BANG! The woman jerked her head to the side as a crash erupted from the elevator, being distracted from her original task of cleaning Room 120. She slowly turned to investigate the sound, assuming the elevator had malfunctioned and fallen until it met the last floor, which happened to be where she was. She crept towards the metal doors, her feet seeming to drag with each step as her mind ran with the possibilities and the stress of having to spend the rest of the day taking the stairs to do her job. I just got here, the woman thought, the sky still dark out, for it was very early in the morning. At last, she pressed the button that would part the metal doors, but not even one of those things that ran through her mind lay in front of her.
A woman lay on the floor of the elevator, her limbs bending in ways that seemed uncomfortable, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, with a lively smile that contrasted her dark hair. Only she wasn’t lively at all, for the corpse that lay in front of the maid was spewing a neon pink liquid that reeked of smoke, bleach, and some other scent the maid couldn’t remember but did not care to, because she was far too horrified. The liquid was all over the woman’s mouth, throat, and chest as blood slowly bubbled up from her esophagus, painting the pink liquid in a sick, strawberry hue that spoiled an exploded stomach, the blood beginning to seep from her nostrils and down into her ears. The maid felt frozen with terror, seemingly paralyzed as she slowly inched her head up to see a message written with the pink fluid on the wall, screaming as she ran down the hallway once she read what it said.
Make me bleed with odious affection, then take my breath with tears of paradise.
* * *
“How in the hell does someone do this shit?” A woman cursed as she spoke with a police officer, the man showing her several photographs of the crime scene at Cawthon Hotel that happened just a few hours earlier.
“I’m not sure ma’am, but you and Detective Hall need to get to work on this right away. There has to be something there you can link to someone,” the man said, eventually putting the images into a file folder and handing it to her as he walked away. She sighed and took her glasses off, cleaning them on her shirt as she stared at the road, moisture still blanketing the ground due to a storm that coincidentally struck the city just an hour after the death was reported. The sky was gray and melancholy, almost as if it knew what took place that morning. The woman put her glasses back on and stared at the hotel, a bereft look in her eyes as she opened the door to get back in the police car.
“Detective Josephs-”
“Just call me Hazel, Citro,” she responded, looking the pale young man in his quarreled eyes. His long black hair fell over his forehead as he reached over to take the folder from her, the bangs stopping just at his eyebrows. His hair was almost wavy, the way it curled in giant waves at the nape of his neck and overflowed from the top of his head and over his ears, several layers of hair giving it a more circular shape that widened his face, for it was long and defined.
“Jesus Christ! The way her limbs bend like that- it's impossible. How does someone even do that? How are we supposed to figure this shit out?” He exclaimed, sifting through the images while Hazel just stared at the street ahead, not yet feeling ready to drive back to the station yet. She let her head drop onto the steering wheel, hitting the car horn with her head while she lay defeated, her messy bun beginning to fall as gravity pulled on it. She always had very long hair, but refused to ever let anyone see it down, keeping it in her daily bun with just two strands out on either side of her face, having very slight bangs that were only on the edges of her forehead that went down to her temples.
“Hazel, come on. We can do this.”
“It’s not even that, man. I’m already working on another case, and I was so close to solving it and now they’re moving me to this one just because I’ve worked on similar shit, but it’s draining to see such messed-up stuff all the time. Not to mention my brother’s starting eighth grade and he’s already struggling so much. Every day I go home, I have to help him with a million questions and cook, shower, clean, and then I have no time to myself and by that time I have to be up in five hours again to go back to work.” She rambled, unloading all the thoughts that were plaguing her mind.
“Hey, I’m not too busy tonight and if you want you guys can come over and I’ll make dinner. It’s been a while since I had visitors anyway. And I’ll help him with his homework too so you can rest.”
“Are you sure? You really don’t have to, it’s fine-”
“I’m sure. It’ll make solving this case much easier anyway ‘cause you’ll have the energy you’ll need.” Citro assured, giving her a small hug as she thanked him what seemed like a thousand times. She then backed out of the parking space and took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself to get back to work and call to inform the only living relative of the woman who died. Gwen Lilith Woden.
* * *
“HA! I won, parrot lookin’ ass,” a young woman exclaimed, slamming down a chess piece to a board, the man sitting across from her groaning in defeat.
“Just take the twenty bucks” he said, his brown eyes looking up at her with a face of annoyance. She cheered and ran off to get something, her curly hair bouncing as she skipped away.
“Maude, where are you going?”
“To get my wallet! We’re going out right now. I wanna see what I can buy.” Maude replied, returning with a small bag in which its leather is falling off and ripped at the edges, the sewing holding the pieces together also hanging by a thread. Maude held the wallet happily, as the man stood up wearily and grabbed the car keys on the table.
“Maybe you can buy a new wallet. That shit is actually disintegrating.”
“Darry, shut up. You don’t even have a wallet.” Maude responded, closing the door behind her as Darry unlocked the car. He rolled his eyes and got in, proceeding to drive the small vehicle. Maude immediately put music on and blasted it at twenty “Volume”, giving Darry a cheeky smile as she took his sunglasses out of the compartment on the ceiling of the car and put them on, doing an awkward dance to the rap music.
“You’re killing me” he said, trying to hide the fact that he was enjoying the music too. After they drove down a few blocks, Maude lowered the music as she stared at something outside, Darry slowing the car to a near stop.
A tall, brick building was surrounded by police cars, multiple officers entering and leaving it while others stood outside and spoke with any people who asked or tried to get inside. All of the windows’ blinds were drawn and the lights of the sign spoiling its name was turned off, reading Cawthon Hotel.
