“Clara? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

“Yes! Yes, oh my god! I don’t know what to do, Elsie, I don’t know what to do! Please, I don’t know what to do!”

“Don’t do anything. Don’t even move. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll be right there. I’ll have Caleb drive me. He’ll be there before you even know it.”

Clara didn’t even have time to say anything in response before Elsie hung up the phone. She half walked, half stumbled into her little living room and sat down heavily on the couch. It didn’t occur to her to check her apartment and make sure that there was nothing else amiss, or God forbid somebody actually inside and waiting to strike. For her, time stopped. It was like everything she’d been before and everything she might be again in the future was gone, and all that was left was this horrible new reality splayed out for her terrorized eyes to see. The world came to her in waves, and with each ebb, she felt very close to losing consciousness. There was a kind of a graying out of her surroundings, and she wondered if it might not be better for her to just let the graying have its way. It would have been so much easier than clenching her hands between her shaking knees and waiting to feel normal again. It would have been easier, but it wouldn’t have helped anything, and in the end, Clara was not a girl who was likely to take the easy way out. So instead of allowing her body’s coping mechanism to take over, she waited there with grinding teeth and a desperation for time to reverse itself, or at least return to its normal speed. When she finally heard an urgent knocking on the door, she practically jumped up and off of the couch, biting down on her tongue hard in the process and instantly filling her mouth up with blood. She thought she would be sick then. She wanted to be sick, to let the pain and fear inside of her drain out in a real and physical way. That taste was too close to the smell filling up her bedroom. Instead of being sick, however, she set her face grimly and pressed her injured tongue against the roof of her mouth, wincing at the pain but feeling the world swim into a greater focus than she’d had before. She was hardly able to undo the latch on her door and see who it was before Elsie burst inside, wrapping her up in her arms tightly. Caleb followed behind closely, his face the picture perfect of concern, as he surveyed her apartment wearily.

“Clara, are you okay? Are you hurt? What’s going on?!”

“In...in the bedroom. It’s in the bedroom.”

Caleb wasted no time scooting past the two women, who seemed to be actively trying to block the doorway completely. He pushed them aside gently, squeezing Clara’s arm lightly as he did so. For some reason entirely beyond her comprehension, Clara’s first instinct was to push Elsie away from her and stop Caleb from continuing his investigation. She didn’t want him to see. She didn’t want anyone to see for that matter, despite the fact that it had been her phone call that had brought her friend and her dreamy boyfriend to her apartment in the first place. She didn’t want Caleb to see; she didn’t want either of them to see because she felt an immense amount of shame over what they would find when they entered her bedroom. She hadn’t been the one to do it, of course. She hadn’t been the one to physically do the damage, but she felt as if she’d done it with her own two hands nevertheless. Elsie must have felt her flinch and then strain towards Caleb because her grip tightened. Elsie was now hugging Clara to her so tightly that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. It might have actually made her feel panicky if the situation had been something different. She’d had a fairly serious case of asthma when she was a child still living in the usually drafty, always dusty orphanage—and even though it hadn’t troubled her for several years, the inability to breathe properly continued to frighten her in a very big way. In this case, though, she almost welcomed it. The feeling of her tightening chest, the smell of Elsie’s sweet perfume, those things served as a distraction from the cry of revulsion she knew must surely come. When it finally did come—not as bad nor as loud as she had anticipated, but still completely unmistakable—she buried her face in Elsie’s shoulder and wished she could be anywhere else. If only things like magic slippers really did exist, she would have wished herself away to someplace far from her little apartment. It would never feel safe again. Elsie grabbed her tighter, so tight that Clara could feel her heartbeat jackhammering in her chest. It was almost as fast and as unruly as her own, and even in the midst of her extreme distress, she was floored by how much this friendship had come to mean to her.

“Oh Jesus. Jesus Christ. Elsie, we need to call the cops.”

“Why?” Elsie called back to Caleb in a voice that could only be described as shrill. “What is it? What’s going on back there?”

