On the surface, the day was perfect. Sky as clear as a clean window, sun pouring down with that honey-heat that makes even concrete shimmer. The couple’s car hissed up the driveway, tires mourning against the cobbles, and for a moment you’d think it was an old lawntime scene: two people, young, full of hope, moving into a new place.
But the building wasn’t a home. It was a slab of gray stone and grim, a square-jawed block that sat on the street like a corpse that no one had bothered to bury. The windows were open eye sockets, dark and pitless, and the door was a grinning mouth. Jenny—she was the light-on-her-feet one, the kind that tried to find a smile where there was nothing to smile about—said, “Kind of scary.” Her voice shaked a little a, but she imitated a laugh anyway, the kind that drips into the floor in the same way as spilled coffee.
inside, the hallways were tight, corridors stinking of old onions, milky cough syrup, and the iron tang of water that had rotted in the pipes. The carpet looked almost wet but was dry as a cracked tongue, stains spread like shadow fingers. Jenny tried to keep the cheer, but she kept wiping her palms on her jeans, them already sweat-covered. Mark made a shrugging grimace, a sort of face men make when they know they’re lie saying to their girl and she knows it too.
It was when they finally sink onto the bed—springs screaming and milky dust puffing out from the mattress—that the world, for a second, settled. Jenny curled into Mark’s side, a yawn dribbling from her, and if you squinted, the whole damn thing looked like the picture on a rental ad: home, love, new beginning.
Then the knock.
It came from the door, low and thick,the knock wasn’t just a sound—it was a feeling, sharp and brittle, like two human bones clapping together inside a dead limb. The echo crawled under the skin, rattling in the marrow even the air changed, grabbing their eyeballs with a sharp, icy squeeze.
Mark went to answer. He opened the door.
The knife went in first.
No yell, no warning—just that glint of steel, shiny as if it had been kissed with tongues of fire. it slammed into his chest, right between his ribs, and the sound wasn’t metal meeting flesh. it was wood splitting. Jenny sweared she heard his ribs crack open, splintering like half-rotted fenceposts.
He stumbled back, the knife still standing outright in his chest, quivering with the beat of his heart. Blood boiled out in thick streams, dark as old wine, running down his stomach, slippery as motor oil. It collected in the waistband of his pants, then poured down his legs. By the time it reached his shoes, he was squishing in his own life.
He tried to talk, to get something out—“Jenn—” maybe, though it comes out as a spray of coughing red mist. He clapped at the knife, but his hands slipped, because you can’t hold on to a bleeding hole. He looked to her, eyes already glazing, skin going gray, and she will never forget that face: trying to smile at her, trying to be strong, even while the light drained out.
When he fell, he didn’t clatter. He splattered. His body hit the floor, wet puddles spread and seeped against the floor. The red sea of blood like a watermelon was dropped, Jenny didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her heart batted hard against her throat, but the rest of her froze.
The man came in.
He was tall, too tall, the way a shadow gets stretched by light, but this was the real thing, and his face—0h, god, his face—she couldn’t make it out. it was smeared, a blur, something her mind slipped off like soap. The more she tried to see, the more it faded.
By the time she could breathe, he was on her, rope biting her wrists, the smell of Mark’s blood—that iron horror, that barn-in-the-rain stench—clinging to her hair. He dragged her out the way you drag a sack of potatoes, her heels scraping the carpet, smearing it with a trail of boot prints blood.
The door swallowed them, closing on the sound of drips.
1 after the change in it all
Three years later, the apartment became a legend of sorts. Three couples had lived there after Mark and Jenny. Three men died. Three women are gone. Only one survivor ever spoke of it: Mark Robin. The first victim. The only man left to remember.
He shut himself away after that. Three years inside, enslaved to his own memory. He drew the killer’s face over and over, blotching the pages with sketches that never looked the same. Insanity had tightened its vicious hands around him, but he kept scribbling. Kept trying.
On a very ordinary morning—a morning that could have been any other—Mark’s eyes snagged on an ad in the paper.
Private Detective Wanted.
The idea gripped him with a fire he hadn’t felt in years.
He threw on clothes and rushed to the station. When he spoke to the man at the counter, his voice felt strange, as though it belonged to someone else.
“Hello, sir. I’d like to apply for the detective job.”
The man looked up, eyes dull, voice tired. “Back room, to the right. if You got the education, you’ll probably get it.”
