THREE
After three mugs of coffee Dave felt somewhat awake again the next morning. He’d gotten behind the keyboard pretty much right after getting out of bed, not bothering to wear anything besides his shorts. He was eager to meet the deadline on the Hammer film article he was doing for Rue Morgue magazine. He couldn’t help but drift off to the strange movie he’d seen, checking ever ten minutes if someone online had answered his requests for more information about it. He started to understand why a lot of writers kept their computers offline while writing. No one had heard about the movie though, so it seemed.
After drinking the fourth cup of coffee and deciding he should be taking it easy on the caffeine maybe as he’d been to the toilet three times already this morning he again checked the message boards. He didn’t expect any answers to his questions there, though. To his surprise there was an interesting one now. Someone wrote: I might have some information. Give me your address and I will come over to tell you more.
That sounded good. Excited as he was, he ignored the fact there were always risk to inviting people over to your home you don’t know. But he did, how dangerous could a person with the handle EasygoingLatina be? He wrote private message to the user and continued with his article.
He was done with the article just after lunchtime and sent it off to the editor via e-mail. He decided to go out for some lunch, putting on jeans, a shirt bearing the face of Barker’s Hellraiser fiend Pinhead and a sports jacket. Just when he was ready to go out the door someone knocked on it. It sounded loud and insistent. With pancakes on his mind he opened the door without much thinking.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He was greeted by two earnest looking persons. One was a Latina, hair cut short, with a full mouth and a full figure. She seemed to be in her thirties and was quite good looking really. Next to her was a huge, bald guy who was terribly overweight or very muscular. It was hard to decide. They both wore dark suits.
“Huh?” Dave just said.
The two held up police badges. The woman spoke. “Cortez and Miller, homicide.”
“Homicide? I’m still alive,” Dave said.
“Very funny,” Cortez said. “We’d like to talk to you. Can we come in?”
“I was going for lunch actually.”
Miller bumped Dave out of the way with his large frame. All of a sudden he and Cortez were inside his apartment.
“I didn’t actually say it was okay to come in,” Dave said.
Miller scowled at Dave. He was as scary as any movie slasher. “You got anything to hide then?”
“Just some midget porn,” Dave quipped. He always made bad jokes when he got nervous.
“If you answer our questions we won’t be long,” Cortez said.
“Okay, fine. Have a seat.”
The detectives sat down on Dave’s couch. He sat on one of his chairs.
“I’ll be frank with you. I am the user you know as EasygoingLatina,” Cortez told Dave.
“What? I didn’t know the NYPD had an interest in horror movies?”
“We do when someone describes a horror movie that has happened in real life,” Cortez said.
“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Cortez looked Dave straight in the eyes with a stare so intense it made him uncomfortable. “Yesterday evening a young woman got brutally murdered while she was on the toilet. Her head was severed by what seems to be a large bladed weapon. Sounds familiar?”
“Huh? Yeah, of course. You know that sounds familiar. That’s exactly the scene I described in my internet posts. What? You think someone is emulating that movie?”
“Maybe. Can you show us the movie?” Cortez asked.
“I can show you the tape. But I’m afraid there’s nothing but static on it now.”
“Show it,” Miller insisted.
Dave put the tape in the VCR and pressed play. As expected, nothing but static. “Told you.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Cortez said. “We’re taking you down to the station. You have what we call perpetrator knowledge.”
Miller produced some handcuffs from his belt. “You’re fucked, asshole.”