Between Three Pines

1. The WolvesHaven Reserve

"An awful noise

Filled the air

I heard a scream

In the woods somewhere"

Hozier: In The Woods Somewhere.

The body is face-down, shaped uncomfortably to the risen roots of trees sheltering the murder scene. Detective Pitches was sitting at his desk filling in a crossword puzzle when he got the call. He was drinking his third mug of stale black coffee and his stomach was just starting to feel the effects of it. But now crouching over the body he ignores the shivers he feels as well as the heaving sensation in his stomach.

Detective Pitches pushes himself off his haunches and looks at the area around him. WolvesHaven Reserve. The perfect place to hide a body. With the thicket of the forest the body would have gone unnoticed if it hadn't been for the anonymous phone call. The wind begins picking up and there's a snapping of wood.

"Alright let's section off the area and gather as much evidence as possible. This weather ain't gon' hold out."

There is a quicker scrambling about as Detective Pitches makes his way back to his second hand Honda Civic. He leans against the door briefly before collapsing into the driver's seat. Before he moved back to WolvesHaven he had worked in the neighbouring towns department and quickly moved his way up the ranks. He never admitted to not seeing a body. A dead body. But it seemed an unsung truth with the local department that he had. Detective Pitches decided to maintain that theory the second the call came in. His first boss and mentor, Detective Grady, told him the first one changes you. He said it never leaves you.

A few paces back in the distance behind a large pine tree, scared eyes watch on, a purple synthetic wig is flowing furiously in the wind.

Detective Pitches shakes violently out of his sleep. When he got to his apartment he couldn't hold his stomach any longer. He threw up violently along the neat trimmed hedges leading up to the main entrance of his building. Sweat dripped from his brown along his temple. When he made it to his apartment on the second floor he dropped his pants at the door and made for the toilet where he sat for what felt like an eternity.

He then crawled into bed and promptly fell asleep. He slept deeply but kept dreaming of that body. The poor girl whose soul once held a home in that fragile rib cage. The blonde hair that seemed to turn white the longer he stared at it. Her. The way her fragile and bony fingers were dug into the earth as if to hold onto it.

He even began to feel the coldness of death creeping from his toes up his legs. Now sitting up with an eye cracked open he sees his open window and deduces its the wind chilling his bare bottom. He rolls off his bed looking at his alarm clock as he does. 2:45. He unbuttons his shirt and pulls it off, leaving it on the floor beside his bed. He walks into the kitchen and pours a glass of whiskey, neat, before looking out of his window at the flickering lights of the little town. WolvesHaven's first murder.