Polite to Death
A Detective Langston Kieve Report
written by
jaron summers (c) 2025
I’ve seen a lot in my 14 years on the force.
Once chased a naked man through a mall food court during a senior pancake giveaway.
Another time, we had a guy who tried to rob a bank with a carrot.
But nothing prepared me for the week someone started sneezing people into oblivion.
It started with the guy in the red puffer jacket and the yappy Pomeranian. Barked at kids every day. Folks cheered when he disappeared—literally. One minute he was sipping kombucha on the corner, the next—splat. All that remained was a faintly acidic puddle and a leash that smelled like disappointment.
I thought it was a joke. Maybe a viral marketing stunt. Some TikTok crap.
But then it happened again. And again. And again. Always the same MO:
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Victim: annoying but not prison-worthy
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Crime: something mildly antisocial
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Clue: strange man nearby
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Outcome: human Jell-O
I watched hours of footage.
There he was. Mr. Slim Fit Menace. Bald. Pale. Always carried a green umbrella like Mary Poppins with a superiority complex.
Sometimes he coughed. Sometimes he sneezed. One time I swear he sighed. That poor line-cutter at the taco truck never stood a chance.
I consulted with Dr. Hirani at the coroner’s office. Smart, but caffeinated to the brink of psychosis. She waved a tablet in my face.
“These people weren’t burned, Langston—they were liquefied.“
“By what? Alien goo?”
“No. Human hydrochloric acid. Freshly secreted.”
I blinked. “You’re telling me someone is… weaponizing their indigestion?”
She nodded solemnly. “And quite precisely. It’s like if a stomach took a hit out on the neighborhood.”
The perp’s name?
Gordon Vess.
Ex-professor of “molecular gastronomy”—a fancy term for “guy who ruins food with foam and smugness.” Fired from his university for turning his gut into a fermentation chamber.
I found his old research proposal: “Volitional Gastric Emission for Social Correction and Public Decency.”
The man wanted to weaponize politeness using bodily fluids.
He’d cracked the body’s acid production code, rerouted his parietal cells, and learned to store HCl in weird fleshy “pockets.” According to Dr. Hirani, the man was basically a walking pressure cooker with a nasal trigger.
The plan was elegant. Disgusting, yes. Illegal, definitely.
But elegant.
I found him in a bungalow that smelled like Vicks VapoRub and pork roast. The door had a sign:
“Please Knock Politely—Sudden Sounds May Trigger Involuntary Disintegration.”
So I knocked. Twice. Softly. Like I was asking a librarian on a first date.
He opened the door in a silk robe and nose plugs.
“Detective Kieve. Shoes off, please. I’ve just Lysol’d the floor.”
I kept the shoes on and the gun out.
Inside was like Frankenstein’s digestive tract. Diagrams of stomachs. A dentist’s chair with seatbelts. Beakers labeled “Tuesday.” A framed document that read:
“Rudeness Is A Disease. I Am The Cure.”
He offered me a chamomile tea. I declined.
“You’re not angry?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Gordon said. “Anger agitates the esophageal glands. I’m very calm. Clinical, even.”
“You killed people.”
“I corrected them.”
He sneezed into a tissue. The tissue hissed and smoked.
“That one was just a warning,” he said. “Lactose intolerance. Bad timing.”
I arrested him using rubber gloves, a face shield, and the kind of tongs usually reserved for barbecues.
The trial was a circus. Gordon represented himself.
He used terms like “cultural bile,” “gastric karma,” and “civic emulsification.”
Somehow, the jury didn’t vote for death. They voted for a padded cell with filtered air and no pepper.
En route to the psych hospital, he sneezed. The driver vanished. The seatbelt, oddly, was untouched.
Nowadays, people in the city are… nicer. Quieter.
Baristas say “have a nice day” and mean it.
Dog walkers whisper encouragement instead of letting their mutts scream at toddlers.
Someone even let me merge on the freeway.
There are rumors, of course. That Gordon escaped. That he now teaches “alternative digestion” workshops in Oregon. That if you slam a shopping cart into someone’s heel, he’ll appear behind you with a tissue and a sniffle.
I don’t know if it’s true.
But I started saying “please” again.
Just in case.