“I think you should just call, okay? You don’t want to see this. You don’t want to and you don’t need to.”

“Screw that,” Elsie muttered to herself under her breath, finally letting Clara go and heading down the hallway after her lover. For a moment, Clara just stood there, wrapping her arms around herself tightly and instinctually the moment Elsie’s left her. It took her that moment to understand what Elsie was doing, and by the time she was able to open her mouth in protest, it was basically too late. It was like all of her body’s responses were being delayed, and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t make herself move fast enough. It was like trying to move, trying to think, while stuck in something thick and sticky and full or malice. When she finally did get words out, Elsie was almost all of the way to her bedroom door.

“Elsie,” Clara croaked, her voice sounding like it belonged to somebody else, somebody completely unrelated to her and her life. “Don’t. He’s right, believe me. You don’t want to. You don’t want to see.”

“Bullshit I don’t want to see. Let me pass, Caleb!”

Caleb had made one last effort to keep Elsie from seeing what he and Clara had already seen and what Clara knew she would never be able to wash out of her mind no matter what she did, but it was completely useless. Clara had seen Elsie soften some over the months she’d spent with Caleb, but it wasn’t a softening that was total, not by any means. This scenario turned out to be a perfect example of that, and Clara thought numbly to herself that if the situation was a different one, watching Elsie school Caleb the way she was doing would have been funny. Except for the fact that things were so awful. As it was, there was nothing funny about the way Elsie shoved, literally put both hands out and shoved, Caleb aside so that she could enter the bedroom. Or maybe she should start thinking of it as the scene of the crime. Maybe that was more accurate at this point.

When she heard the gasp and then the low, desperate gagging sound, Clara knew Elsie had seen Bo, or what remained of him. She had no desire to view the obscene mess that was spread across her duvet, but even as she thought that, she could feel her feet carrying her one step after another, like walking through a nightmare or one of those horror movies she was never willing to go see. It was almost as if she was trying to hurt herself, as if a self-inflicted emotional injury was precisely the thing she deserved for what she had allowed to become of her poor cat. Because her absence had been the thing to allow his terrible destruction. Never mind the fact that if had she been in her apartment when whoever it was to commit the crime had broken in, it might very well have been her gutted and splayed out like a butchered pig. It wasn’t like that would have been any better, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that her not being there was the worst, most neglectful thing she could have done…and it had been her last act as Bo’s owner.

“Clara! Please, you shouldn’t be in here. You don’t need to see this again. Seriously, you should be waiting in the living room, away from this.”

“No, I don’t think so, Elsie. He was my responsibility. I should be the one who has to see him now.”

“You can’t possibly think this is your fault!” Elsie cried, glancing at Caleb for backup she must have felt that she desperately needed. “This isn’t anybody’s fault but the freak who did it! Speaking of which, we need to call the cops. Like, right now.”

“On it,” Caleb said grimly, his phone already out and in hands that were visibly shaking, “and you two should go out and sit on the couch. Elsie’s right, Clara, you don’t need to see this. As a matter of fact, neither one of you needs to see this.”

“But I don’t want to leave you in here with this mess, Caleb,” Elsie exclaimed, and then she went white as a sheet when she realized what it was she had just said. As soon as she was done speaking, all three of them looked involuntarily at what remained of Clara’s beloved cat. The cat, an animal that had at one time been beautiful, lay with all four of its legs jutting out at impossible, painful looking angles. His fur, fur that had once been immaculate, soft, and well-groomed, was now so stained and matted with blood that he looked as if he was entirely black. He was completely covered in his own blood, as were the blankets beneath him. It looked as if every drop of blood that had once belonged inside of his little body had leaked out of him, leaving him completely drained of his life force. On his face was an expression of immense, uncomprehending pain, his eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth frozen open in a scowl of anger and fear. He had been cut open from the base of his throat all the way down to his tail, then his ribcage pulled open brutally so that all of his tiny organs were there for all to see. One would think that seeing that was the worst part of the scene in Clara’s bedroom. One would think that would be the worst part of anything anywhere, really. Unfortunately, in this situation things really could get worse because there wasn’t only blood all over Bo and all over her bed. There was also a message left on her wall, a message for her and her alone, although many others would see it before it could be washed away. It was the message that made everything so awful that it hardly even felt real, and it was the message that Clara knew she would remember every day of the rest of her life. Even if she lived to be a hundred years old, she would see that message in her mind’s eye on each and every one of those days. She was still staring at it as Caleb led both her and Elsie gently out of the room and back into the living room, and even when she could no longer see it, she still could.

