Young Writers Society

"Want to start at the right or left shoulder blade?" Emily asked, staring at the shriveled black body on the table in front of them. He was tall with a permanent scream on his face.

"Has it ever mattered? Belinda asked, staring down at the photos in the file.

Emily wondered why she was even looking through the file seeing as she had been to the actual crime scene, but she didn't say anything.

"Left it is." Emily slid the blade of her knife into his flesh. It crackled as flakes of charred flesh fell off along the y-cut. "Oh god that's gross." Emily said, holding her nose. The smell was a mix of decomposing blood, over-cooked meat, and some intermediate step that could not be explained better than "crap".

"That's at least four days old." Belinda agreed covering her nose with both hands just to be safe.

"But the car was only stolen a day or two ago."

"Emily." Belinda grabbed bone saw off her desk. "Meet victim numero uno."

Emily shook her head and pulled both sides of his chest open slowly with a look of disgust on her face. "How did we not smell this before?"

"We were very lucky." Belinda handed her the saw and watched as the gooey black ribs broke off one by one. Slowly the lungs and heart revealed their decaying, smoky glory. They cut one lung open, and immediately regretted it. The smell in the lab increased ten fold, to the point where Emily began to tear up.

"Maybe we should have done this in someone else's lab." Emily said as she pulled the loose, soft lung open.

"Too late now." Belinda coughed.

"This is so squishy." Emily stroked the outside of the lung through her gloves.

"Really?" Belinda felt the other lung. "Cool." She swabbed the inside of the lung and set it aside. "You just don't get dead enough people in here anymore. Pass me the stomach."

Emily began to cut the stomach loose from the digestive track. Belinda grabbed a metal tray and placed the stomach on it. "Hungry?" She smiled as she cut it open. Through the mostly digested food they were able to distinguish a mush that was probably spaghetti and probably tomato sauce. With some simple tests they found alcohol in the stomach lining and blood. They tested every organ and wound with acids and microscopes and DNA testing machines.

"Any other pointless tests you'd like to do?" Emily set down her scalpel and checking her watch. It was 9:34 at night.

"None that involve a negative attitude as an indicator." Belinda replied, closing the corpse again.

"Whatever, I need to go home and shower because I am two hours over my stink limit. Do I need to call Veronica to pick you up?"

"Nah, I hear that there's going to be a turf war tonight." Belinda threw her blood covered latex gloves in the trash.

"Again, do I need to call Veronica?"

"My house has inch thick bulletproof glass, eight locks, and flood lights. She's safer there than anywhere else at this point."

"Just..." Emily was going to continue to protest, but she thought better of it. "Just take a shower before tomorrow, we both stink, and I never want to smell this again." She motioned to the body and carefully threw her gloves out.

"Pinkie promise." Belinda rolled herself back to her desk and grabbed a chocolate bar.

Emily grimaced at the fact that the chocolate was the same consistency and color of the mushy decomposing body. She never wanted to eat again.

***

"You still- WHOA!" David said as he entered the room. He pinched his nostrils and gagged.

Belinda rolled her chair over to David and handed him a manilla folder. "Here's your report, I just finished."

"And you can stand that smell?" David said eyeing the corpse still sitting in the center of the room.

"I've been in here for four hours testing everything I could get my hands on, suffice to say, I'm used to it." Belinda rolled back to her desk and began to stand up.

David walked in, careful to stand as far as possible from the body. "Do you want to stay at my place tonight?" He asked through his hand.

"Sure, just let me finish up." She threw the scalpels and saws still on the table into a plastic bin under the table. But then she stopped, staring at the man's cheek. "Huh."

"Huh?" David repeated.

"I just...I don't remember seeing this before."

"Seeing what?"

Belinda grabbed a new pair of gloves and opened the mouth. A new wave of smells filled the room, and David gagged again. "From this angle, there's a bulge in the lower part of the cheek." She stuck her hand into his mouth and gripped the table with the other for support. Swishing her fingers inside all she felt was tongue. "Ugh, forget it. Give me a hand." She grabbed the butt of her cane and motioned him over.

"I'm not-"

"Relax, it's not like he'll being getting an open casket."

"Wait what do you mean-"

"Just give me some support." She grabbed his shoulder and readied her cane.

"What are you-"

Belinda slammed the bottom of her cane into his jaw with a crack. He oozed slightly and his jaw cracked into two.

"There was a proper way to do that wasn't there." David said taking her cane and setting it aside with his free hand.

"Probably, but..." She shoved her fingers down his throat and pulled a small greasy plastic bag out. "Not half as fun."

