A large flower pot that had once been tucked into a corner of the living room now lay shattered, crushing the area where the deceased's head should have been. It fit snugly against his broad shoulders, mingling fresh blood, brain matter, dark soil, and porcelain shards across the floor.
Upstairs, Ivy's condition was just as grim. A single glance revealed the hopeless finality of the scene: the corpse face down, unshod feet sticking up, socks dusted over with gri.
Leah's voice broke the silence. "How could this happen? It's been less than an hour, and now another person is dead?"
The neighbors, gathered at the door with increasingly grim expressions, shared her dismay. Everyone was present except for Barbeque Brow and Marigold, who was notably absent.
"It's not been an hour. The blood's starting to congeal," Mr. Grant corrected. "He must have died twenty to thirty minutes after we found Ivy."
Elizabeth shut her eyes briefly. It seed Marigold had acted shortly after her return.
"Hey, Marigold isn't here," soone said.
This reminder stirred a flurry of uneasy glances, forming a silent consensus.
"If it was her... it makes sense," Ms. Chen said, her hand covering her nose. "Didn't she always suspect her husband was out to get her?"
"That's a relief," Jessica said, sighing. Seeing everyone turning to look at her, she quickly added, "No—I an, it's not a serial killer, thankfully, with two deaths back to back."
"We understand," Mr. Grant said soothingly.
Pink's grandma seed perplexed, her eyes scanning the chaotic scene. As Elizabeth wondered whether the old woman grasped the gravity of the situation, she suddenly blurted out, "Where's the child?"
The room fell silent. In the commotion, everyone had overlooked the couple's infant son. It took the dazed grandmother's inquiry to remind them.
"Their child, not even a year old," she continued, her voice trailing. "He's my grandson, nad Pink..."
Pink tugged on her sleeve from behind her. "Grandma, I'm here. It's Pink."
"Oh, oh," the grandma said, patting his hand.
The neighbors were silent for a mont, the house deathly still. The usual baby noises, often heard, seed missing for quite a while.
"We should look for the baby," Mr. Grant said. "We can't just leave an infant unattended."
The neighbors, doing their best to ignore the grim scene on the floor, tiptoed around the body and dispersed to search the house. In a small storage room repurposed into a nursery, Elizabeth noticed the telltale signs of Marigold's care—or lack thereof. Dried milk splatters on the mattress, a milk bottle caked with a grimy film, and the baby crib's railing, neurotically stripped of large chunks of paint and wood, scattered debris across the floor—each detail painting a stark picture of a caretaker's deteriorating ntal state.
As a pharmacist, Jetson's ho was well-equipped. Elizabeth found a portable first-aid kit in the bathroom and shalessly stuffed all the ointnts, alcohol, and bandages into her pocket. While the others were distracted, she closed the bathroom door and opened her character manual.
The number of people who truly believed in her psychic abilities had, predictably, decreased to three.
Those who passed away no longer counted as a target, so even if they believed in her when alive, they were deducted posthumously from her completion progress. Quite disheartening. Elizabeth snapped the manual shut and glanced behind the shower curtain to find it empty. Annoyed, she opened the door.
Where was the usually inconsolable child?
Despite their efforts, the baby remained missing. Regrouping in the living room, confusion prevailed. Pink's grandmother began frantically pulling open drawers as if the child might be folded like a pair of socks inside. Even Pink didn't bother to stop her. The group exchanged glances, shaking their heads and murmuring, "The child is missing."
"Who would take the child?" Jessica pondered aloud. "Did Marigold take her own chil..." Her voice faltered, laden with doubt. Given Marigold's condition, it was already fortunate she hadn't drowned the child. Why would she take the baby?
"There's nothing more we can do if we can't find him," Ms. Chen dismissed with a wave of her hand. "Cover him up, and let's go."
"No, wait a minute," Elizabeth said, her heart pounding as she gestured for everyone to stop.
