eulogy 4
Strawberry-blonde hair. 5'11. Twenty-seven. Pretty in the way a freshly carved wound is right before the infection sets in, right before she became a headline they couldn't scrub clean.
Last seen in a glistening, oil-slicked gown, not hers, not clean—it smelled like soil and rot, and it wasn't the kind of blood you can talk your way out of. It was the heavy, clotted black of a dying heart. Bloodlust hunger. Pariah. A woman they dissected with gossip until all that was left was the skeletal frame of their hatred.
CHLOE IS MISSING The question isn't whether she vanished, but how long her screams were muffled. The neighbors swear they heard something. Not a thud, not a cry, but a sickening, wet dragging sound, or maybe their guilt playing a trick at 3:07 a.m.—the hour of the blackest wake.
Her phone was found in the mud, screen shattered into a spiderweb of accusation, last message half typed: "He has the k—" and then silence, terminal and absolute.
The gown she wore was not torn, it was shredded, pulled apart with savage intent, stained with a shade of red that was almost black beneath the dew, a color only found in the abattoir.
No footprints. No weapon, just the silence of something meticulously cleaned. No struggle they're willing to admit to, but her late husband's family shifts in their seats. They smell of fear and cheap cologne. They know the truth is a splinter beneath their skin. Their alibis are too smooth, too rehearsed, they sound like a prayer recited to a demon.
Rumor says she was seen in the passenger seat of a dirty, rust-flecked pickup. Heading toward the Badlands, the ones where bodies don't get found, only the things that feast on them are remembered.
Another rumor says, she staged all of it, that she didn't want revenge, she wanted a sacrifice, that she wanted them panicked, guilty, ruined, and that the blood wasn't hers. It was the first offering. That she walked away smiling a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
But the truth... the real truth... is buried in a silence thick enough to coat your lungs in dust and despair.
Did someone take her? The answer is a promise of pain.
Maybe a man with too many secrets finally silenced the only person who could expose him—and enjoyed the process. Maybe a woman who'd been discarded one too many times, decided to shed her skin and become the vengeful thing that would hunt them all.
Maybe she's dead, rotting beneath the roots. Maybe she's watching, her breath cold on their necks.
But what we know is simple, undeniable, and paralyzing: Chloe is missing. And wherever she is... whether she's buried alive, running with the feral things, or drawing up a list of names in the dark... They should all be terrified. They should be praying.
