Billy’s flashlight beam began to trace the contours of the wreckage, a hesitant exploration of a nightmare. It lingered on the sedan’s shattered windshield, a spiderweb of cracks obscuring whatever lay beyond. Then, his light moved to the crumpled passenger door. And that’s when he saw them. Figures. Two of them, slumped within the mangled confines of the car. One was slumped over the steering wheel, a dark, amorphous mass. The other was angled towards the passenger side, equally still, equally unnatural in posture. He couldn’t make out faces, not in the distorted light and the obscured windows, but the stillness was absolute. It was the profound, unmoving stillness of the permanent.
A cold dread began to coil in his gut, tightening its grip with every passing second. His mind, accustomed to the predictable rhythm of his work – the dirt, the grime, the eventual erasure of messes – found no purchase here. This was chaos. This was violence. His job was to clean up after people, to erase the evidence of their mistakes, their carelessness, their transgressions. But this… this was beyond anything he had ever encountered. This was a mess that reeked of death. He was a cleaner, not a detective, not a paramedic. His purpose was to bring order, to restore a semblance of cleanliness. But the scene before him was a testament to the utter absence of order, a monument to brutal disruption
He forced himself to take another step closer, his boots crunching on loose gravel and the finer grit of shattered glass. The air, thick with the metallic tang of blood, seemed to press in on him, suffocating him with its unspoken narrative of terror. He peered closer at the sedan, his flashlight beam casting long, distorted shadows that danced with the stillness of the wreckage. The passenger window was completely gone, leaving an open void. He could see more clearly now, and the sight sent a fresh wave of revulsion through him. The passenger, a woman, was slumped against the deflated airbag, her head tilted at an impossible angle. Her face was obscured by shadow and matted hair, but the limpness of her form, the unnatural stillness, spoke volumes. There was no doubt. They were dead.
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