Triggers: Exhaustion, Fainting, Blood, Death
Word Count: 1,097
Genre: Mystery, Modern
Characters: Michael, unnamed woman, unnamed man
Other: First post! Let me know what you think
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The first murder happened in the middle of the night. The night was dark and cold, and only one house had their lights on.
Michael’s head snapped up from his laptop when he heard urgent knocks on his front door. His eyebrows furrowed and he almost went back to his work, but when the knocks came again, he couldn’t ignore them.
“One second,” he called out. He yanked his jumper from the back of his chair and pulled it on as he walked to his front door. He unhooked the chain lock and turned the key.
When he opened the door an unexpected sight greeted him.
“Are you alright?!” He asked the young woman on his doorstep.
“I–I—” She panted hard, like she had been running, but she wasn’t in running gear. Not even trainers, just a pair of Converse that looked like they were falling off her feet.
She shivered and her teeth chattered; the biting wind tore through her thin t-shirt like a laser through tissue paper. The night air condensed as she breathed. Despite the fact it must’ve been close to freezing, she was sweating and her eyes were unfocused.
“Ummm…Are you alright?”
Just as he spoke, her face somehow got paler, her eyes closed and her legs buckled under her. Michael jumped forwards and caught her just in time. He scooped her up and carried her inside.
He set her down gently on his sofa and ran back to his front door to lock it.
He went back into his front room and sat back down at his table, his laptop had gone dark in the time he was away from it, but he clicked a few keys and it lit up again.
After double checking his document was saved, he went to the kitchen to make something that would kick her blood sugar back up.
When she woke up, she saw him kneeling beside her with two mugs of hot chocolate next to him on the floor.
She bolted upright faster than a cat in ice-water and looked around, confused.
“Hey.” Michael said softly, as to not startle her.
She lifted a hand and pressed it to her head, that was pounding, no doubt. “How long was I out?” She asked, her voice weak.
“Just a few minutes.” He reassured her, before standing up and retrieving the mugs. He gave one to her and she sniffed it tentatively, then gulped it down in a flash.
She gasped in air and stood up abruptly. Michael stood up too and held an arm out as he thought she would be a bit dizzier than that.
“Thank you for that,” She smiled at him. “But I should really get going.”
“What?” He scrambled to think of something else to say. “Are you sure? You could stay the night if you want. If you still don’t feel too good.”
“No thank you. I feel fine now.” She kept smiling, entirely confident in herself. She started walking towards the front door, but Michael tried to stop her.
“Are you sure? You were practically dead not 30 seconds ago. You need to go to the hospital.” She shook her head and adamantly refused.
“Let me walk you home, at least.” Michael didn’t see it, but something flashed in her eyes with malignant intent.
“Ok then.” He nodded and ran off to get a couple of things.
Two minutes later, he was back next to her. Shoes on, jumper over one arm.
“Do you want this? You look frozen half to death.” He held it out, and without a word, she accepted it.
He opened the door and she put the jumper on as they stepped out and he locked up. He put his keys into the pocket of his jogging bottoms.
They set off. She directed where they went and Michael grew ever more uneasy as they got into the dangerous part of the city. He’d lost track of the numerous streets, alleyways and cut-throughs they had gone down and through.
“Sorry to ask, but where am I?”
“We’re near the old factory yards.” She didn’t give him an exact answer and it just added to his mounting apprehension.
They turned down another narrow street and she pointed down the street, to just past a dumpster. “It’s just down there.”
He gulped down his fear knowing that he would be leaving soon. He was regretting offering to walk her home…
The sooner he could drop her off and get home the better.
He felt his heart rate quickening and sensing that something was going to go horribly wrong, a cold sweat broke out over his entire body.
He found himself hunching over slightly and his eyes flicked from side to side, frantically in search of a safe spot…
Or frantically searching for the danger he could all but smell.
They went down the street in silence, but when they got past the dumpster, someone jumped out behind him and held a knife to his throat. The person closed his hand over Michael’s mouth so hard that even if he tried to scream, he wouldn’t be able to. He glanced down at the knife, it glinted in the moonlight that managed to filter down through the clouds.
He raised his hands as a man came out of a doorway and rifled through his pockets in search of…well he didn’t know what.
He looked over at the woman and saw that she’d leaned up against the wall on the other side of the narrow street. She smirked at him and he realised what she’d done.
“He’s only got his keys.” The man plucked his keys out of his pocket and chucked them to the woman. She then nodded to the person behind him and he felt a searing pain in his neck for a few seconds. Then
Nothing
The woman laughed cruelly as he collapsed to the floor like a sack of potatoes, blood spurting from his throat like an insuppressible fountain and pooled around him.
She ripped his jumper off and tossed it down on him.
“I didn’t want your jacket anyway.”
