Photos were strewn across the table as if the beige folder hadn’t been able to keep them down. It sat useless underneath the scattered gloss like an animal with a broken jaw.

She ran her fingers along the surface. Her nail made soft vibrations. For now, she was looking a bit through them, trying to keep them in the background of her mind. She wasn’t quite ready yet.

Madani was sitting across from her. Chewing. On a nail. On loose finger skin. On a paper clip. She was avoiding, a tiny bit. They both still had the stomach to look at the photos while they procrastinated.

They were whispering to her. Like static on a on a screen whispered blue light to a sleeping room. Nothing discernible. Just the usual shit she got if she paid too much attention.

Madani was trying not to look at her too much. She could feel it in that animal way most people felt eyes on the back of their head, the normal caveman way. She could also feel it in that purple-voiced part of her. It was stronger than the unknowable murmurs the photos gave her.

She could step into Madani if she tried. But all she cared to garner was that the woman was curious about what she was doing, in a worried way. A neutral leaning to negative interest. A dull red anxiety.

Low murmurs. Overlapped. Like a couple few second clips of noise, starting right before the other stopped. Nothing to hear but low-spectrum violet sound.

Madani moved her chair back. It was cheap and wooden and of the type where the legs would bend a little if dragged. It required a pick-up-and-push-back action.

She moved across the room to pick up a designated plastic cup and fill it from the tap. She sipped gently. Her thoughts were still at the table. Mulling over the images. Curiosity and professional distaste. There was a good chance it was the worst thing Madani had ever seen, but it probably wasn’t by much.

It was the worst thing she had seen, but not necessarily for the gore. A lot of it was always the why. She was good at the why. Now she was dealing with the how as well.

They’d been twisted. A mom. A son. She would have just called it as a child if she didn’t have the residential info. The name and the age and the gender.

It looked painful. Angry. Harm with intent behind it.

She looked at the photos now. Not through them, trying to guess what the table looked like behind the colour and gloss. She saw house hallways and carpet of indeterminate colour due to darkness and walls that looked starched from camera flash and work lights. The power had gone out in the house.

“Ready to go. If you wanna,” she said. Madani inclined towards her a bit. An automatic response.

“I’ll grab my coat and meet you by the car,” which was followed by a final chug of remnant water. Then the cup into the trash. Then a brisk walk towards the door and a small smile in her direction. With her eyes. Not much mouth involvement.

She tapped the edges of the photos until they sat in a neat pile. Folded the mouth of the folder closed around them and slipped that creature and its meal into a bag leaning against the bottom of a table leg.

She looked at her coat, given skeletal form by the back of a chair around the table. She hooked it with two fingers and tossed it on the bed, because she didn’t like how it looked hanging there. It seemed to be waiting for her.

A drink of water for her. Two glasses. The cold was vacuuming moisture from her lips. She had a chapstick in her bag, but it was only half the puzzle. She still needed hydration.

There was a mirror over the kitchen sink. Which she found vaguely strange in a way she didn’t care to look deeply into. She splashed water on her face. Not for anything particularly dramatic. Her skin was feeling a bit raw. Acne coming on. She was trying to get ahead of it.

She looked at her features framed by drops of water as she came up. She stared, openly. In a way she wouldn’t at anyone else. No choice but to make eye contact with herself if she wanted to inspect.

Gwen. Her name was Gwen. She was blonde in a not-terribly-eye-catching way and she had a nose that looked like it had been a bit broken but shockingly never was and her name was Gwen.

Gwen stepped back from the counter and blindly grasped for a towel she knew was somewhere near the fridge. She wiped bare arm against bare face and felt damp eyebrows slide over her wrist. The other hand felt the towel. It took over from there.

She rolled down her sleeves but didn’t bother to button them around her wrists and spun her coat from the bed to around her shoulders and over her arms and grabbed the bag. It was the nicest jacket she owned. And had still been thrifted. Heavy wool-ish material that was so dense the snow just sort of sat on top of it. Could be easily brushed off. It had a handful of big black buttons and came halfway down her ass.

Madani was already in the car. The windows were fogging from disparate temperatures. They were a couple hours outside New York. The city. Not the state. Firmly inside that. Gwen was never great at geography. She’d uncomfortably slept when Madani was driving and just followed the GPS loyally when it was her turn. She still wasn’t used to seeing miles on the speedometer.

