The curdle

"The Joker, you figure ?"
"Oh, I don't know. What do you think ?"
The uniformed policeman's shoulders stooped. He scratched his graying chuck. He shifted his weight and huffed. He scratched again, slightly across from the first spot, his breath heavy under all his pig fat. He shook his head, more like a concealed shudder. "They really look like they're smiling. How the hell does he do that."
"With a knife, sargeant. He does it with a knife."
"We found an exacto blade in the bathroom."
"That's not how..."
"Oh, no, no, they had the scalpels shoved up their asses alright. We didn't touch those. You'll get them from the coroner tomorrow. The knife was an extra."
"A gift."
"Something like that I guess."
"Who found them ?"
"Cute lesbian package across the hall."
"That her pawprints ?"
"Yup. We took their shoes. They're in the boxes with everything else."
"They ?"
"Oh, you should see these two. About Allison's age just about, too."
"These days..."
"Takes all kinds."
"They heard anything ?"
"No, they say they heard the cat meow, and then the door turned out to be ajar, and one thing led to the next."
"At least it saves us the stench. Usually this sort of thing's found a week old, or two. I can't even remember the last time the coroner said something about hours."
"True fact, lt."
"Anything else ?"
"Nope, nothing. Guy's got a book and he's going by it. Step by step."
"One of these days he's going to take a wrong step right into the hole."
"If you say so, lt."
"Alright, where are they ?"
"Across the hall, I've got Timmy with them."
"What are they called ?"
"The white girl's Laura. The other's Ellen. Students."
"Yeah. I bet."
"They're all students around here, lt."

The lt. waved his hand and took off, whistling the theme to Forever Young loudly enough to hear from the street. The grinning cadavers left behind shone in the May day's last sunbeams, bare, elaborately sliced, one time prior to about forty-eight hours ago pretty girls, students perhaps, about Allison's age just about. Now, so much catfood. The approximately six square feet of smoothly, uniformly dried blood in a roughly oval puddle with crumpled outline reproduced to some degree the sky above, forcibly translated to its own palette of metallic, reddish hues. A bored child watches the Christmas tree early one day, the day after the excitement of the day immediately after. The day after that. He plays with the decorations, idly. They're slowly peeling in his mind, from their abstract, purely idealized function of Christmas decorations. They're objects now, mere objects, real, concrete. No longer anything in particular besides what they actually are, which is nothing. No longer meaningful, therefore now incomprehensible, incapable of being meaningfully dismissed. Things. Round. Shiny. Reflective. He notices the potato beamed back off the round, shiny surface. It is his nose, he realises. His nose, his whole face, eyes crumpled in, an afterthought barely holding on at the edges, his chin rendered immense, overflowing beyond any possible measure, beyond Jennifer Rudolph Walsh even. That's him! Him, but not really him. A reflection, crushed, reformed. Deformed. Yet his nose doesn't hurt. How was it bent out of shape to that degree without feeling anything ? The reflection's of him, but not his, its abuse upon his parts entirely outside, perfectly alien. The globe twisted his face, turned his nose, balooned his features yet he felt nothing ; and the feeling of terror, of sheer, unmitigated terror consumes him. Years after he spends guarding, spying hypervigilantly all reflective surfaces everywhere in sight. The TV's shine often distracts him, brass knobs suspicious, a little round pocket mirror extracted from a discarded powder compact his only comfort ; in its fair, regular, predictably and reliably accurate representation his only solace. That kid's nowhere to see it ; and yet the curdled blood reflects the curdling sky in its own terms regardless. Not forever, it's true ; but regardless, nevertheless.

"And you didn't hear anything."
"No. We just... we keep to ourselves."
"Did you see anything ? Or anyone ?"
"I... I mean we... you mean over there ?"
"Yes, any visitors, deliveries, anything. Coming in and out, loitering down the hall, anything at all."
"They... they really kept to themselves. We never really met."
"So you didn't hear anything and you didn't see anyone at all, not a single soul."
"No one at all", said the blonde. "Not a single soul", repeated the other, soulfully.
"Not yesterday, or the day before. Or the day before that. Nobody whatsoever this past week altogether."
"Nobody..." they whispered, together, like from a dream.
"Alright, well, thank you for your co-operation. If anything comes back, if you remember anything, here's my card. Give me a call, day or night."
"Ok."
"Goodbye."
The man nodded and left the two holding each other, seated on the couch, their eyes enlarged with a terror unspoken, unspeakable. If they believed in God, if they read books, a reference to "There, but for the Grace of God,..." would have imposed itself ; but they didn't read books, nor did they believe in God. They believed in Science instead, which isn't really the same thing, if for no other reason then because no followers of that particular faith, no believers in Science seem to ever read any books, or recognize any references ; the world as reflected in their eyes always unspeakably distorted, incomprehensibly mangled somehow.

At length Laura stood up and, paddling barefoot to the small makeshift bar in the corner, poured two small helpings out of a shaped bottle holding a colorful liquid. Round the neck of the bottle a paper label, with the words 'DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters, was conspicuously absent.

The end.