Chapter 4

Where did the salty sea breeze go?

My senses are empty;

A void surrounds me.

Am I alone?

She wakes up, the alarm flashing angrily reminding her that she had hit snooze a dozen times too many without realizing it. With an elegant arch of her shapely back; like a panther waking from her beauty nap, she slowly slid out of her blood-red flannel sheets.

Another morning…

With grace and snake like smoothness, she made her way down the sunlit hallway.

I need a cigarette… Instinctually she traced her slim cherry polished index finger over her slightly pouty, painted lips. After rummaging through her polished, patent-leather, oversized tote she was able to find her packet of Camels and a silvery lighter with the initials DH.

Oh right… Ada would want this back.

As though on cue, her phone rang. The sexy voice of Nina filled the room: “I need some sugaaa in my bowl…” Reluctantly she interrupts Nina’s melodious blues with a click of the send button.

“Hello?” Her voice was raspy and slightly horse from the previous late night of tequila shots and multiple packets of Camels. I really should cut back…

“Sharlet! You… You get home okay?”

“Hey Meg, yeah I’m dehydrated as hell but aside from that I’m perfectly fine. What’s up?” Her voice contained as light hint of annoyance. Sharlet hated when people worried about her. There is always the underline expectation that one day she would need to “look out” for the other person as well. Sharlet cared about no one expect for her self. She let out a loud sigh as she began to tune out Meg’s drawn out monologue about how a John had screwed her and then didn’t pay. What an idiot!

She looked up and stared at her reflection from her wall to ceiling gold gilded mirror. She was striking despite her short boyish hair cut. Her platinum tuffs fluttered and framed her delicate cherub-like face. She always kept it short since she was 14, the age when she entered the business. Short hair made it easy to ware wigs, and wigs helped to both boost her popularity and not to mention give her a certain level of “camouflage” in case the Pigs were out. However, no matter how much she changed her hair and various tinseled swatches of fabric, her piercing, glacier-blue eyes will always betray her. They almost appeared to emit their own azure glow which will draw in both men and women alike.

“Sharlet, are you even listening?!” Meg hissed her voice was a mixture of hysteria and disbelief.

“What? Sorry I was checking myself out. I look fab considering I don’t even remember how I got home.” Sharlet let out a soft chuckled.

“Well that’s the thing! I saw you last night, after I ran out after my last John who didn't pay, you jumped! You jumped from the hotel balcony into the sea!”

“What the hell are you talking about? All I remember was talking to this chick name Ada. She gave me her lighter. Told me that it’ll save my life one day. By the way did you get her number? I think I may have passed out before then.”

“The fuck you talking about? Ada, who the hell was Ada? You jumped Sharlet from a fucking 10 story hotel into the fucking ocean and you are telling me you got home, without a scratch?!”

“Look Meg, I don’t know what you are on or smoking but I’m standing in my bedroom looking at myself in the mirror and I’m perfectly fine. Here, I’ll take a picture and send it to you so you can finally stop spewing drug-induced shit at me.” Sharlet pressed the hang up button and turned her phone around so that the black camera eye was facing her. She stared into it and formed her usual sexy, pouty grin.

The phone camera flashed.

The world around her faded...

Only the distant scent of the salty sea remained.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Awe damn it! This is the second one in less than a week!” Jake muttered as he quickly shoved the body bag closed.

He hated looking at bodies, especially those of beautiful women. “It just ain’t right…” He sighed. Her eyes were still open. They were hauntingly beautiful. “Hey Boss, do ya think this one is tied in with the Ada case?”

I wasn’t listening to Jake. My attention was fixed on the hysterical women being examined by the local police. “I’m telling you I talked to her! I called Sharlet this morning. She said she was at home, safe and that she needed to return some damn lighter to a person named Ada! It was her voice! Look I even have it logged in my phone!”

“Miss you mean to tell me that at 10:24am this morning you called this women who you saw jump off the 10th floor balcony last night at around midnight?”

“Yes! Please believe me. I’d have called the police earlier but I was really out of it myself and thought that I had hallucinated the whole thing. Then I called her and she said she was fine. Honest! I never would thought that she’d already been dead for over ten hours! Oh my God! What the fuck is going on! Please! Please believe me!”

“Excuse me, can I talk to her for a minute?” I looked down at the puffy eyed women. She was scantly clad in a red sheer silky dress. Her cheap makeup smeared face; run-filled, black stocking; and messy, over-teased, badly bleached blond hair made her looked like something out of the Thriller music video.

“Hi, my name is Ed Sullivan I’m apart of the special investigation section A. I overheard your conversation. You said you talked to her? The dead women?”

“Yes! I did. I called her look!” She shoved her phone at me. Her call log covered the screen and on the top of list was the name Sharlet.

Suddenly, an eerie chime was emitted from the phone followed by the appearing of a message:

You have a photo message.

Without thinking I clicked the accept button.

I froze.

There she was.

The same soft blond hair, angelic face; but her eyes…

They were soulless… Just like Ada’s eyes.

I looked down at the time stamp, it said: Photo sent by Sharlet—Today, 10:30am.