Page 5 of Cursed by Death

My heart sank for Thomas as it also squeezed painfully inside my chest. This wasn't right, none of it was. First the door then the mess. Thomas would have a coronary if he were to see this.

Carefully, I stepped over the broken glass and mangled couch cushions and walked to the kitchen.

The kitchen was a disaster. Flour, sugar and coffee were littered across the ceramic tiles, mixed in with glass. Plates, cups, the coffee pot, all of it was in a mess on the floor.

Stumbling back, I clutched at my chest as I whirled around and sprinted towards the hallway that would take me to the bedroom.

I stopped before the closed door and the smell hit me first.

I gagged and covered my nose and mouth with my hand. What was that awful smell?

A sense of foreboding hit me hard as I put my hand up to the smooth wood and held my breath before pushing the door open.

Chapter 3

The door crashed into the wall as my knees buckled and I collapsed to the floor.

An unintelligible noise left my throat, not words but not quite a scream either. My brain shut down, rejecting the sight before me, as I slowly crawled towards the body on the floor.

Thomas stared up at the ceiling, sightless and unmoving. His immaculate suit had been ruined, parts of it shredded and an entire sleeve had been ripped off. One of his legs was bent at an odd angle, his leg clearly having been broken. His right arm, the one where the sleeve had been ripped off, was missing huge chunks of skin, looking like someone hadbittenhim and ripped chunks away.

Bile crawled up my throat and I choked. My body lurched with each gag and I was forced to move my hand from where it covered my nose to clamp it over my mouth in an attempt to keep my vomit inside of me. The move left my nose susceptible to the smell and it hit me hard. Blood and feces. Not to mention it was fucking hot in here, which made it seem a whole lot worse than what I figured it would be if the air conditioning were still working.

It crawled up my throat no matter how much I tried to stop it and I hunched over as I vomited all over the floor.

This didn’t make sense. Thomas’s body looked as if he,it,had been attacked by some kind of vicious animal. What else could have taken those chunks out of his arm like that? Certainly nothing human.

But that didn’t make any sense. The only door to the little house was the front door and it had been closed when I’d come inside. An animal couldn’t open and then close the door behind them.

Like I said, it didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense right now.

Thomas couldn’t be dead.

I sobbed as I reached over to grasp his hand. It was still warm.

Stillwarm.

He hadn’t been dead long enough for his body to have turned cold yet.

Oh god.

Whatever had done this to him, had brutally murdered him, be it animal or human, could still be close by. Could still be in this house at this very second.

I could be next.

I hated to leave him like this but Thomas was dead and there was nothing I could do for him. Especially if I were to die next here.

I needed to live so I could find whoever did this to him and make them pay for it. And if I found out who had murdered the one and only person I had left in my life who mattered to me I would do everything I possibly could to see that they were brought to justice for it, however that came about.

I got up and ran out of there, ran out of the house. I stopped long enough to grab the strap of my purse and lift it up fromwhere I had dropped it onto the ground beside the garage. I clutched it tightly in my hand as I ran across the perfectly manicured lawn to the front door of my house.

I glanced over my shoulder quickly and scanned the area, relieved to find no one there, before punching in the code on the panel beside the front door. The door made a soft clicking noise as it unlocked. I hurried inside and slammed the door shut behind me. The alarm beeped at me and I pressed all of the appropriate buttons to have the locks on the door clicking in place once again.

I breathed a sigh of relief even though my home no longer felt like a safe space to me at the moment.

I hit the button on the alarm that would contact the security company, letting them know I had an emergency to send the police to my home. I had never used it before so I had no idea what their response time would be. I was sure the company had given me some bullshit response time when they’d installed it but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what it was they told me at the moment.

My brain was fried and I kept seeing Thomas’s dead body on an endless loop whenever I closed my eyes.

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