Seriously? What the hell…

Malachi watched the muck climb up his boot and over his jeans stopping just above his ankle and soaking his sock in slop. You don’t forget your first case and it doesn’t matter who you are you don’t forget the bizarre coincidence that broke the case.

It had been his first missing person’s case in North Jersey near Sussex before he moved south. He had been investigating the disappearance of Danielle King, wife of celebrity chef and farm to table restauranteur, Eli King. His farm south of Sussex was huge, filled with livestock and vegetable gardens all to supply his New York City restaurants. All around the farm was heavy construction machinery. Eli said that he was expanding his farm to meet the growing demand for his famous food, including a new barn and next to the barn a recently dug out and expanded pig sty.

Eli King had reported his wife missing two weeks earlier, stating she was going shopping downtown on Madison Ave. Malachi recalled how he had complained non-stop about how she wouldn’t stop blowing his money. Eli had become the chief suspect in her disappearance but there was no body or material evidence to support it, just a gut feeling.

Until, Eli remembered, the freak accident when thunderstorms plowed through New York and Jersey, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Lightning from the heavens blasted the farm like judgement day had come and a finger of lightning struck a diesel gas tank behind the barn. The explosion ripped through the barn, sending a wave of flame across the newly dug out pig sty sending the hogs into hysteria before roasting them alive.

In the ensuing investigation Malachi was called in. In front of his eyes the darkened basement floor transformed into the crime scene. Reality rippled in front of him as a wave of of color flowed over the basement floor and covered over the walls and faded apartment doors, replacing the darkened basement with the scene from accident. Plodding forward, Malachi was stunned to see his boots, walking still on the basement floor but actually pushing through the muck of the pig sty. To his right was what was left of the barn, burned and charred wood blasted off, leaving only a blackened skeleton behind.

In the pig sty, charred hog bodies lying where they fell, crispy pig skin falling in on itself revealing baked internal organs. The overwhelming smell of rot and vegetation mixed with the undeniable smell of burnt bacon.

The grave holds no respect for status or species but all return to the same muddy depths. In the middle of the cooked pigs the face of Danielle King staring blankly into the night framed grotesquely by muck and burnt pig bodies.

During the case, the entire pig sty was excavated, not only uncovering the corpse of Danielle King, but of her lover and rival chef to Eli, Bobby Brown. Eli suspected for years that the affair would happen during his frequent overnight shopping trips to the city. During one of those trips, Eli lied about leaving, murdered them both and buried them in the pig sty.

In the vision of the farm Malachi walked through the mud to where he remembered the corpse of Danielle King was among the cooked hogs and churned mud. After staring down at her face Malachi was never able to eat bacon again. The smell of it always triggering this memory of the once beautiful face now straddled next to a burnt pig’s face, the charred snout caressing her cheek.

Malachi found himself transfixed by Danielle’s face. She had been pretty once in a trophy wife kind of way. In life, she was featured in celebrity magazines with long wavy blond hair, high cheekbones and full inviting lips. Death distorted that pretty face, hair matted to her forehead in the mud, her cheeks and lips ashen grey and bloated out of proportion. She certainly had not been a saint in life, but Malachi thought, she didn’t deserve this kind of end.

Malachi felt transfixed by the lifeless eyes staring vacantly into the night sky, waiting, anticipating. Waiting for that blink, that twitch of the eyes, for any sign of life that once lived in the vacant corpse, but none was there. Or maybe the lifeless corpse would rise from the muck pulling rotting limbs from the sucking mud and heave its way up and out to rip Malachi’s throat out with bared teeth.

A piercing scream tore through the apartment building, ripping Malachi from the phantasm and watching as the devastated farm and Danielle King’s corpse, like a holographic image projected on a screen, retreated past Malachi and into a woman’s hand. His pupils trying desperately to adjust to the sudden disappearance of light Malachi stared deeply into the now dark hallway. He could just barely make out the vague shape of a woman with shapely curves standing in the dark. Not only standing in the dark, but dark herself he thought; moving and living darkness silhouetted against the gloom. The high-pitched piercing scream ripped through the night again. Malachi looked upstairs and then back down at the living oil in the shape of a woman. She curtsied, flexing black-as-night legs and then turned and ran up the stairs.

Malachi pounded up the stairs after her.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4-Malachi