Last Friday
My hands were numb at this point. The wind whirred and wound around my shaking body. At times, it felt like it coursed right through me as another shiver sliced into my core.
Maybe if I hadn't taken them out of my pocket to use my mobile GPS, they wouldn't now be clamped like a vice around the chilled metal device. Not that it did me any service, as I had made the rookie error of forgetting to switch on the plug while charging my phone. It was dead, and I hoped my familiarity of the surroundings would be enough to get to my destination.
I loathed the cold. But not as much as not knowing something. Curiosity may kill the cat, but at least it had nine lives, right?
I wondered how many I'd lost in my life already, my mind derailing as lame protection from the elements. Each step was getting more unstable, as my frail frame acted as a weather vane to the blowing gale. My nose burned, a fake heat from being so frozen was almost a relief as I caught sight of the place.
Small tornadoes of vegetation whipped up in front of me and created a gap in the carpet of leaves that surrounded the old abandoned structure.
It was the textbook local haunt, which I had never expected to come across in my family's photo album. Or the sketchy relative that sat in the State Penitentiary across town. My family never spoke about him to me, perhaps because there was nothing to say.
I approached the building, wading and kicking a clear path to prevent slipping on the drenched dead leaves. Why had he been here? And why was the decade old photograph slipped in the middle of my sister's baby photos? I was glad that she had got away from this place with an amazing job as a junior lawyer, but I did miss her. She would have loved this mystery.
It didn't take much to kick in the loose fitted boards on a side window, and I squeezed myself in, holding my breath as if it would make edging past broken glass safer. I dropped down, landing off balance which caused me to reach for a table leg, the scraping sound ricocheting in the worst possible tone.
Then the smell assaulted me. I couldn't place it as something rotten I had inhaled before. It was toxic, musky and what I imagined trapped curdled death would be like. It took all my nerve to not double over and retch, but the awful oratory assault was just the beginning of my worst nightmare. There was no going back now. How had nobody known about this? Why hadn't a groundsman disposed of the source?
A source. I skimmed the murky interior, trying my best to hitch breaths in my throat rather than breathing normally. I couldn't stay there long, or I'd grow dizzy. There was nothing of note, other than dusty furniture filled with old junk, some in boxes that juxtaposed their contents. A cheery christmas lights box full of long outdated dog treats and accessories, for example.
The only clear surface was a tired, simple kitchen table draped loosely with a plastic sheet. Plastic sheets in an abandoned house? This couldn't be more cliché horror movie if it tried.
And yet; the horror was all too real, all those late night Freaky Fridays ran wild in my subconscious as I shakily stepped towards it. The smell was strongest here, and I instantly filled with dread, chaining me to the ground as I hovered in front of an easily removable tarpaulin.
I clenched my fist with the mid-centre of the sheet, attempted to swallow my dry throat, and tugged. What fell in a perfect cascade of material only revealed a terror I had wished I'd never attempted to find:
My cold, murdered body.
©demariah
