Holt’s movement suddenly froze, maintaining that bent-over posture, not moving for a long time.
The knocking sound rang out again, followed by a loud shout from outside the door: “I’m back, open up!”
I recognized that voice. It was Carter, Lavender’s boyfriend.
Holt hesitated for a moment, coughed twice, but still straightened up and shuffled towards the door.
He put on clean clothes, hid the knife behind his back, and stopped at the doorway.
My heart clenched into a knot. If Carter came in and started fighting with Holt, maybe I could use the chaos to escape.
Thinking this, I shifted my body closer to the edge of the bed, ready to run at any moment.
Holt hesitated for a while, then opened the door.
“It’s been so long, you’re still not done?” Carter outside the door said, slightly angry.
My heart sank. Carter actually knew about their affair. By the looks of it, the two of them had already planned this together.
Holt smoked silently.
It was then that Carter noticed the blood on Holt’s body and the nauseating smell of blood in the air. His face immediately turned pale.
“What… what did you do?”
Holt smiled eerily.
“Isn’t it obvious?””
Carter was stunned. He lunged forward and grabbed Holt by the collar.
“You… you killed her?” he sputtered. “I thought you said we were just messing around! How could you kill her?”
“I figured you didn’t care if she lived or died,” Holt replied, his face impassive. To him, murder seemed like an everyday occurrence.
Carter collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.
Holt’s eyes were cold as ice, but a smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Help me get rid of her. If the cops find out, you’ll be implicated too.”
Carter’s anger flared. He shouted, “Bullshit! You’re the one who killed her. I don’t know anything about this. Don’t try to drag me down with you!”
Holt suddenly lashed out, seizing Carter by the collar and pressing a knife to his throat.
“Let me rephrase that. You help me dispose of her, or I’ll kill you right now.”
Carter finally felt real fear. His lips trembled, too terrified to speak. He could only nod vigorously.
Holt released his grip and jerked his head, signaling Carter to get started.
Shaking like a leaf, Carter approached the bed. Even though he’d tried to brace himself, the gruesome sight of Lavender’s corpse made him retch violently.
“Useless piece of shit,” Holt muttered.
Holt coldly eyed him, picked up two legs, and turned to enter the kitchen.
I huddled under the bed, watching Carter vomit while chopping up the body.
Suddenly, Lavender’s dismembered limbs dropped to the floor again.
Carter bent down and suddenly froze.
He had spotted me hiding under the bed.
My eyes trembled as I raised a finger to my lips in a shushing gesture.
Carter instinctively glanced toward the kitchen, saying nothing.
His lips moved slightly, and I could make out what he said.
“Run, go call the police.”
I shuddered, nodding firmly.
Holt was still in the kitchen, forcefully chopping meat, completely unaware of the situation on my end.
I slowly crawled out from under the bed, walking barefoot across the blood-soaked floor.
Gradually moving towards the door.
The bed was only a few dozen steps from the exit, but for me now, it felt like a million miles.
As I walked, I kept my eyes fixed on the kitchen, terrified that Holt might suddenly turn and spot me.
Perhaps due to the loud noise of Holt’s meat chopping, combined with Carter’s deliberate creation of distracting sounds, I successfully escaped through the door. In the hallway, a gust of cold wind blew past, making me shiver uncontrollably. It was then that I realized my clothes were soaked through with sweat, as if they could be wrung out.
I wanted to run, but my legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the ground.
I don’t know if it was just my imagination, but I felt like the doorknob behind me moved slightly.
A powerful survival instinct awakened my deepest strength, and I scrambled up the stairs, half-crawling, half-rolling.
Lavender and I live in the same building; she’s on the tenth floor, and I’m on the eighteenth.
When I was buying the apartment, Lavender tried to convince me not to get the one on the eighteenth floor, saying it was unlucky.
But I’m not a superstitious person, and the eighteenth floor was much cheaper, so I bought it anyway.
I ran non-stop from the eleventh floor to the eighteenth, finally reaching my front door. Fumbling with the smart lock, I burst inside, feeling a bit safer at last.
I slapped myself hard across the face to make sure everything I’d just seen wasn’t a nightmare.
In my mind, Holt had always been a gentle man, the epitome of an honest person who would rather suffer himself than let others be wronged.
I found it impossible to connect him with a deranged killer.
And judging by his behavior, this probably wasn’t his first victim.
