Chapter 2

After dry-heaving until absolutely nothing was left, I swiped the bitter bile from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.

Steeling myself, I pushed the heavy front door open and stepped back into the house.

The living room echoed with the ragged, breathless sobbing of the victim’s mother, Elaine.

She was slumped against a dining chair, her knuckles white as she violently twisted the hem of her cardigan. Arthur knelt beside her, his eyes bloodshot, rubbing his wife’s back in slow, rhythmic circles.

Gates stood a few paces away, his standard-issue notepad flipped half-open.

"Mr. Pendleton," Gates started, his voice flat. "Just confirming some basics. How old was the deceased? And when was the exact time you last saw her breathing?"

"She's 28." Arthur swallowed hard, his voice practically grinding like sandpaper. "Around ten last night. Right before bed, I spoon-fed her half a bowl of vanilla pudding myself. She was perfectly fine, just a little quieter than usual. I swear..."

"If she couldn't care for herself, why wasn't she in a proper hospital?" I blurted out, unable to hold back. "Or at least in a medical bed?"

The words had barely left my mouth when Elaine’s head snapped up. Through a mask of tears, her swollen, bloodshot eyes locked onto me.

"She suffered from severe mania and extreme autism! If anyone so much as tried to lift her from that couch, she would scream bloody murder!" she shrieked, her voice thick with absolute desperation before she collapsed back into her husband’s arms. "That chair was her only safe space! What were we supposed to do? Watch her drive herself insane? Watch her be tortured by a bunch of cold, sterile machines?!"

I stood frozen, my mind spinning.

In the framed photo on the mantle, the girl named Grace was smiling brilliantly, dressed in her high school cheerleading uniform—a final snapshot from before the sickness took hold.

On paper, it sounded like a textbook tragedy. A loving pair of parents emotionally and physically drained by their terminally ill daughter, finally meeting the inevitable, quiet end.

But I couldn't shake the overpowering wrongness saturating the house.

It was too clean.

There were no medical chucks for rolling her. No IV stands. No heavy-duty deodorizers. There wasn't even a trace of that distinct, clinical smell that clings to long-term bedridden patients. Nothing—except for the sickeningly sweet cocktail of cheap air freshener and rotting meat radiating from the recliner in the center of the room.

Gates snapped his notepad shut. He pulled a pair of blue nitrile gloves from his tactical pocket and snapped them onto his hands.

"David. Get over here." He strode toward the center of the living room, planting himself in front of the couch.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I forced myself to walk over.

Gates leaned down, his eyes locked on the victim's right arm, which was draped over the edge. Reaching out, he gently pinched her wrist through his gloves, attempting to lift the arm just a fraction of an inch.

A sickeningly soft, tearing rip echoed in the quiet room.

Wet. Muffled. Like peeling back a strip of old duct tape that had been stuck there for a decade.

Gates released his grip like he’d been electrocuted.

I felt the veins at my temples throbbing violently. Beneath where her arm had rested, a patch of semi-translucent, grayish skin was left fused to the leather armrest. With the skin completely degloved, the muscle tissue underneath had liquefied into a dark red sludge.

But the detail that made my entire body crawl was underneath. Startled by the movement, rows of tiny white maggots wriggled frantically in the crevices between the putrid flesh and exposed bone, burrowing deeper into the rot.

My eyes trailed up the arm, forced to look again at her shriveled face where the same dense clusters of white specks were surging

Gates straightened up, slowly peeling the gloves off his hands. He didn't look back down at the gruesome scene; instead, he turned to face the couple behind him.

"Mr. Pendleton." Gates stared at the grieving parents on the rug, his tone so deadly even it made my skin crawl. "You are absolutely certain that at ten o'clock last night, she ate pudding on this exact couch."

"Yes..." Arthur averted his eyes, his voice taking on a faint, tremulous quality. "I swear..."

Gates didn't press him. He withdrew his gaze, immediately unclipping his shoulder mic. "Dispatch. Get the ME and Forensics out to 302 Oak Street. We're locking down the scene."

"David," Gates muttered under his breath. "Start digging into these perfect parents. That girl did not die peacefully in her sleep last night."

The second he finished speaking, the television screen behind us abruptly cut to a new scene.

Blinding neon red and blue strobes blasted from the monitor, raking across the dim living room and striking the couch dead-on.

Cheerful cartoon characters shrieked with exaggerated laughter through the surround sound, layered over the ragged weeping of the heartbroken parents behind us.

My throat tightened into a suffocating knot.