Room#23 [2]

Dark.

The first thing Xiajun noticed that it was dark inside.

He pulled out a small flashlight from his pocket and searched the paint-chipped walls for a light switch. When he did, he flicked it down and a small light bulb in the middle of the irregularly shaped room cast an eerie, yellow glow around.

When Xiajun's eyes had adjusted to the low light, he discovered several things. First, the room looked exactly the same it had looked 5 months ago, in the photographs.

There was an ugly green carpet on the floor with a large blood-stain in the middle where the body once had bled out. Xiajun screwed up his face in disgust. There, on the small kitchen counter, was a small basin which wouldn't work even when Zhaohui moved forward to try. In the cupboards overhead was nothing, nothing at all.

The investigators must've cleaned it all out, Xiajun thought bitterly to himself. And they didn't provide him with the goods as well, the brats.

Anyways, Xiajun looked around carefully and mentally marked the spots where the knife had once been, on the counter with the rest of them, and the place where the woman would've slept if she was still amongst them, the far right side of the room on the thin mattress which the investigators had cleaned out as well.

There was a little door just big enough for Xiajun to pass through on the left side of the room which perhaps led to the tiny, box bathroom. Zhaohui opened it to check it out but returned upon finding nothing interesting in there.

"Just a cracked, old bathroom," he said after retreating into the room. "The water supply's been cut off there too."

Still, as a detective, Xiajun decided to take a look. You never know what you may find.

As Xiajun eased back the door, he found himself in a dark, smelly bathroom. He was only able to make out that this was a bathroom because the trickle of light from the main room cast cast shadows of the indeed cracked porcelain. Xiajun flicked on his flashlight and raised his eyebrows at what he saw.

There, on the small toilet with its lid down, sat a woman. She had her feet up and her head was resting on her knees, a position one took when tired. The woman looked just like she had in the photographs Xiajun had access to, though in the photos, she lay sprawled in a pool of blood with a knife stabbed into her chest.

When Xiajun scoffed, the woman raised her blue tinted head and stared straight into Xiajun's eyes. Though not a word was spoken between them, the woman knew at once that this man could see her.

Slowly, the woman lowered her legs one by one and stood up.

Xiajun gulped but closed the door on her and retreated into the main room.

"Nothing interesting in there at all," he said weakly.