[ The house is silent – too silent. All lights have been switched off, making it appear empty and abandoned even in the harsh daylight of the late afternoon. The doors and windows are locked tightly and there are no signs that anyone has been in or out since the last member of the household has stepped out the door. Upon slipping through the doorway, that comfortable facade slips away. The air is thick with unease, the pungent scent of death and charred flesh smothering anyone daring enough to enter the residence… though the scene itself is meant for one man in particular.
It is the kitchen where the real horror waits: strewn across the kitchen table is a disfigured corpse. Their features are too warped by broken bones and burn damage to be recognizable, but it is clear that the damage took place before their inevitable death. Still, the postmortem mutilation is more gruesome than what occurred before death. Whoever has placed them here made sure to impale them with varying tools they located around this house, varying from broken pipes, to kitchen knives, to what appears to be the handle of a rake. No blood seeps from the points of impact, making it seem that the messenger has held onto their body for a few days, at least…
The message itself is not immediately recognizable, but upon closer examination, it will begin to piece itself together. Clutched tightly in what remains of the victim’s fist is a broken key, seemingly belonging to a very familiar brand of car. The cut is jagged and unclean, giving off the impression that it was damaged in a collision. This key, unlike the person atop the table, is several years old. Sitting attached to one of the longer, more jagged pipes shoved into the corpse is a singed envelope. When opened, a single, slightly damaged, slightly bloody piece of paper falls out. Upon unfolding, it is revealed to bare a cryptic message. ]
ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ɪꜱ ʙᴜᴛ ᴀ ᴍᴇᴍᴏʀʏ ɪɴ ᴡᴀɪᴛɪɴɢ.
Signed, A Concerned Citizen
Christian rarely stepped out of the house, having really no need to since there was a studio that he worked in at the house, but today he needed air to be able to write. So, he had left. He had been certain that he locked all the doors and shut all the blinds to make sure no one came in, yet when he walked back into the house he felt like there was something off. It was an odd chilling feeling and he almost felt like there was someone inside there with him. “Casey?” He yelled out, as she could possibly be the only one who was in the home. His parents lived in the old Whitaker house and they came over often but not it wasn’t like they had keys to be able to get in, and they would have let them know if they had planned on coming over. At this point, Christian didn’t know what the fuck was going on but he knew someone was in his house.
He just hadn’t realized that the person in his house wasn’t exactly what he expected. For some reason, Christian decided to go in the kitchen first; which was where the person was actually located. he guessed he just felt safer in the kitchen surrounded by things he could use to defend himself if there actually was an intruder. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, after all. There had been multiple incidents in Los Angeles where people had broken into his home because they wanted pictures or something. Despite everything telling him that this was different, he was trying his best to assume that it was just a crazy fan.
The smell of something, he wasn’t sure what, was overtaking him as he neared the kitchen and it took everything in him not to retch right there and then. He just put his hand over his mouth and under his nose and just continued to walk in. His curiosity was getting the best of him now, wanting to know if this involved something that he’d actually need to call the police about. He stepped into the kitchen, the smell the strongest it had been and it took him a minute to get composed and focus on finding whoever was in the house.
That’s when he saw it.
Christian’s face went pale and he just dropped his hand in shock, not able to move a muscle. The body that was laid before him was mutilated beyond anything he’d ever seen before but that wasn’t the worst part in Christian’s eyes. After scanning the body for a moment, his eyes had caught a set of broken keys in the victim’s hand and that’s what had Christian upset the most. Seeing a dead body was terrifying and made Christian sick but those keys scared him to the core because he knew what they meant. They were to represent Julianna.
Now he couldn’t tell if those were her actual keys or not, he had no idea what kind of car she drove or what had happened at the accident. He had no idea what the scene had looked like but the feeling he got off all of this was grief and pain and it brought up memories he had suppressed. Christian had done a good job at hiding his emotions, other than his relapse, but he felt all of it coming back up. Or maybe that was just the vomit that he had been suppressing. He ran to the sink and quickly let go of the contents of his stomach. The image and the smell, plus the emotions that were reappearing, were making him sick and he knew he had to get out of there.
He quickly left the kitchen, grabbing his phone and calling the police quickly, explaining what he had just found. He threw the phone and sat there for awhile, after he hung up, just crying. Christian never cried but the scene was too much. He was angry, he was in pain, and he was griefful.
After he had calmed down a little, he looked back at the kitchen and decided to go back in to examine a bit more. He was probably crazy but he just needed to see those keys again. Just as he was getting close to the body to examine them though, he heard the knock of the police. “Just a minute!” he called out, grabbing the keys out of the fist swiftly, making a note to examine them later. Just as he was about to turn around and get the door though, he stopped and looked back. For the first time, he had noticed the envelope. He reached over and quickly opened it up, grabbing the paper that fell out. He looked down curiously and when he saw what was written, he felt himself go a bit pale again. Christian hadn’t known why, he had never read those words or heard anybody say them…he had no ties to them, yet something made him freaked out.
He shoved the letter into the pocket as well, going to open the door for the officers. He realized that this wasn’t going to stay hidden news but there was nothing he could do about it. Christian couldn’t just keep a dead body under wraps but he certainly wasn’t planning on telling anyone about the keys or the note. Not just yet. Not to anyone he couldn’t trust. He needed to figure all of this out, why this body had shown up in his kitchen, why it had been presented the way it had. Needless to say, for the first time in a long time…Christian was scared about what was going on around him and he didn’t know what to do.
