It Calls to Me

by Catlyn Ladd

COMING SOON

It calls to me. I am powerless to resist. I need to see, to know. But I am afraid.

I don’t like the texture of cardboard, the way it’s gritty and soft at the same time. I draw my nails along the flap where the tape holds it closed. Once I see I can’t go back. Some things can’t be unseen. It had cost half a million dollars and a lot of luck to get my hands on it.

It had started with rumors, whispers in the galleries of wealthy collectors who trade in memorabilia of death. They buy and swap and barter for clown pictures painted by John Wayne Gacy, china with the swastika of the SS, bone fragments uncovered at Fox Hollow Farm, bricks from Treblinka. The closer to gore, the more blood soaked, the more expensive. I deal in the detritus of serial killers and mass murderers.