I apologize for going on hiatus for so long. This is a revised version of Beyond the Blood. I have deleted the original. Enjoy!
I do NOT own DMC.
Living by the ocean had always been a dream of mine- to be able feel that salty breeze caress my face each day was almost euphoric to me. A smile tugged at my lips as a new wind blew through my hair as I gazed at the orange sky that was slowly melting into blue over the water's edge. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. However the peaceful moment was immediately ruined by the gruesome scene of a mutilated woman, her bones crushed beyond recognition and her insides spewed across the pavement as though they were used for painting.
My body instantly flew up in my bed in an instant. The loose t-shirt was now dampened with cold sweat around the neck. I gulped at the air, trying to calm my suddenly panicked body. Through the darkness, I leaned over and flicked on the bedside lamp. The golden glow quickly illuminated the bedroom, making me feel more at ease. I glimpsed at the clock, 3am..again.
For the past 3 months, I had had these horrendous nightmares. My once calm nights were replaced by foul imagery and always ended with me waking at precisely 3am, gasping for air and covered in a slick cold sweat. Each dream was different, but had the same chilling epitome of recollection. The dreams were so vivid and I could feel everything, smell everything, as though I had been there. Everyone has dreams like that, but these seemed too dark to be something of just a dream.
The dreams also directly correlated with my current police investigation. Around the same time the dreams started happening, a new serial killer emerged in the alleyways of Toronto. The crime scenes were always random and never followed a pattern, except for the one detail – each victim was female. A psychoanalyst would probably conclude this guy had some fucked up relationship with his mother and had developed a hate for the opposite sex, or even the same sex if the killer is a woman. Whatever gender this killer was, they were painting the streets red with chunks of Leatherface's basement.
About a month of the dreams and eerie crime scenes, I decided to go see someone. My first though was a psychologist, but all they could tell me was that it was probably just the stress of everything. I tried a psychiatrist next, who for some reason thought I was a delusional schizo and recommended 300mg dosages of some high end anti depressant. I tried every profession I could think of, and they gave me nothing new or even relatively useful. So last week, I decided to go see a psychic palm reader. I had always been one for astrology so why not try this?
The reader, a plump woman who went by the name Lady Carrabelle, had given me something that actually caught my attention. Her warm fingers danced over the left palm as I watched her eyes flutter closed and her lips move soundlessly. She had told me that I was to find out something very big, something very important to my existence.
Then she had let go of my hand and opened her eyes. Her honey brown irises looked almost frightened as she gazed at me. "You're about to embark on a very dangerous journey my dear."
Her words had left me speechless and puzzled. But the way she had said those last few words stuck to me like sap on a tree. The way her tone carried the words and her face reflected that tone, it was as if she were warning me. We I rose to leave her little shop she suddenly grabbed my wrist.
"Be careful
I pushed the covers off my bare legs and touched my feet to the wooly carpet. Just as I was about to stand, the familiar tone of Bach buzzed next to the lamp.
"Detective Kaildas," I replied.
"Detective, we have a new crime scene by the waterfront. It's our guy."
Within the span of 27 minutes, I had managed to clean myself up, put on some decent clothes, and rush to a crime scene bordering the harbour. It was surprisingly chilly out tonight considering how hot the mid-July days had been.
The lights of my Volkswagen soon found the police perimeter of yellow tape followed by the flashing of red and blue lights. Quickly parking the vehicle meters form the tape, I locked it and dashed towards the blur of lights. As I crouched under the tape and started down the cracked pavement, I suddenly recognized this crime scene. A concert hall that I had visited frequently in my teenage years.
A gust of wind came north of me, bring the fresh smell of lake water tinted by decay. The concrete soon turned to grass as my sneakers squished against the damp ground and I soon found myself gazing the wooden board along the waters edge where a cop and a coroner hovered over a mass of red.
"You got here quick Kalidas," the coroner replied in an uninterested tone. I ignored his comment and locked my sight on the body.
Though this would've made people gage involuntarily, blood and gore no longer had a sickening effect on my stomach. This victim was pretty, a round face with plump pink lips parted and honey blonde hair that was a few inches past her shoulders. Her eyes however were slightly haunting. Rather than a pair of colorful irises, there were nothing but gorged sockets surrounded by dried blood. Her face reflected nothing short of terror. The pink sweater on her petit framed was also covered in crimson. Her stomach was not in tact though. A spew of pinkish organs flowed from her body onto the wooden deck. The intestines had not been ripped out cleanly, but rather quickly and messily. The entire inside of her stomach was open to the world and looked more like a fleshy bowl with chewed organs. The skin of her stomach had been savagingly torn off and was residing in a small pile a few feet from her head.
"Cause of death?"
The coroner shook his head unsurely and ran his eyes over the corpse. He let out a heavy sigh then before turning his attention to me and standing. "It could be a number of things," he said dully while stripping off the latex gloves. "She had blunt force trauma to her head, probable blood loss, the disembowelment process most likely. She has heavy bruising around her neck suggesting possible asphyxiation."
His brief analysis was nothing new to me. All the other victims looked just as ravaged as this poor girl. "Have we gotten an ID on her yet?"
"Yah we found a purse in the bushes by the road. Name's Amy Wilcott, 19, freshman at UFT."
I let out a heavy sigh and ran my fingers through my hair. "Alright then. Bag her. How much time do you think you'll need for the autopsy?"
"I won't be conducting it, David will be. He didn't say how long he'd take, but he told me to tell you to come by whenever to see the body."
He smiled and went off to retrieve a black body bag from the ambulance. I couldn't help but let my gaze drift back to the corpse. Each victim had been destroyed in the same, gruesome way, and every time it never ceased to shock me.
David stood over the sleek silver table curiously as he examined Amy Wilcott's corpse. The elderly man's glasses perched on the tip of his nose and a scruffy white-gray beard coating his jaw. It took only a second for him to realize I was there. He smiled gently.
"Hey David. Whatcha got for me?"
"You know the obvious already. The COD was internal bleeding. The wound to her head didn't do enough damage to kill her and the strangulation marks along her neck seem to only be there because that's how she was probably trapped," he explained, using his hands to indicate bruises and wounds along the body. "For the looks of the skin on her stomach, she wasn't cut open but rather torn open; by what, I don't know."
"What about anything unusual? Did you find anything that wasn't on any of the other victims?" I questioned.
"I did," he responded matter-of-factly. David turned away from the table and went over to the counter to retrieve a small plastic container. "I found this embedded in her left lung. It looks like a fingernail or claw. I'll send it to the lab after I finish here and have them beep you."
"Okay, thanks David. Let me know if you find anything else."
As always, feedback is always appreciated guys. Sorry again for the long wait.
- Arathi