There’s a murderer in Habitsville.
I know what you may be thinking. A straight-forward homicide case in Habitsville could be considered mild in comparison to the usual happenings around my small town. And you may have been right—if this was anything straight-forward about this killing.
The police believed the first murder was an spur-of-the-moment act, because up until it happened, there had only been a series of break-ins around Habitsville. I know this thanks to a friend I have on the force, one of the few cops that are friendly with investigative journalists like me, Sam Singer. The break-ins were harmless, besides a bit of property damage, and the victims were only abandoned buildings. Then, they escalated to closed businesses, and eventually, homes. It was odd—though the entries into these buildings grew more and more risky, there seemed to be no reward in store for the perpetrator. They never took a single thing.
Once the café down the street from the Habitsville Gazette office where I work was hit, I decided it was time I bring Eleanor home with me. Nellie has been serving as our resident cat in the newspaper office ever since I took her from the McAfee house during the interview I conducted there (the details of which are strangely fuzzy). I’m not much of a cat person, and admittedly, her little white gloved paws and wide-set eyes used to creep me out a little. But I quickly moved past that feeling, and instead found comfort in the way she rubbed against my legs while I was working.
So with the break-ins happening near the office and my soft, overprotective heart now attached to this cat, I decided to bring her back to my apartment with me until things were sorted out and the crimes stopped.
Which, of course, they didn’t.
The murder happened on a Thursday night at the ice cream parlor, right in the heart of downtown Habitsville. The victim was a sanitation worker, Jeff Jameson, an old man who was no doubt caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like I said, because there hadn’t been any other killings up to that point, the police figured Jameson’s death was incidental. My police friend was able to snag me the case file for a quick look, and after examining the details, I can’t say I agree.
I don’t’ know how someone incidentally does that to another human being.
For one, there hadn’t been any weapon, as far as they could tell, besides the perpetrator’s own two hands. Instead of a merciful blade or bullet in the chest, Jeff Jameson got something far worse. Huge gouges of flesh had been unceremoniously carved out of him in dull scoops, as though dug out with ragged nails on thick fingers. ‘
Although the attack was animalistic, the murderer was definitely human—that much could be told from the evidence of lock-picking on the front door, and the imprints of human teeth scarred into what was left of Jameson. His tongue, oddly, was gone. Once again, after a full inventory, the cops found that nothing had been taken from the ice cream parlor, besides one unfortunate man’s life.
It would have taken an incredible amount of effort to destroy a man like that, and a strong resolve to not abandon the job before it was done. So, as far as I was concerned, the murderer entered the ice cream parlor that night with an intent to kill.
So I started triple checking my door and windows each night before snuggling up with Nellie in my bed and settling into restless, anxious sleep.
It was on one of these uneasy evenings that I was woken suddenly. At first, I thought I had only been disturbed by a dream I couldn’t remember—and then I heard it. A distinct clattering coming from the kitchen, like something—or someone—was rummaging around in a cabinet.
My breathing quickened as I slipped out of my bed, my bare feet cold against the floor. I ineffectively tried to keep the images I had seen in the file, of Jeff Jameson riddled with gruesome holes, out of my mind as I crept towards my doorway.
I had left the light in the kitchen on at night ever since the café had been hit, but the bright bulbs didn’t reveal anyone standing upright in the room. I followed the same clamoring sound that had woken me up. It was coming from the other side of the island.
I picked up a pair of scissors that were lying on the counter gingerly and held them as threateningly as I could. Then, I turned the corner.
The breath I had been unconsciously holding fled my body in a gust.
It had been a murderer after all.
Nellie, crouched over a small, pulpy pile of flesh that I assumed had once been a mouse, was sitting on the kitchen floor, her white-gloved paws soaked scarlet.
Grateful as I was that I wouldn’t die that night, I still hated the gore. I put the bits of flesh into a plastic bag and set it by the door, resigned to taking it out the next morning. I rinsed Nellie’s paws in the sink, and grimaced as she joined me back in bed, bloodthirsty creature as she was.
The next morning, Sheila Bergman was dead.
I didn’t know Sheila Bergman. She was in her late forties, an accountant, with no immediate family of her own. She lived a quiet life in Habitsville, until it was cut short. The cause of death had been the same as before, I didn’t ask my police friend for the pictures. I didn’t need to see them to imagine what had happened to her in perfect clarity. Holes pushed into her body, the substance scooped out, like a child’s hands in wet sand. This time they were testing saliva and trying to match dental records to a bite on the body—one that had completely taken the ear and some of the head, which were spit out some feet away—but they weren’t having much luck.
And of course, her tongue was gone.
The murder of Sheila Bergman disturbed me. It disturbed me, of course, because it was a murder in my town, a particularly gruesome and twisted one at that. But Sheila’s death was incredibly worrying to me for a much more urgent reason:
She lived in the apartment directly under mine.
