A Tale of Murder and Fog

Sprawled across the thread bare all weather carpeting, underneath the plastic simulated wood grained table lay the body. No one was sure how long it had been there, no one remembered seeing anything out of the ordinary last night, no one heard screams or a commotion of any kind, no one knew exactly how it got there, no one could immediately recall having last seen the deceased alive, but there it was a body, on a porch, in the fog.

The early morning fog swept up and around the body enveloping the porch where it lay giving the crime scene an eerie haunted house feel, like one of those classic black and white horror movies. It was as if the spirit of the deceased had wrapped itself up in the safety of the fog and using it as a disguise hid within in its mist while attempting to ferret out the murderer. Was it a murder, was it suicide, or was it a tragic accident?

A passing car whipped up trails of the moist sulking murkiness that had been hugging the ground, slowly the haze began to move dancing about the street in its own ethereal ballet, tinted now with the washed out light of the rising sun. A lonely street to die on, not a cul-de-sac not a dead-end, but a long lonely block with a hidden quick turn to the left at the end that sometimes left drivers confused and disoriented.

The curious had begun to gather, conjecturing and formulating guesses as to what had happened. Standing around the railings of the porch, everyone being careful not to encroach upon the crime scene, they waited for someone to either move them along or let them in on the story of this most reprehensible crime.

This was no accident this wasn't suicide, this was indeed a murder. No two ways about it, her head was twisted and swiveled around, bent down and tucked against her lifeless body. The furniture on the porch was in slight disarray suggesting that if there was struggle it was a brief one. There was no blood trail, what little blood there was lay in a dark pool beneath her now cold body.

The popular guess was that she had been attacked, robbed, beaten as she went about her daily chores. The neighborhood had definitely changed over the years from a pleasant safe warm place to a block that some felt resembled an inner city neighborhood located deep in one of those big nasty cities that you always hear about dark, heartless and cold.

“Crime is now everywhere; it was no longer safe to be on the streets by yourself nor is it safe to allow your children to play unattended,” an onlooker opined.

Someone suggested that they take names and start up some kind of vigilante committee like other neighborhoods had started. Others complained how it was the outsiders who had caused all the problems and ever since they had begun to move in to the neighborhood from the north with their lazy ways and their gimme, everything is mine attitude things had gone downhill.

“They should just be run out of town, send them all back to where they belong, the rotten bastards,” remarked an older and presumably wiser observer. He continued, “Everyone knows that they are different then us they eat different foods, refuse to work and just hang about waiting for trouble to come and bite them on the ass.”

Another bystander reflected on how it was impossible for her to move, she had so much invested here and quite frankly who after hearing about this ghastly incident would want to move in to this neighborhood?

Her companion looked at the body and just shook his head in disgust, giving out a loud tsk, tsk as he looked over the assembled crowd and said, “This is the work of a madman”. The crowd cowered and stepped back upon hearing his words. “Look for yourself at the body, her head is twisted all the way around, not normal, not normal. What kind of animal, what kind of fiend would do that to a poor defenseless creature? I ask you, what kind of fiend? I have seen death close up, we use to live in one of those big cities you are all comparing our neighborhood to and I am here to tell you that a simple thief might be pushed to attack you if you did not give up your belongings, but they would never be so vicious or have the fortitude to commit such an act as this.”

As his eyes began to well up he turned and walked away laying his head against a tree on the front lawn, his body heaving and pulsating to his sobs.

“Maybe it was someone she knew. Maybe it was someone she trusted.”

“It had to be, she was always such a cautious one.”

“I knew her the best,” a matronly bystander piped up, fighting back tears as she told her version of their most recent conversation, “Only last week we were discussing the wide variety of wildflowers that are available this fall season. So many colors, that’s what she said, so many colors to chose from and so abundant on account of the lack of rain.”

“I heard that she wasn't very bright, in the brains department.”

“She walked in to traffic the other day without looking. Just whistling a tune and not paying attention. Right in to traffic, can you believe it?”

“Someone told me that she liked to entertain until all hours of the night, if you know what I mean.”

“So what? Sure that’s just like you to blame someone’s death on their lifestyle. Is the fact that she liked to entertain a bonafide reason to kill her?”

“You get what you ask for.”

“Wait a minute. What if? What if it is one of those serial killers? He probably just singled her out, followed her surreptitiously over the last month waiting for the right moment to strike, to get his blood lust going.”

“He? How do you know it was a he?”

“That would make sense it would have taken quite a bit of strength to grab her, hold her down and then still have the ability to twist her poor sweet little head around. It is facing backward isn't it? I can't look, I just can't look anymore. Someone needs to come and close those little black eyes. It is if as if she is staring at all of us begging us to find her killer and bring HIM to justice.”

A small voice in the back added, “Maybe someone in this crowd is the killer getting sick sexual satisfaction from the killing and then hiding among us where it is safe with the witnesses taking sick sexual pleasure in his work.”

The thought frightened even the bravest of the group as they all stepped back and examined one another thoroughly top to bottom and then bottom to top. The sun began to peek through the weakening fog and fingers of light stretched out and reached for the ground.

“Well what happens next?”

“Does anyone know?”

“Someone needs to come and investigate. Someone needs to take her body away. I mean it can't just lay there on the porch all day. Once the fog burns off it will probably get hot, then she will start to swell and bloat, bugs and flies will come and the smell will be something awful.”

“She deserves better.”

Silence. No one moved, no one stirred. They looked to one another unsure of what should happen next. This was new to all of them, a senseless killing. This was something that happened somewhere else, never here, not in their neighborhood, not in their backyard. Sure there were deaths, but death by natural cause over time is not the same as the willful taking of another’s life.

In the big window on the porch something stirred and the curtain moved to one side as a large lazy cat stared out. She patiently studied and watched the crowd collected on the porch and in the front yard. Slowly and stealthily they began to disburse leaving the fog and sunlight to fight with one another. The window cat just sat there yawned and watched each one suspiciously as they drifted away. She stretched and noticed a greasy feathery smudge on the window and tried as best as she could to get its scent and then made a halfhearted effort to bat it away swiping her furry paws at it until she realized it was on the outside of the window.