Out of the dozen or so properties I help inspect, there wasn't a single building I dreaded more than this place. It had been well over two years since I'd been called to the Holly Way Apartments. It was an old sort-of refurbished three story building deep in western down town, among the other derelict, half abandoned high-rises.

It was a somewhat urgent call from the manager of that property. A tenet had skipped out on rent for the month and refused to answer his phone, email, or just the door. Apparently he'd changed the lock at some point or added a new one on, either way the manager couldn't get in and the neighbors have filed complaints. Smell complaints, noise complaints, even from the tenets above and below him on the first and third floor had something to say.

Like always the manager didn't want to get the police involved yet, so me and another inspector got called in to deal with it and to see if the police were necessary.

I've worked with the guy before, George was his name. I could already make out his distinguishable blue Camry parked beside the towering building. This building was old, one of our oldest. Light tan brick work covered most of the building, coated in decades of dark water stains emanating from each window or gutter. Barely six o clock and already the sun was well behind the horizon. In the looming darkness I could see each window above, the interior lights silhouetting whatever unique makeshift curtains the tenets had put up. Mostly the easily recognizable dip-shape of a thin bed sheet held up with thumb-tacks.

I had parked across from George. The stocky balding man was waiting in the drivers seat, leaning deep into his phone before realizing I'd shown up.

"About time you showed up." He said in his usual agitated nervousness.

"Six o clock traffic, terrible this side of town"

"Yeah well at least we won't have to deal with it after we get this over with."

He finished typing something on his phone before pocketing it.

"Why are we even down here? Don't they call the police for these kinds of things?" George said as we made our way to the buildings main entrance. The original coloring on the surface level walls was hardly discernible anymore, caked in a dark brown soot.

"I already asked about it and the manager is clear, he doesn't want police involved if he can help it." I said.

"Oh so we work for this guy now?"

"Look we just gotta ask a few questions, crack open the door, figure out what happened. Guy probably just ditched town. You know the types who live in these places."

"Oh and what about the smell then? They told you about the complaints right? Even the people on the third floor were complaining about the smells, the noises."

"Manager said they stopped a few days ago. Besides, If its anything other than a months worth of rotting food then we'll have every reason to call the cops no matter what this guy says."

We made it to the front door. The awning was tattered and stained, one of the doors had spray painted utility markings covering the glass and was obviously in no state to open. Both sides of the double glass door were dark and clouded, and the inside wasn't much better.

Unlike a lot of other low income apartments, this one actually had a lobby. An under used relic of it's past, but still a lobby. The original ceiling had been replaced with drop tiles, covered in dark water stains, some of them missing or knocked out of place. Furniture had been taken out, but dark spots stained the vinyl flooring where they sat for God knows how long.

A single light was turned on throughout the entire lobby floor, in the back office behind the reception desk. Donald, the owner of this building, sat hunched over his phone and a stack of papers, looking up at us almost in a fight or flight reaction once he heard the front door open.

"Oh." He took a breath before standing up "You boys are finally here." He reached out, shook both our hands before frantically searching his desk for something.

"Ah here we go." He produced a small piece of paper, handed it to George.

"That's the apartment number, 2-B5, and the numbers of the neighbors who made the complaints on the same floor."

"When did the complaints start?" I asked.

The fat man shrugged. "You'll have to ask the neighbors."

"You didn't report the complaints to the office?" George said.

"I don't report complaints to the office, they go straight to the office. Office didn't say anything to me." He continued.

"Office doesn't care about noise complaints, I only got involved when the smell got bad, but then the smell went away, problem solved. Then he was late with the rent."

We both shook our head in impassive agreement.

"And why haven't you called the police?" George asked.

"I got you guys, the office, all that, why risk lowering the value of this place even more with more reels of police around here if they don't need to be. You find something that merits the cops then you tell me but not a moment before." Donald finished with a raised, dramatic voice as he made his way back down the hall, disappearing into his office.

"Well, that's that. Lets get started then." I said to George as we made our way to the elevator.

It was just as old as the building. A rusted sliding door covered in chipped gray paint creaked open with the sound of scrapping metal. A whirring of the elevators pulley followed, and the doors revealed a small, florescent light illuminated compartment lined with chain screen and false wood paneling. The light flickered.

"Lets take the stairs." George said, turning a 180 to the stairs across, already five steps up by the time I started to follow.

We had passed the first floor rooms already, they were somewhat clean, with what appeared to be a coat of paint that was only a few years old, instead of a few decades. The second floor was a different story. As we crested the final steps and turned into the second floor hall, a wave passed over us. A wave of thick air, heavy with dust and the smell of mildew and rotting... something. George pinched his nose as I rubbed my eyes, the air immediately burning and irritating them.

"The smell..." George said. "Could that be the apartment?"

"You'd think they would've complained more if it was all that different from normal."

"Well the manager said the smell stopped, so we can assume this is the normal aroma of the place I guess." George said as we started down the hall.

A seemingly endless hallway, lined with dark and stained red carpet and equally neglected beige walls. Thin wood panel doors marked every apartment, each chipped and splintered here and there.

