Perfume by Kara Sobra (english readers txt) 📕

It's somewhere in the middle of December and it's snowing outside. The room is quiet. Gloomy quiet. All that can be heard is the wind outside and the wood in the fireplace burning. It's... too quiet. It has to be really late.

"I must have spent hours in this chair" I say to myself, judging by how hard it is to get up "but how long have it been...?". I rise my eyes to the clock on the wall. It showed 3 AM. It is indeed really late. "Why have i been up so late? I should have went to sleep." I think. I put the book i was reading on the cupboard near the fireplace and i get up from the armchair.

I look towards the other armchair. Amy is deeply asleep. Poor Amy... she is so fragile. She was so excited about the surprise party we had for her birthday she overreacted... again... and now she got so exhausted she fell asleep in the armchair. Poor her.... should i... wake her up and put her in bed? But she is sleeping so deep and beautiful... No, i have to wake her up. I bet that armchair will give her terrible pains until the morning. Yes, i will wake her up. 

I get close to her really slow. I put a hand on her forehead, she is a little bit cold... I pet her a little and than i come closer. I whisper her name but she doesn't hear it. I let my hand fall onto her shoulder and i get to kiss her horehead. It wasn't my hand that was cold, it was her. I call her one more time. I catch her with my both arms and start shaking her a little while keeping calling her. And louder, and louder... I start shaking her brutally and screaming for her name but nothing. I've turned all white and freeze. She is still not waking up. She is not going to wake up. A tear runs down my face. A desperate scream bursts out of the bottom of my chest. She won't wake up and I know it... but it's hard to face the thruth, isn't it? While shaking her for the last time and crying a red liquid starts pouring out of her mouth. Blood? No, it's too liquid to be blood. Wait... we drank red wine at the party. Could it be... I suddelny rise up on my feet and get out of the room running to the table in the dining room smashing everything around me. Throught my tears i only manage to wrong step and fall on the ground. A short moan comes out of my mouth but I shortly mute it and rise back up as fast as i can. I get to the table. I had a flashback with the party and all of us laughing. I rush onto the table and check every glass of wine. Worthless. Everything seemed clean. Than i noticed a glass in the back of the room on the coffee table near the chair where Amy spent part of the night. However... the wine in the glass got a strong shade of green. Could it be poison? But why... and who... who would do something like this... there were only 18 people despite us and all of them where very close friends or relatives. Who could have done this? It's.. it's not fair... it simply is not fair.

I fall down on my knees for a few seconds and cry silently. Wiping my face, I rise up and try to regain my balance, mostly the pshysical one. Thousands of thoughts start rushing throught my head. I feel empty... senseless... with not plans for future. Just one thought was ruling them all: I will find out who did this and I will certainly avenge you.

***

It's been 3 months already and i still can't believe you are gone, Amy... Who am i supposed to trust if that person is not you? Who could i count on if not on you? And now? Now i have nobody left. It is so silent without you... I haven't been to your funeral... I just couldn't... I knew i couldn't face all of them there and lose myself blaming everyone for what only I know and himself.. and you. I couldn't face all of those monsters with twisted faces who pretended to love you. Instead, I've cleaned out my mind and I went to that meal 3 months after the funeral our family held in your memory. They were like some dolls playing teathre, all of them... struggling to cry so they gain attention from that one person and seem like they actually care. It was like a contest of "who can pretend better" combined with "who cries the most cares the most" and "who wears most masks in the same time". They cannot understand and will never be able to understand why I could not let cry a little then let go just like they did. They will never undesrtand as you cannot let go when you care, no matter what it takes. Sometimes i wonder too why I couldn't get past it but then i realize the reason why I do all of these and an ice feeling shakes down my spine while my blood starts to boil, stimulating my thirst for justice and my desire for revenge. I am right. I HAVE to avenge you. You didn't deserve to die like this and you certainly don't deserve to be forgotten like this. You cannot go until the killer doesn't pay for his crimes. If the police has given up on your case from lack of evidence, I won't even if that means I have to take it really... personal.

            It’s 2 AM and Margret is woken up by a powerful and repetitive noise. It’s the work pager which insistently rings.

            -Margret Tucker.

            -Margret? It’s Tommy Barr.

            -Oh... it was you... what’s up?

            -Going out for a juice?

            -...Tommy are you kidding me? At this late hour? I think either your brain fell asleep and forgot to take you with it or you got drunk again...

            -Eh... I had to try it one last time. Grim Avenue nr.2, hurry up.

            Margret Tucker is a supple woman, around the age of 31, with a quite unaesthetic physical constitution for a woman. Her stumpy aspect was a result of the intense trainings she has done for swimming and basketball. Despite her arms and calves which seem boorish because of the way too proeminent muscles, she has a clean and slim face, looking like it’s part of another body. Her bloody red and curly hair was crawling down her shoulders highlighting her slim lips, unobtrusively painted with a colorless lip balm, and the light cloudless-sky blue eyes, covering a little of the sinewy arms. The thick eyelashes were sometimes highlighted by a Mascara ori a discreet stripe of eyeliner.

            At 3 AM , a black matte Volkswagen, slightly overused, stops on Grim Avenue and Margret gets out of it in a hurry, dressed with a long large T-shirt, a pair of jeans and a coat over which looks more like a bathrobe, with a pair of overused and full of dirt sneakers, originally white.

            -Hey, Margret, I was just wondering when would you intend showing up. Just a little bit more and it would have been pointless. Late ones don’t get juice.

            -Well, now I am here. So, what do we have here?

            -Well.. here? Nothing but at about -5 decrees, mud everywhere and goddamn powerfull blizzard. Inside, however… there is the real party, says Tommy pointing to a little storehouse which seemed to be a hobbit hole comparing to the other giant buildings surrounding it.

            -Why do I have a bad feeling about this…

            They both walk slowly past the high wooden treshold, go under the metal improvised archway which was built to cover a support beam and then they finally reach the backroom. They barely open the door when a strong scent of fresh blood, rottenness and lavender perfume strikes them.

            -Oh, god, what’s with this smell?

            -Apparently, it’s the victim’s perfume. It stinks of lavender since when we arrived in here. I’m surprised the smell doesn’t feel anymore from the outside.

            The body is settled on a chair and tightly tied with an elastic cord. The whole body is covered in blood and lavender perfume, except the face. The face is still intact like nobody ever touched on it for a reason. The victim is a girl around the age of 29, dark haired, strident made up.

            -The victim is Alice Bloodworth*, says George. She left home 3 days ago as her neightbours say, she was living alone as her parents passed away and the last time someone saw her she was leaving with her own car “to an old friend of hers”, as her boyfriend says, though he doesn’t know neither the name nor the address of this “friend”, so he is not helping much. The perfect target, if you ask me.

            Above the victim there was an old-fashioned lamp hanging from the ceiling, irregularily spreading a weak, pale light, that kind of lamp used in queries.

            -The victim doesn’t seem to have any outer or inner lesion, though she is covered in blood. We will wait for the analysis resoults because the blood seems not to be hers. The only strange thing about this gurl is… her face. That’s it! It’s way too clean!

...

          George Black*