My head was pounding. I didn’t feel like I was unconscious for long. It felt like Sofia hit me and I simply blinked but that was clearly not the case. The surroundings were completely different. My comfy bed was replaced with soft grass and the roof of my apartment was now a beautiful night sky. I was still in the simple shorts and white shirt that I had worn to bed that night. I immediately attempted to get up. I felt relief as my hands and feet were no longer constrained from the handcuffs.
“Thank god. I was worried I’d need to kick in the ribs to wake your lazy ass.”
I looked over and saw Sofia sitting on the porch of a small rustic home. She wasn’t smoking this time and the moonlight provided me a far better look at her. She wore the same leather biker jacket but zipped this time. Her face was clearly beautiful but held a ruggedness that made you keep your distance or fear being cut. She stared at me with an expression of boredom as she rested her head on her hand. I quickly stood up.
“Where am I?”
My voice trembled with uncertainty and confusion. I knew this wasn’t a dream. The dirt on my palms made me aware of that. I didn’t understand anything though. Why didn’t she just kill me if she didn’t want me to track her? Why was she asking about Roxane Elliot? But the most important question was simply where was I? It was clearly rural as this small home was the only thing along a small dirt road in the forest. Sofia remained sitting and watched me closely. I watched as she seemed to play with a lip piercing with her tongue.
“30 minutes from Peterstown, near the border with Virginia.”
The border with Virginia? I was just in Morgantown. How far did we travel? And how? I didn’t get the chance to ask my next question. She stood up in front of the house. This was the first time we were both standing. She was a little bit taller than me and held the muscular advantage clearly. If she wanted, she’d easily destroy me. She pointed to the building behind her.
“This right here was where Roxane was last that we know. My boss needs you to figure out where she’s going.”
She spoke about her boss before she hit me. Who could be hiring her with such a history? But I didn’t ask that. Something else she said caught my attention.
“You know Roxane Elliot was here? How long ago?”
Sofia answered my first question with a nod.
“A day ago. No one has touched it since we found it. You think you can find whatever it is you need?”
In a normal situation, I would have said no. Without looking at the situation inside, I had no idea if she left any clues I could use. I had never seen another of her crime scenes recently and only remembered the details of her case five years ago. I had no way to make any solid claims about her behavior. But this wasn’t a normal situation.
“I can try.”
I confirmed her question. If I wanted to survive this, I needed to play along. She seemed pleased and gave this crazy smile showing white teeth and a pierced tongue behind them.
“That’s the spirit. Come on in!”
She turned around, walked up the steps, and opened the wooden door. It gave a creaking sound that left the rest of nature silent. She turned towards me and motioned for me to go inside. I took a few steps forward before the stench hit me. It was a sweet bouquet of rotten meat that attacked the nostrils. I recoiled instinctively and made a sour face while covering my nose. Sofia laughed at my reaction.
“What the hell did you expect? It’s a fucking crime scene.”
Part of me had hoped I was dreaming despite the pain in my side and extremities. Any hope I had disappeared at that moment. That smell was definitely real and seemed to work its way into my nostrils no matter what barriers I put between. I continued to approach, despite my best judgement.
As I walked past Sofia and through the threshold into the home, she followed in behind me. All the lights were off and I took a moment to find a light switch by the door. Luckily, the lights came on. The entrance was a wide hallway which turned left into a living room/kitchen area. I turned the corner to find the source of the smell, at least one of the sources.
The living room was simple with a couch and a recliner chair facing a fireplace with a mounted tv. The walls had wooden wall panels that kept its rustic look. In the recliner chair sat what was left of an older gentleman. The body would have been overweight in life but had ballooned since death. The skin was a sickly pale with a green tint. The arms rested neatly on the recliner’s armrest while the head was plastered across the ceiling and on to the kitchen island behind the recliner. To add insult to injury, a knife or other sharp instrument had been taken to the nether region leaving it skinned and shapeless.
