The Red Pools

The Story

It all started on that one evening. That one evening that  I started to look behind me more often. That one night, when my life turned to scraps and loneliness.

I was walking home from college track practice. It was an extremely exhausting practice. I had no energy to spare and I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. I arrived at my apartment unaware of the danger lurking in the darkness.
I flipped the light switch, and to my surprise and disappointment, the overhead flickered, and shut off.
“Ugh, the electrician will have to come and fix the wiring, AGAIN,” I thought to myself.
“Why can’t I just fix it myself?” was my next thought.
My next thought was interrupted by my roommate entering the flat. He is very noisy and makes a lot of racket due to his gear. He normally has at least three textbooks with him.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he puffs.
“How much are you studying tonight?”
“Not much. I have to go to work.”
“Okay, drop your stuff on your bed and go to your job.”
“See ya,” he yells through the halls.
I don’t respond.
If only it was me that had to go to work.

I didn’t see it coming. I am running through my apartment. He is behind me. Or is it a she? I don’t know anymore. I trip on the couch and then blackness. The figure in the darkness, it could not be seen. All of the sudden, my senses were jumped and I had to reboot. SLAM! The figure attacked me.

I wake up  tied up. My captor, I cannot describe. So much pain has been inflicted that I am not able to see them for a time. I am not sure if it’ll wear off.
She comes toward me with a paring knife. Those things can be used for anything. Taking seeds out of fruit or inflicting unbearable pain. My thigh is burning, burning through my mind. There is blood pooling on the floor. Am I dead? I was waiting for my impending death. Am I dead yet? Then I have blacked out. I am dead.

I wake up with a bandage on my leg and in a clean room. It is so different from last night. Last night the room was sinister. The corners were dark and who knows what evil they nurtured. No this was a totally different room. A different setting. Then my roommate came in. I wasn’t tied up. I, of course freaked out and he calmed me down and called a nurse.
So I was in a hospital, THAT was comforting. I would have doctors and nurses fussing over me. I hated those kinds of things, but I lived through it.
“It will be okay. Calm down. Detectives are working the case,” my roommate said to me.
“What are my injuries?” I queried.
“Well, two broken ribs, a concussion, a greenstick fracture on your shin, several bruises, and stretched ligaments where you were tied up.”
I look at myself in the mirror with horror.
“You are part of a serial killing. You are the only survivor,” the detective says as she enters. “There were six other victims, all had the same injuries as you. Except all the other victims had their throats slit. The doctor already read off the injuries. I don’t need to be told again.”
This unsub is definitely not timorous or furtive.
So this detective has a sassy attitude. She takes control and becomes boss. I will continue to analyze this “detective”.
I noticed right off the bat that there was something off, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe she was ignoring the fact that I could barely move. I would have to be in a wheelchair.

My injuries throbbed as I was helped into the wheelchair. We came back to my apartment to investigate. Then I saw the true extent of my injuries and how they were inflicted. There were blood pools on the floor. Yes I said pools. The blood was dark, crimson. But it wasn’t all mine. There was a stain under the chair I was sitting in, like there was blood, but not anymore.
“Was there blood here?” I questioned the CSI crew.
“There is/was a stain, but there was no pool,” the leader replied.
“There was too much blood to have soaked into the carpet.”
“So you’re saying this woman took your blood?” Detective Kelly asked with a whimper.
“That is exactly what I’m suggesting.”
This case will definitely be a conundrum.
We investigated a little. I took note that the unsub was very careless. She left the gloves she used at the scene. She also left her torture kit. There was blood on every single tool. That concluded that she uses every tool available to torture. Overkill. She might have a grudge.
“How bad were the injuries of the other victims?” I asked
“They became worse and worse up to you.”
That means if I was the last victim, all the others were surrogates. She will try to kill me again. Gosh, this girl is crazy. Something I did to her must have griefed her greatly to do this to me.
We scanned the fingerprints on the glove and voila! We found a match.

“Her name is Martha Baxter. She lives alone and we could catch her right now,” Detective said.
“Let’s go!” I rallied.

We turned the sirens on and raced to her house. The car was not in the driveway.
“Be careful in there,” I said. “She is a strong woman with a strong will.”
We burst inside to find a living room and a kitchen beyond. It was quite a big house for one person to be paying the bills.
We heard a door shut.
“She’s gone out the back!” exclaimed the detective.
We raced out the back door and out into the open. The detective was already on the chase. The woman was at superspeed. But so was Detective. They were pulling ahead but I turned a corner and I only saw the detective. Something fishy was going on.
The detective ran on and I decided to try to catch a glimpse of the killer. I grabbed a gun from one of the policemen. I cut through a block where Detective was heading. The unsub was nowhere to be found!
“I have found the culprit. It’s the detective!”
I caught detective and pointed the gun at her.
“Why did you do it?” I stood calm and firm.
“Oh, you found out that the inconspicuous detective was the unidentified subject, huh?” she sneered viciously. This flummoxed me.
“Actually, It’s been awhile since I found out.”
The ruse she had planned out was as easy to see through as a piece of plywood.
She was cat-like. Her movements were as planned and as perfectly executed as a trained person. She roundhouse kicked me but I was ready for an attack. I ducked and was knocked over by her next kick. You are in the greatest danger of being hit by a carriage when you have just gotten out of the way of another carriage. The police came before She injured me any worse. She was taken away screaming and kicking, calling the Lord to come and kill me for my sins. She was put away in jail and later put into a mental hospital.
What was so fishy is that the doctor didn’t read off the injuries, the roommate did. And how did she know that the injuries had been read off? She was stalking me.

I visited her 5 years later, on request, but she just gave me a you-will-die-for-this look. Didn’t talk. The request was strange. She scrawled my name into the wool of the desk in her room. She also wrote down clues to another murder. A partner did it, and they together, will make a comeback.