The Bodies Of Missing Girls Have Been Showing Up In Our Small Town, And The Locals Are Starting To Fear A ‘Time Traveling Serial Killer’

I guess this was Ray’s five percent of truth. He led me over to a grey body floating on top of the choppy river, surrounded by a collection of logs which kept it pinned into a little pool of cold water. I could tell from the length of the body’s jet black hair the victim was either that of a woman or a rock star.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch when Tray and a crew pulled the woman’s body into the shore with what looked like the kind of pool hook you would see hanging on the wall around a motel pool. I felt my stomach rumble and bumble while I stood with my back to the scene and pretended to be writing an email on my phone.

“Green,” I heard Tray’s drawl shoot up at me from the muddy banks of the river.

I ignored it. The fake email was much too important.

“Green…

“What?” I yelled back and turned around, looking and feeling thoroughly annoyed.

Tray’s lip quivered. His eyes were glassy.

“You’re gonna want to see this,” Tray announced.

I felt bad about yelling at Tray when I carefully walked down the steep banks of the river and tried not to slip on my ass. The whole situation had me under too much pressure and I was officially beginning to crack. Plus, I didn’t want to lay eyes upon another dead woman.

Maybe I had a sixth sense about this one which made me hesitate when Tray first summoned me, because this one would hit me harder than anything else I had ever seen in my entire life.

“She looks like you,” Tray whispered to me with boyish wonderment when I reached the flat bank of the river.

I felt vomit rush up to the back of my throat when I laid my eyes upon the face of the dead woman who laid dead and bloated, eyes red and pale arms to her sides on the dirty riverbank. I saw my mom’s body for the first time in almost 40 years.

I needed to talk to someone, even if it was Tray. We sat in my patrol car parked on the side of the quiet road chugging coffee and craving the chewing tobacco I forgot back at the station.

“I’m sorry Green,” Tray consoled me from behind the mesh metal which separated the front and back seats in my car. “That’s beyond fucked up.”

“Thanks Tray,” I replied and fought back tears for the 10th time since we got in the car. “Maybe we really do have a time-traveling killer or some shit. I know for a fact my mom was dead. I still remember flying all the way back to San Francisco to that fucking police station so they could tell me in-person because I didn’t believe it until then.”

“Did she look like she did then?”

My gut reaction was to scold Tray for asking a questions which could have been taken as insensitive, but I didn’t. I thought about what he asked and the last time I had seen my mother. She had been alive. I never actually saw her dead. The officers back in San Francisco never made me identify her and I couldn’t take asking to see her, I didn’t really want to anyway.

The last time I had saw her was before I left for the Navy and we went to dinner on the bay for our favorite meal of crab and clam chowder. That night always stuck in my head when darkness crept into my mind. It always reminded me of the simple miracle of enjoyment in life. My mom had lived the hardest of lives from what I knew, grew up on the street, and stayed there other than for a few brief periods with men who eventually turned unreliable and violent. Even after all that, there we were in a fancy restaurant, eating our luxury for probably only the second or third time in our lives – laughing, smiling and loving. I could tell my mom felt that her life was beyond repair, but if I could make something of myself, live a happy life, then it was enough. For just a night, we were just like everyone else.

Then it was gone and I never truly got that moment back for myself.