Silence used to cling to him, a heaviness that hung from his bones and shadowed his footsteps in his empty condo. Silence that carved him away from the rest of humanity, made up of the first steps he’d take into a crime scene, or the smell of arterial blood soaking into carpet, or dirt and mud mixing with the slip of decomp and decay. He couldn’t describe the exact way pooling blood shone mirror-black, left behind in the stillness after a murder. That knowledge lived like a hum under his skin.
