The fog in the View District didn't just roll in; it crawled, hugging the pavement like it was trying to hide the blood before it even hit the ground.
A man named Micheal was walking home from the late shift, the collar of his coat turned up against the damp chill. He didn't hear the footsteps behind him.
He didn't hear them because there weren't any. There was only the rhythmic click-clack of his own boots and the low hum of the streetlights flickering in their final throes of life.
Then came the smell. It wasn't the usual city scent of exhaust and garbage. It was metallic—sharp and cold, like a butcher's freezer left open in the sun. Micheal froze. He turned, squinting into the gray haze, but the street was empty. When he turned back, the air in front of his face felt heavy.
A hand, impossibly pale and ending in fingers that seemed a few inches too long, reached out from the mist. It didn't grab him.
It simply touched his chest, right over the heart. Micheal didn't even have time to scream before the world went red, his body collapsing into the gutter with a wet thud that the fog swallowed whole.
*************
Jay sat at his desk at the VPD, leaning so far back in his chair that it creaked in protest. He was currently trying to see how many paperclips he could chain together before the Sergeant noticed he wasn't looking at the Micheal file.
"You look like you're thinking hard, Jay," a voice chimed in.
Jay didn't look up. "I'm calculating the structural integrity of office supplies. It's a high-level detective thing. You wouldn't get it."
Jake stood over him, arms crossed. He looked tired. "Three people in two weeks, man. All found in the same two-block radius. No witnesses. No DNA. Just bodies with parts missing."
"Maybe they're just moving away in a hurry," Jay said, finally glancing up with a lazy, lopsided grin. "You know, the housing market is a nightmare."
"This isn't a joke," Jake snapped. "People are terrified. And you're sitting here acting like you're waiting for a bus."
Jay stood up, smoothing out his wrinkled shirt. He was tall, with dark, messy hair and a jawline that usually stayed hidden behind a layer of low stubble.
He knew he looked like a wreck—probably why the girls at the coffee shop always looked at him with that weird, wide-eyed pity. He figured they were just disgusted by his lack of a mirror.
"Look, Jake, getting stressed doesn't catch killers. Coffee catches killers. Let's go."
"I'm not going anywhere with you until you take this seriously," Jake hissed, his voice dropping to a dangerous low. "We had an argument about this yesterday. You're lazy, you're sloppy, and frankly, some of the guys downstairs wonder why you always seem to be 'around' but never 'there'."
Jay's expression didn't change, but his eyes stilled. "Careful. People might start thinking you don't like me."
"I don't like your attitude," Jake said, turning on his heel. "Fix it. Or stay out of my way."
Jake stormed out of the precinct into the evening rain. Jay watched him go, the chain of paperclips finally snapping in his hands.
The next morning, the call came in at 5:00 AM.
Jay arrived at the alleyway behind the bistro, his hands buried deep in his pockets.
The yellow tape flickered in the wind. He walked past the forensics team, his usual smirk gone, replaced by a mask of cold, blank indifference.
Jake was pinned down to the floor. There was a hole the size of a dinner plate punched clean through his abdomen. No struggle. No mess. Just a hollowed-out man staring at nothing.
Jay stood over the body, the silence of the alley pressing in on him. He reached down and picked up a small, jagged piece of metal from the ground—too clean to be trash.
"What the fuck, Jake," Jay whispered, his voice devoid of any humor. "I guess I'm taking it seriously now."
*********
The funeral was a blur of grey wool and forced handshakes. Jay stood at the back of the cemetery, leaning against a weathered headstone. He didn't cry.
He just chewed on a toothpick, watching the VPD brass offer hollow sympathies to Jake's mother.
"He was a good cop," Sergeant Miller muttered, stepping up beside Jay. "The best of us. What are you doing back here, Jay? You look like you're casing the place."
"I'm keeping the wind off my neck, Sarge," Jay replied, his voice flat. "And Jake wasn't the best of us. He was a loudmouth who didn't know when to quit. That's why he's in the box."
The Sergeant's face flushed a deep purple. "You've got a real dark streak, kid. Half the squad thinks you're too cold for this job. The other half thinks you're hiding something behind that 'who-cares' routine. Keep it up, and Internal Affairs will be the ones following you."
Jay offered a thin, ghost of a smile. "Tell them to bring donuts if they follow me. I hate being watched on an empty stomach."
As the crowd dispersed, Jay caught a glimpse of Sarah, a forensic tech, looking at him from across the grass. Her gaze was intense—not the usual look of professional courtesy. Jay looked away immediately, pulling his jacket tighter. Probably wondering how a guy with skin this pale and eyes this sunken hasn't been committed yet, he thought.
He left the place and headed straight to the View District. He didn't go to the office. He went to the alleyway where Micheal died.
The police tape was torn, fluttering like a warning flag. Jay ducked under it. He knelt exactly where the body had been.
The VPD had missed things; they always did. They looked for fingerprints and DNA. Jay looked for the impossible.
He pulled another jagged metal shard from his pocket—the one he'd pocketed before the crime scene unit arrived. It wasn't steel. It felt organic, like a calcified tooth, but it was sharper than any scalpel. He pressed it against the brick wall, and it slid into the masonry as if the stone were butter.
"You're still here," a voice echoed.
Jay didn't flinch. He turned his head slowly. A local informant named Silas was perched on a dumpster, swinging his legs. Silas was a twitchy man who lived on the periphery of the city's nightmares.
"I'm always here, Silas. What did you see the night my friend got hollowed out?"
Silas shook his head, his eyes wide and glassy. "Not a man, Jay. Not a man. It was like a shadow that had weight. It didn't walk; it drifted. And when it touched the detective... I heard it. It sounded like a vacuum. It didn't just kill him. It took something out of him."
"A hole in the stomach," Jay mused, standing up. "Empty."
"Not just empty," Silas whispered, sliding off the dumpster. "Harvested. You better watch out, Detective. You smell like the kind of person that thing likes. You smell... lonely."
Jay let out a short, dry bark of a laugh. "That thing has terrible taste, then."
He walked away, leaving Silas in the shadows. As Jay crossed the street, he felt a sudden, sharp prick at the base of his skull. He stopped under a flickering streetlamp. The light died just as he turned around.
In the sudden darkness, the metallic smell returned—cold, clinical, and ancient.
Jay reached into his inner coat pocket, not for his service weapon, but for a small, leather-bound notebook filled with sketches of things that didn't belong in this world.
"Come on then," Jay whispered into the dark. "I'm a lot harder to digest than Jake."