---
When she groggily opened her eyes, she thought another day had passed. She had endured another bit of this agonizing life... Rubbing her eyes, she realized the date on her phone hadn't changed. She had only been asleep for half an hour.
Losing one's other half doesn't an you're lucky enough to only lose half of the world. No, she felt as if life was like a massive ice cream scoop, harshly plunging in, tearing out a large chunk of her existence, leaving her with just a thin layer of residue.
Her personality had drastically changed, a change she felt deep within.
Back then, to keep her husband—now her ex—she had tried everything. Candlelit dinners, shared baths, intimate monts; nothing could bridge the gap that had ford between them. Their conversations invariably circled back to the sa unresolved issue.
Had she not tried hard enough? She had undergone every conceivable dical test and treatnt, spending vast sums in a desperate chase for a flicker of hope, enduring treatnts no matter how uncomfortable or painful.
Ultimately, when all seed hopeless, it was her pain and desperation that drove him away.
Now, any recollection of those tis conjured an aching emptiness in her lower abdon, as if a black hole were consuming her from within.
"Your uterus refuses to carry a fetus," the doctor had said bluntly, seeing their confused expressions.
She slowly stood up, engulfed by mories—not of the divorce, but of monts just before she fell asleep—she realized she had taken sothing from her neighbor's house.
Looking down, she saw a baby's face in her arms.
Wait, had she stolen a baby?
Yes, it appeared she had. In a frenzied state, she believed a baby would solve her most pressing problems. Presenting the child as her own, conceived just before the divorce, seed a perfect cover for her infertility and might even lure her ex-husband back. So, when she saw the frenzied mother montarily leave the baby by the window, she couldn't resist.
Now, with a clear mind, the plan seed utterly flawed and ridiculous.
She scanned the room but saw no signs of the baby. Relieved, thinking it all a dream, she sank onto the sofa. But it felt different—firr. She imdiately tensed up.
When she reached into the cushions and pulled out the child by one leg, its skin was already blue, reminiscent of a squashed rat.
No, it wasn't necessarily her fault.
If her mory served, the child was silent when she took him, and shaking him hadn't awakened him. Perhaps he was already gone when she found him. Funnily enough, even if she was responsible, this wasn't the first child to die by her side.
She shuddered, hastily dropping the small corpse.
This wouldn't do. His parents would surely search for him. The building was small; suspicion would inevitably turn her way. What was her objective again? "Don't get caught."
That ant she could do whatever she pleased privately, as long as no one found out; she had always avoided neighbors with this principle in mind. But now, with a missing child, wouldn't the parents turn the building upside down?
Standing in the middle of the room, she pondered how to dispose of the body. She couldn't leave the apartnt building. Although she lived on the first floor, there was no yard to bury it; she never cooked, so the kitchen was empty. Wrapping it up and hoping for the best was out of the question.
She peeked through the curtains. The hallway was deserted; it seed no one was watching. As she eyed her doorstep, an idea ca to her.
After disposing of the baby's body, she sat restlessly in her apartnt, the noise from her neighbors—talking, dragging footsteps, slamming doors—keeping her on edge. A woman even shalessly shouted in the hallway, "Soone co quickly!" Each noise startled her.
'Screw this. Once I fix my marriage, I can finally escape this hellhole.'
The relentless tension drained her. Like a prisoner awaiting a verdict, she sat rigidly until fatigue overtook her, and she dozed off. It was late afternoon when a knock jolted her awake.
"Open up! It's your neighbors," ca a shout from outside.
'They're here; they must have noticed the child is missing.' Yet, they couldn't know she was involved; maybe they just wanted to check if she had seen anything. If she handled this right, they might not suspect her at all.
But when she opened, she was caught off guard.
The child's parents were absent, but nearly all the other neighbors were there, with Elizabeth, that witchy woman, leading the pack. They all seed to have a mutual understanding as if they ca for a unified reason. Gathering her composure, she asked, "What's going on?"
"Barbeque Brow," Elizabeth murmured, leaning in close. "The divination revealed the baby is here with you."
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