Day 893

Modern media likes to focus on death as it happens, the near-immediate crime scene and the ghost centuries later but rarely the moments in between when the gore is gone but the stains are stuck and the ghosts are barely formed half ideas not fully aware that they are aware.

Take for instance the house of a triple homicide - the usual father murders family and claims he went off the rails when he really had a mistress in another country and wanted a clean break, never thought he'd get caught. The works. While the bodies have been taken and the forensic clean-up crew has done their best there are still traces of death.

The couch cushions wouldn't come clean so the covers were removed leaving little white squares, faintly pink along one corner. It'll stink of bleach for months and when the next owners buy a new couch Terry Junior will poke anyone who tries to sit next to him, even though they can't see him.

There's a pale patch on the hardwood floor by the bay windows where they scrubbed too hard at the blood stain, removing the varnish too. That's where Mummy will stand to watch new people coming in, blocking the light somehow and casting a vague shadow.

All that's left of baby Chanelle is a faint grey ring around the sink where she drowned. It's such a small detail that the clean-up crew didn't bother to do more than a cursory sweep over with their bleach mix to remove any bacteria built up from the three weeks that the little body had been there. Sometimes when the next owners are cleaning their dishes they'll see a baby's face appear in the water or feel the air grow thick and harder to breathe. This will fade when they get a new sink.

Terry Junior and Mummy will always be with the house, seething silently as their murderer lives in a comfortable cell awaiting the eventual release into the arms of his mistress. He'll probably kill her too now that he has a taste for it. He's one of those people who gets hooked easily.