Traumadumping
It's been a couple of weeks since Laci got back to school finally. And way longer since her sister had gone missing, her parents had.. kind of moved on. Well, her dad sort of did. But her mother started going to the press, the local news, trying to spread the word, warn anyone else in their area about how it could happen to them next, and her dad, well, he stopped going to church, stopped praying, and now just.. stares at the TV. It doesn't matter if it's on or not. He's just become a zombie. And the police have slowed down. Turned their attention to other things like burglaries and petty thefts. "More important" things, they said. What could possibly be more important than this? Laci knew how selfish that way of thinking was. But she couldn't bring herself to care.
So, here she sits, with her best friend and her best friend's best friend/boyfriend-but-not-really. She doesn't like him. She can't place why. But she misses when it was just her and Heathen hanging out, without another person. It felt.. intimate, closer. But that doesn't matter now. She called Heathen and told her to come over and bring Micheal. So now, they all sit in her bedroom. It's bare compared to Heathen's, with perfectly clean walls, no mess, a cross hanging on the wall over her bed, and a prayer written in sharpie on the ceiling above her bed.
Glory Be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
"So," Heathen begins. It pulls Laci from her angry train of thought and briefly calms her down. "Why'd you tell us to come over? Moral support? A pep talk?" Laci smiled again, as brief as her calmness had been. She looks at Heathen for a while, at least a few seconds before she turns to Micheal, and then finally, she addresses them both. "I want to look for my sister myself. I'm tired of waiting and doing nothing. I know we should leave it to the police or.. whatever. But I just can't, anymore." Heathen nods thoughtfully while Micheal looks more concerned than anything, and he voices such, while Heathen looks at him. "Well, I can understand not wanting to wait, I mean, not exactly, but we really should leave it to the police—" Heathen cut him off, and Laci ended up looking between the two like she was watching two adults argue. "I think it's a good idea. If it'll help you, we should do it." Heathen gives Laci a smile, a lazy, assured smile, and now that Laci thinks about it, smells a bit like a skunk. Comparatively, Micheal stares at Heathen, looking unsure, before he reluctantly agrees with a nod. And for some reason, that upsets Laci more than anything. Why did he listen to Heathen, who is in, all senses of the word a stoner and a burnout, but not Laci, who's the actual affected party in this situation? Is he serious? "So it's settled then?" Laci sounded angrier than what was necessary, her teeth slightly grinding together when she spoke. And all the other two did was nod.
"Okay, great. So we'll need.. flashlights, and.. uhm.. protection, right? Just in case. Ya know?" Laci sounded calmer now, mainly because they had started listening to her again. Her and Micheal both looked to Heathen, much to her confusion. "Heathen, you have a gun, right?" Laci smiled at her, and Heathen nodded. But she still felt that douchey need to correct Laci. "It's technically my dad's, but yeah." Micheal chimed in, though his question was less like a question, and more like he was confirming a suspicion. Like he knew something about Heathen that Laci wouldn't. "And you know how to use it?" Heathen nodded, again, but this time moved her hand from side to side, as if to say 'kinda' without saying it. "That's good enough for me." Laci smiled, and Heathen smiled back, that same stupid, lazy smile that, for some reason, gave Laci butterflies. "We'll, uhm.." She pauses, trying to keep her flustered stuttering to herself. "We'll check the woods tonight. Whoever took her could have left her there, right?" Micheal looked as confused as he could have, but Heathen nodded.
"Why would whoever took Sandra just.. leave her in the woods?"
"They're a deranged individual, Micheal. Why wouldn't they?" Heathen gave Micheal a look, and he just accepted it. Finally.
It's been a few hours. It's dark. At the proposal of Micheal, they check the parks first, Heathen and Laci don't really understand why they listened to him, but it was probably safer to have a dude around anyway. They reach the forest, and it's a lot of hiking, and they end up off the main trail. "This is like a fucking horror movie." Heathen comments under her breath, and by far she's somehow the most prepped for a hike in the woods, Laci's wearing sneakers that are just the smallest bit too tight, and Micheal apparently decided to wear work boots that he hadn't broken in yet, which led to a lot of tripping. Laci smiles, watching as Micheal tripped again, but managed to catch himself by holding onto a tree. She was smiling both at Heathen's comment, and the fact that Micheal had tripped. "Yeah, maybe." Laci muttered, continuing to walk with them. "I wouldn't know, the last horror movie I watched was Possession at that one sleepover we had." Laci smiles, which Heathen happily returned. "It seemed like a good movie to show you, I dunno." Heathen shrugged. The conversation had died down, unnaturally, due to.. Micheal, noticing something in the trees. "Guys. Shut the fuck up. Just.. for one second." Laci's brow furrowed, and Heathen just looked mildly confused about where it was Micheal was looking, his eyes now glued to something as he trekked off further into the woods. Laci, without much of a second thought, followed behind him, Heathen took a few seconds before she followed them, complaining just slightly under her breath.
Until, of course, she heard a scream. An earth shattering kind of scream. And caught up to Laci and Micheal. Micheal was just.. frozen, while Laci was now on the ground, in front of the crucified remains of her sister. She was mangled. Her insides pooled at her feet, and she was nailed in such a way that kept her legs spread apart. She had burns all over her body. She had been cut between her legs. Or, that was the first assumption. The realization of what the source of the bleeding had been.. much, much worse. Micheal had turned away to vomit, and Heathen was now sitting next to Laci, hugging her while she cried.. and also held back her own urge to puke.
Laci had just gone from the police station to the detective agency the next day. She sat in Dutch Van Der Linde's office, next to Heathen, and her dad, who stood off to the side, maybe as a reminder for Dutch to stay on topic and not.. traumadump on this poor teenager who had just found her sister's corpse about his similarly kidnapped and murdered daughter. "I just went out to look for her. That's all.. I don't.. know why I thought she'd.. be okay if she was in the woods.. but I thought.." Laci trailed off, unable to look Dutch in the eyes as she started crying again. At least he at least had the decency to be kind to her, and.. not assumed that she had been the cause of her own sister's death, like the police had originally thought, and honestly, probably still thought. "I'm not blaming you, Ms. Whitlock." Dutch seemed to like to talk to his granddaughters friends like they were adults. Or maybe it was specific to this instance. Either way, it isn't unwelcome. "I can.. sympathize with the need to know, I promise you, I can. You didn't do nothing wrong but seek out answers." She had heard that before, from her church's pastor. But it felt less.. condescending coming from a detective. "The. The police think I killed Sandra." Laci choked out, but despite her tears, she wouldn't take the several offers for tissues she was getting from both Heathen and Dutch. "I know. And I also know that you would never do something like that to a person you were so close with." Laci nodded. Dutch turned to Heathen, who sat up straighter when she noticed he was looking at her. "How far out into the woods did you get?" Heathen glanced at Laci, then her dad, as if he magically knew, before she looked at Dutch again. "Well.. we were super off the trail by.. by the time we found.. y'know.. uh, I remember we turned left, and then right, once we were off the trail, but.. I can't really give specifics." Laci looked at Heathen past her tears, who gave her an awkward glance out of her peripheral vision before she looked back at Dutch. She acted like she was being interrogated anytime they spoke in his office specifically. Dutch nodded and then paused before shaking his head. "Right.. you two can go. Maybe get something to eat or.. something like that.