Chapter Three
#3 of Crystal Lake
Crime Thriller following the citizens of the city of Crystal Lake, an Island City on the diverse planet of Terra.
Chapter Three
It was getting late, the sun was getting lower and lower in the sky as Janus drove home towards his home on the outskirts of the northwest pier of the city. He had gone through his head a thousand times about if he was going to tell his wife about his affair with his boss.
He had been married for almost five years and this was the first time he had messed up.
He had messed up in a big way...
He tried going over numerous excuses for being late home, as it was soon getting to about seven o'clock and he was supposed to be home almost an hour ago. He knew that the plans for the evening had been ruined but that was usually the case anyway when he had to work that.
"Cassata will understand..." he told himself as cars began to put on their headlights to counter the blanket of darkness which was now falling on the city. "She's used to me working late... she'll understand".
Despite the recent invention of anti-gravity shuttles, only the richest could afford them as a mode of travel so the rest of the working population had to make do with conventional combustion automobiles that had been in service for many years.
It was almost dark as Janus pulled into the driveway of his home, it was a small detached house backing onto the waterfront, with a neat green front garden and drive. They had only moved into the house last year, before which having to make due with a flat downtown until they both had enough money to buy a nice house.
This was the dream that Janus had worked so hard for, all his life.
He had originally met Cassata, the person who would become his wife on nightclub bust almost seven years earlier. The police had conducted a raid on a rave in a converted warehouse on the docks which had been organised by Cassata, a well respected artist who had a wide variety of followers. However they had fallen in love almost instantly and since Cassata was eventually cleared of what turned out to be false allegations of drug trafficking, she and Janus had grown close, meeting in a more personal setting.
Now his "perfect dream" lied in ruins before him, all because of one man... Janus did not know if he should have felt guilty or violated, expecting some great resolution that absolved him of his sin.
He had always had a somewhat naive view of justice, believing that good would always triumph over evil but during his time on the force he had learnt that good and evil were just "words" and had vastly different meanings to different people and sometimes, doing the wrong thing for the right reason could be just as bad as doing the wrong thing outright.
Today he had learnt a lesson...
Justice was some lame idea that somebody had made up to give meaning to the chaotic nature of animals and now... it just seemed to him that Barrus would go on living his life without a care in the world of what he had just done.
And that made Janus angry...
He sat outside in the car for a few minutes, thinking over what he should say to his partner and through all the multiple scenarios that he had played out in his head... not one would help him.
He approached the door, surprised to see that the lounge light was not on. Usually his wife would be there, watching the day's news. But this time there was not a trace of that Vulnira in sight. Janus could see in slightly through the window, the television was not on and there was an eerie chill in the air.
Maybe she had gone out without him?
Janus shrugged on the explanations, saving them for later. He reached in his pocket and took out his keys to unlock the door however as he reached out for the door, it blew ever so slightly open.
Why was the door open?
He began to get very suspicious as he entered the door and into the hallway which was windowless, small and dark without the lights on. The dying light of the sun shone through the kitchen window at the far end of the hall.
"Hello..? Cassata?" he called out into the darkness, hoping to hear some kind of reply. He could not believe that Cassata would be so incompetent as to not lock the door as she headed out. Though what other explanation could there be?
After a few seconds of silence, there was a few bumps coming from the upstairs bedroom, Janus heard them with alarm and reached into his pocket, drawing his sidearm and proceeding slowly and quietly up the stairs.
It seemed completely logical to him that they might be being burgled.
He decided not to call out anymore as they might alert whoever was up there to his whereabouts in the house, even if they heard the opening call. Although from the frequency of the bumps in the floor upstairs, he could guess that they probably had not.
He edged ever closer up the stairs as the sounds became more and more clear, a strange moist sound came from the bedroom. It was difficult to describe and not something that Janus had ever heard before but again, he was able to deduce that he was probably dealing with just one person.
Janus headed down the landing at the top of the stairs and towards the bedroom, edging ever closer to the sound that was coming from the other side of the door. It was a truly disgusting sound, like squelching but more raspy.
The door opened and Janus walked inside the bedroom and the sight that befell him, drove him almost to shock and terror.
On the floor was the body of his wife, Cassata with another figure standing over her, bending their head down with their back towards Janus so they did not see him enter. He had no idea what they were doing and for a moment he thought that maybe his wife had been seeing somebody else and he had caught them but then he saw it...
The figure was wearing a dark hooded coat so Janus was unable to make out his face until he turned around. It was the face of a wolf, more specially another type of Canid species, someone that Janus had never seen before and his jaws were dripping with blood.
He had been eating Cassata!
Janus recognised this straight away, he was a Yiff junkie, same as the ones that Janus had encountered before but this one was in his house. He thought that paradise could never be so bitter.
He looked at the body of his wife with a large bite wound on the side of her neck which was heavily leaking blood onto the carpet. Her eyes were open in shock and terror. There was nothing he could do, the wolf had driven its fangs deep into a main artery. She was already gone.
At that moment, Janus had no idea how he should be feeling, looking into the crazy, bloodshot eyes of the attacker, he held out his handgun with no remorse.
He knew if he tried, he could have taken him alive...
No... He didn't want to...
A gunshot echoed in the room as the bullet impacted right between the eyes of the junkie, killing him instantly and turning him into a head on the floor. Janus just stood, silently... his wife was dead. Perhaps if he had gotten here sooner...
Perhaps if he hadn't been...
"Ohhhhhh GGGGOOOODDD!" exclaimed Janus as he let out a roar of anguish and moved towards the body of his world, his love... everything that he had wanted out of life. He had failed her... He had failed him because he was enjoying himself with another man.
At that moment, he felt he could have taken a gun to his own head. He had nothing left to live for as the most important person in his life was taken away from him. Nothing would ever cleanse him of this pain... of this guilt.
However... he rose to his feet after holding his dead wife in his arms for several hours. He needed to get to the bottom of this drug... to stem the supply of it. It had taken his wife away from him and he wanted something much more than an outdated sense of honor and justice.
He wanted to find the people who did this and make them pay...
He wanted one thing...
Revenge...