The Fascinating Files of Claudia Broadstad

“So let me get this straight, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. So you didn’t notice the body until after you took a nap?!” she asked, Claudia’s voice snapped at the end. After reading his file, she knew everything worth knowing about him. In the twenty years since his birth he had managed to become an unemployed, uneducated, recovering shoplifter. She folded her arms and adjusted her body in the hard chair.

He licked his lips and winked at her, “That’s what I told you. Why don’t you believe me?” the young man asked as his sharp jaw popped and his nostrils flared up.

He slowly strangled Claudia with his tacky brown eyes. Her mocha coffee colored skin wrapped in dark denim pants, purple shirt and lime green scarf enticed him. She didn’t appreciate him looking at her with such hunger. She contemplated stopping his attack by stepping on his face with her plaid Converse shoes; however, she refrained due to the situation.

She snapped her fingers, unraveling the man’s eyes from her body, “How long had you two been living here together?”

“Four months,” he answered as his eyes targeted a small window next to him. A tiny drop of water expelled out and down his face as he swallowed hard. It wasn’t the tear of a man who had lost his love but a boy who was afraid of the consequences of his actions. Looking back for her reaction, he rubbed the tear deep into his face.

Claudia sighed as she pushed her hands over the wild mess of black hair on her head. He watched as she got up from the table and walked across the room. Feeling his intrusive eyes she looked back at him. They stared at each other for a beat before he abruptly looked away. He couldn’t stand to look at her while she stood next to the body.

The victim’s arms swayed in the air lightly as an open window pulled in a warm gust. She hung there for about three hours before her boyfriend came home and noticed her (after his supposed nap in the bedroom right next to the kitchen). Her lover screamed so loud the neighbors thought they were fighting again. Despite his best efforts to convince the badge wearing audience of his innocence, he was the prime and only suspect.

Claudia surveyed the body as she wrote down every lie he told her into a wrinkled college ruled notebook. She inhaled a deep breath but quickly threw it up. The sweaty inhospitable room was the first clue in the crime. Whoever this victim was, her life wasn’t ripped away from her for her money.

The woman’s dirty white shirt and potato brown pants didn’t easily hide her boney frame. Her petite body hadn’t been properly fed in about three weeks. An eating disorder was certain; drug use was likely too. No drug had the right amount of euphoria needed to keep her from feeling the physical and emotional torture brought on by the attack.

Her slightly ajar mouth suggested she gasped for air or asked her attacker to stop. Sections of her blonde hair twisted their way into the phone cords used to hang her from the ceiling fan. Her eyes were wide open like she was surprised that she was going to die. The gun shot holes outpouring blood onto the floor turned her shock into reality.