I sat in my bathtub and touched my abdomen where the folds of skin curled inward toward the puncture wounds, a light powdery blue and beneath the yellow layers of fatty tissues. For the second time this evening, I threw up thick meaty chunks of coagulated blood.

I read about a man on a New York subway, a loving husband and a father to a little girl, who had tried to defend himself from a maniac who was on the run after committing a series of murders. The victim that tried to fight him off had suffered a half-dozen stab wounds to his skull. Fueled with adrenaline he continued to fight his attacker despite being critically wounds until the police arrived and apprehended the murderer. According to the news reports as the victim was being secured to a stretcher he was still thrashing and screaming threats to the madman.

I realized it then. I was going to die. Of course I was going to die, there were stab wounds tearing through my stomach and chest. I was only alive for as long as I was because I was still in shock.

The idea that I might die brought a feeling of relief, like being hugged by the Downy Bear. No more struggling through each day, no more worrying about how rent would get paid next month and no more disappointing parents or fighting with Josh.

I took a deep breath and let my body relax in the tub hoping Death would finally catch up with me since I had not waited for him. I concentrated on the hot water spraying over my breasts and stomach as I shut my eyes and tried to imagine beautiful things like lakes reflecting forest-covered mountain peaks, tropical island beaches with swaying palms, and hot gooey extra large stuffed-crust pizzas.

Instead I saw the pile of leaves where I had been buried. I needed a drink. I missed the comfort of the shower even before I stepped out.

I went to my freezer where I’d saved the largest, cheapest bottle of vodka I could afford. I stood naked and dripping unable to feel the freezer’s icy breath as I poured myself a shot. Then another. A third. There was no burn when the alcohol drained into my throat.

Back in the bathroom I reached for my parka, jeans, shirt, socks, and underwear still lying on the tile and heaved them into the shower where they made a loud splat! The bottom of the bathtub flowed red from my blood soaked clothes and I heard the clank of a metallic object falling out of my clothes onto the bottom of the tub.

I climbed back beneath the spray of water and crouched down when I spotted the silvery glint partially hidden beneath my parka’s sleeve. It was a man’s ring made of silver with a red gem. Inscribed around the gem was the inscription of a class number following next year’s date. It was a class ring. DeBorgia University was a prestigious school about fifteen minutes East tucked away at the base of a mountain and cloaked in the shadow of massive pines and wide-spread maple and sycamores.

I quickly pulled the ring out of the water and placed it on the edge of the bathtub. I stared at it for a minute wondering how it had gotten in my clothes. It definitely wasn’t mine and Josh never graduated. It couldn’t have been one of my friends because I didn’t have any.

It belonged to one of my killers, I suddenly realized. Lost in the struggle. I stared at it awhile longer until the water in the tub ran from red to clear. Now that I know I have it, what how was I going to use it?

#

After my shower I wrapped myself in a bulky dark sweater and gray sweatpants with the knees worn out. I placed the ring on my chipped coffee table and fell into the threadbare couch. The wooden block serving as a couch leg creaked under my weight. Like the chip in the table, it had broken off while my previous roommate helped me move out of her apartment.

Megan Durnsey. That was my previous roommates name. She liked to get trashed at the bar and send guys pictures of her boobs over the phone. She spent most of her daytime hours, when she wasn’t working her office job selling printer cartridges in bulk to various corporations, she was home with me listening to her record player and telling me about all the stupid girls all the boys she was interested in were dating. I couldn’t stand other girls either. It was the only thing we had in common really. I couldn’t really stand anyone though. I honestly tried to make it work with her though seeing as how we were sharing a living space. Megan Durnsey was one of those annoying hipster types who spent hours doing their hair and makeup and changing outfits just so they could appear at the bar looking like they made no effort beyond getting out of bed. The look usually involved a fedora.

“So who are you here with tonight?” She would finally ask the man sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon who had spent the evening politely listening to her talk about the indie punk rock metal bands she collected on vinyl. Then she’d bring him home and I wouldn’t see her come out out of her room until the following afternoon. Sometimes her hookup would come to the kitchen, clad in his boxer shorts, and upon seeing me studying in the living room would make awkward conversation, until the coffee was ready, but our encounters never progressed beyond discussing art and literature like Paul Coelho. “Life is always waiting for the right moment to act,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was quoting the Portuguese language author, or if he was subtly hinting something at me. Then, when they heard Megan shout from her room asking if the coffee was ready (Megan always had her overnight guests make her coffee in the morning) they’d retreat back into the bedroom, but not without a giving me a lascivious smile that lingered a little too long.

Every time was the same. For a week Megan would get hung up on him, talk about him non-stop, and when he wouldn’t schedule plans to hang out again, she’d trash talk him all over town. “All men are assholes,” she’d say, feeling sick and tired of one-night stands. I don’t think she ever understood that one night stands meant there’d be no further contact after the deed was done. Nevertheless she blamed me because I allegedly “stole” them. I never stole anyone. Her problem was that she didn’t realize those men weren’t really hers in the first place. They wanted booty and hers was easy to get. If they ever did want something more, it wasn’t with her. Not as long as she behaved like a high school brat.

