He pushes the door open with two fingers.
Inside is quiet.
The hallway smells wrong. Sweet and rotten at the same time.
His shoes stick slightly to the floor as he steps inside.
“Fuck,” he murmurs.
The living room is untouched. Kitchen the same. No drawers pulled out. No obvious chaos. That almost makes it worse — the deliberateness of it. Whoever’s been here wasn’t searching. They already knew where everything was.
He moves toward the bedroom.
The door is open.
The smell hits him first, sharp enough to make his eyes water. Then the sight lands, heavy and irreversible.
There is a fox laid out on his bed.
Its body is twisted unnaturally, fur matted dark with blood. The tail — impossibly bright, almost theatrical — has been severed and placed carefully across the pillow, like a gift. The sheets are soaked through, red blooming outward in obscene patterns.
Daniel doesn’t scream.
He doesn’t move.
His gaze drifts past the bed, to the wall beyond it.
Smeared there, in uneven, dripping letters, are two words.
DEADLINE
TONIGHT
Written in the fox’s blood.
Something inside him finally fractures.
A sound escapes him — not a sob, not quite a laugh. His hand comes up to his mouth too late, his stomach lurching as the reality of it crashes in. This isn’t a warning. It’s not a reminder.
It’s a promise.
He stumbles back, knocking into the doorframe, breath coming shallow and fast now. His phone vibrates again in his pocket, but he doesn’t need to look. He already knows.
From the bedroom window, he sees them.
A car idling at the end of the street. Dark. Unremarkable. Watching.
The brake lights flare red.
Then the car pulls away, taillights shrinking into the distance, as calm and unhurried as if they’ve just dropped off groceries.
Daniel sinks down onto the edge of the bed, careful not to touch the body, hands trembling now despite himself. The heat behind his eyes returns, sharper this time, no longer masquerading as irritation.
This is fear.
Pure and undeniable.
Tonight is no longer a deadline—it’s a reckoning.