The words hit Mark like a stone in the gut. He hadn’t finished school.
But he kept going.
He sat with the other candidates, waiting, the edges of his nerves fraying. One after another went in, and one after another came out.
Finally, it was his turn.
He walked into the interview room, the metal chair cold underneath him. The interviewer, face gray and detached, asked him to speak his name.
Mark did, shakily, and slid his papers across the table.
“Why do you want this job?” the interviewer asked.
Mark looked directly into the man’s eyes. His voice was tight,
“Three years ago, my girlfriend was taken. They call it the apartment murders. The man who did it—I have to find him. I have to know his face. I have to know where she is. And I have to know what he did to the others. That’s why, sir.”
The man paid no attention to his words and read the almost blank resume. He looked up at Mark and said, with no emotion or care, “No, I’m sorry, but you don’t have the education or prior experience.”
Mark’s heart dropped. How cruel the words were, yet they fell from the man’s mouth and crawled into his ears with no emotion. Mark left, saddened, like a kid told no to sweets.
He walked down the dark concrete, and out of moping eyes, deepest to the left, barely visible, he spotted the shine of something too familiar—something he had once had leaked from him. A deep crimson stain.
As he walked towards it, he saw Jenny’s body in the blood. As he reached to touch her, she disappeared. He heard the knock echo through the walls of the dark alley, his mind messing with him.
At the end of the alley was the man’s face. He finally saw it in its purest, ugliest form: the balding brown hair that seeped down as he kept the remaining hair he had left long, the dark green eyes, the pale white skin like a ghost, the webbing tattoos that crawled from his neck to his face.
It snapped away as a car drove by, cracking the silence. The image in his mind cracked like glass, deep dark cracks breaking his thoughts on the horror of that face.
He remembered it. Immediately, he started etching, carving the face into the walls of his mind, determined to never forget it again.
2 remember me
The next day came. After seeing the man’s face, remembering it for the first time, Mark woke, sleepy and restless, his mind still tangled in the memory. He picked up his pen and drew the true face of the man, carefully, deliberately. The ink still glittered wet on the paper. He hung it on the corkboard and began removing all the other smudged, poorly drawn images—the false faces he had once thought were him.
In that moment, he knew he needed to be alone. He didn’t need help. He didn’t need the law. He was going to find him—the man who had changed everything.
A knock echoed through the room. Mark grabbed his head, thinking it was another illusion, but it wasn’t. It came again, cold and deliberate.
He opened the door.
A young woman stood there. Calm. Measured. “What’s your name? Sorry if I’m coming on too strong. Let me rephrase. Hi. I’m your neighbor. I just moved here from California.”
Anger flared in Mark. He didn’t want to be social. He didn’t like it. He needed to think. But he knew he should be kind. He forced the best fake smile he could muster.
“Hi, I’m Mark. Don’t worry, I understand—moving’s tough. I, uh… I don’t like to be bothered. I’m kind of always home, doing things. So, if you could be on your way, that would be… nice.”
The woman’s smile faltered for a moment before masking her hurt with another polite smile. “Well, just in case, my name’s Rose. If you ever decide to come around, I’d be glad to meet you. But for now, since you’re busy, I’ll go back home. Goodbye, Mark. Nice meeting you.”
Mark shut the door coldly as she finished speaking.
He tried to remember what he had been doing before the knock. His eyes fell on the corkboard. He finished removing the old images and began constructing a detective board. At the center, he pinned the inked drawing of the man’s true face, now dried and sharp against the paper.
He thought. Where to start? Where could he look?
Mark pulled out his chair and booted up his old computer. Article after article, name after name, he’d looked so many times before on these before usually they all had nothing until now he found the first lead beyond the victims: the landlord’s name.
3 im you
He looked at the name of the landlord. Jacob Rimmer. Mark tried to find an image of him somewhere, anything to match a face to a name, but found nothing. Only a work number. He dialed.
The phone rang once, twice, and then a voice spat through the receiver—hoarse, ragged, the voice of a smoker who never stopped.
“Hello, this is Hightown Apartments. What can I help you with?”
Mark paused. The man on the other end grew impatient. “Hello, this is Hightown Apartments. What can I help you with?”
Mark spoke slowly, deliberately. “Is Jacob there?”
“That’s me. What can I help with?”
Mark hesitated. He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but finally managed an excuse. “Can I rent an apartment if there’s one available?”
