Remembering Hope Findlay

Chapter 8 - What Happened Here?

My eyes were stuck closed, glued down with shakes that my thin body was letting through.

"Dammit, pull yourself together." The voice in my head shouted.

I pulled my weak hand up to my head - it became wet.

"Wha-"

Blood. Even with my blindness I could tell.

I lay my hand limply around myself, wishing for my yellow trenchcoat in this cold place. I kept shivering and shaking - from both fear and the chill.

I think I lay there for another two hours, just lying down like a corpse in a grave. When I woke my eyes finally gave way and opened. My sight blurred at first, but then growing into high definition.

I had been lying on the rotting, frosted grey floorboards near where that old man was lying. A drop of blood ran into my eye - I ignored it and just kept shaking uncontrollably. It was freezing, colder than cold. I think my toes were frozen - about to just turn into icicles. My fingers numb, I pushed myself up so I was sitting up in the thin air. When I took in a breath I could just feel the frost going down and onto my lungs. Out the window I could tell it was getting late in the evening as the once bright blue sky was turning a deep colour of the ocean.

I pulled my long black hair around me like a curtain to try to get warm. Damn, I wish I had my trenchcoat instead of sitting here with my black three-quater length sleeved shirt and my raven coloured business pants that hung loosely around the highest part of my feet from where my black ankle boots covered. Sitting still I heaved on my legs to pull them up, almost being able to hear the ice crack that had set on my knees, not literally, but it felt like it. I was now in a curled up position - almost like a basketball and rubbed my arms with my numbed fingers.

I finally made up my mind that I should try to get moving - it could help me warm, although that felt very unlikely now that I could practically feel my bones freezing up.

In my mind I was still fully shocked about what had happened in front of my own eyes: A man killed, a killer, being what I thought was stalked and almost killed...

I clenched my teeth in a strong clamp as the bleeding injury on my head seemed to groan and scream.

"Bloody hell." I squeezed out slowly and slurred as I pulled my hand to my head feeling it get sodden with blood before it even touched.

I left myself to feel pain for the next hour I think as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Well, I didn't actually know what the time was for I lost time a long way back, the last moment I had known time was when I was just about to leave for TAFE. I checked the time just after my best friend, ugh, forgot her name again, called me to explain that she was sick today and couldn't come in.   

I still can't believe that man is dead, even though I can see the life drained from his face.

His body was limp. Cold and limp, like a fish being put in the fridge while it was still wet, fresh out of the sea. My pale fingers touched his motley skin. It was now a sickly purple colour, his fingers were colder than ice and his blue and white lips were a total opposite to the brown-red blood dried on his shirt. He was surely dead. His white business shirt all sodden with death and limp.

I found my shakes become more uncontrollable and sudden. It was like every time I shook, my ribs and bones were getting shaken around in my body, like I was in a blender. I somehow started walking towards the large door, the entry to this secret place where so much crime took place and now death had grasped.

With one last shake I fell into the heavy door - forcing it open and I hit the ground - half in and half out. My head bleeding onto the dark cobbles outside. My eyes shut and I lost final consciousness inside my body.

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This is another flashback in case you were a bit confused ;D Will be posting next chapter once I reach a total of 100 votes! So far 9 to go so spread the word =)