A collaborative short story told in alternating perspectives.
Written with Alexander Adams, whose work you can explore here.
—Alexander Adams
“It’s a damn shame.” Detective Morgan rubbed the back of his neck, looking over the scene of the crime. his partner, Detective Smith, came over to follow his line of sight.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Morgan continued thinking out loud. “Do you think they wake up, get dressed, make themselves some coffee, and then think about this sort of thing while they read the paper. How much of their mind is occupied with...this...in a day?” He gestured to the body parts, the irregular flash of cameras allowing more uncomfortable details to come in and out of existence.
The torso had been dissected, and most of the larger organs were missing. The kidneys had been arranged under the armpits, as if they meant to squeeze two slimy beanbags.
The elbows had been smashed by a blunt object, and were now large pockets of swelling and bony shrapnel bent the wrong way like some animal.
The eyes and tongue had been cut out and replaced in both cases with heated coals. There was an omnipresent smell of burnt blood and flesh that the detectives barely managed to tolerate. Smith still had to take a step back. Morgan winced. Neither wanted to stay.
—Rose Rivers
I didn’t know what I was witnessing. That’s the sentence I repeat when I can’t sleep, hoping it might loosen something. Hoping it might absolve me.
I was in the house because it was mine. Because most days, home doesn’t feel like a place you need to escape. I stayed quiet. I made myself small. I counted my breaths.
I remember the smell first. Not rot. Not blood. Something scorched. Like when you leave a pan on the stove too long and pretend it’s fine. I remember a voice too. Low. Unhurried. Not angry. I remember hands moving where they shouldn’t have to move.
After that, memory stops behaving. It breaks into pieces that don’t stack. A wet sound. Metal touching bone. A shape slumping where a person used to be. I didn’t scream. I didn’t move. I became furniture.
I don’t know how long I stayed that way. Long enough for my legs to go numb. Long enough for my mind to leave without telling me. When I left, it wasn’t running. It wasn’t brave. I just wasn’t there anymore.
Now I replay it in reverse, searching for a moment where I could have changed something. A moment where I was still a person instead of a witness. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this knowledge. I only know I am not the same person.
And sometimes, when I think hard enough, I remember something small.
Not a face.
Not a weapon.
A wrist lifting in the dim light.
The quiet habit of a watch being checked.
Like whoever stood in that room already knew what time it was.
—Alexander Adams
A sound from the corner of the room caught their attention.
“Did you hear that?” asked Morgan.
“It sounded like something shuffling about,” Smith added. Gingerly, he stepped around the crime scene and moved past the others in the room, eventually making it a wardrobe by the back wall. The door was slightly ajar, but there was nothing to suggest there was anything further to comment on. He opened it fully and found only coats and shirts.
“Maybe it’s from the floor below?” suggested Morgan. “Do we have people down there too, or are the owners home?”
“No, it definitely sounded like it came from here...hey, what’s this?” Smith bent down and examined a floorboard that looked out of place. It was cleaner than the others, and slightly detached from the rest of the wooden planks.
“Hey, come over here and tell me what you think.” Morgan followed the same path around the room to see what he was talking about.
“Looks like there could be something under here to me,” Smith said. “Help me move it?”
Together, the two detectives raised the floorboard, and found a small gap underneath.
They heard another shuffle in the small space. But who was making it?
—Rose Rivers
I had been wandering for hours. Or maybe minutes. I hadn’t stopped to keep track. Time had blurred, stretched thin, each step heavy and uncertain. The fear still hung in me like smoke I could not shake.
I found myself back at the house, drawn by some quiet need to see it again, to know it still existed in the same way I remembered. The front looked empty, but the glint of badges and the low hum of engines told me otherwise. Police vehicles lined the street. Detectives moved with purpose, unaware of my presence.
I hugged the sidewall, heart hammering, and slipped around the back.
Through a narrow crack in a window, I watched them kneeling over a floorboard, heads bent, hands probing, voices low. One froze at a sound. They stood very still. Then one muttered something about a pipe. No one sounded convinced.
They lingered, moving slowly, saying little. They didn’t seem hurried. They didn’t seem burdened. Some of them moved like they’d been here before.
That thought made the house feel heavier.
My chest tightened as I thought of the sound of another voice in the kitchen once. Footsteps crossing the hallway. A lamp that used to stay on late. Now the emptiness pressed in around me, thick and unyielding.
Outside, beyond the windows and doors, the murderer could still be there. I couldn’t name him clearly anymore, couldn’t remember details, and yet the fear lingered, a shadow threaded through the hollow house, pressing me into the glass.
The floorboards groaned under each step. A shutter rattled in the wind. I stayed where I was, drinking in the ordinary world reasserting itself. Their quiet chatter. Their radios. The soft scrape of boots. While the absence of the house pressed in on me, unrelenting.
The rooms I had loved once, that had life, now echoed with only absence. The weight of what I’d lost sat heavy on my bones, a quiet, aching pull.
I lingered as they filtered out the door.
Outside, the air was damp and sharp, carrying the faint hum of distant life. I was left with the hush of the house and the unbearable swell of solitude.
Yet I felt a small pulse, very fragile, almost unnoticed, hammer in my chest.
And I realized something still mattered.
Quiet.
Fragile.
Alive.
Even if I was the only one who could feel it.
If you enjoyed reading, you can buy me a coffee ☕ — a small gesture that helps keep the creative fire burning.
If this piece spoke to you, tap the ❤️ or share it with someone who might need it too. Your quiet support keeps the ink flowing.
That's gotta be so scary for the witness. I can't even imagine.
An intriguing story and the two perspectives worked very well together. I'm a fan of multiple POV's.