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The Knife's Edge
Welcome to Asheton: part five

Welcome to Asheton: part five

Country and western music played over the car stereo. The streetlamps cast a gentle light into the car. This, Emily thought, her hand on the back of her boyfriend’s head, pressing their lips together, this was perfect.

“Let's go inside.”

“Okay.” David stroked Emily’s cheek.

As they noisily made their way indoors and up the stairs, the man watched them through the outside of their kitchen window. Then… then he did something. He seemed to almost disappear, the surface of the flesh sack he currently used as a body seemed to wobble and fluctuate like a sound wave, and within seconds he had passed through the wall of the house, directly into the kitchen.

His form solidified and he crept up the stairs. Outside, the wind whistled through the trees, it whistled a wicked tune, and why wouldn't it? Tonight was a night for wicked deeds.

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“Sorry to keep you waiting, '' Sheriff Norton said, slowly sitting down opposite Benny.

“Hm? Oh, you're fine.” Benny adjusted his attention from the two way mirror to the sheriff.

Norton loaded a CD into the recording equipment on the side of the table. He shivered. This was the only interview room in the department, and nobody had quite yet figured out where the draft came from.

“This is Sheriff Norton, ID code 77638. Taking the statement of one Benjamin Baxtor. Can you state your name, for the record?”

“Benjamin Baxtor.”

“All right. And can you confirm that you consented to this interview of your own volition?”

“I did.”

“Ok. Let's start with the night Jenny was murdered. What had you two been doing that night, before she was murdered?”

“We.. we’d spent the night out. We went to a restaurant, El Maria, we got a main to share.. and a dessert. Then I drove us home.”

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“Just to be clear, you and Jenny Shipton drove home, nobody else was in the car with you?”

“No.”

“Ok.”

“So we went home and.. we went upstairs for some wine, in the study. I turned on the fireplace. Then we heard a noise. Like someone had knocked something over. When we got up to open the door and investigate, the door swung open. It pushed us over. A man dressed in black came in and pulled Jenny off of the floor, pulling her into the hallway. He, he slashed my leg when i tried to get up, as he was trying to get out of the room he slashed my leg, and slammed the door. When I limped over to try to open it, it was jammed. And I.” Benny stopped, swallowing back saliva.

“You ok to go on?”

“Yeah, yes. I, I tried to open the door. Then I heard her scream. I tried to open the door I swear.. at some point I must have passed out.”

“Then?”

“Then, when I woke up, the sun was streaming through the windows, and I called the police.”

“Ok…” Sheriff Norton paused for a while. “Interview terminated at 10:36pm.”

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Will had been digging for an hour, and he had, he thought, made quite a decent sized hole in the rocky surface the cliff face. So much so that his decent sized hole had revealed a larger hole, previously hidden behind the thick, sharp beach rock.

Will stuck his head into the larger hole. Dear god, he thought, screwing up his nose. The hole was lined with a clear, thick, goopy substance, and smelt like a cross between industrial strength cleaning fluid, and birdshit. He went down to his bag and grabbed a 4 vault powered flashlight.

Shining the light into the hole, a pair of cold, blood red eyes stared back.

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The husband was in the bathroom, expelling his bladder. The wife, the man decided, would be the first. She was in the bedroom down the hall from the bathroom, naked from head to toe, considering a pair of landre on the bed, when she felt the cold burn against her neck, drawing a line of blood down her chest. He held her head back as blood gushed over the bed. She was dead before the blue-black thing thrust through her back, slipping between her rib cage. Impaled on a twisted appendage that used to be an arm. The man tossed her onto the bed and the appendage slipped out of her with a sickeningly slick sound.

“Emily, that you?” David called out from the don’t tell me you're getting impatient.

The man took his place in the room, and waited.

David crept along the hallway towards the bedroom. “I’m coming to get you,” he giggled, putting on a camp tone. At the doorway he saw Emily, laying in bed. It took him a few steps towards her before he realised that the bright red splash on the wall above the bed was her blood. His mouth fell open, and a cold sharpness shot through his neck. By the end of the night, all of him should be open, and he’d live to experience it. Well. Most of it.

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“You need anything you just call, alright?”

“Alright!” Benny practically shouted to the Sheriff from his porch. “Do let me know if you find anything.”

Norton gave a two fingered salute to Benny before driving off. He was hardly the picture of an objective police officer, but that didn't matter to Benny. He watched from the porch as he drove away.

They wouldn't find anything, he’d make sure of that.