To Die Horribly by Rhiannon Matlock

From Nicole Beck… Thanks for always being inspiring.

She caught a whiff of bleach and she couldn’t help it – she started looking for any blood that may have been overlooked……

She’d been over this scene a dozen times. Had been back even more times. There was something off, something she knew she was missing.

She didn’t believe in that psychic power or sixth sense bullshit, but she did trust instinct. She racked her mind. Had they already released the house? That would be the only legit reason for the bleach. A cleaner scrubbing the place down and making it usable for the vulture real estate agent jokers who just wouldn’t stop pestering the police to restore the rights to the property back to them.

The thing was, she wasn’t a cop. There was no way she would know for sure when or even if the department had let it go. No, her insight into the cause behind that bleach was insufficient but one thing she did know for certain; it wasn’t there the last time she’d been. Softly she moved from room to room, sniffing with every step to try and
locate the source. It wasn’t coming from the room where the murder took place and besides, it was too faint to be a cleaning crew. They doused it when they came, sanitizing everything. Probably in some vain attempt to scrub the awful images they came to see on a regular basis.

She wasn’t the type to have nightmares about such things though. Blood, bones, entrails. She’d spilled or broken or pulled her fair share so the sight of any or all of it wasn’t off putting. It was who she was hunting currently that was starting to piss her off. The
bleach was the first misstep they took. Whoever it was had come back to clean something up, something they deemed important enough to risk returning for.

She smiled; this was the beginning of the end for them.

A few moments later, the scent became stronger. The bedroom. She followed the trail until she reached the closet and tossed open the door. The smell was almost overpowering as she knelt down and turned her phone towards the floor. Covering her mouth with her sleeve, she squinted against the acidic fumes and looked for anything that they
might have missed. The light was faint and barely penetrated the darkness but finally she found something. Wedged between the shoddily installed floorboards and the wall was a small, pink barrette. She didn’t need to inspect it to know who it belonged to. Anger flashed through her as she picked it up and shoved it into her pocket. Yes, those bastards were going to die and they were going to die horribly.