I always knew I wasn’t a ‘people person’ but meeting Megan Durnsey confirmed it. I never once slept or flirted with any of her hookups. I rarely slept with anyone. Like maybe one guy once a year. If even that. I hated going out and people everywhere, no matter their gender, annoyed the hell out of me. Going out was for pretty girls who liked to get drunk and brag about it. They were usually the pretty girls. A lot of them I guessed had mornings when they felt pretty good. They’d wake up and look in the mirror and say, “Hey, I look pretty good today,” and take some selfies to post online to show everyone how pretty they thought they were, but not me. I was just average. Frizzy brown hair, a round boyish face with a pointy chin, lightly freckled pale cheeks, and bushy eyebrows. No one ever called me pretty, but I often got complimented on my redwood brown eyes and my exotic long eyelashes. There was a little bit if Irish and I figured maybe a little bit of Italian too, or maybe some kind of Spainish. I was pale and if I was Irish, those were the features that were the strongest, but I couldn’t ever explain my lashes except with luck. Megan Durnsey was the opposite, a blonde knockout with a slender waist with breasts as large as her head and round hips and ghetto booty that boys loved to pucker at when she walked away.

After a month of listening to her blame me for stealing her men I finally said, “Bitch, stop sending pictures of your boobs! Take a picture of your degree!” And thus ended the brief three-month living situation with Señorita Psychobitch.

Flash forward living in my car for three months to finally living here and through summer I had found myself for the first time settling in. It wasn’t a nice space, cracked floors, an ant infestation, noisy neighbors, but it was the first place I could call mine. Not my roommates, but mine. And next month it would be gone.

I had hoped Josh would’ve asked me to move in with him by now, but things were kind of rocky between us since we got into a big one a about a month ago. After what I did, I doubted he’d care if I ended up on the streets. That didn’t stop me from wanting to call him every day though, now especially more than ever. I wanted to hear his voice. From the coffee table I lifted the phone and dialed his number. There was still a bit of blood dried to the screen but I scratched it away. If I had a heartbeat, it would’ve quickened at the sound of the ringing. It rang once, twice. A third. Then to voicemail.

I let out a sudden breath filled with a mixture of disappointment and relief. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve said anyway.

I checked the time on my phone trying to decide if I should leave a message or not. 7:36 on a Thursday night, about the time he was hitting a dinner rush. He was the executive chef at La Roux on 4th Street, about a mile down the road from me and over one block. Walking distance if I missed the bus would take me a little less than an hour. He used to bring me dinner when I was low on groceries. I felt guilty whenever he did, and I’m sure he didn’t always feel as happy to do so, especially lately as we drifted apart, but I was grateful every time. Even now I was hungry. Coming back from the dead worked up an appetite, but there was nothing to eat in my refrigerator. Mustard and pickles between saltine crackers. The fact that I was hungry came as a surprise. What does a dead woman eat?

“Hi you’ve reached Josh, sorry I missed you—”

That’s when I hung up. Sorry I missed you.

I miss you too, I thought. I sat the phone on the couch beside me and stared at the ring still resting on the coffee table. Above and across the beige room was the only window, approximately six feet wide framed between cheap plastic hanging blinds that clicked and clattered in the breeze like rattling skeleton bones. Beyond was DeBorgia, a city that splayed across over the hills and down into the valley and up again, through endless forests and streets that veined into the darkness. Even the four high-rises; one a parking structure, two were hotels, and the last an apartment building, were miniatures below the swirling night above. More sky than it seemed possible, more than enough to make such a large city look like a little village. Standing in the glow of green and pink neon bar signs with a hundred or more cigarette butts crushed on the broken sidewalks, peering up at the top of the illuminated skyscrapers could make a person wonder how the city wouldn’t scrape the clouds and puncture the night. Beyond, when the roads turned primitive and the highway weaved through the hillsides, there was only dark pine forests and rocky hills. On a clear night when the moon was full and the air was still, a person could stand at the highest point on the parking structure and see from one state to the next.

In that vast distance across the city I knew there was a man sleeping without his class ring. Maybe he knew it, or maybe he didn’t. All I knew is from my shitty apartment I could see up and down the streets, passed the skyscrapers to the wealthy hillside residences, churches, schools, and offices, the entire city, and somewhere within this city, was a killer. My killer.

There was only one way to find him and I couldn’t do it on my own. Presenting this piece of evidence to the police would grant me way more questions than I could answer. I couldn’t tell the police that I found it after I crawled out of my grave of leaves. That sounded crazy. Perhaps I could use the ring as leverage; a clue in exchange for his suspect list. A list he could build with the prints he could pull from the ring. A junior going on senior at DeBorgia. A male. Someone killed me and who else better to find the killer than the murder victim herself? The ring would provide plenty of DNA and that was my leverage. I had to get it to him now, tomorrow would be too late.

By tomorrow the homicide team would have taken their photos, gathered their samples, and would be off to canvas the neighborhood. I learned that term from watching Inspector Lynley. It meant going door-to-door talking to everyone in the neighborhood and then doing it again at the same hour of the same day a week or so later, even if the residents already gave their statements. It was a matter of making sure everyone was following their routine. What would I do when they came to my door? The same thing I would do to anyone else who knocked. Not answer. Opened doors invite trouble.

I stood up from the couch and entered my bedroom. I dressed warmly, covering my entire body, anything that would conceal the wounds. I wore a hoodie too and wrapped an orange and black knitted scarf around my neck more to hide the bruises than to shield myself from the October chill. I didn’t really care about the cold. I couldn’t feel it anyway.

A minute later I was out the front door. Back to the park. Back to the place where I was murdered.