From a distance the apartment in question was obvious. A bulging mass stuck out from the base of the door way, leaning against it like it was trying to get in. A mound of packages. Boxes and puffed envelops shoved against the door, dusty, with some scattered around the carpet, covered in boot prints.

"So this was the mail they were talking about." George said, kneeling down to inspect one of the damaged packages.

"What do you mean?"

"In his original message, Donald said the tenet had a lot of mail piling up at the front. Eventually got sick of it and just had the custodians dump it here."

"Are there dates on any of them?" I asked.

"No... but look at this." George picked up a cheap, chalky cardboard box and showed me the label. It was some kind of foreign language, Chinese I think. The only thing that was in English on any of the packages was the address of the building.

"See, this one too." He handed me another, a heavy envelope, this one labeled entirely in Russian.

"They're all like this, look, everything, no English labels, no commercial packaging, nothing." George said as he dramatically sifted through the packages, checking as many as he could.

"You don't think its..." I asked, trying to feel the contents of the envelope without opening it.

George looked at me for a second, pondering the possibility of it.

"No... No ones that stupid. Plus they're too big, too heavy."

"Well, maybe we should open one."

As me and George considered the idea, a door opened across from us. One of the neighbors. A heavy set women with her hair wrapped in a towel with a look of perpetual irritation on her face.

"Who are you?" She snapped.

"We're with the property owner, taking care of... this." I answered while motioning to the packages.

"About damn time someone dealt with this!" She yelled, as if talking to someone inside her apartment.

"Were you one of the neighbors who wrote a complaint?" George asked, standing up and dusting his jeans off.

"You're damn right I am!" She continued, trailing off onto a tangent about the lazy land lord, and the smell. The women continued shouting before we could get her name, Sandra. She had made the original smell complaint saying the room smelled like a landfill about two weeks ago before slowly going away. When we asked if she knew anything about the tenet, all she said was "Probably just a damn crack head." While shutting the door to her apartment.

As this conversation ended, another door opened a few yards the opposite way. An almost skeletal figure peered out from a dimly lit apartment. Shifting lights from her T.V. silhouetted a frail old woman, shrouding her in a thin veil of darkness.

"Are you here to find Jeremy?" She asked, voice hardly louder than the television.

"What?" George asked, stepping a bit closer but keeping his distance.

"Jeremy, he's been missing for so long now. I hope you police will find him." She spoke with a struggling croak, closing the door slowly before either of us could say anything.

"Somebodies missing?" I asked George as he shot a wide eyed glance at me.

"She's talking about Jerry Baker." A voice appeared from behind us, an open door where a lanky man leaned against the frame. George and I shared another quick glance as to confirm neither of us heard him open the door.

"Young, young guy... Lives down the hall. Used to visit her often, I think." The stranger said, almost as if he was talking to himself. "He stopped showing up about a month ago, probably just skipped town like this guy did. Oh well." He said, turning back into his apartment without another word.

George and I continued to share glances as the man carefully clicked his door shut.

"Well, guess we've questioned all the neighbors..." I said.

"Great, cant wait to be back here in a week to solve another case of the missing crack head." George said as he knelt back down, moving packages out of the doorway.

"So, are we gonna open one of these things or what?" He asked me, holding a small box, white label filled with fading Chinese characters. I said nothing, simply motioning for him to go for it.

George cut the tape with a small pocket knife carefully, pulling the contents out as to not damage anything. A long, skin colored object sat in a cloudy plastic bag. George squished it a bit before tearing the plastic open and holding out the thing inside.

"A foot?" He said, perplexed.

"Part of one, I think."

George held it closer to me. It obviously wasn't a real foot, it was hard and squishy and the same time with a bit of shininess, silicon plastics, some kind of prosthetic or something. George quickly picked up a tore open another package, same thing. A set of three fake fingers this time.

"There's no way every single one of these packages is a fake body part." George said, exasperated.

"Lets just get these packages out of the way and get inside so we can get this thing over with." I said, stopping George from reaching for another package.

"Right. Help me move these." He said. The two of us scooting and kicking the boxes away from the door until it was clear enough.

"Try the key" I said, and George took the apartment key from his pocket and tried the lock. The lock released... the door opened. A chain stopped it a few inches in.

"Look out, its just a chain." I said, slowly pressing my shoulder into the door, pulling out a flat head and reaching around inside until I could slide the chain lock off the latch.

Immediately a wave of air hit us, air that was different from the musty hallway. A familiar sent of an old dumpster, the light aroma of rotting meat, and fresh air. It stunk, but it was fresh air compared to the rest of this place.

George and I placed on lite breathing respirators before opening the door completely. Inside was confined with oppressive darkness, save for the timid glow of a single street lamp emanating from outside the apartments only window. An open window, a broken-open window. A gust of cool air passed and the drab curtains fluttered a bit, a sudden billow of freezing air forcing itself into the room. Small shards of broken glass littered the floor, reflecting the light of that street lamp, glittering as I moved into the room. Darkness covered and silhouetted everything, nothing was identifiable in it, every inch of table or counter space, every crevasse and corner, everything was filled with some ambiguous mass.