***

“So, somebody wanna tell me what we got here?”

That was the first line delivered by the first of the two cops who showed up Clara’s apartment over an hour later. During that hour, Caleb must have made more than a half a dozen phone calls to the precinct, each one more frustrated than the last. Clara watched him with some amount of sympathy, despite the fact that she was the one being threatened and she was the one who had just lost a pet that was like a child. She could see by the look on his face that he was afraid, maybe almost as afraid as she was about the thing that had just happened, but that wasn’t the only thing that was bothering him about what was going on. The other thing, and this was something she would never have mentioned to either Elsie or Caleb, seeing as he was only trying to help, was that he wasn’t used to being told no. It wasn’t even that he was being told no, either. It was that his request wasn’t being granted immediately, and that was never true for men like Caleb Grant. Each time he called and was told simply that he would have to wait he got even angrier so that by the time the two cops actually showed up at Clara’s door, he was well and supremely pissed off. The fact that the cops didn’t look particularly thrilled to be there, not thrilled or in any way interested, only made matters worse. All it took was that one line, that one opening sentence, for Caleb to completely unleash on the cops that looked more tired than anything else.

“What we’ve got here is that I called for you guys more than a fucking hour ago, that’s what we’ve got.”

“Now, sir—”

“No, I’m not finished. Is this the way you guys operate in this city? I’ve never actually had to call the cops before, thank God, got my own private security, but if this is what you guys do I’m not even close to impressed. Do you hear me? Not even close.”

“Private security?” the bigger of the two men and the one who appeared to be mostly in charge asked, his rather portly face starting to go an alarming shade of red. “Well, look at you. Must be some kind of bigshot, right? Hear that, Weston? We’ve got ourselves a bona fide bigshot here.”

The first cop glanced at the second one, a man who was not at all portly and would probably have made Clara incredibly nervous in different circumstances with how good looking he was. He nodded in agreement, only his face didn’t look nearly so worked up. His face looked almost serene, and even in the midst of all of the awful chaos filling her home, Clara couldn’t help but marvel over how that might be so. There was something about him that was almost eerily calm, so much so that if she hadn’t seen him walk through the door, she would have had the feeling that she was looking at a beautiful statue instead of a person. And he was beautiful, too, probably the most handsome man she’d ever seen outside of a movie screen. He looked like a man that had stepped out of another time, one of those debonair forties movie stars, the men who came from a time when men were classy and chivalrous. She had absolutely no evidence on which to base the attachment of those characteristics to him, he was a total stranger, for God’s sake, but there was something about him that gave off that impression, and when his eyes met hers, she ducked her face and looked hard at the floor. There wasn’t exactly anything riveting about her carpet, but from the way she was looking at it, you would never have known that. She was now so full of conflicting emotions that she felt like she might actually throw up right there, right there in front of everyone. The fighting that was rapidly escalating between the bigger cop and Caleb wasn’t helping either. Clara positively hated it when people fought; she had since she was small and a self-designated keeper of the peace in the orphanage. Having Caleb and the cop do it now was almost enough to push her over the edge.

“Look, we can turn around and go on our merry way, Mr. Bigshot. Believe me, we would have no problem with that. No problem whatsoever. You could just call some of those private security mooks, let them deal with your little problem.”

