“I didn’t mean to kill him. I-I didn’t”, the woman whispers her face as white as chalk. Her words are hard to believe given her state. Thick red liquid drenches her white linen dress, rendering the long sleeves swooping twin wings of scarlet. Her hair, which are fine blond strands atop her head, must’ve been weaved into an intricate braid at one point. It is now a stringy nest, the ends so dark with blood they appear black.

You swallow hard, the bile clawing up your throat as you take in the gory scene before you.

You already saw a glimpse of the body upon entering the home, the tattered remains of a human body littering the entryway.

You already saw the torso split in two, the entrails slippery and meaty pouring from the gash. Sinewy strands of tendon and muscle embed in the fluffy blood soaked rug beneath the body and you swear you see the pulpy remains of a purpled organ ruptured a few feet away.

You already saw it all and yet you are too afraid to dare a second glance, too afraid to look again to make sure the man really is deceased.

God, you really wish he is deceased, given his state.

“M-ma’am , I’m going to need you to remain calm and…”, you search around for a weapon of some sort, something sharp and capable of tearing through skin. You find nothing. The rest of your rehearsed phrase ‘and drop your weapon’, falls from your lips.

You glance behind you nervously, willing for your partner to turn up behind you. You are a rookie, barely done your training. Your partner- your mentor- was supposed to oversee this situation, not you. You were both in the area when the call came in and were first on the scene.

He was right behind you.

Where is he?

“What happened?”, you ask, unable to form any other words. You are too busy comprehending the scene before you and recovering from your own shock to ask the right questions.

You know you shouldn’t be questioning the suspect just yet.

A voice in the back of your head tries to warn you about issuing the Miranda Warning before asking such an incriminating question, but your head is too fuzzy, too rattled to do the right thing.

A strange buzzing sensation fills your ears, an earie high pitched hiss that thrums against your eardrums painfully. It makes your skin feel itchy and flushed.

It makes you feel anxious, on edge.

The woman looks up with large teary eyes as milky blue as saltwater taffy. Her features are delicate and doll-like, awkwardly small on that moon face of hers.

‘She has too much face’, you think absentmindedly, the though both observant and insulting, ‘she might’ve been pretty if she had a little less of it’.

Her gaze is uncomfortable, hot and invading and far too personal.

“I killed him”

You feel the colour drain from your face and discomfort whips like an electric eel in your gut. You suspected as much, but you didn’t expect her to outright admit to the crime.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to arrest you now. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back”, You say. You try to inject confidence into your voice, but it comes out warbled and boyish.

You sound scared and unsure.

You are scared and unsure.

The woman, thankfully, obliges, the fluttering hem of her dress rippling as she turns and places her hands at the small of her back. With her white dress, pale skin, and silvery hair, she appears ghostly and ethereal.

‘She’s a strange cross between something unnerving and something beautiful’, you think.

The humming grows louder as you take tentative steps towards her, the sound so splitting that it liquifies the space between your inner ears.

You try as best as you can to ignore it and hold your handcuffs out in front of you.

Nervously, and a beat before laying your hands on the woman’s wrists, you look behind you one last time.

Your partner still isn’t here. He was supposed to have been right there beside you.

Where was he?

With a deep breath you finally brush your hand across the woman’s and attempt to cuff her.

Her skin is cold but smooth, like a marble statue.

“You have the right to remain silent”, you finally manage to say, your training momentarily surfacing despite your extreme discomfort, “Anything you say can-“

But you are unable to finish your words.

Your eyes have found hers in the mirror hanging on the wall across the room. Only a sliver of her face shows, but it is enough.

Her pale eyes bore into you, something menacing and warning pooling in them.

While she hadn’t seemed like the violent type, at least not the perpetrator of such a grisly scene, something about her is still disarming and uncomfortable.

The buzzing in your head intensifies and that liquid feeling reaches your outer ears. It feels as though something- maybe blood or inner ear fluid?- is dripping out your ear and tracking down your neck into your collar.

But when you crane your head, the mirror reveals there is nothing there. You squeeze your eyes shut for a second and give your head a little shake to clear your thoughts.

When you open your eyes again the woman is still staring at you through the mirror but something about her gaze is different. There is a rabid, fiendish look in her eyes now and they appear like two smudges of coal in the face of a snowman.

“Its inside of you too”, she murmurs, her lips stretching into an expression that is more grimace than smile.

“W-what is inside of me?”, you ask. You know it would be best to just ignore her, arrest her and call for backup, but nothing about the situation feels right. Even your own thoughts don’t feel right.

“It was inside him”, she says nodding towards the corpse in the middle of the beige rug in the entryway.

“But I managed to pull it out. I just didn’t mean to kill him in the process”, she says, her eyes turning somber as she evaluates the body longer.

Cold shivers trace down your spine and that discomfort floods inside you so heavily that it feels as though a thick blanked of it presses down on your body.

“I can help you get it out”, she offers.

You take a deep breath to steady your racing heart and try to maintain your composure.

“Ma’am, I’m going to take you back to the station now and you can explain everything there”, you say.

You look down and attempt to handcuff her but the silver handcuffs that were once in your hand are no longer there. You look down to the floor, and reach at your waist but they are nowhere to be seen.

“What?…I swear I just…”

Your hands leave her wrist for just a second but when you look back up at her she too has suddenly disappeared.

Frantic and panicked, you survey the room, your eyes rapidly scanning every corner for the woman. Cold beads of sweat pool at your hairline and a discomforting weight settles at the pit of your stomach.

And that darned ringing still hasn’t gone away.

When you return to your position, your eyes flitter back to the mirror, and that’s when you see her. The woman, with the too-large face is right behind you, directly over your shoulder.

You see her lean towards you, her cool breath on your neck as she purrs.

“It is inside you”