Moonlyte - part 2

 Author's Note: Another one of these little snippets. Got to the next "break point" and figured I'd share what I had so far.

Warning that this does contain mentions of some VERY dark content. Do NOT read if you are squeamish about horror/gore elements.

[story] [horror/gore] [non-erotic]

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‭I ignore the police consultant for a long while as I cram mouthful after mouthful of my chorizo omelette into my face, taking long swigs of coffee in the brief moments I should be using to breathe. I was hungrier than I thought, pizza be damned. Sleeping and typing can be really draining, you know.

“Can I get you two anything else?” asks a waitress of what looks like middle age, gliding over to the booth Lindsay and I occupy. The diner’s called the Dockside. I’ve never been here before today, but they still served breakfast at what was now pushing 4:00pm.

“M’re cahffee,” I grunt through a mouthful of food, then glance to the small mountain of empty cream cups sitting at the edge of the table. I swallow. “And more creamers.”

“Nothing for me, thank you.” Lindsay watches the waitress nod and leave, then fixes her unblinking dark eyes back to me. I wish she wouldn’t do that. Just stare, like that. It’s like that stare a fish gives you, or a lizard, where you wonder if they can even see at all. Unfeeling and still. She looks nice enough beyond her creepy mannerisms -- her hair’s dark and sleek, her eyes a little bigger than average and dripping with icy intellect. Her light brown leather coat looks like she either had it tailored for her or got it from an expensive designer, too, so even her clothes make me look like a fucking goober next to her in my shorts and unwashed Ren and Stimpy t-shirt.

Now, though, her stare is focused on me, and I can watch her patience wane in real time. “Alright, what’s up?” I finally sigh, gulping down a slice of avocado. “What’s the cassssse.”

“Nothing important,” Lindsay says flatly. I can hear a sarcastic punchline coming from a mile away, I just don’t know the details of it yet. “Two children found dead in southeast Detroit.”

“Just two? Seems like a good day for the east side.” I scrape up what remains of my omelette, forming it into one solitary semi-congealed mass of fallen fillings. In the mouth it goes. Yesss.

“Both kids were missing all four limbs, and both eyelids. Forensics showed enough semen in them that they must have been raped six to eight times each.”

I blink. I feel my stomach do a backflip and my lips part on their own, that glorious mouthful of spicy breakfasty remnants just tumbling forth and down onto my plate, saliva pooling around them as I try not to throw up. I’m not sure what’s worse -- what Lindsay just said, or the absolute emptiness she said it with. “That--” I cough, then groan, swallowing saliva back down before I can finish my thought. “That does sound like a problem. How, um....”

“One was eleven. The other was six. A boy and a girl, respectively.” She answers my question before I have time to wish I hadn’t started to ask it. “There have been eight other incidents around the country, possibly more outside of it. I’ve been pulling every string I have to keep the FBI from getting involved before I have a chance to investigate it further.”

“And by investigate, you mean I investigate.” I let out a deep, slow breath, reaching for my coffee and pouring a long stream of it down my throat, emptying the cup. Waitress still hasn’t come with more. I set the mug down and feel my hand tremble a little. When you spend as much time on the internet as I have, you’ve seen some super fucked-up shit. I’ve seen One Guy One Jar and everything. Saw that one guy get a dildo shoved in his dick. All the Blue Waffles you could drench in syrup. But this is... no. This is not something I want a part of. “Sorry. I’m... nuh uh. Not interested. Sorry.”

“There was stenciled graffiti at the location of each body, tagged onto the wall,” Lindsay continues like I hadn’t said anything at all. Reaching into her jacket pocket, she withdraws a small strip of paper about the size of a fortune cookie fortune. “Does this mean anything to you?”

I swallow hard. I look up to Lindsay, then down to the strip of paper, willing my hand not to tremble as I reach out for it. The code on it reads “eTBnNTA3aDA3aA==” which means absolutely fucking nothing to me... unless, like, it’s encrypted from Base64, or maybe a URL. A really fucking scary URL.

“I expect serious compensation for this,” I finally say, under my breath. I reach for my coffee cup again, but it’s still empty. I set it back down. “And I want Katelyn Webb scrubbed from your records. Fingerprints, everything.”

“That will be difficult.”

“Do it!”

“I’ll try. That’s all I can promise.”

I inhale deeply and slump back in my booth seat, staring into the little pool of drool and ground beef slowly spreading across the center of my plate. I really want more coffee. I don’t think I’m gonna get any. Fuck this diner. “I wanna go home.”

“I’m sorry,” Lindsay says. I know she isn’t. I don’t know if Lindsay is actually capable of being sorry for things -- genuinely sorry -- but for some reason the fact that she at least tries to go through the motions brings me some small comfort. “If this is rooted in some kind of cybercrime, some online organization, the FBI won’t have any clue how to take care of this. These will become cold cases at best, or buried under paperwork until they’re lost to time at worst. I need someone who understands this stuff.”

“And that someone’s me. I got it. Believe me Lindsay, the nuance of this situation -- subtle as I realize it is -- hasn’t slipped past me.” I exhale through my nose, and forget the last time I released a breath at all. “You need a nerd. And I’m your resident pet nerd. So I get to deal with the child-butchering rape cult--”

I tense and look up. The waitress showed back up at a bad time.

“More coffee?”