1.)


The Dogs Are In The Yard and The Garage Door Is Open


The physical address of the house is 130 Green Meadow Lane, Fayetteville, Georgia, 30215. The house is brown with white trim lining the windows and doors. It is a big house with a freshly mown lawn. The grass on the lawn is very green. A massive gate fences off the house from the rest of the neighborhood. In the yard, there are two German shepherds lying on their stomachs. One of the dogs is asleep. The other one is awake and panting because he is thirsty.

Behind the house is a pool. A fence separates the pool from the rest of the yard. There is a diving board in the pool. Next to the pool is a garage. The garage is connected to the house. Inside of the garage there are pool toys, hockey sticks, and a red Sport Utility Vehicle. Inside of the garage there is a door that leads into the house. This door is open.


The house has three floors and a basement. There are lots of rooms inside of the house. A bedroom is at the top of the stairs on the second floor. It is the bedroom of a seven-year-old boy. The walls in the boy’s bedroom are painted white. Two posters of a professional wrestler cover the walls. The boy is in the bedroom, lying facedown on his bed. The boy is dead. The boy has no bruises on his body. He looks like he is sleeping. A bible is lying on the dresser next to the boy’s bed. The bible is closed. On the windowsill there are professional wrestling action figures. The sun is coming in through the window, casting shadows over the action figures that are looking at the bible and the dead boy lying facedown on the bed.


Upstairs from the boy’s bedroom there is another room. This room has wooden floors. Papers and files are scattered around on the floor. Against the far wall of the room there is a large desk with more papers on it. Some books and computer games line a shelf that is sitting on the desk. A computer screen is turned off in the middle of the desk. A leather swivel chair is pushed back from the desk. Something is sitting in the chair, wrapped in a towel. A woman is underneath the towel, sitting on the chair. The woman’s hands and feet are tied together with thin white pieces of twine. Her head is slumped forward, her hair hiding some blood drying on the back of her head. An extension cord is wrapped around her neck. The woman has bruises underneath the cord and some more on her back. Another Bible lies at the woman’s feet. This Bible is also closed.


The kitchen of the house is big. It has large beige tile floors and is very clean. Two cell phones are sitting on the granite countertop. The screens of the cell phones are lit up because they both have new voicemail messages. Under the counter there is a cabinet. In the cabinet there is a blue garbage bin. Ten crushed and empty beer cans are piled at the bottom of the blue plastic bin.


In the living room of the house, there are two black leather couches, and a large fireplace. On top of the fireplace sit a few framed photographs. Some of the photographs are of the dead boy and the dead woman when they are alive and smiling, and not dead, rotting in rooms in the brown house with white trim that they used to live in.


In the basement of the house is a room with a blue carpet. The walls are covered with mirrors. A white metal rack is in the middle of the room; it has a bunch of black weights stacked onto it. Other weights and dumbbells are on the floor. There are half dozen weight machines in the room. An empty bottle of wine is lying on its side next to one of the machines. This machine used to have a bar attached to a wire attached to some weights. The bar has been taken off and is lying on the floor, next to the wine bottle. The wire of the machine is wrapped around a man’s neck. The man is hanging from the wire by his neck. The man is being held up by 240 lbs of weight. There is no bible on the floor. There is no note. There are only the weights and the sound of the dogs barking outside because it is 2:30 in the afternoon and they haven’t been fed yet.