Girl Psycho

The light of day (Dlamini)

The video ended and Detective Dlamini sat in shocked silence staring at the screen. She couldn't take her eyes away despite what she'd just seen. She was trying to hide the fact that she was shaking, and was trying to swallow down the bile that kept getting stuck in the back of her throat.

"Jesus crapping Christ!" Jethro, the last guy who had made it through the video said as he got up from his throne of technology. He was the resident tech guy and hacker, anything you wanted to know about, anything, you just asked him.

"I've seen some fucked up shit... but what the hell!" He paced the room and kicked a pen across the room. Abigail believed him when he said he'd seen some fucked up shit, it was his job to keep tabs on the sick crap happening out there on the net. Flash back a few years ago and he wouldn't even have a job, but now most big police stations had someone like him, chasing down cyber criminals and the other animals that lurked in the deep web.

"Do you think it's real?" He turned and asked her. "I mean, I thought this stuff was an urban legend. It's an urban legend, right? It has to be... like that Japanese movie.  Rumors of that spread on the dark web but the FBI confirmed that it was fake."

"I don't know." Abigail looked down at her hands and saw blood. It was only once she saw the blood that she actually felt the pain. She had picked one of her cuticles all the way down to the quick.

"There hasn't been one that has been proved to be real," Jethro said almost desperately.    Abigail watched him, she could see how agitated he was. And it was growing by the second.

He kicked the pen again and then ran his hands through his balding hair. Jethro's parents had been semi-famous rockers in their day and they had wanted a hard-core rocker son too- hence the name. But what they'd gotten was a prematurely balding, pale, short-sighted, genius who listened to Taylor Swift and spent his Saturday nights playing Mine craft and hacking into the governments computers.

"Is it him on there?" He stopped pacing and asked her.

"I think so." Abigail nodded. She was pretty damn sure it was him, either that, or he had an evil twin somewhere. (God, she wished that was the case) But it was him, the picture she'd taken off his wall earlier, the one in which he was about twenty years younger, proved it. Despite the poor quality of the video, the resemblance was more than striking.

"Do you think, I mean, that girl...?" He stopped and stared at the ceiling. "She looks like a teenager. And is she... do you think?"

Abigail stood up. She needed to take charge of this situation because everyone around her was fucking out. Her partner Jake had walked out first, followed by two other male cops from homicide. They were meant to be hardened and old-school; been there done that. Except she could hear the one throwing up in the bathroom and now Jethro had picked the pen up, snapped it between his hands and had ink all over him.

"Look, I don't know much. We're going to have to..." she inhaled, "It's unavoidable. We have to watch it again, there could be something on it that gives us some information we can work with."

"I'm not watching that again!" Jethro's voice sounded desperate.

"So can I have a quick crash course in that then," she said sarcastically pointing at all his computers. On them he was able to isolate sounds, zoom into picture and fill in things that weren't there and visible to the naked eye. She couldn't do that and right now, she needed someone who could.

God, this was turning out to be a very shitty Monday. And to make matters worse, Dead Eddy's family was sitting in the waiting room. They had been sitting there for hours and they were all tear-stained and shook up and wanted to know why his body couldn't be released. Why couldn't they see their beloved father and grandfather and what did the cops have to do with this anyway? They didn't even know how he'd died, mind you, neither did she at this point. She needed to watch this thing again, figure out if it was real or not, so she could figure out what she was going to tell his family.

Abigail sat down again and tried to remain calm, but inside she was a total mess, more so than anyone else here. Because she knew from first-hand experience what that girl was going through, try growing up as a black lesbian in the townships of South Africa.. you'll know more than you ever want to know. She knew what that felt like and her blood was boiling. Her skin felt like it was on fire and there was a rage growing inside her, but she just couldn't show it...

Suddenly she wanted a drink more than she'd wanted in months. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired... she was all of those things right now.

"I'm interested in those parts that have been recorded over." She said. The imagery on the tape was disturbing enough, but in three places the footage had switched to a few seconds of cartoons- Daffy Duck to be specific. Why had someone deliberately recorded over those parts? It's not like it was hiding the gruesome bits.

The kind of guy that keeps a tape like this, wouldn't record over any of the 'good bits' unless... she paused and thought about it. Unless there were clues in those moments that could give something away, but what? It's not like he had made any attempt to hide his face, which was odd.

He must have been so confident that no one would ever find or see this- otherwise he would have kept his identity hidden. And there was also something in the look on his face that bothered her too; she couldn't quite put her finger on it yet. Her brain was spinning; she needed to stop drinking coffee.

God, this was some sick shit! But this was also the kind of case that had made her want to join the police force. Any chance she got to catch one of these perverted sons of bitches, these depraved versions of human beings, that's why she'd become a cop. Yeah, yeah, Abigail had done enough therapy to know why she was doing this. She could probably write a book on it.

Victim of violent, sexual crime becomes policewoman. It doesn't take a Freud to figure out why she was doing it.

"I need another coffee." She finally said standing up again. She'd just told herself not to drink anymore, or else she was going to spend another sleepless night staring up at her ugly celling. What was this, seventh cup today, maybe eight? She needed to eat something too... and she needed to call her sponsor before she came looking for her.

"Do you need me to get anything for you? Before we look at this again." She walked over to Jethro. She reached out, and for a moment thought about laying some kind of a reassuring hand on his shoulder. But she knew stuff like that didn't help. Once you had seen that kind of sick darkness, no amount of reassuring hands made it better.

He shook his head.

"Ok, rewind it, let's start at the beginning, I'll be back now." She walked out and all her colleagues were sitting around a desk, still looking ashen and pale. They all stopped and looked at each other, a kind of silent message was passed around between them.

Each and every one of them could feel this was big. This was not the kind of case that came around every day, and if it was real, if what she had seen was real, then she would need to start looking into missing girls from around that time. Because if that tape was real, that little girl not only didn't find her way home, she also never saw the light of day again.