"Murdered? What do you mean murdered?" Mrs. Dunne asked.

"What happened?" Mr. Dunne asked, much more calm than his wife.

"There was a crashing noise that woke me up this morning, then we tried to find the source, then we saw blood under her door and opened it, and she was in there, there was so much blood, so much blood I'm so sorry-" I was crying now, the words spilling out of my mouth in a torrent.

"Oh god," said Mrs. Dunne when I ran out of words to say and just cried on the phone.

"Whoever did this-"

"Robert, you aren't playing vigilante! The police will catch him, they always do." Mrs. Dunne was thinking clearer after hearing her daughter was dead than I had the entire day.

"You should probably get a funeral or something arranged," I choked out. It all seemed too real now that her parents were in the loop. "I'd like to go, say goodbye one last time, even if there's nothing to hear me."

"Of course, sweetheart! You were one of her best friends, you have to go," Mrs. Dunne said. She was consoling me and her daughter was dead, what the fuck is wrong with me?

"Thank you." Get it together Conrad.

"Wait, boy, didn't you mention that you could see ghosts that one time?" Shit, had I told them? Had they believed me or were they grasping for straws?

I nodded for a moment before realizing they couldn't see me. "Yeah, I usually can." I didn't elaborate, but I should have.

"What, you can't see murder victims or something? Real fucking convenient."

"Robert! I understand that you're frustrated but that helps nothing! Honey, can you tell us what makes this time different?" Mrs. Dunne asked in direct opposite fashion to her husband.

"I don't know. I think. . . I think whoever, or whatever did this destroyed her soul. I don't know what to do, I'm so sorry." I knew what to do, but they couldn't help me, so I left them out of it.

"Thank you for telling us, Conrad. I don't think I could bear if a stranger called us," Mrs. Dunne said. "Do you need a place to stay? I know it's a bit of a drive, but we would be happy to have you."

"Emily, we can't have him staying with us, he's a nut job! We can't be feeding into this, it's not healthy," Mr. Dunne tried to whisper, although it was completely audible.

"It's okay, I have somewhere I can stay here. I need to be close for the investigation anyways in case the police need me," I responded, trying to wipe my tears from my eyes as the words came out. Stop being a bitch, Conrad! Get it together! I thought.

"Okay, well the offer still stands if you need it, okay? Try to get some rest, I'm sure it's been a tough day for you," Mrs. Dunne said.

"I will. I don't know what to do now. Say goodbye?" Fucking moron, say something comforting or something!

"I don't know. Thank you for telling us, sleep, figure out how to move past this. That's all anyone can do," Mrs. Dunne told me.

I took in a shaky breath. "Okay. I'm so sorry," I said before taking the phone from my ear and clicking the "end call" button. It was a mess.

I sat down, leaning against the wall with my knees to my chest. I was the guy that talked to dead people, I shouldn't be having such a hard time with this but I couldn't handle everything coming at me. All I could do was hold my head and think, my knees to my chest in the fetal position.

"Conrad?" Jack asked, kicking my foot and breaking me out of my reverie.

"Do we need to pack?" I asked, turning my red eyes up to him, my hands shaking slightly on my knees.

"Yeah. Are you sure you want to go in? Maybe you should just wait in the car, I can pick up everything you'll need. You'd have to pass her room to get to both of ours, and I don't know if you can do that. I don't know if I can do it."

"No, I have to do this." I had to see more of the crime scene if I was going to figure out what happened. Whether or not I could handle it was yet to be decided. I stood up and walked over to Jack's car, popping the passenger side open and sliding in, the leather warm from the sun's rays.

Jack got into the car, not saying a word before turning the key and following officer Sturgis back to our apartment. Halfway there Jack broke the silence with "How did the call go?"

"I don't know. I guess better than it should have. They handled it better than I did, because of course they did. I'm a bitch," I responded. The venom from earlier almost inserting itself into the words, but it didn't have the same bite it did before. I wasn't the enemy, just an obstacle. One of many.

"Don't say that. They didn't see the body, they weren't there when it happened, they heard about it over the phone. It's not real to them yet. They'll be worse than you were when they see her, I'm sure of it. You're not weak, you just took everything all at once, people break under that kind of stress, and that's okay," Jack said vehemently.

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"You didn't." The words were almost an accusation. Jack was one of the kindest people I knew, why was I trying to burn the bridges between us?

Jack was not about to let that happen though. "When I was little my grandma had a heart attack. I was the only one home and I didn't know what to do. I was too little to know how to call the police. When she fell and didn't get back up I thought it was my fault. It took ten years for me to accept that, to finally recover. My freshman year of high school I got a message that one of my friends I had known most of my life before moving killed himself. He called me before, but I was playing video games and didn't want to fail the level. I let it go to voicemail and forgot to call him back. If I had just picked up the damn phone. I still accept that that was my fault. People have been dying around me all my life, and for once, I'm almost grateful that it was something I couldn't have done anything about."

"Jack, I-"

"It's fine. Just because you haven't had to suffer the same way I did doesn't make you a bitch, it makes you a better person than me."