“Little problem? Little problem?! So that’s how you talk to people in distress, is it? Maybe next time I will call my guys. I was under the impression that you guys didn’t like ordinary citizens taking the law into their own hands, but I would be more than happy to in the future.”

“That’s enough.”

Clara spoke so quietly that, at first, nobody else in the room heard a word she’d said. They just kept ripping into each other, Caleb and the cop, who looked more and more pissed off with each passing second, while Elsie yelled at them both to try and calm themselves down. The only person not yelling, aside from her that was, was the good-looking cop. He stood behind his partner, so much behind him that he was still practically halfway out the front door, every bit as silent as Clara now was. He caught her looking at him again, and something in his eyes gave her the courage to speak up again. She had no idea why, no clue why a look from this stranger would have that kind of effect on her, but she was glad for it, and therefore she saw no reason to question it any further. At least not in that moment, she didn’t. In that moment, she only wanted all of the noise to stop so they could get down to the business of figuring out what the hell was going on.

“That’s enough, I said! Stop it, all of you!”

All three of the people engaged in the yelling stopped and looked at her, the room falling quiet so quickly that the silence felt almost as loud as the shouting had been. The cop only looked supremely pissed off, most likely at Caleb more than at anyone else, but both Elsie and Caleb looked stunned. She was sure that neither one of them had ever heard her shout before, probably never heard her do anything that could even be considered approaching shouting. She felt immediately guilty for doing it at all, but it had calmed everyone, so she supposed a well-timed yell wasn’t the worst thing on the planet. Especially not in the face of the abomination waiting for the cops in her bedroom.

“Thank you,” she went on quietly, seeing no need to shout now that everyone was paying attention, “that’s much better. Yelling at each other isn’t going to help anything, you know. Caleb, I’m sure they got here as fast as they could. They probably respond to violent crimes first.”

“You’re telling me that bloodbath in your bedroom isn’t violent?!” Caleb started up again, only stopping when Elsie delivered him a swift knock to the gut.

“You know what I mean,” Clara continued, as though she hadn’t just seen one of her good friends sock her boyfriend hard enough that he doubled over in pain. “I mean violence that is currently taking place.”

“See?” The fat cop answered, a smug look beginning to replace the angry one he’d been wearing so far. “This chick gets it. That’s one sane person, at least. I think we’ll only be talking with her from now on, if you don’t mind.”

“Thank you, officer. Now, what was your original question?”

“My question was what brought us here? What are we doing in a place that looks pretty fucking peaceful? Aside from your friends over there, that is.”

“It’s my apartment,” Clara spoke up quickly, wanting to leave Caleb not even a small chance to get pissed off and yelling all over again, “and I called these two after I returned home.”

“Returned home from where?” the fat cop asked her, his face suggesting that he already had a pretty good idea of the answer. When Clara saw that, her heart began to sink. She knew that look, the same way that she supposed every girl knew it, especially girls who were pretty. Even being a girl who didn’t usually go out on the town the way she had on this fateful night, Clara understood the judgement she was seeing in the larger cop’s eyes. All he had to hear was that she’d been out partying and her credibility took a massive nose dive. His next question would be what she had to drink and how much of it there had been and by the time their initial conversation was over he would have written her off completely. She could actually see exactly how things were going to unfold, and yet she was helpless to stop it.

“Can I ask you your name?”

“I’m sorry? Come again? I just asked you a question, miss. Did you not hear me? Listening is a pretty big part of conducting interviews like this. If you can’t do that, you’re just wasting our time.”

“I understand that. I only wondered if I could get your name? This whole thing has been very upsetting. I think it would be less frightening if I knew who the two of you were.”

“I’m Detective Edwards. This here, the mute one, is Detective Daniels.”

“Weston,” the cop who looked like he should be a model said in a quiet voice, “you can just call me Weston, if you’d like. What’s your name?”

