Jackie's Bad Night

Jackie saw the red and blue cop lights in her mirrors, her heart sunk to her stomach, and she sighed.
“No, no, no, no!” she implored to the protector god of slightly drunken girls who have just been dumped and drive home to show their bravado, “This can’t be happening. Not tonight. Not after hearing that jerk tell me all about his mother and crap. This is too much.”
The officer outside tapped on her window with the end of a sturdy looking flashlight, the kind you spend a lot of money on and will still have working and shiny ten years down the road. The kind of person who didn’t like to buck tradition or give a girl a break was precisely the kind of person who bought a sturdy flashlight. Jackie sighed. Then she sighed again as she rolled down the window.
“Hello, young lady. What took you so long to roll down your window? Were you making up your mind about something?” said the officer in a strangely inflected tone. Jackie figured it was an accent from someplace awful like Alabama or South Dakota and struggled to come up with a good answer to a question she had no wish to answer. Nor would the following ones be any fun either.
“Sorry, officer. I had a hard night. My boyfriend dumped me tonight and I’m a bit…distraught.” There was a word she never used. Why hadn’t she said mad? Sad? Upset? Something a normal person would say. Something a sober person would say.
“Young lady, I can smell something pretty strong on your breath.”
“It’s not what you think. I can explain. It’s just…It’s my…”
“Young lady, will you please get out of the car?” asked the officer, with his hand already on the door handle.
“I can do it, thanks,” Jackie grunted in as much contempt as she thought she could allow him to see without rubbing him raw. She opened the car door, swung her legs out, and pulled herself out of the car. “All right, I’m out. What’s next? Sobriety test? Walking the line?”
The officer held out his hand and indicated his car, saying, “Young lady, will you please get into the back seat of the vehicle?”
Jackie narrowed her eyes, wondering if the cop was a sleaze ball who pulled over young girls to give them a hard time and give himself some hot shower stroking material. Or not. Either way, she didn’t like what was coming next.
“Are you going or do I need to help you?” asked the officer in his strange accent that now sounded like he didn’t have a very good grasp on the English language. Stupid cops, Jackie thought, not even a rudimentary education and they get to carry lethal weapons and get to intimidate people for their own sick and sadistic pleasure.
“No, I’m going, officer,” as she turned curtly to amble over to the cruiser, “I can see the way. I’m not blind.”
“That’s too bad,” he replied. Jackie could hear his voice coming from right off her shoulder and then she heard what sounded like the first few pops of popcorn loudly cracking open. She whirled around, grabbing the gun out of his holster, and aimed it at him as she backed up a step. What she saw almost made her drop the gun. Almost. The pain in the back of her head allowed her to stay focused.
The officer’s head had been obscenely cracked open, so that his mouth now extended past his ears, and in place of his tongue, a writhing, mucous-covered tentacle, which had grasping, hungry tentacles of varying length all over its nauseatingly gelatinous surface. Jackie could feel the malevolence from it as strongly as she smelled the combined emanation of paper mills, waste treatment plants, and slaughterhouses. Her eyes widened to take in the horrific sight before her, her earlier drama so far removed. As the tentacle-officer lurched forward towards her, Jackie aimed and fired the entire clip into him.
He lurched forward another step. Jackie sighed again. It just wasn’t her night.