"Fuck, I'm not going to sleep," I said to myself. Which of course I wasn't going to sleep, I was just about to and then I realized that this ghost wasn't killing for some purpose, they were killing for to kill and the profile was just a bonus that the ghost wanted to stick to, not something they were unwilling to budge on. That made everything much harder.

"She has to kill someone every full moon, or at least wont consider not killing someone every full moon. She'll try to kill someone that fits the previous victims, but if she can't she'll kill anyone," I muttered as I paced the room in my boxers. "How am I just figuring this out now? It's so obvious!"

I started walking back and forth, back and forth. Without realizing it I started humming the song that the dead played every full moon for the last three months. I could feel the story as it was playing now, a young girl finding love only for it to be ripped from her the moment she thought she could have everything. She finds this piece of wood that lets her kill people, then she grows jealous. She runs out to kill people who would have the chance she didn't, maybe people who she thinks still have a chance at what she didn't get and she destroys their soul so they don't get that chance. She's angry because she feels that something was taken from her.

"Maybe we could talk this through with her, I mean, she just seems angry." A few steps later and I remembered again that she wasn't just looking for specific people to fill a specific role, she's looking for people that fill a specific role until it's almost sunrise, then everything goes out the window.

"I guess the plan stays the same," I said as I looked up to the ceiling while I stopped at the foot of the bed. I glared at the drywall covering in deep thought. "We need to speak to the victims families and friends, find out where they went the day they got murdered."

It was a wonder I hadn't thought of it yet, that seemed like such simple investigation procedure I almost laughed. "I promised Jack I'd sleep though," I muttered, and my eyes were having trouble staying open, even though I wasn't going to sleep very well anytime soon.

I flung myself on the bed, my eyes never leaving the ceiling. I forced myself to close my eyes and let the darkness consume me as my mind raced. I did everything I could from counting sheep to tightening all my muscles then suddenly relaxing them. Eventually I fell asleep to the sound of murder emanating from my own lips.

When I woke up the next day I found myself flat on my back with a deep puddle of saliva filling my mouth. I swallowed it and sat up, feeling my back complain at the awkward position I had let it fall asleep in. I stretched my back and legs, pulling this way and that to loosen the muscles and try to relieve some of the discomfort. I turned my eyes to the cheap curtains that did little to block out the light which seemed to be glowing almost with an internal light from the bright morning.

I ran a hand through my hair, my fingers catching on various snarls and knots despite it's short length. I walked over to the window and pulled the curtains aside as if I were a Disney princess getting ready to meet the world, only be be blinded by the intensity of day time. "Ah! Bastard!" I muttered under my breath as I pulled a hand up to block the glare while my eyes adjusted to regular amounts of light. The thoughts of the night before started catching up with me, why I had slept in such a painful position, what I'd figured out.

"This is going to be harder than we thought," I whispered out to the world.

"sabah alkhayr 'ayuha alrajul al'abyad," I heard from behind me. I whipped around to see a ghost in tattered and bloody dessert attire.

"Dude, I don't know what that language is. Can you leave? I've got stuff to do," I said after relaxing my stance because I saw it wasn't someone here to kill me. I wasn't sure why that was where my mind went, but the situation I had been in for the better part of a week now made it understandable.

"'ana la 'afham kalimatik alsakhifata, 'ayuha alrajul al'abyadi. 'ana kharij min huna," said the ghost in response with a frustrated hand wave shooing me off. He walked through the door with a puff of mist and I was plunged into silence once more.

"I hate it when that happens. All the foreign ones seem to already know I can see them or something. They get real bold even though I can't understand a single word they say," I muttered as I looked about the room for something other than my boxers to wear. They were a day old, but I hadn't gotten as gross as I had most other days, so I just threw on the clothes I wore two days ago. It wasn't worth looking for something else to wear when this was right here.

I threw on the clothes as I left, going into the bathroom to brush my teeth, an activity I had forgotten for several days. It made me feel dirty, but it felt oddly familiar. I never liked that feeling, even as I kid I was an avid brusher. Odd how something like that can slip through the cracks when the world breaks around you.

As I walked into the bathroom I heard a key card slip into the door and the lock click open. Those kinds of locks were probably easier to pick than they seemed, matter of fact I was a hundred percent sure they were. I had no idea where my confidence had come from, my lockpicks hadn't even come in the mail yet. I shook my head and pushed the bathroom door open as Jack pushed the front door open. I didn't see him before I disappeared beyond the door jam to search for my toothbrush and toothpaste.

I did find the items, although the system Jack had used to pack this thing was driving me crazy. Why would toothpaste belong with a coil of copper wire and a pair of pliers? Or, a better question, why was there copper wire and a pair of pliers in there at all? Didn't he also grab my at home tool bag? I was confused, but just chalked it up to a high pressure situation mixing with artistic tendencies in the heat of the moment.

Stolen story; please report.

I hummed the song of murder as I brushed, the toothpaste foaming alongside the rage of the song. The spite was cut abruptly short as I spit out some built up saliva before resuming with all the pain inherent in the music. The song came to an end, prompting me to spit out the toothpaste and wash out my mouth with water before I flossed and quickly rinsed with mouthwash. After spitting out my mouthwash I looked into my reflection, seeming slightly less haggard than I did yesterday, though not by a large margin.

I took a deep breath. "Time to get to work," I muttered to the clone of glass before me. I stepped out of the bathroom to find Jack laying face down, glaring at the floor.

