The Station
The police station was exactly as Iris remembered it from her previous visit — gray walls, fluorescent lights, the smell of coffee and fear. But this time, she wasn’t sitting across from Detective Walsh in an interview room. This time, she was being led through the booking area in handcuffs, her wrists already raw from the metal.
The officers didn’t speak to her. They didn’t meet her eyes. They processed her like a piece of cargo — fingerprints, photographs, paperwork. They took her coat, her shoes, her belt. They gave her a jumpsuit the color of vomit and led her to a holding cell.
The cell was small. Concrete walls. A metal bench. A toilet without a seat. The door closed behind her with a sound like a tomb sealing shut.
Iris sat on the bench and put her head in her hands.
The smile from the rearview mirror was still burned into her mind. Her smile. But not hers. Wrong. Twisted. Hungry.
Was that me? she thought. Or was it the thing inside me?
The voice didn’t answer.
It had been silent since she threw away the vial.
She didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one.
She didn’t know how long she sat there.
Minutes. Hours. Time moved differently in the cell — thick and slow, like wading through mud. She heard footsteps in the hallway, muffled voices, the clang of doors. She didn’t look up.
A key turned in the lock.
The door opened.
Detective Walsh stood in the doorway.
“Come with me.”
The interview room was the same as before. Gray walls. Metal table. Two chairs. A camera in the corner, its red light blinking.
Iris sat in the same chair she had sat in days ago, when she was a witness, not a suspect. The handcuffs were removed, but the marks remained — red lines circling her wrists like bracelets of blood.
Detective Walsh sat across from her. She placed a recorder on the table and pressed a button.
“This is Detective Marcy Walsh, interviewing Iris Cole. Ms. Cole, you’ve been advised of your rights. Do you understand them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish to speak with me without an attorney present?”
Iris hesitated.
The voice whispered: Say no.
But the voice was faint, distant, like an echo from the bottom of a well.
“No,” Iris said. “I’ll talk.”
The detective opened a file.
Inside, photographs. Crime scenes. Bodies.
Iris looked away.
“Ms. Cole, I’m going to show you some images. I need you to look at them.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I understand. But I need you to.”
Iris forced herself to look.
The first photograph showed a woman in her thirties, dark hair, dark eyes. Her throat was bruised, her face frozen in an expression of terror.
“Her name was Elena Vance. She was strangled in her apartment four days ago. Her neighbor saw you enter the building around midnight.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“The fingerprint on her throat says otherwise.”
Iris’s hands trembled.
The detective slid another photograph across the table.
A man this time. Forties. Broad shoulders. A tattoo on his neck.
“His name was David Marsh. He was killed in 2001. His body was found in his car, parked behind a bar on the south side. Your fingerprints were found on the steering wheel.”
“I was twenty-two years old in 2001. I was in college.”
“We verified your alibi. You were registered for classes. But your roommate at the time said you were gone for three days. She didn’t know where.”
“I don’t remember.”
The detective slid another photograph.
Another victim. Another face. Another death.
“His name was Marcus Webb. 2007. He was found in his apartment, strangled with a necktie. Your fingerprints were on the tie.”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
The detective slid another photograph.
And another.
And another.
By the time she finished, there were twelve photographs spread across the table. Twelve faces. Twelve lives. Twelve deaths.
Detective Walsh leaned back.
“Twelve victims, Ms. Cole. Twelve murders spanning twenty years. And your fingerprints are on every single one of them.”
Iris stared at the faces.
She didn’t recognize any of them.
But the voice was stirring, clawing its way up from the darkness.
You know them, it whispered.
No.
You know them all. Their names. Their faces. Their screams.
Stop.
You enjoyed killing them.
STOP.
“Ms. Cole? Are you alright?”
Iris looked up. The detective’s face was blurred, her voice distant.
“I didn’t kill them,” Iris said.
“Then who did?”
Iris opened her mouth to answer.
But the voice spoke first.
I did.
The lights flickered.
The camera in the corner sparked and died.
Detective Walsh stood up, her hand on her weapon.
“What’s happening?”
Iris smiled.
It was not her smile.
You wanted to know who killed them, the voice said, through Iris’s lips. It was me.
The detective stepped back.
“Who are you?”
The thing inside Iris laughed.
I’m the part of her she tried to kill. The part that survived. The part that always survives.
The lights went out.
The room was plunged into darkness.
Iris heard the detective fumbling for her radio, heard the static, heard the panic in her voice.
Then she heard the scream.
Not the detective’s.
Her own.
And when the lights came back on, Iris was alone in the room.
The door was open.
Detective Walsh was gone.
And there was blood on Iris’s hands.