Blood on the Windowsill by Madison B
It would have been fine if there was no blood on the windowsill- because then nobody would have noticed the body behind the bushes six stories below. It was very well hidden, that was for sure, but as soon as Lea saw the blood, she saw a faint outline of someone in the leaves below. It was around four o’clock in the morning, so it wasn’t light, nor was anyone awake to see what Lea had just seen. The door had shut, after Lea had left it ajar to go see what the noise was, so there was no way of going back in. She was stuck on the landing of the sixth floor of flats in the early hours of the morning with a body just meters below.
The noise she had heard only a few minutes ago that had brought her out there was simply a bang. It wasn’t a big or loud one, and it wasn’t followed by footsteps or screaming but it was a bang nonetheless. Nobody else had heard it, it had seemed- either that or no one cared, which was also likely. Apart from the odd car driving past, the streets of suburban London were pretty much empty and there were no buses running at this time of day. Someone had fired something, Lea knew that, but there was no one about. There were no tire marks to indicate any cars that had pulled up recently, and there was no gun. There was nothing in fact that Lea could see other than the blue-grey inkiness of the surroundings.
That’s when the tapping started.
At first it was just a couple of taps to the right of Lea, and then slowly the tapping gradually moved further down the corridor, increasing slightly in speed and irregularity. Lea had nothing better to do at this time, she knew her mum slept with a hat on so there was no chance of hearing her knocks to be let back in, so she followed the taps.
The sound moved at a steady walking pace, stopping every so often at door frames and then reappearing again on the other side. The corridor curved and the tapping followed the direction of wall until it had reached the opposite balcony area around the other side of the block. The bush with the body could just about be seen from where Lea stood now, but the view was slightly obscured by the window ledges of the other residents. The tapping came to a stop, and suddenly the wind picked up slightly. That was odd, given it was in the middle of a dry summer, and the air had been still for the past few days. Lea looked around, wondering where the tapping had gone, she hadn’t often been over to this part of the block, so she started walking back towards the end she knew best.
She hadn’t yet walked off the balcony when her foot slipped on a small patch of water. Lea regained her balance and watched some more drips fall from a pipe onto the floorspace where she slipped. The drips fell with a gentle tap onto the ground, the pipes disappearing into the wall which assumably ran through the whole block where she lived.
Everyone was asleep, no one was using water at this time of day- so Lea tipped her head towards the pipe trying to see where the water was coming from.
And almost instantly something flew out of the pipe, grabbed her neck and shoved her towards the edge of the balcony, sending her flying off the edge with a short, sharp bang as she hit her head on the metal railings.
Lea lay behind the bushes until morning came and one of the residents woke up and saw her.