𝑩𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝑩𝒚 𝑩𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 | 𝘼 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙀𝙫𝙞𝙡 𝙁𝙖𝙣𝙛𝙞𝙘

Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ ４

Laura

She's dead... She's actually dead.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to. I kept thinking that it was all merely a bad dream; a nightmare. One that I would wake up from any minute now and find myself in the comfort of my own bed. Except, it wasn't just some figment of my overactive imagination, it actually happened, and I was living every second of it. It wasn't crimson paint that was caked all over the mauve colored walls of the master bedroom—it was blood, the blood of my dead mother.

As much as I wanted to forget all of it, I couldn't unsee what I saw in my mother's bedroom. It was permanently burned into my memory by the very flames of fright. Once I gazed into her room, I shrieked in absolute terror, like any horrified character in a horror movie would upon discovering the maimed corpse of their loved one.

The corpse of my mother was sprawled out on top of her bed, her glossy eyes wide open as her soulless irises gazed in my direction. Mass amounts of her blood were splattered all over the room, staining the majority of the bed sheets, carpet, and the once spotless walls. It wasn't even the worst of it; what made me really sick to my stomach was the condition of Mom's lifeless cadaver.

Gashes and slashes of all shapes and sizes blanketed the surface of her pallid skin, the most apparent lacerations were located on the anterior side of her bony wrists. The entirety of her outfit was practically saturated in her own blood, giving off a somewhat metallic scent in the room. Her mouth was left agape, droplets of blood trickled from her cracked lips onto her chin and down her neck. Worst of all, in her right hand she was holding the very culprit responsible for her injuries: a blood-soaked kitchen knife.

Whoever had ruthlessly taken the life of adoptive mother was no ordinary killer, the murderer was experienced, as adept as Beethoven was in the art of music. Be that as it may, the murder made one simple mistake on their part: they left the bedroom door unlocked. Parts of the door frame were chipped around the strike plate, an indication that someone had busted the door open from the outside. If Mom had actually committed suicide, she wouldn't have left her bedroom door unlocked or purposely tried to break its locking mechanism entirely, not unless she wanted to me to find her in such a mangled state. The officers thought otherwise, they couldn't find any other signs of forced entry within the apartment and the little evidence they were able to scrounge up suggesting it was a homicide wouldn't be enough for them to legally organize a manhunt for the alleged murder.

This wasn't his—or her—first rodeo, and it wouldn't most likely be their last either. The killer was still out there, somewhere, possibly waiting to strike once again as soon as it had its eyes set on their next victim.

I watched silently from the living room as two coroners carried a body bag from the master bedroom all the way to the hallway outside the apartment; containing the bloody corpse of my adoptive mother. I guess it didn't take me until that very moment to realize the gravity of my current situation. My mother—the woman I once looked up to for her outgoing spirit and lively vigor—was gone, leaving behind only an empty shell that had been heavily afflicted by her alcoholism. Things may have been rocky between the two of us for the past year or so, but she was still my mother. She wasn't the best one in the entire world but at least I knew she wasn't suffering anymore.