Gemotions

My hands were shaking so violently I could barely hold the phone. The detective’s voice, calm and clinical, had just described the scene: the shadows, the bloodstains, the… the details I couldn't bear to replay in my head. I paced the kitchen, the linoleum cold beneath my bare feet. A wave of nausea hit me, and I clapped a hand over my mouth, fighting the urge to vomit.

Every corner of my home, now tainted, seemed to be closing in. I could almost *feel* the echoes of the past, the unseen presence. My fingers twitched, desperate to… to do something, anything, to make it all disappear. To scrub the memories from the very walls.

"This can't be real," I whispered into the phone, my voice thin and reedy. I slumped onto the counter, the cool granite a small comfort against the heat that consumed my chest. I wanted to scream, to run.