They find the body draped over a hedge near the most recent crime scene, the figure’s legs dangling over the bushes as if they were trying run away before their unfortunate expiration. The scene itself was nothing that the police were unfamiliar with: a brutal murder, with cracked ribs, a broken neck, and slit tendons on both the wrists and the ankles. All in all, nothing too out of the ordinary. Just another body, like the pile of bodies that had been slowly accumulating over the past few weeks.
What was out of the ordinary was that no one knew who this person was.
In a town that once prided itself on being a place where everyone knew each other, whether the relationship be “best friend” to “person who cut your hair once” as a kid, the presence of an unknown body was nothing short but unusual. Despite the face having been spared from the brutality of the murderer, no one in the police force could muster up a name for the victim, and no one had reported anyone as missing. Were they a murderer, caught by an unknown vigilante and made to pay for what they’d done? Or an innocent, targeted by whatever monsters lurked in the night?
The only clue to their identity was a motel key, placed in their breast pocket. In search for answers, police drove out to that motel on the edge of town, a barrage of cars flashing red and blue at the doors. We’re seeking information on this individual, they said to the owner, it’s in connection with those murders. Such words were enough to cause the motel owner to fold, scuttling back inside the building with a legion of officers in his wake.
“They just … came out of nowhere, y’know?” the motel owner would later say, fiddling with his files behind the dusty front desk. “Creepy. Said they won some kind of weird vacation contest and wanted a place to stay, but hell if I know who’d run a contest to come here when, y’know… all these… ” He drops his voice to a whisper.
“Mur-ders.”
The so-called vacationer, police later learned, had paid for their room in cash. They had provided a name, but cross-referencing databases turned up no results. Their room was searched from head to toe, but all that turned up was a suitcase full of pressed white shirts and a smartphone with nothing in it. No identification. No phone records. Nothing. It was as good as new.
The motel manager would later add that the vacationer seemed particularly anxious lately, panicking and asking to use the phone constantly, though never commenting on why they needed it. Such behaviour seemed strange in the long run, the manager added: why would they need to use the motel phone when they clearly had one of their own, buried under clothes as if it were cursed?
Ultimately, the police found nothing at the motel. In the end, they did what they always did with John and Jane Does: put out a public call for information and hoped that someone would drop on by with a name, a photograph, something tethering this person to the community around them. And as police talked with coroners and the local funeral home for arrangements, one felt that perhaps the reason why these murders hurt so much was because the killers ripped out family, friends, lovers and fighters from their place in the world, sending echoes through the town with every death.
Yet if someone that no one knows dies alone and leaves no one to mourn them behind, does their death make a sound?
There is so much blood.
They find the body soaked through in crimson. Blood on its hands. Blood on the pavement. Blood seeping into its clothes. Its uniform is dark, but it glistens darker. Makes it easy to identify the corpse. There aren’t many EMTs in this town.
Cause of death is simple enough to determine. Ballistic trauma. Died instantly. The police load the body into the hearse, and then they call the medics. It’s not exactly the proper order. Out on the field, things don’t tend to happen in their proper order.
“Got anyone missing?” the police ask, when the hospital picks up.
“Yeah. Just the one.”
The autopsy turns up surprising results. Body, identifiable. Cause of death, identifiable. Model of the firearm, size of the bullet, both identifiable. The blood on the uniform, though. It’s human blood, that much is for certain, but it isn’t a match for anyone in the town’s medical database.. The blood in the deceased’s hair, the blood dripping from the exit wound, that blossom of bone and brain matter—that blood belongs to the deceased. The blood on the uniform, though? Unidentifiable.
Elsewhere in town, an individual awakens. Instead of some profound speech or shock at their current situation, only one word passes through their lips, spoken with reverence and worship.
“Aliens.”
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