Devil's in the Details-Reboot

 

 

The Red Vice

Blood filtered away from the body quickly as if running away from something it was scared of. It oozed out of the orifices in concise pattern with the floor in was spreading across. In death the body was turning paler as it lay there surrounded in its own life force, as it began to slowly congeal sealing the body to the ground beneath. It was not even an hour before, the horror and loss of life took place, the soul was still inside, and the lungs still breathed air. 

The bloody torso with only a head left attached almost stuck fully to the floor before the cops who were called to the subway station got there. When the forensics team showed up, they bagged and tagged all they could, which wasn’t much. Lead Investigator James Holland stood a few feet away staring at the remains as if they would give off some hidden clue. He zoned out, closed his eyes, and meditated the world away. All he saw before his vision was the color red. All he heard was the victim screaming. He wanted to know why. What’s the M.O. of the killer? Why here, why now? 

The investigator opened his eyes and closed in on the body again, staring down at her, scouring every inch of her blood soaked body for something. He looked at the cuts, how the killer dismantled her limbs. The cuts weren’t clean, it took time to hack off her arms and legs. He tortured her, doing it that way. 

As the M.E. and coroner came to get the body to take it to the lab, Holland saw something embedded in the one of the stumps where her legs had been. One shining shard of metal, to him it looked like the teeth broken off from a good old fashioned hand saw. After the item was bagged and tagged, most of the team had taken leave of the subway station. The investigator stuck around, his head pouring, reeling with possible reasoning, motives, serial killers, and everything else he could think of to solve the case.


***


Twenty-four hours earlier:


Through the haze, Rebecca began to awaken, severely shaken, she had no idea where she was. Staring at a very old ceiling, she began to feel fear then she started remembering, she’d been on the way home from a simple run to the store when something took her off the main road and into the countryside. Her car stalled out and she didn’t know what to do, so she sat there for a moment or two. Suddenly someone she didn’t know came upon her, saying they could help her then everything went black. 

As Rebecca tried to get up off the floor she lay upon, using the table beside her for leverage, her hand slipped through the sticky liquid on the surface and she hit the back of her head on the floor. The pain stung her. She tried again, this time lifting herself up. She looked around at the poorly lit room she was in. The thick layer of dust and decay didn’t scare her, what scared her was the sound of heavy footsteps getting closer to the room she was in. She got fully to her feet; with her head pounding, she looked around to see if she could find something to defend herself with, there was nothing. Panic set in as the footsteps drew closer to the one door in the room. The sound stopped then Rebecca heard the lock click, she prayed. She heard the doorknob turn and so did her mind, for the worst. Becca, damn it, do something! 

She looked around the mostly barren room for a way out or a place to hide as a tall thickly built man entered the room. The man stood six foot four inches tall and reminded her of a football player in size, he covered the entire door hole, there was no way out. Her eyes darted around the room and she knew she couldn’t do anything, she had no weapons and there were none in the room. Shit! Shit! Shit!

Suddenly, Rebecca caught sight of his face and gasped because he was horribly scarred and burned. Deep scratches were dug permanently into his skin and the ridges on his forehead were dark with what appeared to be dirt but it might have been dried blood, she wasn’t sure. He quickly came into the room, shutting the door behind himself as he looked down at his tiny prey. He saw her fear and attempted to smile at her. 

Her eyes widened as she backed into the wall, hitting her head on the old plaster. When the huge man reached her, he grabbed her by the arm, pulling her toward the door. She tried to yank away and he smacked her so hard that if he didn’t have her arm in his meaty hand she would have fallen to the ground and been out cold. She whimpered loudly the further toward the door he got her whimpers turned to screams. She was begging him to leave her alone; to him it was a melody as if he were hearing a song. He started to laugh a little. This sick bastard!

Once he got to the door he opened it, leaving it swinging as he dragged Rebecca’s body through it and into a dimly lit hallway. Soon he had taken her to the basement of the old house in the middle of nowhere. Her only thoughts were of how to get away. There were no windows and the door was bolted shut after he almost threw her down the stairs. While she stumbled down, she heard the locks heavily click into place. Oh dear God, I’m going to die! 

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed her by the back of her head, threading his big fingers into her hair, pulling as he walked into the main room. Her screams were like straight-line adrenaline to him, spurring him on. He gripped her head tighter and tighter, his nails digging into her scalp making her holler louder. His skin tingled with anticipation as he shut the door to the killing room and threw Rebecca on the table hard.

She tried to struggle but she was no match for his girth or his speed, for a big guy, he was fast when he tied her down. She couldn’t move and was staring at the ceiling. She wondered how many other women had stared at the very same one before they were about to die? She knew she was going to die there was no doubt in her mind. That large man was going to kill her, she could feel it. 

As the killer fastened her head to the table, his slovenly grin cast itself upon her. It was horrifying even before he showed her his rotting teeth, which made it worse. He grabbed her by the sweaty hair on her sore scalp, making her look at his hideous face before he began to slowly saw off one of her legs. 

Pain gripped her far more than fear as she let out a howling scream that made him saw slower so he could hear her voice bounce off the ceiling and into his eardrums. When he was finished cutting, he showed her the leg before throwing her useless limb into a corner. As she bled profusely onto the table, he began to cut off her other leg with his old rusty hand saw. More screams of pain that excited him, came from her throat. When he finished, he climbed up on top of the table straddling his little female victim. Rebecca couldn’t move, but she screamed a crescendo into his ears, filling him up with all of her voice as he began to saw off one of her arms. 

After he had sawed off all of her limbs, he climbed off of Rebecca, who was still strapped to his table. He tossed his saw on the ground and picked up the electric bone saw he’d procured through a ‘friend of a friend’ and started toward her. She had bled so much she was barely conscious but she could still see him through the slits in her eyes. She’d quickly made peace with God. God, please forgive me, for everything, I will meet you soon! She knew it was the end. As she opened her eyes one final time, she saw him and heard the saw as he closed in on her. One last terrible scream filled her as she felt the pain of her flesh being ripped apart as her killer cut through her neck and into her spinal cord and she faded from life. 


***


Twenty-four hours later:


“Smitty, go get me a sandwich, will ya? This late night shit is for the birds,” Lead Investigator James Holland said.

“Okay, boss. The usual?” 

“Yeah, and make it quick, not in the mood to be doing this…”

“You got it, boss.”

As Smitty left the crime scene, Holland knelt close to the body with latex gloves on his hands observing the pattern of the blood that for some reason hadn’t drained out of the victim until it was placed there at the subway station. This body couldn’t have been killed here, there’s no way without people seeing. How did the killer get her here without her bleeding out? 

Most of the evidence and photos had been taken already, the coroner was about to bag up the body while Holland was still looking around studying the scene, trying to make some sort of since of it all. After the torso of the un-named victim was placed in a body bag and hauled away the last photos of where she lay had been taken. 

Where the hell is Smitty with my sandwich? Holland was starting to pace while he was thinking, trying his best to get some sort of answer when suddenly a very large shadow encompassed a wall opposite him. As he was about to turn around, very large hands grabbed the back of his neck and lifted him off the floor. 

“What the--!” Holland exclaimed. He heard baritone laughter of slight insanity behind him, but all he could see was the wall in front of him. A few seconds later, the sounds of snapping, cracking, crunching of Holland’s neck bones were heard as he tried to scream out in pain, a few seconds later his dead body was thrown on the hard tile floor of the subway station and left there. The very large killer skulked his way back into the shadows and off into the night.