I slid my boots across the floor, moving anything out of the way while feeling for a light switch, flick. Nothing. George closed the door as I toyed with the switch, but as the door closed and the light of the hall disappeared, I realized I couldn't see any other lights in the room whatsoever; not even the small LEDs on a T.V or coffee maker. It was completely black, overlain with the weak orange hue of the dying alley lamp just outside the window.

"Nothing?" George asked me.

"Seems like the powers out." I said, starting to search my pockets for a small flashlight.

"Well, the manager can't do that, he didn't shut it off."

"No, but somebody did." I turned the small weak flashlight on, George pulled his out as well.

"We should just get the hell outta here and call the cops already." George said, mostly to himself.

The flashlights seemed only to illuminate the dust and debris that filled the air around them. A thick dusty fog filling the whole room, blocking out light and blurring my vision as we started to scan the surroundings.

A picture of the room started to form. There were things... everywhere. Every inch of counter and table space was filled with wrappers, tools, notes, pictures. The floor was littered with packaging's, large black garbage bags shoved into each corner, packing wrapper spilling out of them. Stains covered everything, dark stains. The peeling laminate counter top was caked in a thick layer of, something. Something dark.

"Hey, hey get in here quick." George said from across the room.

I switched my gaze over to him, he was staring into another room, maybe the bedroom. Flashlight fixed on something.

"What is it?"

George didn't answer, he simple stepped aside- trying not to gag.

It was a body. A body that hardly smelled or looked like a body anymore.

"I'm telling the manager to call the damn cops." George mumbled, ducking back into the kitchen, leaving me to stare at this corpse alone.

The dim light and dusty air didn't allow me to get a close enough look at it, but I could tell even from a distance that this body wasn't decayed, it was eaten. Its face was gone, only bone was left of the arms, both legs gone, and it seemed like it was disemboweled... but it looked empty. Hollowed out.

George made his way back as I started to scan the rest of this room. There were multiple dining tables against the wall, set up like operating tables. Holes cut in the edges where restraints hung, a large strap in the upper center where I assume a neck would be.

"What the hell was this nut job doing in here? And is that him?" George quipped, staring at the same tables I was. Trying not to glimpse the corpse again.

"The body parts, the prosthetics..." I said. "You don't think..." I looked at George, George was looking at something else. Staring at something else.

"Look at this one." He said, moving to a table at the other end of the room, tipped over, splintered, restraints snapped off. A large stain covered the entire thing, the unmistakable deep red that grew darker towards the center. George moved without saying a word, jogging out of the room quickly like he was onto something.

"Hey, did you talk to the manager?" I shouted to him as he left the room.

"Yeah yeah he said he'd call the police." George said, moving up to the broken window, shards cracking beneath his shoes.

"Holy shit, look at that..." He said while looking outside the window, down toward the street below.

"And this, see here?" He pointed towards blood on the windows remaining glass.

I looked outside the window to see a distinguishable stain across the pavement, dark and dried, but there wasn't a body.

George and I moved back into the other room, passed the body, inspecting for the certain proof of identity that was on both our minds.

"Here, look, see. I knew it, how the hell did I know it." George handed me a few pieces of paper, wiping the sweat from his bald spot. "That old lady wasn't losing it entirely, the kid went missing." He continued.

The pieces of paper were mostly blurry pictures, cheap Polaroids and print outs of this man, all labeled in sharpie with the name "Jeremy." A few of the pictures had a different name on them, despite being the same man, they were labeled with "Matilda."

"We gotta find this kid, he's probably hurt." I said, George pacing, trying not to look at or disturb the corpse lying just a few feet away.

"The cops will be here soon, hopefully, probably. Who knows how long they'll take to respond to this dump." He said.

"Exactly, we might be able to find him in time, who knows how long its been already."

"You think it was him who dropped out of the window? Why the hell would he do that if the door isn't locked from inside..." George asked himself.

"Lets just check the rest of the room quickly, and we'll go down and find where he could've ended up." I said, quickly scanning across the room. The beige wall where the corpse leaned was stained heavily with smears of blood, dirty operating tools were scattered across the floor. On the other side of the room there was some kind of workbench, or dresser. Laid on top of it were limbs. Wrapped in paper. I could make out two arms, two legs, but they were clean and I couldn't see any blood. More prosthetics?

"Alright there's nothing left for us in here, lets get downstairs before we tamper with anymore evidence or whatever the hell you'd call this." George said, already moving towards the front door.

"This is the..." George thought for a second. "West side of the building, right?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Then the window he fell from would be on the alley side of the building then." George said as we made out way out of the second floor hallway, down the stairs and into the lobby. I'm not sure how long we were upstairs, but night had fallen now. The lobby was dark, empty. Wind and the sound of distant traffic filled the empty void as we stepped outside; a few street lamps piercing the oppressive darkness and empty roads.

The alley way was long, a narrow stretch set between the apartments and some kind of abandoned office building or warehouse. Both buildings towered three stories high, a single flickering street lamp between the two served to illuminate the alley. On the dark stained concrete we could barely make it out until we were right over it. Dried and dark red, a splatter of blood that could've easily been mistaken for an oil slick.