I was not disgusted. I was too desensitized for that. It was inaccurate to say I was shaken either, I had expected such a scene. But there was a certain innate shock to finding such a scene in person rather than in a photograph. There was no drop in my stomach or panic in my thoughts. Only a silent moment of taking in the area and wondering what led me to this. I was taken from the moment by Sofia tapping my shoulder.
“I hope you aren’t growing a moral compass now of all time.”
I shook my head in response. I took a few steps forward. The body was at least two days old and had clearly been carved up after the death judging from the stains on the seat. It was quick based on the arms and legs and how they settled into rigor mortis.
I saw behind the recliner there was a dark brown stain on the wooden floor boards. I recognized it as the stain you see from dragging a body. It led from the kitchen all the way into a hallway on the other side of the room. Sofia didn’t speak but followed and gave a discerning look.
The hallway was short and split into three doors left, front, and right. The trail led to the left door which was left wide open opposed to the closed front and right. The left seemed to have been a guest room or a child’s. It held a single adult twin bed and a dresser and little decoration. On the bed was the body of an older woman rolled onto her side. Her head was intact and kept a wide eyed look of fear on it. Her chest had been pulverized with her right breast completely gone. Whatever clothing she wore was removed and thrown to the side on the floor. I watched as a roach lay unbothered on her left breast, eating away at the dead flesh.
Sofia laughed at the sight and I turned to her confused. She gave me a cheeky smile, as if sharing a joke that I didn’t understand.
“I didn’t know Roxane was a Sappho. Guess she prefers dead GILFs.”
I looked over to the body and immediately shook my head.
“No, she didn’t have sex with her. The body’s position wouldn’t allow it. Let me check for something.”
Sofia raised an eyebrow, intrigued, as I moved out of the room and back into the living room. I walked over to the recliner chair and began inspecting the pants of the man. Sofia followed and was immediately confused. I explained.
“She was looking for something. And was desperate enough to go through her clothes and his pants. His pockets are inside out.”
I stood up and moved past Sofia quickly. She turned around and followed me as I moved to the door on the right of the previous hallway.
“If I’m correct, then I assume…”
I opened the door and was met with a complete mess. This was previously the master bedroom with a king sized bed, a large dresser, jewelry boxes, and a desk. Every single part of the room was turned inside out. Papers, clothes, and various trash covered the floor.
“Yep, she made a mess.”
Sofia looked exasperated at the mess. I walked into the room, not bothering to dodge the trash on the floor.
“If it’s on the floor, she didn’t need it.”
I narrated as I moved through the room. It felt like another one of my videos at that moment. Analyzing crime scene photos and piecing together a puzzle. Sofia followed along as I spoke. Her face would shift between confusion, shock, and laughing as I went through each part of the room. Once I reached the bed, some conclusions could be made.
“The bed isn’t made but that’s not surprising. But the lack of trash on it is. Odds are, she slept here for one night.”
I took one of the pillows on the bed trying to find some hair. Some hair that differed from either corpse’s grey would’ve been conclusive but none turned up. Sofia looked at the bed for a moment before grabbing the blankets and throwing them aside. Hidden underneath was a single large blood stain and the man’s missing genitals, locked in an erect fashion. I was shocked but Sofia wasn’t.
“Yeah she definitely stayed the night. She even made a dildo for the night.”
I looked at her confused and she matched mine. She grabbed it and began to examine it. The skin was falling off but the rigor mortis kept it hard and long.
“You’ve never seen Dahmer’s freezer? Rigor mortis dicks make a great dildo for the short term.”
I nodded along as she spoke. Okay, this one grossed me out. I instinctively imagined Sofia treating me the same way and felt both fear and a little aroused at the idea. She gave me a knowing smile which I decided was best to ignore.
“Well that confirms she stayed the night and it was meant to be temporary. Now the question is what she wanted.”
Sofia dropped the dead dick back on the bed. I looked around the room for any other sign of life. Whatever was cleaner must’ve been important. The kitchen was clean aside from the large stain on the ground and had dirty dishes in the sink at least a day old. The bathroom behind the third door also had raven hair in its shower drain, Roxane’s same color.