***

Belinda lied down on David's living room carpet and stared at the ceiling. David was sitting cross legged next to her, twirling the small silver key from the plastic bag between his fingers.

"So the key-"

"Storage Unit, downtown." Belinda interrupted.

"Ah." David set the key down on the coffee table. "May I ask how you know that?"

"I have one just like that on my key ring, you made an impression of it last year." Belinda turned her head over to him. "I'll be needing that copy back by the way, the storage company doesn't like multiples of their secure keys."

"Why do you have a-"

"It's where I keep my drug money." Belinda stared back at the ceiling, "Would you believe I don't remember?"

"A bit." He grabbed the folder off of the table.

"It's just that sometimes I just know things, know things happened with no intermediate steps."

"Isn't that sort of your thing. You see the evidence and deduce it."

"No, I mean about myself." Belinda strummed the imaginary strings on her cane mindlessly. "Like I don't remember getting a storage unit, or ever wanting one, but I know that key is for one. I know I bought one. I don't remember ever putting my hair up, but I know I have. I don't remember buying the sixth Wonders book, but I knew it was on the third shelf of my bookcase."

David didn't reply for a few seconds. He watched as she stared at the hook of her cane, twirling it around with her long pale fingers. Then he scooted closer to her and lied down with the file in his hand. He had something he had been meaning to ask her, but he set that thought aside for now. Instead he held her hand and waited for her to say something. But she didn't for a while.

"Fire." Belinda said after a minute.

"What?"

"The Jogger..." Belinda coughed, "And Fire."

"Fire and strangulation, Fire, and smoke inhalation. Seems like a connection."

"But not a helpful one."

Belinda squeezed his hand. "Yeah it really isn't..." She shook her head slightly, "He's not giving us anything to work with. No fingerprints, no dandruff, no nothin-" Belinda coughed.

"Well maybe that's the point of the fire, to destroy any evidence."

"Or maybe it's just a happy coincidence, does it eben madder?" Belinda cleared her throat. "We can't do anything, until we find something!"

"Then let's stop looking for a while. We can't do anything, so why try right now."

Belinda looked at him. The only flaw on his face was a nostril slightly bigger than the other. It whistled softly when the room was too quiet. But David was perfect even then. The kind of perfect that made her want to be oh so much closer to him.

It was hard to explain. The moment was intimate, with out necessarily leading to anything sexual. It was a single moment when they didn't need to read each other's thoughts, they just had the same ones at the same time. Some form of human connection beyond being ruined by hormones or impulses or speech.

For a minute David rubbed his callused thumb along Belinda's palm, and Belinda forgot about murders and the eternal subconscious deductions stopped. All she could see was this present David. And that's all she cared about.

***

Daniel sighed and set down his glass of water. The apartment was a mess, vomit coated the edges of the toilet bowl, his pee stained clothes from a few nights ago were fermenting in front of the door, and he had wet the bed. Not to mention the state his apartment had been in before. He could barely stand the smell of the garbage and dishes he had been putting off doing before his withdrawal started.

He limped into the front room, clutching his stomach and watching for loose remotes and needles. He grabbed his stinky clothes from the floor and walked back to the trash. But just before he threw them away a letter fell out of the pile. Intrigued, he tossed the clothes and opened the letter.

It was a thick pink, card sized envelope. Inside was a cartoon of a dog birthday party and about $2,500 cash. The card read:

"Daniel, don't waste it. I'll see you soon- Chris."

Without another look, Daniel tossed the card and pocketed the cash.

***

"Go! Go! Go!" The paramedic yelled out of the back of the ambulance. The nurses pulled the gurney as hard as possible out of the back and ran with it down the hall. He watched as his patient officially left his hands. His bloody, ash covered hands.

"Any fire, you call me." David had told him the other day.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and searched through his contacts. "Hey, I think I got a victim."

"Really?" David exclaimed.

"Maybe, but I wouldn't expect many answers."

"Doesn't matter, where's the murder scene?"

"It's only murder if she dies." He jumped out of the ambulance and walked down to the ER.

"She's alive!"

"For now, but it'll be a few days before you can speak to her. She's going to the burn unit." The paramedic stopped at the soda machine and flattened a bill on the edge.

"Cool, I'll talk to you later."

"Wait!" The paramedic gripped the phone tighter.

"What?"

"I just wanted to ask if you still had Mom's ring, from your first engagement."

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, if you're not going to use it..." The paramedic swallowed.

"I might."

"It's been three years since she left you, if you haven't met anyone yet I should get the ring."

