People believe that when an individual enters a stage of extreme shock, you become immobilised and they lose close to all sense of coordination and control over their own bodies. In fact, they will be filled with so much fear that it is considered a privilege to even let out a scream. That was what exactly happened to me. My mind blanked out on me. Is that a human head that I was looking at? I reasoned with and thought to myself that I could be imagining things. Maybe it was supposed to be a prank for Halloween, to scare the neighbours’ children while they were out trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood. I took a few steps closer into the room and then I ran out, holding back the urge to throw up. The slight trace of the scent of decomposing human flesh was unmistakeable and although the person did a decent job in preserving it, it was not enough. Maggots were starting to appear on the surface, digging and crawling around, digesting anything that they came across and in a matter of days, putrid odours would be emanating from it, only to be blocked out by the shifting slab of six-inch concrete. Covering the remains of the unfortunate victim with my towel, I quickly shifted my attention to the other things that were in the room. I acknowledged the presence of a worktable to my right and as I made my way towards it, what I saw sent chills down my spine and made my blood curdle. Pictures of me, circled in red, were scattered all over the top. My routines, sequenced chronologically with notes scribbled all over the place, essentially showing and notifying the intended reader how I behaved and structured my lifestyle. While I was rummaging and sifting through the pile of pictures and documents, a newspaper cutting caught my attention and seemed so familiar. After spending a few seconds trying to recall where I saw it, my heart sank. It was yesterday’s paper and the heading read:
“REMAINS OF MAN UNEARTHED AFTER 2 YEARS, FIANĆE STILL MISSING”
My hand shook as I started reading the rest of the article and I continued until I came to a part where a picture of Paige was staring right back at me. I was horrified. Turns out that the man’s missing fiancé is currently living, eating and worse, sleeping with me for the past six months. I refused to believe what I read. There could be another person in the world that was identical to the love of my life or maybe the room had a bad lighting and my imagination was working overtime after discovering a decomposing head in the depths my very home but I could not lie to myself any longer as I knew that an individual’s social security number cannot be changed so easily and I was reading the article directly under a table lamp. There were older cuttings, dating to about a year back with her pictures on it and all the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. My girlfriend was a budding serial killer and a smart one too. She did not confine herself to a single location and she chose her targets wisely. She picked the ones who had a low-profile in society, the ones who were seldom noticed. Now I knew why my face was circled in the pictures, my life all planned out like how one would program a robot and why she did not choose to kill me in my sleep. No, she was too intelligent for that sort of barbaric and crude modus operandi. Why get your hands dirty when you could pay a thug few hundred dollars to do the job and at the same time stage your own demise? Why step into the fray and run the risk of getting caught? As a matter of fact, it was her decision that we settled down in this house. Had she known about this room all along? I could not help thinking to myself how many ways of murder she has already planned within the four walls and it sickened me to think that after the deed was done, she kept “trophies” of her victims which was a twisted way to remind herself of her successes. Then I heard a sound of our front door being opened and closed, indicating the presence of another human being. It was probably Paige coming back home, unsuspecting of my recent discovery of what she has tried to conceal from me since we got together. I panicked and quickly ran out of the door, pushing the lever so that the wall could slide back into its original position. Praying that the ominous grunting could not be heard by anyone and once the wall was back in place, I quickly rotated the showerhead to look normal once more. As I was getting dressed, I reached for my gun that I had stashed away in my drawer in anticipation of a situation which would call for it and it seemed to me that this would be the time where I would need it the most. I took a deep breath, kept the small handgun in my pocket, muttered a prayer and went downstairs to check if my assumption was true and there she was smiling at me as I walked down, only this time that smile will be her last.
Post a Comment