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Now wasn't this a familiar sight? The small grey room made Yomiel nostalgic in all the worst ways, the familiarity of it all cloying and choking him. The last time he'd been in a room like this one, it had been a lifetime ago. Before the incident that had ruined his life forever, the one that had stolen what precious little was once his away. Yomiel found himself markedly calmer than that previous experience, lounging in his uncomfortable, rigid chair.
The officer walked into the room not long after, a man who looked to be in his thirties, if Yomiel had to guess. Combed brown hair, green eyes that stared straight at Yomiel's sunglasses like he could see all the way through him. He certainly looked reasonably decent for interrogation. Yomiel knew that other members of the force were watching him from the window at his back, one-way though it was. But, unlike before, he'd learned how to work a room in his favor.
"What's your full legal name?" the officer questioned. Straight into questions then, huh? There wasn't the tiniest hint of pleasantries first, to cushion the sharp swerve the conversation had taken. Not that Yomiel needed it, of course. He couldn't blame the man for neglecting to feign empathy, either, since Yomiel was well aware that his being in police custody was very out of the ordinary; for both himself, and the officers. It wasn't every day that someone got to interrogate a 'corpse' after all.
His green eyes searched Yomiel's face for some kind of reaction, a tell, anything, but Yomiel didn't see fit to give him one. Something he'd only learned in his afterlife was that you were always the most important person in the room. Everyone would be working against you, and you had to know that to twist it to your advantage. If the threat of interrogation was legal charges or death, Yomiel just had to show that those incentives didn't work on him any longer. Accept them, even.
"How did you arrive at the scene of the crime?" the officer asked next, seeing the lack of response as the non-starter it was. His second question was slightly more palatable, in that it led into further questioning without being the shock to the system that his first question was. Still, Yomiel didn't answer. As far as everyone was concerned, he was dead. Even though he'd tried his best to overcome death, he'd been left out to dry, his chance at a new life leaving him behind to rot.
His fists still clenched as he remembered that spotless-record detective and the old coroner carting his body off into custody, Yomiel forced to follow if he didn't want to never see it again. If they really snooped, they'd discover the fragment lodged in his back and remove it, and then any chance of a new shot at life would really be taken from him. Yomiel had no choice but to interrupt them as they set his body on the metal table to be cut open yet again.
"What is your relation to the officer involved in this incident?" The man still wouldn't shut up. Yomiel's patience was running out. "According to our records, she was involved in another incident with you as a child, correct? Is that why you lured her out-" The officer's mouth suddenly snapped shut. The invisible 'hand' of Yomiel's ghost tricks had quieted him down; no matter how the officer tried to resist, his body wouldn't obey his commands. Yomiel slipped back into his own body.
"Do you get it?" Yomiel asked, the first words to come out of his mouth in hours. "Do you even know what I am?" He dropped his voice down low, bordering on a whisper as he reclined further in his seat. It had the effect of making him seem unaffected, with a bonus of making it more difficult for onlookers to tell his body went limp while using his powers. The man before Yomiel shook softly. It was all in the eyes; his eyes were still firm and determined. He had to do more to break him.
"I know what you are," the man said. "You're a criminal. You're supposed to be dead, but you aren't. Some kind of... anomaly. A freak of nature." Freak of nature? Yomiel felt his eyelid twitch at the assertion, glad for his sunglasses concealing it from view. This pathetic excuse for a man, who hadn't even the slightest fathom of his suffering, would dare call him a freak of nature?! For a cursed existence that he didn't even want?!
Yomiel reached beyond his body again, making sure that it wouldn't fall as he slid back into the officer's body. Blood, bone and sinew were all under his command, and he intended to make his displeasure known. Moving the officer's hands, he placed them palm-down on the table, spread a healthy distance apart. Yomiel could feel the man's fear as he lost control of his own body, unable to stop. Then, Yomiel reared the man's head back and slammed it down with a crunch.
When the officer drew his head up, Yomiel had returned to his body and noted, with some satisfaction, that the man's nose was surely broken. The soft shaking from before had transformed into full-body tremors, eyes staring at him with naked fear. Good, let him know what he was dealing with, what insulting Yomiel would cost him.
"You miscalculated with all this wasted effort," Yomiel calmly told the officer. "Because I already knew before coming into this room." The man looked at him with eyes filled with terror, leaning back in his seat to get as far away from Yomiel as possible. "Only one of us is leaving this room alive, or didn't you know?" The taunting lilt to his voice made the officer flinch, but Yomiel wasn't just throwing out a bunch of empty threats. No, they were very much real.
Leaving his own body again, Yomiel fit himself snugly into each inch of the man's form. He could catch a glimpse of his memories, if he tried; flashes of animals at home, proud parents, tender moments with a special someone. In the past, that might've been enough to dissuade Yomiel from following through. But not now. He wasn't even all that angry, not anymore. Yomiel was tired. What he was about to do... It wasn't in the name of self-preservation or vengeance, it stemmed from something more like 'enough.'
His spectral form clamped down around the man's heart, making the organ thrash in his hold much like the man was trying to do. In the end, without the heart, there was no life. Wasn't that a harrowing thought? With the heart or the brain gone, humans would be dead, empty husks. What did that make him, a being that now had neither? Just as dead, for sure, and just as empty.
Without blood being pumped consistently, the officer just had to wait it out until his brain ran out of oxygen. He was struggling in Yomiel's hold, a feat that Yomiel had to respect. Only one other person had managed to put up such a fight, the man's fingers clawing at his chest desperately, but to no avail. It almost disappointed Yomiel when no one burst through the doors to try and stop him. They were going to sit by and let an officer die like this? The police really were scum, not that Yomiel didn't already think as much.
It didn't take long for the man to finally stop moving, entirely braindead even as Yomiel reflexively blinked in his piloted body, the movement sluggish. Those pigs wanted to understand him better, did they? Thought they could get answers out of him? Yomiel's life was already over. Any chance at answers or closure had long-since fled. That was their miscalculation; that he would talk under threat of death, when he was already dead. Once he understood that, working the room grew much simpler.
Yomiel lifted the man's bloodied face up, flashing the one-way window a toothy grin, the taste of copper seeping into his mouth. Did they enjoy watching this? Seeing him maim and kill? Did they revel in the pain he caused? Yomiel didn't. No, this was merely a necessity, the final business of a tormented soul unable to move on. But if they wanted to treat him like a monster to be studied and scrutinized, then he'd give them a real show.