Endless Forms Most Beautiful

8- Dirty little copy cop.

The house is pitch black. The only source of light comes from the bathroom on the first floor, the brightness escaping from the gap under the door and illuminating the corridor. The owners don't know she is there, they don't even know who she is; she doesn't know who they are either, she just picked the prettiest house and let herself in. She grabs the needle with one trembling hand, the other one gripping the bathroom countertop to steady herself, her bloody fingers painting the pristinely white marble.

Blood, blood, blood. It's everywhere. On her wound, on her shirt, it drips on the floor like vermillion tears. Veronica won't bleed when she dies. The others didn't either —the dark red that flowed out of them, streaming out of their heads, or their chests, staining her knife and her hands, was just their sins trying to escape before their bodies gave out —but she does, she bleeds, she's real.

"I'm not Veronica...I'm not Veronica...Not Veronica..." she mumbles as she passes the needle through her torn skin, the pain burning her entire abdomen like fire. That copy, the one who stuck the metal bar on her stomach, the one who dresses like Veronica, drives her car, sleeps on her bed...Andriy didn't warn her about another one.

It doesn't matter, soon she will be dead too.

***

When Heather called her at 5 a.m. saying that the police knew the killer's latest pit stop, Janis expected it to be an abandoned house or something equally fitting for a psycho murderer; she didn't expect the address to match a beautiful craftsman-style house on a nice street just a few blocks away from Lawndale, the neighborhood where Janis and Heather got attacked.

Janis stays seated on the car's leather seat as she stares at the house, already filled with police officers coming in and out through the front door. A sudden knock on the car window makes her jump out of her seat.

"Sorry," Heather apologizes as Janis steps out of the car. "I'm jumpy too."

"How's your head?" Janis asks and Chandler lifts her shoulders in a shrug. Even after being attacked the day before, Heather still manages to look flawless, with nice clothes, high heels, and a full face of makeup and she is wearing her ginger hair down, probably in an attempt to hide the ugly white bandage still taped on her neck; Janis on the other hand barely had the energy to brush her hair this morning.

"Probably as bad as yours," Chandler answers as they walk towards the house. Despite the different scenery, the situation reminds Janis of the gravel quarry, with all the cops running around. In the living room, a woman in her thirties, who doesn't look like part of the staff, is talking to one of the police officers who write down everything she's saying; she looks like she is trying to hold back her tears.

"I slept through the whole thing. Trevor came into my room wet with blood," Janis hears the woman saying, voice shaking as much as the rest of her body. "He said it was an angry angel."

Heather walks in the direction of another man, one Janis recognizes from the station, his name is Peter Dawson, another detective. "Good morning, ladies," he greets them with too much energy for seven in the morning.

"What do have here?" Janis asks, trying to mimic the dialogues she's heard from crime shows and Heather, the only two sources of information she has.

"We didn't get him, but we do have a witness," Peter says. "And we also don't have any prints, but our guy wasn't exactly covering his tracks. Take a look."

Peter leads the two women toward the bathroom, where two other police officers are busy taking pictures of every inch of the room. Janis understands what Peter meant by 'not exactly covering his tracks when she sees the look of the bathroom, which looked like a murder scene, with dried blood spread like paint everywhere; on the counter and the floor, there is a pair of bloodied scissors and an open package of gauze. Suddenly, Janis feels her breakfast trying to crawl its way back toward her mouth.