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Antoinette - The Darkest Day

The house looked like something out of a horror story. It stood in the middle of a neighborhood known for its charm and affluence but shared none. Broken glass and shutters, dirty white paint chipped away by time and weather, and a dozen police officers, called in the dead of night, investigating a bloodstained front porch.

Antoinette arrived just before dawn with a journal under her arm and ten-pound bags underneath her eyes. She eyed the house next door with pulled back curtains and an older couple embracing as they watched her walk up. They snatched the swags to block her sight. As if a brief gaze from her would curse them. It probably would. Antoinette panned the scene, remembering the call from the police chief in the dark of her bedroom.

Multiple homicides. The two words she least liked to hear together.

She spotted him in the light of the street post, surrounded by his lower officers and handing out orders.

Antoinette walked closer but didn't dare interrupt. She kept her eyes down as the group broke apart. The officers stared at her as they trotted to the house, one bumping her shoulder. She looked at him and he gave her a crooked smile underneath a well-groomed handlebar mustache. Antoinette frowned.

"Bout time, Cartier. It's a mess in there. Had to hold the paper sharks back a block." Police Chief Daniels smiled at her. His own mustache was shorter and lightened with strands of grey. He put a large hand on her shoulder, "Now, I don't want to sound like I'm fathering you but..."

"I can handle it," Antoinette spoke up.

He looked at the dark circles around her eyes and slight lean on her back.

"Haven't been getting much sleep?" he frowned.

Antoinette shrugged, "enough. I've just got a cold or something. It'll pass." The words came out before she could even think them. A well-practiced excuse that worked nearly every time. "You say, it's upstairs?"

He nodded, "Indeed."

Antoinette left his hand in the air as she turned to walk to the crowded porch.

"And don't let those guys bother you, they're just boys." Daniels smiled and waved.

Antoinette nodded, heading inside. The smarter officers parted as she walked up not daring to get to close or worse accidentally touch her. She avoided the few long, blackened splatters on the wood, making note of them as she went inside. She could've sworn they looked like a pair of clawed feet.

The gas lights in the house had dimmed overnight, washing the walls with eerie orange light. The smell of must and rot hung in the air but was only a soft undertone to the distinct smell of spilled blood. A smell that Antoinette found herself surrounded by too often.

She followed the splatters up the carpeted stairs as they got wider. No one was inside with her. Fourteen grown men stood on the lawn waiting for her to clear the scene. No one was allowed, or wanted, to be with her. No one wanted the job she was born into. No one could do the job she was born into. It was hers and hers alone.

She rounded the corner into the first upstairs bedroom, seeing the lumpy bloodied flower sheets. A doll with bright yellow hair laid on the handmade carpet next to pink sandals and a blue silk dress. An outfit for a tomorrow that would never come. The little girl was sleeping soundly when her soul was liberated from her body. Her blood and brain matter painted the back wall and washed down in a grim dripping mess. Antoinette took a deep breath. The smell of blood and gunpowder gagged her and she stepped back out to catch her breath.

She moved to the next room. A step to the right and across the hall. Heavy boots blocked the door from opening fully but Antoinette could see the body of a young man clearly on the floor, legs and arms flailed at awkward angles, and bloody bullet holes littering his chest. His room was whirlwind of broken glass and ripped sheets. Papers had been torn from the wall and smeared with blood. She knew that this was most likely the fight the neighbors heard. The one that prompted the call.