"Jack? Are you okay?" I asked in a slight panic, running over to see if he was breathing.

"I'm fine, just thinking." Jack was breathing, and there was no blood, at least, none I could see.

"Thinking about what?" It was a dumb question, but I felt it worth asking. The safe assumption was, of course, that he was thinking about Kaylyn and her murderer, but Jack was a chaotic soul. His mind could have gone anywhere during the long hours of the night.

"Kaylyn, her killer. It's all I can think about lately. Mostly how we have no way of knowing where we can find her. What we can do to get revenge," Jack said.

"So why are we face down?" I asked the obvious, because someone had to and Jack wasn't going to. Plus, I couldn't understand that foreign guy if he came back to ask it.

"I was thinking, and thinking made me realize that you were right. We should just give up, there's nothing we can do, we can't find her before she kills again, not with what we have," Jack said, the words muffled as he pushed his face into the ground.

"No, Jack, you were right. There's something we haven't done, and we have plenty of time to do it. It'll probably be how we find her," I said, trying to entice the large moping man.

"And what's that?" he asked into the floor as I kneeled next to him.

"The other victims friends and families. We were so caught up in where it actually happened that we never bothered to look at where they had been that would attract a crazy ghosts attention. Come on, we can still save a life, or at least buy them another month," I offered.

Jack went stiff and stopped breathing. It was hard to tell, but I could see his eyes had gone wide. "Holy shit, you're right!" Jack pushed up on the floor and was to his feet in an instant, his many years of up-downs in sports showing their benefits. I groaned as I slowly rose out of a deep squat, my knees making an aggressive grinding sound as I did. The worst part about getting up so much slower than Jack was that I knew his knees were worse than mine, he wore a knee brace all the time. I hadn't seen him do it in almost two weeks, but I also hadn't seen him go to the gym in that time either.

"I'll look them up, find numbers we can call. We have addresses, but I don't know if that's the right thing to do," Jack said.

"Jack, we're asking them about a dead friend or family member, doing this face to face is the least we could do. No one wants to talk to a faceless machine," I said.

"I don't know, AI is getting pretty popular. Hell, it'll probably take my job in the future, generated art and logos are all the rage these days," Jack said with worry worming it's way into his words.

"Robots aren't going to take your job. This is a delicate matter, Jack. You need to be serious about this, it's important," I said seriously, hitting him lightly on the arm. He didn't move and I wasn't sure he felt it. I considered going in for another strike when he started talking again.

"Yeah, alright. I just. . . I don't know. It doesn't seem right," Jack said.

"Dude, I don't think you've done anything technically illegal this entire time, and I'm not about to let you start now," I said. "Nothing is wrong with this, we're just doing some investigating, and we haven't heard anything from the police saying that we're getting in the way of their investigations or that we're harming anything by doing this. As long as we're respectful and leave when they tell us to we'll be okay."

Jack nodded and pulled open his phone, putting the locations into his GPS, taking us on a route that would bring us to both houses. "We should probably get dressed a bit nicer," Jack noted when he looked down at himself. "We could at least look like we mean business."

"Shit. Did you pack anything nicer than this? I can't fathom your system, I probably couldn't find it if you did."

"There should be some jeans and a nicer shirt in there somewhere. If I'm being honest I just threw things in where ever they'd fit," Jack revealed to me.

"Fucking hell, no wonder it's a bag full of nonsensical shit. Why did you think I needed copper wire and pliers?" I asked incredulously.

"I don't know man! Your room was an absolute shithole, I panicked and just started grabbing stuff and shoving it in a bag," Jack said defensively. He wasn't wrong, my room had grown a bit wild with my recent work schedule. I always just had more important things to do than clean it, plus, it all made perfect sense to me.

"It's called organized chaos," I said.

"No, it's called you're a lazy mommy's boy," Jack accused. I would have been angry, but again, he wasn't entirely wrong. I loved my parents, and while they always thought I was crazy, they still took care of me and tried to give me the tools I would need to accomplish all my dreams.

"Well. . . Get dressed, we have places to be." I walked off, finding my suitcase and rifling through it for something nicer than basketball shorts and a t-shirt.

"This is a shithole," I remarked to myself as I dug through the mountain of stuff. I finally did pull out a pair of my work jeans and a polo shirt. I didn't even know I had any until Jack somehow managed to panic throw it in. I swear that man had magical packing skills, just pulling things out of thin air.

After getting dressed I walked out to Jack's car to find that he was waiting for me, so I jumped into the passenger seat, closing the door with a resounding bang. We pulled out into the street, me holding Jacks phone and warning him of upcoming turns to get to the first address.

When we pulled up we noticed something wrong immediately. There was a for sale sign in the front yard with a large red sticker indicating that the squat house had been sold. I walked up anyways with Jack in tow, hoping that they hadn't moved out yet. I knocked on the door, making sure that I could be heard throughout the entire house.

"Hola, how can we help you?" said a thin woman with a heavy Spanish accent when she opened the door. My heart fell.

"We're looking for the Johnsons, the previous tenants I believe?" I said hesitantly.

"Aiye, we see. I don't know where they go, but they, uh, how you say no vivir aqui? No live here more," she struggled to get out the phrase, but I understood. They had run from the pain, while I dived headfirst in.

"Thank you, we'll leave you alone now," I said. As soon as she closed the door I turned and stormed back to the car. I paused for a short moment before walking out to the curb and kicking it as hard as I could. I felt my big toe break as I screamed out "WE CAN'T GET SHIT!"