Madani gave her another eye-smile when she sat down and pulled the door shut with metal-on-metal violence. Then she pulled the gear neatly into drive and did a nice little J-reverse-J turn out of the spot and onto the road.

Gwen found herself instinctively turned away from the driver’s seat. When she realized it, she did nothing to correct it. Madani didn’t seem to mind. She was taking everything in stride. Gwen was not. She was aware of the fact she had barely said anything to her new partner this trip. She was aware of the fact Madani was also aware. She was aware that Madani had not made moves to remedy that. And she was aware she had nothing to say to Madani. Her brain was broken. She didn’t have that little chip everyone else seemed to have, that told them when to comment on the weather and what to say in passing.

Fucking silence. Because they were now at that awkward point where they both wanted to turn on music but were worried what the other might think of their tastes.

Gwen was also dreading that question. What do you listen to? and its derivatives. Oh, anything. Which wasn’t true. She liked rock and blues and folk. But she could never tell anyone that for fear of them knowing it.

“Do you mind if I-?” Madani finished the question with a light tap on the dashboard. Realistically nowhere near the radio, but she was keeping her eyes on the road and Gwen got the gist of it. She shook her head with half an eye on Madani and the other one-and-a-half on the colours outside her window.

“Nope,” she said quickly as she realized Madani probably only caught some vague action in her peripheral. The word came out fast and was almost bitten off. She was biting the inside of her lips just a little and was very aware of how her body was positioned. Which was to say, all wrong. She couldn’t sit right under scrutiny.

Plastic note of the knob turning. Crackle. Hiss. Spit. Music. Starting in the middle of twinging chords.

“Are you into country?” Madani asked. Gwen remembered not to shake her head this time.

“Not really,” she said. She felt Madani smile beside her even though she wasn’t looking. That change in the air pressure made her look. Just a little, so she could see the mouth. Not enough there was any danger of making eye contact.

“And me neither. We can call this a nice compromise,” she smiled at that. Not just with the eyes, although it was slight. Gwen lifted one side of her mouth and huffed out air. A safe response. A usual fall-back.

Silence for the rest of the road. Smooth torque against the tires interrupted a couple times by holes and cracks. Then the crunch of gravel as Madani pulled them into the driveway. The sun was starting to duck behind structures depending on the height. But light still remained. Streetlights had just turned on. It left an impression of what the night may look like once it arrived.

There were a couple cars still at the scene. Second-day gathering. It felt slow and lazy. Confusion acting as a wall to most things. It was all basically just clean-up before the actual clean-up now.

Gwen already had her hand in her coat as she got out of the car. She used the other one to pull some of her weight up by the top of the door. Used the same hand to swing it shut once she was out of the way. The little leather book was now hanging by her side.

One of the uniforms had caught their car very blatantly driving up to a crime scene. He had slowly grazed over to them and came to a stop a respectable distance away as both doors slammed shut. He seemed less concerned when he noticed the black slacks and white shirts. Gwen had a tie on with a single button undone. Madani was wearing a soft, generic sweater. It looked nice.

“Help you two out?” He said. His coat told them his last name was Ermin. Underneath the nameplate, it was olive green and cold.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“I’m Amelie Madani. Special Agent.” Gwen wished she could sound cool when she said things. Madani managed to pull that off well.

“Gwen Foster,” she said. She let Madani keep the other half to herself; the guy would understand they were a pair. They had both generously flashed a badge at him. He nodded after reading each one.

“Was curious if we’d get any feds here. Lot faster than I expected,” he paused. Microscopically. Added: “Has Ermin.” He said it with a long A. Hawz. He was too far away for sticking out his hand for a shake to be anything but awkward.

“We heard about it offhand. Didn’t get a call yet,” Madani said. Ermin nodded at that.

“Didn’t think you did. Would have been me that called, most likely.” He left that as is. Sitting in the air. Gwen thought it felt a bit awkward. He put a few fingers in his pocket.

“You two want a walk through?”

Madani gave a very respectful, “Please,” and only started moving when he did. Gwen realized her badge was still hanging at her side. Clasped forgetfully in her fingers. She put it away and then followed behind.

An FBI badge. Not entirely legal. She wasn’t a citizen of any of the varied states. Hadn’t even really been across the border, save for a visit to the Falls and a night in Buffalo with a couple mates from the RCMP. Mates as in squad mates. She felt friend wasn’t the right word there.

The front door was already open. It gaped. Like an unbandaged wound. It seemed raw. There were the usual dings and dents on the frame from things being carried in throughout the years. They looked like ragged edges now. Gwen thought it would be fitting if they bled, in this moment.

