Reverie: A Collection of Short Stories

The Art of Destroying a Soul (1,023 words)

Genre: Crime Fiction

Summary:

A recollection of finding a little girl, and a talk with the man who took her. 

Warnings: Mentions of suicide, portions of gore, dark themes

When the dogs howled, hope returned within him on broken wings.

Finally, we found one alive.

It was the thought that caused Isacc Cunningham to sprint that frigid winter day, carried through the thickest parts of the forest by the wailing of bloodhounds. The hope he had felt that day, the pure joy and delight, was a cruel thing. It seeped through every fiber of his being, and knowing what he did now, he wasn't sure if he would have wanted to know the lies that hope had ensnared him in.

When he'd heard the shriek and the strong barking order of his superior, all victory he had felt in the twinkling twilight crumble. His hope fled in an angry fit of laughter that left him bitter and cold. He had slowed his pace to a jog when he came up to the ledge, fearing what laid at the bottom of the shallow ravine, and as much as he would've loved to turn and run, it was his job to look.

He looked to Brooke's mother first. In silence, he watched as she sobbed into her sister's shoulder. Seeing their grief proved too much of a burden to him, and he had to look away to the father, Jared. His eyes were stuck, fixated on something unknown at the time to Isacc. Isacc could see the tears Jared held back, the tensing of every muscle in his unfit body; he could see his soul deteriorate. He'd stared at his end that day, but Isacc couldn't have known.

After minutes of staring into broken faces, Isacc finally looked down into the ravine to see Brookelynn Hodge. The lost nine-year-old had been found too late. The image of her corpse would never leave Isacc.

The girl had been posed like all the rest, in a fetal position amongst the ferns of the forest floor. A pink dress splayed around her legs, she wore no shoes or socks, but if she had, it would've covered the purple bruises that snaked up until they disappeared into the skirt of her dress. Her blonde hair had been dyed red, her eyes stared lifeless and open, and her throat had been slit. Blood still stained her pale skin.

Isacc threw up at the sight. He'd seen a lot of corpses in his time, but children always got to him. He almost started crying himself. He would've had he not heard the smack and a very angry mother cursing her ex-husband.

"This is all your fault! Why couldn't you have been better!" By the time she started screaming curses, other agents were dragging her away, but Issac was locked onto the scene, rendered paralyzed by the encounter. "You bastard!" She spat on his cheek, but the man didn't even flinch.

His eyes continued to stare at the ravine as his ex was dragged away to be detained. Isacc could barely hear Jared as he turned and asked one of the agents a soft, broken question.

"We never could've found her, could we?"

It was the first time he looked away from his daughter's body, but he didn't get an answer. The agent couldn't bear to tell the broken man what Isacc already knew. They could have found her, but they were too slow.

Two weeks later, they caught the very serial killer who dug a knife into the throats of four victims, but unfortunately, Jared never lived to see his daughter's killer caught. He committed suicide the night that they'd found his daughter in that ravine, and he did it by digging a knife into his jugular. Isacc had been called to the scene. He'd never forget it. It was the deepest cut he'd ever seen someone perform on themselves, and the angry, jagged lines would stick with him until the end.

~

I shook myself from the pictures of blood that paraded in my head proudly. The damned things never left me alone no matter how hard I tried, but they were always angrier when I stared into the eyes of the person who caused them.

Graham Greene smiled at me from the other side of the table, ignoring my superior which attempted to question him. I didn't shrink under his blue gaze. Instead, I shoved off the wall and leveled my gaze to match his, but I filled mine with resentment in an attempt to combat the amusement in his.

This brought a large smile to creep over his clean-shaven face. My superior slammed a case file onto the table, trying to break our locked gazes, and after thirty seconds of unflinching stillness, Greene looked back to my superior with a small scoff.

I returned to leaning against the wall, burying a hand into my beard as I did so. Curiosity flared in me at that moment and I couldn't help but wonder why he'd stopped to stare at me. Instead of giving the demon of a man a room bigger in my head than he already had established, I focused my attention on my superior.

The stern woman's face reddened with unadulterated rage as she spread the pictures across the table. They were images of his victims, alive and smiling. The first was an old woman in her eighties, Allison Walton; the second, a woman in her fifties, Patricia Daily; the third, a woman in her twenties, Cassandra Taylor; the fourth, Brookelynn Hodge.

"I prefer my pictures. They look so much better curled up in foliage don't you think?"

My superior dropped her anger, replaced it by a cold expression, and she tossed the images of them dead. "You mean these?"

Greene reached for them, a light in his eye, and in one swipe of her hand, Vanessa scattered the pictures onto the floor. My eyes landed on them, but only took in the colors of the dresses. White, orange, yellow, and pink.

Greene laughed. "My roses are all up here." He tapped his temple in a smug fashion.

"What did you say?" It was me who asked, and Greene lit up in pure delight.

"I planted a garden, detective, and you rooted it up." 

I have finally updated! Sorry, that's it's kinda depressing. Hope you enjoy anyway! Have a stupendous day and God bless!