𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚛

15

F

Doimi remained standing in her spot, like a middle schooler getting caught for drawing on the walls, but she didn't have one ounce of remorse for why she was in our apartment. She stayed there, squeezing the clear liquid of the hydrogen peroxide on the used-to-be white carpet, and the reddish brown blood stains sizzled at the contact. Her eyes were studying the horror on both mine and Meran's faces, but still remained and my question didn't even seem to go through her head.

"What in the everloving shit is this?!!" I bellowed. I really hoped that the neighbors that were never here both beside and below us weren't at home this fine afternoon. "Well first off, that's a body. Secondly, your door was open, and third, did you not see the crows eating this chick's hand??" Doimi stated, making the whole situation seem lighthearted, when it obviously was not. "Oh yeah, and you forgot my milk cups so I was originally coming by for those because I knew you had them and out of the kindness of my own shriveled heart I decided to help you clean up." It was then my head went to our marble countertop, and saw four pink and empty milk cartons. "I'm sorry about that, but with the week that we've had?! How could I remember something like that!" Meran then brushed past me, and I saw the tension in her shoulders, and how her saran-wrapped wrist was held to her mouth. "I think I'm gonna be sick..." She whispered.
"Well you know where your bathroom is." Doimi shrugged and continued spraying the couch and even the walls to lift the blood stains. Meran hopped over the blood puddle and small bits of maybe stomach, intestine and perhaps bits of brain matter to get to the bathroom next to her room. The scent of dead body started to get to me the longer I looked at the dirty trash bags. "I actually got here an hour ago but you guys only had one bottle so I bought more." Doimi was through with were she sprayed. She didn't spray the tile, or really anywhere in the kitchenette. "Thank you??" I muttered and found the dollar store bag with three more brown bottles of the destruction water. "How'd this even happen?" "Your door was unlocked. Like I said." Doimi's dark green hair flew behind her as she bounced off every surface to get to even the smallest of blood splatters in places I couldn't even see.

"So this person just ran in here and-?" "They were probably chased by them vultures and this place smells clean and safe anyways. I would hide out in here too." I cracked open two of the remaining bottles to help her out, even though my heart was racing. My hands were shaking, and I tried to keep it under control and I began looking for spots. I found some splatter and spillage on the side of the couch and on the carpet beneath, so I just turned the bottles over and watched the substance drip onto the fabrics. I gave them some pressure, and the liquid began to make the blood sizzle and break down. Meran's wretches were heard through the wall, and I felt really bad for leading her into this. I hoped that she was just having a stress response of some type, because even before we went out on a raid day, she never felt so scared and stressed to puke. And I'm pretty sure we haven't eaten anything since breakfast. Doimi saw the contemplation on my face and suddenly appeared next to my ear, causing me to back up an extreme amount.

"Either she's just got a weak stomach 'cause I know you two have seen worse, or she's just really wimpy being close to dead mutilated bodies. Don't feel bad." Her small purple irises bore into mine, and I saw her scanning my eyes over. "You sure you're not an elf or something??" She asked. I was actually taken aback by the sudden shift in question. "I'm pretty sure I would know if I was an elf.." She closed her eyes and backed up into a regular standing position. "Ok, if you say so. So when I got here the temperature of the body was about 95.6 degrees, so that means that they were dead for about 2 and a half hours, so taking the time that they've been dead, how long ago I got here, and the time it took me to get all of that peroxide, this girl probably got killed at 11 a.m...." Doimi started going off about facts of the time of death, how they possibly got into the building in the first place, and how they were killed. Again the abrupt shift in tone and conversation threw me off, but I really had to words to tell her to stop talking about it or really ask why she was changing topics so much. This little green haired goblin even guessed the time we left in the morning for Meran's tattoo. "You're extremely weird for a 13 year old..." I muttered under my breath and kept my eyes on her for any sudden movements as I bent back down to finish working on the blood spot.