Cops had swarmed my building, and I didn’t feel safe there anymore. The thought that I had potentially been awake that night, merely a few feet away from the heinous acts that had taken place through the thin floor, had given me constant nausea.
The day after it happened, I was distracted, as is probably understandable. I didn’t remember until the afternoon that there was still a bag by my front door, full of decomposing mouse guts and fur.
I picked up the bag, trying to work up the nerve to walk down the stairs, past the floor and the apartment that was now bloodstained and swarmed with police.
Then, there was a small thud.
I looked down and immediately winced, cursing the cat under my breath. Perhaps it had been unwise to leave what was left of Nellie’s prey so within reach, because it appeared she had ripped open the bag and taken a second go at her long-dead conquest.
But then, in the cold light of day, when my heart wasn’t pounding with fear and my eyes were bleary from sleep, I took a closer look at the mound of red on the floor.
There, mashed and kneaded into an almost unrecognizable shape, was a human tongue.
Slowly, I turned my head.
Nellie sat at the end of the hall, licking her paws.
I didn’t know what to do, so I sat on the floor, about six feet away from the tongue. I simultaneously tried not to look at it and stared at it intently. Sheila Bergman’s tongue was in my apartment. It had to have been, Jeff Jameson’s wouldn’t have been nearly so fresh. Logic was telling me that it couldn’t have been what I had taken from between Nellie’s paws the previous night. It made no sense. And yet…
Nellie traipsed over after I sat down, and casually climbed in my lap. I absentmindedly stroked her head as I tried to form some sort of plan as to what to do next. Going downstairs and proudly delivering the tongue to the police was not a good look for me, and would no doubt earn me a trip down to the station. But still, evidence was evidence, and it was my duty to turn in what I could. And of course, a small, psychopathic part of me was excited about what a bizarre detail this would add to some sort of story for my column in the paper. But mostly, I was spiraling in thought.
Ow!
Nellie suddenly bit me hard on my arm, a firm, ravenous chomp rather than a playful nip. Immediately, I grabbed her around the middle and tossed her out of my lap, my lips parting to scold her—
And then, I stopped.
I had just felt something, something strange and impossible and terrible. And yet, oddly familiar.
There was a zipper on Eleanor’s stomach.
I stared at her, as she stared back.
Then, as sweetly as I could, I snapped my fingers together, trying to coax her back into my lap. She gave me a few moments more of her look of reproach, before sidling back up to me, a deep rumble in the back of her throat.
Sweat was beading on my forehead, and if I was nauseous before, I was physically holding back vomit at that moment. I pushed down the feeling of dread that was rising within me.
I scopped Nellie up, her back cradled in my arm, her stomach fluffy and exposed.
With my other trembling hand, I smoothed down her fur, and there it was.
Small and flesh colored, a zipper.
I stared at it for a moment. Nellie started to squirm.
Then, slowly, I pulled the tab down the track.
Zzziiiiiippppppppppp
I didn’t want to pull the skin away from the middle, but I could see something inexplicable between them: a black line of space, as though Nellie’s body was hollow. No organs, no blood, nothing. She swatted a paw at me playfully, seeming to not notice her opened up abdomen.
I was frozen, staring at that thin dark expanse of space.
Then, there was movement, causing me to stiffen and lean away. Something white was approaching the opened pouch. It pressed against the separated skin, and then, something emerged.
It was a hand, huge, thick, and masculine. It was wearing a white cartoonish glove, and as it came pushing out of Nellie’s stomach, I could see that it was attached to a man’s forearm, as big around as a cantaloupe with prominent tendons and covered in dark hair.
The hand was feeling around. It touched my shirt, and I was stuck in an immobile panic. I held my breath as it grazed my chest, digging slightly, trying to sense for something.
It made its way up to my face, feeling around my lips, pushing with some force there. I could smell the scent of body odor and rust on the rubbery material of the gloves. In a desperate attempt, I leaned over, and carefully picked something up.
I held the mangled tongue of Sheila Bergman aloft, trying to guide it into the outstretched hand. When its fabric-covered fingers touched the flesh with a squelch, it carefully tightened its grip around it. In a quick movement that almost made me throw the cat out of my lap, it brought the tongue back within the folds of skin from which it came.
Once more, the hand came out, feeling for something again.
And then, it found it.
The small, flesh colored tab of the zipper.
Slowly, with much effort, the arm pushed out to the elbow, and the hand started to pull. The tab traveled all the way back down the track. The hand tucked itself back inside Nellie.
Zip
It shut completely. And suddenly, the zipper was gone. I tried to find it again, but there was nothing. It was as though it sunk back into the flesh without a trace—or, perhaps, it was never there to begin with.
Nellie got up off of my lap. She batted my hand a few times, licked it where it was covered in blood and sweat from grasping Sheila Bergman’s tongue. Then she grew bored and lazily walked away.
I sat on the floor a few hours more.
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