Hit Read Free

lens through the crack in the door.
    My girlfriends won’t believe the people I saw tonight.
    She realised that the man was arguing with someone. It was odd because his lanky body was unclothed from the waist up, save for a glinting gold watch and some rings, and yet the Asian-looking man he was disagreeing with was fully dressed in a collared shirt and dress pants. Meaghan squinted and cocked her head to one side: something was wrong with what she was seeing. Her heart began pounding in her chest even before her mind fully registered the source of her horror.
    The scene through the doorway came into focus slowly, and with awful clarity. Meaghan’s breath caught in her throat, her arm suspended motionlessly as she recorded everything on digital video.
    Eyes…staring…
    A naked girl lay prone on an unmade bed just inside the doorway. The young face—so close that Meaghan could have reached out and touched it—was turned at an awkward angle in Meaghan’s direction, chin buried in a pillow, the dark eyes wide open, staring lifelessly, her mouth gaping in an awful silent scream. A small manicured hand rested inches from where Meaghan stood in the dark hall, the fingers outstretched as if the girl had been reaching for the doorknob in her final breath, a heavy black leather tie dangling from the wrist. A syringe lay on the floor along with fallen bed cushions and an upturned water bottle, near the opening inthe doorway. From the bedroom the musty scent of sex mixed with a horrible, sickly sweet odour Meaghan had not encountered before.
    Death.
    Meaghan’s stomach lurched. She brought her hand down, stopping the recording. She could not believe what she was seeing.
    Oh my God…
    The girl on the bed was Asian in appearance and young. Too young. Was she twelve? Fourteen? Dark glossy hair fanned out around her head as she lay stomach down, back and buttocks fully exposed, her diminutive body clothed only in a frilly hot-pink garterbelt that contrasted sharply with the grim setting and the bluey-ashen pallor of her skin. A large intricate tattoo that seemed out of place coloured her lower back in a pattern of lines or script that Meaghan could not make out.
    She wanted to tell herself that this girl could simply be unconscious, but those staring eyes were too unresponsive. And besides, death was immediately recognisable: no sleep was so grim and terrible on an otherwise fair face; no living state left a person so empty-looking.
    The famous man she had been recording stood at the foot of the bed arguing animatedly with the other man, neither of them bothering to attempt to revive the girl or cover her nakedness. The girl’s body looked so small and vulnerable in death, her limbs splayed out. Andthose unseeing eyes. The eyes seemed to look at Meaghan. Above the dead girl, the men were engaged in a hushed but heated argument—Meaghan could tell that they did not wish to be overheard. The implications of what she was witnessing were enormous, and difficult to fathom, particularly in her state.
    What is that guy doing there with a girl so young and so…dead?
    ‘Hey!’
    A man’s booming voice yelled at her from the hallway behind. Meaghan jumped with fright at the sound, letting out a shocked yelp. Instinctively she palmed her phone behind her back and whirled around to face the voice. It belonged to a strong, even-featured young man who was barely two metres away and closing fast. Behind her the bedroom door was slammed shut from the inside. She heard a scuffle within as the inhabitants realised they had been spotted. Meaghan wore a bold smile for the stranger in the hallway while her fingers worked the buttons of the mobile keypad behind her back, trying to send a video of the dead girl to the first person listed in her phone book.
    Should she tell this stranger what she had seen?
    ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked accusingly, standing over her aggressively.
    She continued pressing buttons, with no time to