Creepy Hungover

Creepy Hungover
The police station smelled of stale coffee and damp papers, the kind of place where secrets clung to the walls like mold. The officers moved with deliberate heaviness, as if every step carried the weight of the missing. They had one man in the interrogation room that night—Mr. Allan Gomez.
Alisha sat in the far corner, her notepad ready, her eyes sharp. Allan looked calm, too calm, as though he had been waiting for this moment. His graying hair was slicked back, his dark eyes unreadable.
The lead detective leaned forward. “Mr. Gomez, we know you and Adelia Murray had a past. You were close.”
“Yes,” Allan answered, his voice soft, steady. “Yes but I haven’t spoken to her in over a months.”
“You expect us to believe that?” the detective pressed.
Allan smiled faintly, a gesture that made Alisha’s stomach churn. “You can believe what you like, officer. But the truth remains—I had nothing to do with her disappearance.”
The room grew colder. Papers fluttered on the table as though a draft had slipped in unseen. The detective shifted uncomfortably but continued. “Do you know why people think of you when women vanish?”
Allan’s eyes flashed. “Because people need monsters. And when they can’t find them, they invent them.”
Hours dragged on. They asked about his past, his whereabouts, his ties to the other missing women. But no matter how hard they pushed, Allan had alibis. Witnesses. Records. His story lined up too neatly. In the end, they had nothing to pin on him.
When the interrogation ended, Allan walked out free, his steps slow and measured, as if he knew the world still whispered his name in shadows.
But now the investigation’s focus shifted—toward Jessie Murray.
Rumors spread quickly in small towns. Jessie was Adelia’s younger sister, always seen in the background, always compared to Adelia’s beauty, her grace, her charm. Jealousy was an easy motive. The police leaned on it. People whispered in markets and bars—Jessie must have snapped, must have taken her sister out of envy.
Alisha’s pen scraped furiously in her notebook. Her instincts screamed at her that Jessie wasn’t the real answer. It was too convenient, too clean. But convenience had a way of blinding desperate men.
By the time she left the station, the sky had darkened, the cold pressing against her bones. Her head throbbed from the hours of listening, of chasing shadows. She needed a drink.
The neon sign of Dave’s Bar flickered like a dying heartbeat when she arrived. Inside, the air was thick with smoke and liquor, laughter trying too hard to drown out despair. Dave spotted her the moment she walked in.
“Alisha,” he said warmly, guiding her to a corner booth. “Rough night?”
She let out a bitter laugh. “Something like that.”
Dave brought two glasses, poured whiskey until it sloshed at the rim. He sat across from her, his dark eyes softer than she had seen all day.
“You’ve been chasing this case for months,” he said, lifting his glass. “Why not drop it? Write about politics, the mayor’s stupid road project—anything else.”
Alisha drank deep, the burn steadying her nerves. “Because those eleven women deserve better. They vanished, Dave. And no one’s giving them a voice.”
“You think digging will change that?” he asked, a shadow passing over his face.
Her grip tightened on the glass. “I think if I stop, whoever is doing this wins. And worse, I’m afraid when December comes… another woman will vanish.”
The bar quieted around them, as though her words had stolen the noise from the room. Somewhere near the jukebox, a glass shattered, sharp and sudden, but no one claimed it.
Dave leaned closer, lowering his voice. “December. You really believe this is part of a pattern?”
She nodded. “Eleven women. All gone between September and November, each year. But no December yet. It feels like a drumbeat leading to something worse.”
Dave rubbed his jaw. “You’re going to get yourself in trouble, Alisha. People don’t like when reporters dig too deep.”
She forced a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe trouble’s already here.”
For a long moment, they sat in silence. The bar’s lights flickered, the shadows stretching longer, almost alive. Alisha shivered though no wind touched her.
Then Dave sighed. “Just… promise me one thing. If you feel like someone’s watching, don’t ignore it. Sometimes the danger isn’t in what you uncover—it’s in who notices you’re uncovering it.”
She looked at him, uneasy. “What do you mean?”
But Dave didn’t answer. He drained his glass and stood, heading behind the bar. His back seemed heavier than usual, like he carried secrets she wasn’t meant to touch.
Alisha stared down at her drink, her reflection rippling in the amber liquid. For the first time, she wondered if she had underestimated how close the darkness really was.
Somewhere outside, in the cold November air, a church bell tolled once, sharp and hollow.
And though the sound should have faded, Alisha swore she still heard it—echoing, dragging, like a rope swinging in the night.
She pressed her palms flat against the bar counter, the wood cold and sticky under her skin, but even grounding herself didn’t help. The sound lingered in her ears, circling her mind like a predator. Dave glanced at her with concern, his hand tightening around his glass.
“Alisha… are you okay?” he asked softly, his voice careful, almost hushed, as though he, too, felt the heaviness pressing into the room.
Her throat was dry, but she forced herself to nod. “Yeah. Just… tired,” she whispered, though she didn’t believe her own words. Her eyes darted to the bar door, half-expecting to see someone—or something—waiting there.
The neon sign outside flickered, bathing the windows in erratic bursts of red. Each pulse of light stretched the shadows longer, until they seemed to crawl toward her feet. She gripped Dave’s wrist suddenly, startling him.
“Promise me,” she hissed, her eyes wide, “if another woman disappears this December, you’ll help me. You won’t tell me to stop.”
Dave swallowed hard, searching her face. The dragging sound swelled again, louder, closer—like something unseen was already answering her plea.