Finding Quinn

01

01

THERE'S JUST something about the smell of a corpse. Something about the aroma of blood and perfume, and tears, and sweat. There's just something about the way it never seems to leave your nostrils, and never stops burning your throat. I take a shaky sip of my coffee and force the liquid down my throat. Hoping that the burn will make me feel something. Pain. Shock. Anything.

It amazes me how things can happen so quickly. How they can happen in an instant. One minute, I'm going to grab Ms. Lofton's lunch from the teachers lounge, and the next? I'm running down the hallway away from a bloody horrifying seen behind me.

She was so... Cold. Crimson sludge pooled out if her mouth through her chapped lips; her neck was sliced all the way down to the bone, and her wrists where covered in so much blood I couldn't even tell where the gash started and where it ended.

The image plays over and over and over and over again inside my head like a scratched CD, But one moment stands still. The moment where our eyes met. Mine and his.

I sat up in my bed in a panic. My dream so vivid that it was like I could actually smell the blood. I looked down at my hands and for a moment they were covered in crimson. This was the fifth time this week, and the second week this month. It was like I couldn't escape the reality of it. The reality that Quinn was gone. Not even in my dreams.

After I'd gotten ready, I made my way downstairs. It was no surprise my father was already there, the TV as loud as he could make it with his face buried in his newspaper. Which was his way of saying he had no desire to talk to or see me. I sat down at my place at the farthest seat from his at the other end of the table, but if he thought he would get out of this conversation he was fucking crazy.

"Dad." I started and turned down the volume enough so that we could hear what was going on, but not enough that he could say he didn't hear me or complain that it was too low. "When are you going to sign off on the case? It's been three whole months. This isn't a typical runaway and you know it."

Dad was always a man of few words. He was a man of even fewer words when it came to me. When he and my mother were together, they thought that they would never be able to have children. The doctors told them that my mother just wasn't able to. But, a couple of years later my mom started getting morning sickness and at first they thought she was sick, but after some tests, it turned out she was pregnant.

They told them that carrying me full term would be risky, but my Mom didn't want an abortion and wanted to keep me. And my Dad was happy to finally have his first son. She carried and delivered me, and she lived for six years after I was born and we were happy. But then one day those complications reared their ugly head, my Mother bled out during the night.

Ever since the night my Father woke up covered in the blood of the women he loved he was never the same. And all that for a daughter. A daughter who was supposed to never have been born, or at the very least had been a boy. He calls me Kyle sometimes. But I'm not so sure if it's an accident.

"You should really pay more attention to the news Kyaa." He said without looking up from his newspaper. When I saw what was on the screen I immediately turned it up even louder than it was before.

"Now as many of you may know, three months ago on the night of her graduation, a student of Mudville high school, eighteen year old Quinn Mayfield disappeared, along with her boyfriend Microft Eleanor, the youngest son of the notorious Eleanor family, who have yet to make a statement."

Two photos flashed onto the screen, one of Microft, and one of Quinn.

"We've just been informed that the Seattle police department's Chief of Police, Mr. Aaron Moore, has finally decided to look into this case. Though no official statement has been made, we understand that this case will become the departments top priority. We will inform you when more information is developed-"