"Jack, you're one of the best people I know. I'm sorry, it's just a lot," I said as I doubled over with my hands on my neck. "I don't want this to stop us from being friends. Are we okay?" It was such a deep conversion I was shocked it wasn't happening at three A.M., but strange times prompt strange behavior.

"Yeah. Don't get bitter, you wont like the man you become," Jack said. It seemed almost prophetic the way he said it, but he was clearly talking from his own experience rather than anything from the future. I nodded, but I wasn't sure if he saw me before he talked again, changing the subject. "You know that one hotel I designed a logo for? 'Summer Suites'?"

"I thought they were in California, sort of a cheaper alternative to staying at a Disney resort." I responded. It was a business strategy that everyone used, but demand was just that high.

"They mostly are. They're expanding out. They've got some in Florida and a few sporadically throughout the Midwest. They were planning on opening one in a few months. It's all set up, they're just going through hiring and training and all that first," he said. I had a feeling I knew where this was going, but I didn't want to expect anything.

"That's cool," I said, sniffling a little. It had been a long day and it was only three in the afternoon.

"I kept in touch with the owner online, super cool guy, plays a lot of video games. Anyway, he agreed to let us stay in the Summer Suites building until one week before opening. By then we should be allowed to move back into our apartment. We wouldn't have all the same benefits of a paying guest, but it's a roof over your head and a bed to sleep on. How's that sound?" Jack was too nice of a person to be my friend, especially in this kind of situation.

"That sounds fine," was all I said. No "that's wonderful, say thank you for me" or "that's so generous, what a nice guy." Normally I would have said those kind of things, but I was letting this make me bitter already. I could tell Jack noticed it, but he wouldn't say anything until I was going to make a decision I couldn't fix with a few words.

We pulled into the parking lot of the apartment in silence, squad cars surrounding the building in a hectic circle of black and white with splashes of red and blue, like dawn and dusk fighting, one gaining the upper hand to lose it again to it's equal counterpart. Jack parked next to my car and opened the door carefully so as to not leave another dent in it. I appreciated the consideration even though it didn't make much of a difference either way.

We stepped out to the building where officer Sturgis waited to lead us into the building. "Follow me," he said as he led us to the elevator, pushing the button and waiting for the elevator to come. "The door to her room should be closed, and the blood you see should be minimal, but in case it's not, I want you both to try not to look. I wont blame you if you do, but I want to try to avoid that if at all possible."

"What do they do with everyone else in the building? Do they have to find somewhere else to stay too?" Jack asked. I hadn't even thought about that.

"No, you two are the only ones displaced for the time. No one can enter your apartment without a police escort, but otherwise it's pretty much supposed to run the same way it usually does. Everyone will be questioned eventually, but that can take some time. It's also above my pay grade," Sturgis said, trying to make light of the situation.

Jack and I both nodded without saying anything as the doors slid open with a faint ding! We stepped in and waited awkwardly for the device to lift us to the second floor, the few moments seeming to stretch into hours in the quiet music in the elevator. The music was a happy tune that made me want to tear my eyes out from the contrast to the rest of the day.

When the doors slid open everyone was relieved to be out of the cold metal box, even if it meant diving directly into the hellscape that was my home. We walked down the hall, not far, to see neon yellow caution tape stretched across the outside of the doorframe. Sturgis lifted the tape slightly and moved to the side, allowing Jack and I to duck underneath, followed by Sturgis himself. The place was swarming with what I guessed was forensics and detectives, none of which spared us a glance. We walked inside, seeing Kaylyn's door flung wide open, men in white with large cameras taking pictures of the walls and floor, a bloody tarp over the floor covering what I assumed to be her body. It looked horrific, almost like a bomb made of blood had gone off, spraying the room with spurts of blood, large amounts making it as far as the ceiling.

Sturgis wandered off to talk to one of the police officers on the scene, her partner from earlier in the day. Jack watched him, not sure what to do while I ignored everything, feeling a rock sink into my stomach. I took a deep breath, walking in the direction of the hallway, slowly, step by step trying to steel my resolve to at least make it past the room.

I was brought up short. My eyes hadn't left the horror scene in Kaylyn's room the entire time, my feet still carrying me closer when a man in a white hazmat suit talked to a woman in a pantsuit, motioning to the body with one hand and then the camera in his other. She nodded, moving around the body and pulling back the tarp, the sight underneath making me sick in a whole new way.

This was not natural, something outside of the natural order of things. An affront to existence, as if to point out the hubris of human existence, though I couldn't fathom what that meant.

Her corpse lay still, golden waves wet with blood forming spikes around her head, her limbs contorted as if still in agony, her mouth open in a forever silent scream. Her stomach was split open violently as if something had slashed it's way out of her, the wound on full display with her back on the ground.

The most unnatural part of all, the thing that unnerved me most was the eyes. Or lack thereof. As if two stars had formed and met their maker in her sockets her eyes had been burned out, empty eyelids open as the empty, charred socket gazed at nothing, black rings around the eyes giving away to less damaged tissue the further from the sockets you looked.

"I knew this was wrong, but this is wrong." The flashes of the camera concluded and the forensics lady put the tarp back in place. She looked up, meeting my eyes.

She knows I saw were the last thoughts in my mind as black overtook my vision and I fainted.