The Red Room
The body was still warm.
Detective Elijah Raines knelt beside it, ignoring the crime scene tape flapping in the wind behind him like a warning. Blood soaked into the cheap carpet of the apartment, spidering out from beneath the woman’s shoulder where the blade had entered. No sign of struggle. No broken furniture. No defensive wounds. She’d opened the door for him.
The killer made sure of that.
Raines rubbed the back of his neck and stood, the overhead light buzzing like a dying fly. He’d seen three killings like this in as many weeks. Same knife, same entry wound. Same precise, clinical detachment. Whoever the bastard was, he didn’t kill out of rage.
He killed like it was an obligation.
“Detective,” Officer Tran said behind him. “You okay? You kind of… froze for a second.”
“I’m fine,” Raines muttered. His voice didn’t sound like his. “Did the neighbor say anything useful?”
“Same as the others. Heard nothing. No scream, no noise. Just... found the door cracked open and called us.”
Raines stared at the dead woman’s eyes—still open, glassy, staring past him. He tried not to imagine her thoughts in those last moments. But something pushed into his mind anyway, uninvited.
A whisper.
“She smiled when I said her name. That’s how I knew it was time.”
He blinked.
What?
“Detective?” Tran asked again. “You're pale as hell.”
“I said I’m fine.” But the chill was crawling up his spine now, threading itself around his brain like fingers made of frost. He turned his back to the scene and looked at the wall. Something dark flickered at the edges of his vision—movement. A smear of red, like—
No. No, not again.
The vision hit him harder this time.
He wasn't in the room anymore. He was looking through someone else’s eyes. Hands—his, but not—reached out, gloved and deliberate. The woman opened the door. She didn’t scream. She just blinked, confused, and tried to say something—
“Sorry, do I know y—”
Then the blade slid forward. No hesitation. No mess.
And when she collapsed, there was a breath of silence, like the whole world had stopped to listen.
Raines gasped, gripping the doorframe for balance. The vision dissolved, leaving behind a no cold sweat and the copper taste of blood in his mouth. Not his blood.
Not his.
“Jesus, man,” Tran said, stepping in to steady him. “You need to sit down.”
“I need air.”
He pushed past the younger officer and stepped outside into the rain-slick hallway. The light there was flickering too. Or maybe his eyes were still adjusting. His hands shook, and he dug a cigarette out of his coat pocket—not because he needed it, but because the ritual helped.
The visions had started two weeks ago.
At first, he’d chalked them up to stress, sleep deprivation, the usual cocktail of cop burnout. But they were getting more vivid. More detailed. And they were always right.
The details in them—the knife handle, the timing, the hallway wallpaper—matched the crime scenes perfectly. But no report had ever included them.
He hadn’t told anyone. Not yet. Who the hell would believe him?
A killer on the loose, and the only clue Raines had… was in his own head.
But there was something else this time. A detail he hadn't noticed before.
A mirror.
On the wall behind the woman.
And in it—a reflection. A partial face.
Not his.
Raines exhaled, the cigarette trembling between his fingers.
If that reflection was real—if he could pull it from memory—he might be looking at the killer’s face.
Or at his own.
