Fuzzy, groggy, this is not how men were meant to wake up in the morning. Where’s the woman? Maybe she can encourage me to - her side of the bed is cold. She got up a while ago. Jerry fell out of bed with a tumble. Barely able to open his eyes, slowly light crept in through his eyelids. Jerry walked over to his fluffy red gown, draped it over his shoulders, and walked downstairs. As he did everyday, he bumped his head on the overhang of the stairs. A modest apartment, Jerry’s contact with the city mayor ensured he got it for a good price. Also, the fact that he is the current town sheriff helped negotiations.

Downstairs his wife of three years, Angy, sat on the kitchen counter, as she did everyday, doing the crossword in last week's newspaper, her crimson hair shone in the sunlight. Jerry, as he did everyday, kissed her on the cheek as he walked past her. Just like everyday they ate breakfast together, avocado on toast today. Afterwards they got dressed together, Jerry in his grey suit, Angy in a navy sweater and brown suit pants. Jerry opened the door for her as they left on their walk to work together, and departed at the police station. “I love you” he told her, everyday, as he kissed her forehead. Angy would continue her walk for another five minutes down the suburban path to her job as a bookkeeper at the only school in the area.

Like everyday, the orange hue of the sun would turn to gold as Jerry sat and had his first cup of coffee at work. Everyday he would switch on his radio and listen to last week's news broadcast. For five years this is how he started everyday.

This day was like every other day.

Until, it wasn’t.

When the call came through Jerry was halfway through his second sip of his coffee. The call terrified him, as the words of the mayor repeated themselves on the landline phone. “Jerry?” Mayor Parker repeated himself, “Jerry, did you hear me? There’s been a murder.” A town like theirs didn’t have murderers. Sometimes a teenager would paint graffiti on a church wall, or an old lady would lose her phone in the supermarket.

Not this, not murder. Not here on the first human colony of Mars.

Abeona was the first of its kind. It had been established by the first human immigrants of Mars. The success of Abeona was replicated by colonies Adiona, Trivia, Hasamelis, and Jizo, all within a one hundred and fifty kilometre radius, with Abeona at the centre. Jizo and Adiona later fell to the Martian terrain and political mismanagement. Not Abeona though. Never Abeona. A shining beacon of pride for the Earth, the joint effort of twelve nations culminated in this success.

Jerry had all of this running through his mind, paralyzed by fear, as Mayor Parker spoke to him. The victim, a maths teacher, had previously worked with a team to assist Jizo, but changed professions when the colony fell. “Now she’s dead,” the mayor said bluntly, “four years later. Probably unrelated, but you should know her history.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Jerry wrote down everything he could remember and ran to his car. “Approach the scene, interview suspects, what were the other steps?” Jerry repeated to himself, his basic detective training a blur.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Jerry pulled up to the school, his wife stood outside smoking a cigarette. Murdered in her school, why was she here alone last night? Jerry climbed out, held his wife briefly, before moving into the school. The principal greeted him solemnly and led him to Mrs C Browning’s classroom. Cathleen had been widowed shortly before she started teaching four years ago. The students, parents, and colleagues loved her, Jerry was reassured.

Clearly a strangulation, water bottle opened, but not drunk, signs of a struggle. Why?

“It was a burglar.”

“It was a lover.”

“It was a janitor!”

Jerry heard it all. Everyone’s a detective now. Jerry wrapped up his preliminary investigation and headed back to his desk at the station.

For the next twenty-four hours Jerry became acquainted with the dead woman, her life, her hobbies, her friends, everything. All for nothing, no video footage, no evidence, no witnesses. Whoever had murdered her was a ghost. A Martian Ghost Jerry chuckled to himself. He didn’t sleep that night, and for the next three days he tossed and turned in his bed, haunted by the murder of the community’s first murder. His office wall was littered with pictures and memories he couldn’t tie together.

Until the afternoon of the fourth day. With no other leads, and a growing curiosity, Jerry decided to look into the team working on the Jivo restoration project. Of the ten people, seven had died in what appeared to be normal circumstances. Car crashes, a heart attack, the list continued to perplex Jerry. Of the two still left alive the one had disappeared, the file simply read “mentally unstable” and “location unknown”. He viewed an old photograph of the team, immediately his eyes were drawn to a familiar face, Mayor Parker. Jerry ran to his car and drove to the mayor’s office. He burst through the doors, no attention was given to the security guard or cries from the secretary. “Mayor Parker,” Jerry bellowed, “we need to have a-” frozen, Jerry gazed at the Mayor holding a glass of whiskey, a vacant, petrified expression evident on his face. Dead. By the window, a woman stood, content, her task completed, purpose fulfilled. Jerry pulled out his pistol to fire, but realised he couldn’t when he saw a flake of crimson hair poke through the mask.

She thought she had escaped when she jumped through that window. She thought he hadn’t noticed anything out of place as she jumped down a fire escape and fled. All this Jerry remembered as he lay in bed. Jerry knew then he would see her again. Today, just as he did everyday. Sitting on the kitchen counter, doing last week's crossword, waiting to have breakfast together. All this he knew as he held the photograph of nine ghosts and his wife. 

She will tell him “They made me do it, the secret, what we did cannot get out. Only I can keep the secret.” That would have to wait. For now he would meet her down the stairs. As he did everyday.