Inside was low. Patches of untrue dark separated by ponds of starchy light. The quiet of people trying to work. Gwen’s shoes felt disrespectfully big.

They were distractedly handed plastic slippers from someone Ermin called over from the front. Gwen squeaked when she walked now, along with disrespectfully lumbering.

Ermin led them through a house. It didn’t look special, under the cover of contrast and atmosphere. It was nice. But it was also very plain. A family lived here, almost nuclear save for dad. No photos on the wall of him. Or the family all together.

Gwen would usually extrapolate from that. The house was pretty big for a single mom with one kid. She’d confirm it when she saw the master with a king bed. Dad gone. Violence in the home he formerly occupied. Family destruction. It wasn’t a unique look, but it usually rang true.

But she scratched that off the list immediately. They wouldn’t be here if that could be the case. And no dad could do that to the bodies. It was physiologically impossible.

First stop. Kitchen. A drawer was open. Blood was on the floor across from it. It started from the little corner made by intersecting cabinets. Then it moved across the white floor in little islands of red. Rain with a very specific intent behind it. Drip drip drip drip.

It stopped across the room. Mostly. Near an overturned paper towel holder and roll. It had been pulled at quickly. There were splashes here and there across the house of a similar pattern. Delayed by the paper towel.

drip

drip

drip

down chin

down arm

floor

Words that were coloured like images should have been. There was more this time. When it was just humans, she’d see things unilaterally. In violet. In carmine. In pale golden sun yellow. Now it was intermingled. There was more. It was like using paints on a canvas still moist with colour. Things were mixing.

There was a body in the kitchen. The tiny numeric signs around it made it look worse. It looked clinical now. The size was small. It could have reached the paper towel, but just barely. It looked like someone had made a paper doll and disliked it enough that crunching it into a ball wasn’t enough. Limbs had to be turned. Things had to be pulled and twisted to the point of ripping and then stopped.

things break when ripped

beyond repair

not fun

Fun didn’t feel right. Fun felt very mundane. Gwen didn’t know if it was a her problem. Maybe she didn’t have the right words for these motives to be described to her. Her language didn’t have a term for whatever this was.

There was something blinding going on if she looked through the words. Past the colours she knew was something she couldn’t parse. She left that alone.

Madani was speaking and it wasn’t registering.

a partnership like an exasperated sigh already

She nodded at that. Madani wasn’t even looking at her. But she nodded anyways.

“Our guy thought the same,” Ermin said. Gwen nodded again. She was still staring through things. Trying to catch a glimpse of the coloured. It never let her. Ermin continued. Oblivious.

“There’s blood in this place from relatively different time periods. Same people, we think, although that’s more of a hypothesis. Doesn’t seem like anyone else has been in here. Lab’ll confirm for us today, fingers crossed.”

Madani was stealing glimpses at her. Unromantically. She’d gone through a roster of quite a few partners in the RCMP. A lot of cases got solved with her. It still wasn’t worth having to be around it.

Ermin was looking at both of them. At Madani looking at her. At her looking at the blood. And the paper towel.

through the eye

“What caused the blood trail here?” She asked.

Ermin and Madani looked at where she had gestured. The line of cabinet to paper towel to paused drips that continued throughout the house.

“Do we know?” She added.

“Not yet,” Ermin said. Which felt like a non-answer. Noise made in recognition as opposed to being on level with her. He was confused about the question.

Gwen nodded. It was a big house, but it wasn’t a planet. She’d find out eventually. Or someone would.

They moved on. Moved past stained carpet. Through patches of light. Technicians worked around them as they were used to doing. This could have been anywhere. She could have stepped outside and been in Alberta. Ontario. The territories. Crime scenes like this. All over. Scarlet on floors everywhere. Twisted people caught in places they shouldn’t be. All over. Everywhere.

The clock was off in the bedroom. It was the first one she had noticed. She’d go back and check later. The microwave clock was off. Just the clock. Same with the oven. The one analog clock in the living room had been stuck at midnight. Or noon.

It was discomforting, to see a bed without the familiar light of digital display. The sheets were a dark monotone. The mother was sitting on the edge. Her feet hung down and her toes brushed the fur of the carpet. She was staring at the wall, which held nothing. An empty wall for dead eyes to see whatever they needed.

