Depths

26. Rights

I did not draw this picture... but isn't he cute? This story is actually inspired by all the art of MerPhatom on deviantart.

...

Phantom leaned against the desk and crossed his arms and ankles and watched with fascination and disgust as blood oozed and dribbled out of Ember's wound with a nasty squelching sound. He wondered what she planned to do with that on such an injured leg. That would take at least a good few minutes to heal completely.

He smirked and started lowering the temperature in the bedroom, staring at the girl in satisfaction when the heat from her breath became visible and a deep shiver racked her form.

She stood up, and her stability in the current bellow freezing environment was impressive. She was stronger than he gave her credit for.

Good for her.

...

A few days ago~

...

Dunald Dunck stared down at the playing footage, curses and foul words running through his head. Vlad Masters was definitely not a saint, and 90% of the general population would probably say that he deserved to die, or at the very least spend most of his life in prison.

Dunck wasn't sure if this was a murder, but he couldn't imagine what Mr. Masters's body was doing hours away from town in a swamp full of crocodiles and snakes. It had already been forensically proven that Vlad was killed by some kind of unknown species of animal, but Dunck wasn't sure if that answered the mystery of what exactly happened to the millionaire.

Every single organism in that swamp had been identified, and though some of the bite marks on the body matched the teeth on the crocodiles, the actual animal that killed him was not found.

A forensic scientist walked up to him, shocking him out of his deep concentration from the footage. He took his thumb away from his lip and regarded the woman with an expression that screamed, "what the hell do you want."

"Sir, we found something really strange, if you will fallow me to the remains." The woman's lab coat was covered in brownish stains, and immediately the investigator knew that it was blood from the remains. He grimaced in disgust but followed her anyway.

She led him to the remains, explaining as they went, "Okay, so Cam found in the remaining tissue around the genitalia that there were traces of elevated sex hormones, indicating that the victim was sexually aroused seconds before death. The problem though is I found in the remaining bone fragments that whatever animal killed him, kill him hours before the crocodiles got to him."

"okay," Dunck said, "What exactly are you telling me?"

"Well, sir, our team did a sweep of every inch of that swamp. There was no evidence of the unidentified species anywhere to be found."

"Are you telling me that after the unknown animal killed him, someone took the body and moved it to the swamp?" He had suspected it, but the confirmation made this a whole new story. How did his body end up where it was?

"That's what the evidence indicates, but we could not find any evidence of foul play. This doesn't exactly make the case a murder one, in fact, we have reason to believe that a trash man may have accidentally transferred the remains to the dump less than half a mile to the swamp."

The doctor was obviously reaching for an explanation instead of acknowledging the mystery. Though Dunck didn't think the possible explanation was impossible, it was the closest thing to an explanation that the evidence would offer. Why was he aroused though? He supposed Mr. Masters could have been masturbating in a dumpster... but somehow that seemed unlikely.