Recommending, 17 Missing Girls.

The 17th Missing Girl

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS VIOLENCE. VIEWER'S DISCRETION ADVISED.

By 'checking it out the location that the 2nd Missing Girl just sent us', Xero meant submitting an anonymous police tip, with the location and a social media profile of the missing girl attached.

Xero sent the tip via encrypted networks.

"If the rest of the 16 Missing Girls are dead...and I'm the one sending anonymous tips to uncover their bodies...the police will definitely suspect me of murder." Xero explained. "No thank you."

"I'm also not in the mood to see another girl, broken, cramped into tiny spaces." So he sent the police to handle that part.

—-----------

2 days later,

The local news once again reported, uncovering the body of another Missing Girl. Crushed into a cabinet at a closed down escape room.

Our profile #2, PlaneJane.

She sent us the location to her body...Though Xero begged to differ, "An AI rendering of the dead girl...sent us to the location before her phone signal cuts off."

That's delusional. I don't buy that. Because wouldn't the police have access to their last known location and searched that area already?? Why didn't they search there, until now?

Why didn't they find anything, until now?

Dead girls, sending us their final resting place.

Illogically logical.

The police had now caught up that there's a serial killer in the area. And connecting the dots between the 16 Missing Girls profiles, their last eerie post of a pastry...as sharing the same abductor or abductors.

Social media blew up with gossips, enthralled by the fate of the remaining 14 missing girls, whose bodies have yet to be found.

Fear gripped the towns. Everywhere you go, work break room, coffee shops, school campus, someone was mentioning the case. Crime murder podcasts cropped up like a well plowed field, across Youtube, Spotify, Podcasts.

"Who do you think did it?"

"Do you think they're all dead?"

"Where are the other 14 girls?"

I browsed through news coverage of the 16 Missing Girls case, both horrified and intoxicated by the mystery. It's something you see in Netflix shows...not something you watch unraveling, in front of your eyes. In the cities, where you grocery shop, work, sleep...

Xero sat next to me, on the couch, peering down at my laptop. He's pretty today. Clean shaven face, white turtle neck top, tucked inside a slim cut cream pants. Harnessed with a black belt. Soft gray hair, sweeping over high cheekbones. Every time he moved, the scent of his warm cologne lingered.

I'm glad he couldn't hear the sounds of my beating heart.

We were still at his place. I didn't want to be alone. I closed the laptop, enough of deaths for the day. Xero was gone when I glanced over.

When did he leave?

Just then, I heard footsteps from down the hall. Xero emerged, hair wet, buried beneath a towel, wearing a pink bathrobe.

"Huh? Why are you coming out of the shower?" I turned from the couch, to watch him walk down the glass covered hall, toward me. The house was large, it took a few good seconds before he reached me. Leaning down from the back of the couch.

"Because I just showered?" He responded. Dripping water onto the cushion and my face.

My eyes widened. "No...but you...You sat next to me, just now. Looking handsome, smelling good—No, scratch that you...just...you sat next to me just now!"