“Clara Blake. Thank you. For humoring me, I mean.”

“Good,” Detective Edwards said in a low, sarcastic voice. “Great. I’m glad we’ve all gotten to know each other a little better. Now. Could you please answer my question? You got home from where?”

“I’m not sure of the name. Elsie took me there.”

“Elsie? And who’s Elsie?”

“I am,” Elsie answered, her hand now planted squarely on her hips. Clara knew exactly why. Elsie had to have noticed the attitude Detective Andrews had adopted, and if anyone would be pissed off by something like, it would be her. “And it was a bar called Town.”

“Town?”

“Yes. Caleb owns it,” she answered him with a tight-sounding voice, her eyes moving in Caleb’s direction affectionately before she turned them back on the detective where they grew cold and flint., “It’s close to the Grant Corporation. Which he also owns.”

“So then he owns a lot of things. Got it. So you got home from a bar. Did you come home alone?”

“I did.”

“Give your number out to anybody? Maybe tell someone where you live without thinking about it? That kind of thing can get you girls into a lot of trouble, you know? Never know what kind of people you’re talking to and the booze don’t help none.”

“With all due respect, Detective, you haven’t even asked what you were called for.”

“Wait just a damn minute, lady. I—”

“She’s right, Vick.”

Clara was surprised to hear that the next time Weston spoke it was to disagree with his own partner. Still, being surprised didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate it. Standing up to or talking back to authority figures was about as far out of her comfort zone as she could get, and if both of the detectives had jumped on her for it, she was pretty sure she would have laid down and died. Still, she hadn’t been asked what was wrong. In fact, Detective Andrews didn’t seem to be taking her even a little bit seriously, and Clara was all of the sudden certain that he would have just walked out without doing his job at all if it hadn’t been for Detective Daniels. Weston.

“Fine. Whatever you say, pretty boy. She’s right. You wanna take over the lead on this?”

“I can. Can you please explain the disturbance, miss?”

“Clara. Please call me Clara. ‘Miss’ makes me more nervous than I already am.”

“Alright, then Clara. Can you tell us what happened? And please, take your time. We don’t want you to be any more uncomfortable than you must be already.”

And so she explained it. After all of the drama involved in getting the conversation started, Clara explained what had happened when she’d returned home. She tried to think back on the things that had been off that she hadn’t noticed and pretended not to see when Detective Andrews rolled his eyes at her yet again. After very little time, she made it clear that the thing they needed to see was in her bedroom.

Detective Andrews seemed to be waiting for her to lead the way, which caused her to panic. Her panic had been dampened down by the distraction of the cops and the excitement they brought along with them rose up into her throat once again. She felt very close to throwing up again, just pitching forward and being sick all over her own carpet. And what would detective Andrews think then? He was clearly already positive that she was just a crazy drunk girl creating her own drama. What would he think if he saw her throw up all over the living room floor?

“Come on, Vick,” Weston said in his same quiet, calm voice. “Let’s get a look.”

Weston started down the hallway without looking at anyone in the room, and Clara had to fight back the urge to reach out and touch his arm, to stop him so that she could thank him. Out of all of the people currently in her apartment, including Elsie and Caleb, she felt as if he was the one who understood her distress the most. It was likely that it was just some kind of wonderful cop bedside manner, something that made him better at his day-to-day job, but she couldn’t help feeling like this guy was somehow just able to see her in a way that nobody else could. It was stupid, and she knew it, but that didn’t get rid of the thought. Him making that first move seemed to break the weird inertia of everyone else in the apartment as well, and Detective Andrews started down the hall after him, grumbling curse words under his breath the whole time. Caleb and Elsie trailed after, following Detective Andrews closely until he turned on them and informed them that all “civilians” were required to wait in the front of the dwelling. Clara was sure there would be another fight then, but one curt call from Weston put a stop to that one before it even started. Caleb and Elsie returned to sit beside Clara, both of them looking rather sheepish, and the three of them sat in silence while they listened to the low voices of the detectives and the sound of pictures being snapped. It sounded like progress was being made and probably that was what most people would think, but Clara was sure that wasn’t what was going on at all. She was painfully skilled in the art of reading tones of voices, and she knew that the voices in her bedroom were arguing. They were doing it very quietly, but there was no doubt in her mind that it was what was going on, and she had a feeling she knew what about and what the outcome would be, too. When the two men returned to the living room to face them, she was completely sure. They spoke, of course, or at least Detective Andrews spoke, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if he hadn’t said a word. The look on Vick Andrews’s face told Clara everything she needed to know.