It had been longer than a day, to start. Rigor mortis was a no-go. No one even brought it up. No one in the room was stupid. The mother was sitting like she couldn’t stand that thought of getting up. It wasn’t a wall in front of her, it was her entire day of work she had to look forward to. She was searching it for any way to get out of fulfilling that prophecy.

The heels of her hands were on the edge of the mattress and her fingers were curled lightly around it. She was resting her weight on them as she slumped tiredly. Beleaguered.

“Well shit,” Madani said helpfully. Gwen didn’t really have an opinion on which was worse, child or parent. The kitchen had been bad. But this had an ominous tone to it. Like a livewire humming somewhere in the room. The kid had been dead. That room had been silent. This place of rest had things to say still.

Gwen separated from Madani. Her partner must have had the same idea, because she split off simultaneous enough it wasn’t awkward but also clearly wasn’t her following any example. Two thoughts from similar contexts, occurring at once.

Madani was looking at the clock. For now. Gwen didn’t think it would be a long investigation. She was just covering her bases. Going for the details.

She stopped in front of the mother. They couldn’t lock eyes. Her head was looking closer to the baseboards than anything else. So Gwen sat and leaned against the wall. She had to sit slumped for them to see each other. Eyes were windows. Or doors. She didn’t want to use them as doors. That wasn’t for now. She wasn’t ruling it out completely. But it was at the bottom of the list.

In her weaker? moments she used to say hello. Or hi. In her tenuous moments. Today the greeting was silent. More for her clarity than the mother’s comfort.

mother?

The blank canvas was back. The background of white. The mother. With pinky-yellow confusion. She was still unsure about her facets. About her different parts.

Sometimes she used to fight these things. The information that didn’t seem pertinent. Her partners, her superiors, angry because she told them things that didn’t pertain. It moved easier when she didn’t fight.

In the background she saw a woman in the depth-of-field behind of an unfocused lens. She was looking intently into the closet. She had dark hair that hit her chin. It blended in with the shadows.

The woman’s eyes were already open. She felt them open. She began to know.

her body is marked by progress

down into a deep sea

she can’t answer

She hadn’t expected her to.

you are marked by the still

you do not go back

but do not move forward

She hadn’t expected that. But it never gave her things she expected.

a deep sea interlinked with a deep sea interlinked with a hearth

something slipped here, and was not put back right

Her head hurt. She stopped. She got up. Ermin was standing near the door now. He didn’t feel like this was his room anymore. He didn’t have any rule here.

She stood in the center of the room. She hated doing that. She was touching the foot of the bed for comfort. A structure to block her off from egregious space. Just a light brush of the fingertips. It was the only place far away from the mother and Madani and Ermin. Her partner closed in.

“The closet is bad,” Madani said. It was low and tilted towards her. Or maybe away from Ermin.

She paused for a moment. She looked towards it. Looked like a place to store clothes. It was empty right now. No boxes around the room. Or the house. And there wouldn’t be. The place felt settled. There were knickknacks and placements of objects that only come with years in a single home.

“Okay,” she responded. Madani looked at her for a moment.

“That’s my first recommendation to check, when we come back more prepared,” she said. Gwen nodded. Explicitly did not look back at the mother.

“She was taken somewhere. The kid too,” she was extrapolating that a bit. Assuming that wherever the mother was, the kid would have followed, “Something happened to the house. I think they got pulled in with it.”

Madani was looking at her again. They hadn’t gone over this. What they each brought to the table. Rayne had let them come to that on their own time. That time hadn’t come yet. Sore spots.

“Okay,” Madani echoed. She turned to Ermin. He was standing between the two sides of the door frame. It looked like he didn’t want to lean. Out of respect maybe. Or uneasiness. The desire to touch as little as possible in this place.

He didn’t ask what they’d found. They hadn’t acted like FBI agents. It was interesting when the charismatic actor went off and stared at things to pretend to solve a case. It had warmth to it, because you knew them. There was precedent. Two strangers had arrived. They’d had cold stares. Had expectations he didn’t have. Didn’t know to have. He didn’t want to know right now. That could be for the daylight.

They retraced their steps. She didn’t look at the child. Explicitly. She didn’t want to feel that quite yet. And she was worried she wouldn’t know where to look. They took the booties off and bundled them in a trash bin sitting especially outside. Just for the occasion.

Setting sun. Pink chased by violet and blue. A darkness on its edges that threatened. She breathed in cooling air. Indicative of changing hues. Ermin would have to wait for his daylight for a little longer.