The Missing Linck

• NINE •

One of the guys gasps behind me when he sees the mess. The entire room is in chaos and all we can do is stand and watch.

Half of a glass tabletop is cracked and the other half is shattered. More shards of glass lie on the floor from presumably a vase or a container being shattered.

The floor is covered with water up to an inch high. Using a broom, I prop open the bathroom door so the water can drain. While we wait for the water to drain, 'Alex' points at something. Near the window, cerise drops drip from the windowsill, on the wall and on the floor, turning the water a violent shade of red.

After most of the water has drained away, I carefully walk in and kneel by the window, observing the cerise coloring. From afar, it looked like paint. From close, though, it looks more like blood. Shuddering at the thought, I dip the end of my handkerchief in the scarlet puddle forming on the floor and observe that it definitely seems like blood.

"What's that?" one of the guys asks me.

"Seems like... blood." I hesitantly spit out.

"Blood?" 'Alex' laughs, "Someone's been watching too many crime tv shows."

I scowl at him and motion for him to go ahead and observe the fluid and see if he comes up with anything.

"Paint's ruled out," he says.

"How can you say that?" someone else asks him.

"Doesn't smell like that," he replies matter-of-factly.

I move to look outside the window when I spot feathers on the windowsill near the cerise trail. Peeking out, I spot more of the same obsidian colored feathers on the ledge.

I pull my head back in and bang my head on the sill in the process. Swearing under my breath, I rub my head until the throbbing pain diminishes. Pulling my hair back in its original style, I notice an obsidian feather in my hair.

Exclaiming in surprise, I poke my head back out the window and turn my head upwards where I can now hear squawks emanating from. A bird, most likely a pigeon, is stuck in the window and desperately trying to escape. Every single frantic moment it takes to try to free itself, it's losing more blood. It's frantic squawks grow weaker and weaker. Grimacing at the sight, I pull my head back in carefully this time.

I continue watching it in the reflection in my phone screen. I notice that the sill's bent at the top. Must've been my head. Another fifteen squawks later, the pigeon manages to pull itself free. And drops dead. Holy bumbling baboons! No way it would've survived a fall from that height as injured as it is!

So a likely explanation is that it mistakenly tried to get in and knocked over a vase or something and got stuck while trying to get out...

Shaking it off, I turn around to see the guys just a bit in front of the door and backing away. That's strange. Weren't they like right behind me? Why are they backing away from me?

The fear on their faces doesn't make sense. I mean, I get the pigeon just fell out and what not, but they would've heard its squawks enough to know it was there...

I observe their faces to see if I can find anything, but I come up with nada. Someone gestures to me to run out with his eyes. What are they so afraid of? I thought-

'Alex' yelps when his eyes trail down my arm. I look at it to see that there's an unusual gash in my forearm which is bleeding. I guess I hit it on the shards of glass scattered on the floor or some sharp edge of the windowsill. But that wouldn't produce a gash like that.

This gash looks like someone sawed my hand with a knife. Wouldn't I have noticed then? I didn't even have any wound there earlier if I were to suppose that an old wound reopened. What hap-

I gasp for air whilst a pair of hands coils my throat.

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Hey there. I'm sorry for the large gap between this chapter and the last. I would've written and posted this yesterday if I hadn't been so disturbed. I still am, but I couldn't let this go...

My college starts the day after so I can only update once weekly from now. If I have any extra time that isn't dedicated to another story, I might post an extra chapter.

Thank you for reading, and keep reading.

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