“Alright, so let me recap this. You said you think you may have left your front door unlocked?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly, hardly seeing the point but not wanting to be rude, “that’s right.”

“And you had been drinking.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be honest with you. It looks a hell of a lot like a jealous ex to me. It’s twisted to be sure, but that’s what I’m thinking.”

“That’s not possible. I don’t have any exes.”

“Not a one? Never been on a bad date with a guy? Never brought one of ‘em home?”

Clara was silent. The truth was that she hadn’t ever brought a man home to her apartment, not to this one, but there was no point in telling the Detective that because he’d already made up his mind. It was possible that the other one, Weston, would have believed her, but Detective Andrews was the one in charge. As he watched her say nothing, the expression on his face began to change from aggravated to smug. 

“That’s what I thought. Look, we bagged some evidence, the cat and the duvet included. We dusted for prints and all that good shit. I gotta say, though, my guess? We don’t find the sicko who did this, and I’ll go you one better. This is a one-time thing, okay? You don’t gotta worry about this happening again.”

“But what about the text message? You really don’t think the two things are related?”

“A text message from an unknown number and a freaky animal killing like this? Naw, not a chance. Not the same kind of thing. Like I said, one-time thing from a guy you pissed off. Get your locks changed and give me a call if something else happens, but that’s about all I can say. I’ll get in touch if I find anything, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. City like this? Odds are pretty fucking slim.”

Clara nodded, almost thankful for the weird ringing sound in her ears so that she didn’t have to hear the disgusted comments coming from her friends. There was some more argument, she knew that was what was happening, but the fight had gone out of them all. Even as she considered this, the two detectives were moving towards the door. It was only when Weston stopped suddenly, turning back to her despite his disgruntled partner’s protests and taking her gently by the arm.

“What does it mean? Do you have any idea?”

“Wh-what? What does what mean?”

“The writing on your wall. ‘I’ll take to show you what you must do. I’ll take so that you may understand. I’ll take so I can give.’ Do you have any idea what that’s supposed to mean?”

“No. No, I’m sorry, I really don’t. It just—”

“Doesn’t make any sense, right?” Detective Andrews broke in from his place in the open doorframe of Clara’s apartment. “Sure, it don’t. It don’t make any sense because the person who did it is crazy. Told you that. Told you both. Now let’s go, pretty boy. We gotta get this stuff into the station. Let the captain know what’s up.”

Weston stood in front of Clara for a moment later, and she was seized by the impulse to tell him not to go. As incredible as it was, she wanted to ask him to stay with her, to stay until the morning came and things didn’t feel so much like a nightmare. Instead she said nothing, and after giving her a small, strangely sad smile, Detective Weston Daniels took his leave. After that, things died down, as they must eventually do.

Clara allowed herself to be convinced by Caleb and Elsie to come back to his massive loft with them with the understanding that a cleaning crew would be sent to her apartment the very next day. It wasn’t really until she was settled into one of Caleb Grant’s multiple guestrooms that she really had any time to think, and what she thought about, of course, was Bo. She thought about Bo, about how horrible a fate he had suffered, but that wasn’t the only thing on her mind. Despite the fact that she tried very hard to stop herself, she thought about Weston Daniels, too. She thought about the way he had let his hand rest so lightly on her arm and about why it was that she saw such sadness in his smile.