The man perked up. He smelled a deal. “There’s a room available. If you want to see it, come down to my office. I’ll show you around.”
Mark smiled behind the phone. He scribbled the address, hung up, threw on his shoes, and speed-walked down the street.
He stepped into the office. The stench hit him first: mold and cigarettes, thick in the air, clinging to every surface. Behind a desk sat Jacob Rimmer. It wasn’t the killer’s face. Different. Full beard, short hair, no bald spots, no tattoos. Nothing like the blur that haunted Mark’s memory. He left immediately.
On the walk home, the sky opened. Rain poured, slow and relentless. Puddles formed in the cracked sidewalk. Mark glanced down—and froze. In the reflection, he saw the killer’s face staring back at him. He looked away, forcing himself to keep walking.
A familiar figure appeared ahead. Rose, walking home. Mark quickened his pace to catch up.
“Hi,” he said, breathless. “Sorry I was mean last time. I’m just stressed.”
Rose looked up, polite, gentle. “Hi. It’s fine. I’m glad you apologized.”
Mark watched the way she moved—soft, careful, just like Jenny. Her eyes caught the light, sparkling the same color as Jenny’s. She was Jenny. He knew it.
Once inside, Mark said calmly, “I’m gonna head home. It’s late.”
Rose tilted her head. “How about I hang at your place for a bit? I’ll cook dinner.”
Mark paused, thinking of how she’d react to his apartment. The mess. But decided it wasn’t too bad. “Sure,” he said. “Just don’t be upset if I fall asleep before you leave.”
Rose smiled. They walked back to his apartment. Rose looked around. Spotless. Almost. The area near the bed was cluttered with his corkboard. Papers hung on the wall, dozens of sketches—different depictions of the killer’s face.
Then, there was the basement entrance. Boxes piled high, coated in dust.
Rose cocked her head. “Why’s the basement blocked off?”
Mark turned to the corner. “I forgot I had a basement. Don’t think I’ve been down there.”
Rose moved closer, curiosity bright in her eyes. “Let’s go look. I’m curious. What’s down there? Aren’t you always in your home? You haven’t really seen it.”
Mark shrugged. “Why not? I guess it’ll probably be empty.”
They stepped down.
The stench hit immediately: rotten, metallic, unmistakable. The floor showed the remains of something grim — skeletons, decades old, four of them. And then it hit him.
The memories flooded back. He was the killer. He had stabbed in fits of insanity to feed his thirst for killing. He’d killed before, but Jenny was the first he’d truly cared for. He had trapped women in his basement. He had killed Jenny. Every memory, every shred of horror he’d locked away surged up like a tidal wave. How could he forget? How could he love a victim while being his own madness?
He sank to the floor, staring at the bones, the evidence of his monstrous acts. The past wasn’t past. It had been hiding, waiting, and now it was all there, undeniable. In front of him lay the rusted knife he had ditched down there after he’d tortured the victims. The first death of his acts in this town had been Jenny’s. He picked up the old rusted knife, chipped and cracked from years of sitting in the same place — the same knife he’d used in the apartment years ago. He had plunged it into his own chest once to try to stop his need to kill, but it had been too late; he’d killed Jenny, forgotten everything, and lived three lonely years in his home trying to remember someone who had been him all along.
He needed to be rid of Rose. He needed to run somewhere new and start again. With that thought he turned toward her. The look she gave him was just like Jenny’s. He plunged the rusted, dull blade into her chest. The blade snapped off and stayed there, causing tiny, spiderweb-like stains of dark blood to pool on her shirt; little spots hit Mark, but he wanted more. He dropped the handle; the metal clang echoed so nicely in the concrete box that was the basement, just like that apartment.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled the blade out. The fear in Rose’s eyes — the squirming — she ran, leaving a trail of gushing blood, but she didn’t make it up the stairs. After climbing, half her body fell back down, pooling on the stairs like fresh paint as it poured down each step so viscously, finally collecting at the bottom. Once he’d climbed the bloodied stairs, leaving sticky footprints behind, he walked out the front door and ran from the town. He hoped no one had heard the screams or cared to ask what stained the boots he wore and the ground he walked on. The splash of red had marked his shirt as the blood seeped into the fabric. He had done something unforgivable — he had murdered so many people in that town — but now he was free to wreak havoc in another town, this time more openly.
-the end
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