1000 words a week – chapter 5 – Stains to puddles

15-04-2013

“Hallo dear readers, I hope you enjoyed the last entry because this one is answering the questions from last time. In this episode our protagonist finds out what happened at the building and where all that blood came from. While writing this episode I was a little tired, but I hope you guys find this one as entertaining to reed as the other ones. But I really like to know what you actually think off the story and the way I am writing it. I could use some feedback on my writing style and the way the story is headed. If you would be able to spare a few seconds of your precious time to comment, that would help me a great deal! On that note, I want to thank you for reading and wish you a great day!

Greetings Peter Verzijl (still working on a pseudonym)”

I couched and slowly made my way to the door and placed the side of my head against the door. Silence. Looked for a keyhole to peek through, but found none. Since there was no other option I could think of at the moment, took a deep breath and pulled the door open. A hall with a stairway revealed itself. I looked where the blood trail was headed and found the stains went over the railing. I did not dare to look down and watch what had happened. Hopefully no one went over alive. But somehow I was still curious of what came to be of the victims, so I made my way down.

It was somewhat of an old building made of wood and stone walls. It had lots of character, where I not so focused on the mass murder, it was kind of nice. You could see that the building had been heavily used and the walls screamed thousands of stories from its inhabitants. From days that had been past. Now the paint was reduced to a few spots here and there. You could see the wood underneath, not in great condition I might add. The paint was coming off the wall and most of it littered the floor.

The steps of the stairs squeaked each with a different sound and made my trip downwards even scarier. Not that I was afraid, the killers had already left and the dead wouldn’t bother her anyway. She wasn’t scared easily by an ominous atmosphere. She actually liked darkness. It made her less visible and less likely to be shot or seen for that matter. Not that the sound wouldn’t give me away. She didn’t even bother to produce less sound by walking slower.

Each floor was deferent and the paintings, or what was left of them, seemed to get prettier by the second. Also I noticed that the lower I got, the better the place was looked after. As if people only lived on the first few floors. But something did not get better by the amount of meters she had descended, it was the smell. The terrible smell of rotting bodies was reminding her of rotten eggs. And these sounded awful. This was worse with at least a factor ten. I had already put my shirt against my nose to block at least a small portion of the scent form reaching her olfactory.

She was almost there, judging from the signs which were put on the end of a stair to indicate the level she was on. E2. And I started to see blood again. This time just small splashes of blood all around. As if someone had put a blood bag on a firecracker. Apparently dropping a body (which actually is kind of similar to a bag of blood) from great height gives the same effect. But not that I had tried any of those. Before anyone gets the wrong idea. Besides my job, my past and a few other things, I am a simple almost honest person. And had the circumstances been different, I would never have killed someone nor stole anything from anyone. I guess it all depends on what kind of environment you live in, what kind of things you do. Everyone just does what needs to be done to stay alive. It is what I always have done.

It was a mess. The floor was coated in blood, messed up organs and body parts. If anyone wanted to ID the persons who lay here in piece, I doubt even a DNA-test would give answers. It was a sight to be seen. That was for sure. The amount of bodies that were thrown here was impossible to devise. You could see how the blood was splashed upward against the wall. I doubted if the ones responsible had witnessed what they had done. It was gruesome. But somehow it seemed unreal. I couldn’t stop staring at the scene. Slowly but surely my brain started to realize this was very real, and so did my stomach. It started to turn around and I felt its continence rise through my esophagus. Quickly dashed to a door with a men’s rest room sign painted on it and before I could close, I threw up.

I did not know, nor care, if the cause was the smell or the sight what was responsible for my ill manners. Thank god the sink still worked so I could wash the taste from my mouth and clean up a little. I did not want to risk it so I closed my mouth and peeked through my eyelids to see as less as possible. Quickly looking for an exit. Which I did not find. Where I ended up was another hall, this time clean with less goory things. However, I was still shocked at what I found. The room was filled with computers and stacks of servers. Many of which were broken. Cables were scattered everywhere and broken server modules were ripped from their towers. It looked like someone or an organization wanted to destroy every piece of digital data there was. Aside from some terminals.

I walked towards one with a functioning screen and typed in some commands. I was far from being a genius with these things, but Knife had taught me some tricks in my career as a currier. I had no idea how to hack into a server from a distance, nor how to build programs, but I did know how to get in without the need of knowing the login name and password. And within a few minutes I had full access to all the documents I wanted. By the looks of it, the building and all of its equipment had belonged to a rival group of curriers. As with us, they had met the same kind of fate as we did.  Only they did not have the pleasure of being warned about it. They had paid that cost with their lives.

As I searched further into their databanks, at least, that which had not been destroyed by the havoc.  I found some interesting information about the cop’s strange activities lately. I opened another file and my jaw dropped immediately. The way they found this particular group, was via a mole. And one of the suspected subjects name was,

Jill Seeds.

This was no coincidence.

(Is this the same Jill she met at the end of chapter 2? Her long lost friend? Find out next time!)