AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One
The sun’s rays pierced Elizabeth’s eyelids like serrated knives. She blinked against the pain until the blurriness faded and the world came into sharp focus. She laid on the ground, staring straight into the sun which hung bright and golden in the sky above her. She could see the treetops in her peripheral vision. They swayed in a breeze she couldn’t feel.
Why wasn’t it cooling her flushed skin?
Between one second and the next, her confusion faded, replaced by an immense pain radiating throughout her entire body. It ravaged her nerves, from the tip of her toes to the top of her skull. Its strength gathered in her chest. No amount of deep breathing eased the agony.
Panicking, Elizabeth sat up too quickly. Her head spun and her stomach lurched. Although the pain didn’t fade, a new sensation arose. Sound came rushing back to her ears and she listened to the cacophony of the world for the first time in what felt like eons.
She scrambled to her feet despite the dizziness and walked backward until she hit a tree. She realized she couldn’t feel the roughness of the bark, but the thought was driven away by the torment in her body. At the very least, leaning against the tree gave her shaky knees a break. She put her hands over her ears. She was so overwhelmed with awareness that all she wanted to do was scream.
Her mouth twisted open in wretched agony.
But no sound came out.
She grasped at her neck, squeezing as if to make sure it was still there. She took another deep breath, and the pain in her chest flared. She tried to cry out again, but her voice had been taken from her.
The sound around her started to even out, and the murmuring of voices reached her ears. Amidst her panic, Elizabeth grasped onto the sound, and for the first time since opening her eyes against the sun, she took in her surroundings.
It was a madhouse. There were at least a dozen people scrambling this way and that, taking pictures, searching the ground, or whispering over steaming cups of coffee. How could she not have noticed? They all seemed to be revolving around one singular object in the center of a small clearing in the woods.
No, not an object.
A body.
Elizabeth’s first instinct was to run away from the horrid sight, but her limbs would not cooperate. Instead, she felt her feet moving forward against her volition, her curiosity outweighing her terror. When she was close enough to see the body through the haziness of her vision, realization dawned on her. All the air in her lungs fled her chest, and the dizziness returned.
Through her tunnel vision, Elizabeth could make out the small black heels strapped to the lady’s feet. The denim shorts with artistic holes that cut the front. A bright pink shirt that had been stained a deep red. Elizabeth’s eyes skipped over the bloody mess in the center of the torso and traveled to the pale face that she could—in some distant part of her mind—recognize as her own. Her eyes traveled back to the body’s chest, her own chest. She couldn’t look away if she wanted to. A gaping hole gave way to a ruby-tinted blackness and, only a few inches above that, an angry gash circled her throat like a gruesome necklace.
The sight of her wounds caused flashes of memory to erupt inside her mind, compelling her to stumble backwards.
She saw a man and a knife. She remembered what it felt like to beg for her life, only for it to fall on deaf ears. She could still feel the pain of the blade against her throat as it ripped into her flesh.
Pinpricks of tears formed in her eyes but didn’t fall. She looked down, first at her own hands, then at her chest, not knowing what to expect. She wasn’t translucent like the ghosts she had seen in movies. But she also wasn’t corporeal. She glitched in and out as though she was nothing more than the personification of poor reception. The embodiment of static. Sometimes she was whole. Other times, she faded away. As though she were nothing but a memory.
More than ever, Elizabeth wished she could cry. She wished she could scream. She felt the emotion building in her chest, amplifying the non-subsiding pain. It was more than a constant dull ache. It was like walking around covered in acid. Every nerve in her body was on fire and there was no way to put out the flames.
The sounds of the world around her ebbed and flowed in time with her glitching. Her mind was in chaos, still wrapped in confusion over the scene of her own body. When she concentrated every fiber of her being on the people examining her corpse, she could hear what they were saying.
“Just like the others?”
“Exactly the same.”
“God, I hope we can get some evidence this time.”
“We’re still looking, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
“You need to work on your optimism.”
“Hard when your first appointment of the day is with a serial killer’s handiwork.”
The words “serial killer” broke Elizabeth’s concentration. Those flashes of memory returned. The man. The knife. The pain. She shook her head and the memories faded, but the conversation was still muffled. She took a step closer, forcing her mind to block out everything else.
“Any leads?”
Elizabeth stared at the person speaking. He was a middle-aged man with a bad combover. He may have been handsome in his youth, but he had let himself go. Pudgy around his middle and more than a five o’clock shadow. This was the one who had been pessimistic. The one who had uttered the words Elizabeth was desperately trying to keep out of her thoughts.
“One. It’s a long shot, but I’m desperate enough to try anything.”
“You gonna let me in on it?”