"I have met someone."

"Oh, I didn't mean to-"

"No, you're right, you should get the ring. I'm being selfish-"

"No seriously." The paramedic crumpled the bill in his hand. "If you like her, you should propose. But if you aren't..."

"Thanks. Bye Trev."

***

The shower came on and woke J.P. up. He yawned and rolled out of bed. Star Wars sheets poured off the right side of the bed. He rubbed his eyes and grabbed clothes off his chair. Down the hall he walked to the second bathroom. But then he passed the kitchen.

His dad flipped a pancake over on the pan.

"You left the shower running." J.P. said, his voice still as high as a little girl.

"No," David told him. "I uh..." David listened to the pancake sizzle.

"Who's in the shower then." J.P. asked.

"Belinda. She uh, stayed over, she's helping me solve this huge case and I just..."

J.P. nodded, even though he didn't really hear anything after "Belinda".

"Pancake?" David offered.

"In a minute, I got to get dressed."

"Kay." David smiled awkwardly.

***

David slid another pancake onto J.P.'s plate. "So he really killed three people in a week?" J.P. asked.

"Don't sound so excited." David sat back down in front of his big stack of pancakes.

"But what about Uncle Trevor? He keeps people from dying right?"

David sighed and cut into his pancakes. "Your uncle does most of the time, but sometimes when these things don't get noticed, there's nothing he can do."

"But if he knew about them he could save them?"

"Well, yeah, but out of the thousands of people he has to get to the hospital, there's no way he could know enough to find these specific people and then have the right equipment to reach them and enough time to save them. Sometimes your uncle can't save people, and that's where I come in." David shoved a bite of pancakes into his mouth.

"So why couldn't he save these people?"

"Well..." David thought for a second of a way to sugar-coat cold blooded murder for a seven year old, "Two of them we didn't even find until a long time after they died, and the third had a roof collapse on him, so that's more the fire department's fault."

"So the fire department killed the guy."

"No." David shook his head, "No. No. No, the fire department did all they could to save this guy, but just because they didn't save him doesn't mean they tried to kill him. Sometimes the bad guys beat the good guys to punch and there's no chance to save them. It happens."

"But you're supposed to catch all the bad guys."

David put his fork down and looked at his son. "It's a bit more complicated than that. Bad guys aren't bad guys until they do something bad. Most of the time they act like you and me, like the good guys, and then they make a bad decision or accidentally do something wrong. This guy right now, probably does everything he's supposed to, but... He also does a lot of bad things, and we just haven't been able to figure out who he is."

"So why can't you find him?"

"'Cause, like I told you, he usually acts normal. Our usual methods just won't work on this guy. We searched all the volcano lairs, and no murderer."

J.P. giggled, and finished his pancakes. David took his plate to the sink, and while David wasn't looking, J.P. grabbed the file he left on the kitchen table.

"David!" Belinda yelled as she limped into the room, just as J.P. was about to open the file. David's head spun around and J.P. dropped the file. David rushed over and grabbed the file.

"Whoa! James! You can't touch that, you know that!"

"I just-"

"Especially this one, James. Especially this file, you don't want to see what's in there. Good catch Bells."

J.P. stared at Belinda with a mix of sadness and irritation. His little cheeks turned red as she sat down across the table from him. Her long hair was wet and her clothes smelled disgusting. But more than that, her long knobby witch hands shook and ghostly pale skin that made him wonder if death was contagious.

"Sorry." She mumbled, "I just wish I hadn't seen that. You definitely shouldn't."

J.P. got up and walked to the front of the house where his backpack was and began to pack it up for school. He didn't actually want to get to school, he just couldn't be in the same room with them. His dad and his dad's poor choice of a step-mother.

***

"He hates me." Belinda blurted out just as David started to drive away from the school.

"No!" David countered half-heartedly, "No. He doesn't hate you."

"It doesn't take a detective, David." Belinda flipped open the folder.

"It's completely natural for him to see you as a threat, Bells, it'll just take some time."

"How much time, David? We've been together for two years."

"And you've seen him how many times? Maybe eight."

"Eight should be enough for him to stop looking at me like I'm some sort of mute zombie."

David smiled and patted her knee. "It's not like you have to replace his mother. He hasn't met her."

"So I just have to create an entirely new niche in his life. Great." She said sarcastically.

"You don't have to do anything, he needs to adjust."

Belinda sighed, and tried to re-familiarize herself with the case.

"Hey,"

Belinda looked back at him.

"I love you."

Belinda smiled, and looked back at the file.