27 May 2012
It was a dark day as Detective Carlton Cuse wearily wandered into his latest crime scene. From the front door he could see one of the rooms cordoned off with yellow police tape. To say it was an ugly sight would have been an understatement. He peered inside from afar. It was a single bedroom, box-like and dusty, with strands of speckled light shooting through the cracks in the closed curtains. One of the beams of murky light hit a spot on the carpeted floor, illuminating the deep blood oozing across its surface. The entire floor was covered in the stuff; it was dumbfounding that any one person could produce so much of it.
Carlton yawned and rubbed his sleep-ridden eyes. So far he had seen no body, just the blood from it. He walked up to one of the police sergeants, Broyles? Was that his name?
“Sergeant,” Carlton called, “where is the body?”
Broyles didn’t even answer, he just pointed towards the ceiling of the blood-flooded room with a sombre look upon his face. He knew he wasn’t going to like this. As he slowly stepped forwards he began to hear the unmistakeable ‘drip drip drip’. He definitely wasn’t going to like this. He was at the edge of the open door now, looking down. He braced himself.
Strung to the ceiling were limbs and body parts, still attached to one another. They had been pulled to each of the four corners of the room and fixed to them. The man’s horrified face was bleeding from almost every orifice. His tendons were tightly pulled, and bits of bones were sticking out from every limb. He had been literally pulled apart.
Carlton had seen his fair share of crime scenes, but none as aggressively violent with such disgusting mutilation of a man’s body. He kept his cool and asked one of the pathologists for a spare all-in-one white suit. He had to peel his covered feet from the floor with every footstep. He made his way towards the computer, noticing that it was still on but with its bouncing screen saver text showing; “Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later”. He moved the mouse and the screensaver disappeared. It was on an internet page and appeared to have a number of general quotes from various different sources. Carlton scanned the page quickly with his brow furrowed but then moved on to the body again.
As he stared at the terrified head, he realised that there was something lodged in its mouth. ‘My favourite part of the job’ he thought sarcastically to himself. Slowly he reached into the gaping mouth with his thumb and forefinger. He got a hold of the object, but it seemed stuck. He gave it a gentle tug but it wouldn’t budge. Once more he tugged, this time much harder and out popped the iPhone, as well as a waterfall of blood. He just about jumped out of the way in time for it not to pour straight onto his head.
Carlton looked at the phone and pressed the home key, it was still working. No password either, bonus. He swiped across to unlock it and immediately understood what was going on.
“Sergeant!” He called.
“What is it detective?”
“It looks like the Copy Cat has struck again.”
Broyles’ eyes widened in horror at the words.
“You mean...”
“Yes. Our victim was posting overused quotes onto Opuss, forcing real poets and story writers out of the top rating system. The bastard. Looks like he’s eating his words now. Well, eating other people’s words more like.”
Broyles stood in silence, clearly worried.
“How should we proceed then, sir?”
Carlton paused for a second then said quietly,
“Maybe we should just let this one slide.”
“Good call, sir.”
Copy Cat Chronicles • Opuss № I