The Cleaning Lady

Today’s prompt: “The cleaning lady”

Forensic cleanup, or biohazard remediation, is a whole cottage industry within the cleaning profession, a whole other animal from your average maid service. It’s often called crime scene cleanup, but it encompasses more than that – suicides, major accidents, disease contamination (remember the ebola outbreak?), and bodily decomposition following a natural death that was undiscovered for a while.

The men and women who work in this industry have seen some shit. But the woman who came to clean up after you was not prepared for what she found.

Your blood went halfway up the wall on three walls of the room she found you in. The room she found most of you in, I mean. Fingers, toes, entrails and teeth had been spread to every room in the house.

Beside your ribcage was a crumpled piece of paper. Against her better judgment, the cleaning woman opened it up to read it. It looks a little like a page from a lab notebook, but most of the entry was scribbled out. She could just make out a few phrases: ‘dilation increase of ~22” in diameter’ and ‘portal estimated 45% open.’ And then at the bottom, amidst a number of scribbles, there’s a word that looks like “R’lyeh.”