Maude rolled down the window to get a better view, the wind unusually strong as it pushed Darry’s hair to the side, the straight black strands falling over his face and away from the direction he always combed it. He flattened his hair as he stared at the scene, thinking the same thing as Maude in that moment.
“What the-” Maude began, before being interrupted by a car honking behind them, Darry having stopped in the middle of the street. He immediately put his foot on the gas and sped ahead, leaving the situation behind them.
“Bro, I remember when we’d go there all the time ‘cause your cousin worked there or something. You wrote ‘Citro smells like cheese’ on the wall in sharpie. That poor maid was so mad at us” Darry reminisced, laughing at the memory.
“Man, I was bored and like fourteen years old. Being there every day after school eventually got annoying you know? Getting picked up by Roger, then going to the hotel, then staying there ‘til nine PM just doing homework and playing the same three board games they had in the lobby. Too bad the place has gone to shit now.” Maude said, pointing behind her with her thumb to gesture at the hotel. Darry smiled at the memories, then his expression changed to that of interest.
“I wonder where Citro is now.” He thought aloud, a silence filling the air as Maude never responded, Darry left alone to answer the question. The next few seconds felt like minutes as Maude stared out the window, defying the question as memories seemed to revisit her as a plague of discomfort.
“I guess if we’re meant to see him again, we will.” He concluded, then took a sharp left turn into a parking lot. Maude silently wished she would, despite her face of disapproval.
* * *
“Gwen?! What’s wrong? What happened?!” a male voice frantically spoke, Gwen crying on the other end of the line, sobbing into the speaker of the phone. Her hazel eyes were bloodshot, and her dirty blonde hair was strewn across her face, down her head and slumped over her shoulders, hunched on the wooden floor of her apartment in a position resembling someone looming over a broken picture frame that meant the world to them. She tried to breathe slowly, then pulled her head up to clear her voice.
“A-Alice died. This morning she just fucking died, and I don’t know what to do, Marshall, I don’t know what to fucking do!” she cried, breaking down into a sob once more.
“WHAT?! How did that even happen?! I’m coming right now, send me your address” Marshall replied, immediately running to his front door and getting his car keys that hung beside it on the wall. Gwen had to recuperate and gather her thoughts before she could send Marshall the address, missing the app icon for text messaging several times as tears fell onto the screen of her phone. She eventually was able to type it out for him, and he arrived promptly at her apartment ten minutes earlier than he should have been able to, their places being about a thirty-minute drive away.
Marshall raced up the stairs to her room, knocking on the door with urgency as Gwen struggled to pull herself from the ground and open the door. He quickly walked inside and held her close, tears beginning to pool at his own eyes.
“How did this happen, Gwen? Car accident? Illness?” Marshall queried, Gwen crying into his chest, for he was almost ten inches taller than her.
“The police called me in the middle of work, a-and told me her body was found all fucked up someplace. There was a message on the wall, and it said some r-random thing that doesn’t make any sense and-” Gwen stammered, Marshall’s eyes widening as he pushed her away from his chest, staring right into her face as he put the pieces together.
“She was...?”
“MURDERED! SHE WAS FUCKING MURDERED!!!” Gwen collapsed to the ground, Marshall attempting to catch her halfway but failing as his own feelings got to him, the tears falling down his cheeks as he went down with her, sitting beside her as she gasped for air.
“Who could’ve done this? Do you have any idea?” He asked, trying to stand up from the ground, but Gwen pulled him down with such a grasp on his shirt one would think she was dying.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” She said at last, defeated and now silently burying her face into Marshall’s chest. He quietly held her close, and let her stay there for a long time, closing his eyes and letting his tears fall into her hair, trying to hold back his own grief to be there for her. After a few minutes, Gwen found the energy to stand and go sit at a stool in the kitchen, Marshall soon following beside her, only he stood across from her over the counter.
“Gwen.” She looked up to meet his deep, black eyes. She felt so exhausted she couldn’t cry anymore.
“Why did you call me?” He asked, searching for an answer in her flushed face.
“You’re the only number I have left on my phone. It was just you and Alice. And I know it’s been years since we talked… I’m sorry I never reached out.”
“I sent you so many messages-” Marshall started, eventually putting his anger away once he saw the remorse in her eyes.
“My mom made me start working with her some place far away from both here and Lucrent. She took away my phone and hid it in a safe for a long time, forcing me to only focus on the work I had to do with her. Then after a few years she mysteriously died of who knows what, and I got my stuff back and was released. That happened about a year ago, but I never called because I thought you would be mad at me for disappearing.” Gwen explained, Marshall sighing and hiding his face in his hands.
“Gwen, no matter how mad I would’ve been I still would’ve been there for you, I still would’ve come to help you.”
“I didn’t know how to ask for help.” She said, Marshall looking longingly into her eyes before walking around the kitchen and giving her a hug, the tears coming back to Gwen.
“I missed you, Lilith.” Marshall mumbled; Gwen startled from hearing her middle name after so long. She slowly brought her arms up to hug him back, one hand in his curly brown hair and the other arm wrapped around his neck.
“Only Alice would call me that” she began, before Marshall pulled away and shook his head, trying to stop his face from getting any redder.
“And I miss her, too.” He said, walking back around the counter to go get a drink from the fridge. It was silent for a moment, before he spoke again, this time clearing his throat to prevent it from cracking.
“Do you know where she died?”
“In Lucrent, at some place called Cawthon Hotel. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it.” Marshall nearly dropped the glass of juice he was holding.
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“I haven’t been there since I was seventeen. It’s been so long… there’s no way-” He began pacing the kitchen, memories flooding his mind at a rapid speed.
“Marshall, what happened?”
“That’s where my sister died too.”
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