DAVIES

Hunter hunted

After my final lecture of the semester, I went straight home. I am not one for parties or drinks. Noise has never interested me unless it follows rules.

I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my front door.

The silence was incorrect.

The house has a rhythm…pipes ticking, wood expanding, the refrigerator’s electrical hum. Even emptiness has texture. This did not. Something was swallowing the room.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

The air was foul. Warm. Metallic. Sharp. Like a rusted coin held too long between two fingers. I knew that smell. I took exactly three steps forward before my foot met resistance on the wooden floor.

Skin. Bone. Human.

I felt watched.

I crouched and reached for the blinds, lowering them slowly until the house sealed itself again. Only then did I move closer. The scent intensified, but it wasn’t blood that struck me next.

It was Darla.

Her perfume. Familiar. Out of place.

I remained calm, considering the shock pressing against my chest. I didn’t shout. I didn’t call the police. I didn’t ask why.

I asked how.

Who could hate Darla enough to do this besides me?

What happened in front of Rishelle had been a moment of lust, nothing more. It changed nothing. It certainly didn’t warrant this. A single tear slid down my cheek anyway. An involuntary response. Annoying.

That was one theory.

The other was simpler and far more dangerous: someone knew me. Knew what I did. Knew what I was capable of. Or perhaps they merely wanted me to know they existed.

For reasons I have never bothered to justify, I carry gloves in my bag. Is there a reasonable explanation for a mathematics professor doing so? I doubt it matters.

I slipped them on.

Fragments of wood lay scattered near the body. I picked one up first. The grain was familiar. Structural. The frame of the mezzanine upstairs.

Then I examined her carefully, respectfully.

Her neck was broken. A knife remained buried in her abdomen. The distance from the breach above to where she landed formed a steep trajectory exactly sixty-five degrees.

She had been stabbed, then pushed through the weakened frame.

No defensive wounds. No bruising. No skin indentations. No hesitation.

Fast. Precise.

An expert.

Thirty minutes, bleach, and detergent later, the floor was spotless. I moved the body to the basement. To Asare’s disgust, I found the arrangement…pleasing.

Oh…Asare.

I should mention. I struck him with a rock the last time he turned his back in my house. He has been in the basement for three days now. Alive. Barely. Sustained on canned tuna and poor decisions.

If the stench of Darla’s body doesn’t finish him off, I will.

I can’t afford to take chances with a sergeant.

The first words he uttered…” How does it feel to be hunted?” “How does it feel to not know?” “How does it feel to be seen?” I didn’t answer him. Answers concede ground.

Instead, I stood there and listened to him breathe; slow, deliberate, confident. The breathing of a man who thought even after death, he had won

All my life, people had looked at me and seen nothing. Now, one man had looked at nothing and seen me. I hated him for that. Not because he threatened me.

But because he had taken something I cherished. My invisibility. The house resumed its rhythm around us. Pipes ticked. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere below, a man waited to die by the dead.

A sense of excitement consumed me after I realized not only was I being hunted, not only was I in someone else’s equation, I was in competition and not even Darla could give me that excitement.