Terrance Whistler

Terrance was out on a hike on a late Friday evening. It was sweltering hot and he was exhausted from work but determined to get out for the first time in months. He'd been dealing with bullshit at the crime unit, garbage about some idiot officer ruining crime scene evidence that was now useless to his team. Stress was at an all time high especially when you added up things like how he was struggling at home, the city life not being as good as it had sounded, his girlfriend having just dumped him and his boss loading him with more and more work despite him only agreeing to the job with the promise of more time off.

He was taking a break by a stream, wetting his brown hair to cool off. The soft gurgle of the small river soothed him slightly and he soaked his shirt as well, before he spotted something from the corner of his eye. Something reflective in the water made him glance over, slow and lazy from the heat. He focused on a small glinting lock reflecting the harsh sun in the rippling water and frowned discerning that it was connected to a chain, which in turn wrapped around a heavy duty tote box. Terrance stood and crouched as close as he could without falling into the water and drenching himself further.

Curious, he hauled the heavy thing out of the water, back popping with the effort. Being a crime scene investigator made him paranoid, but he couldn't ignore the hairs beginning to rise on his nape and arms. It splashed him as it flopped onto the shore with a thud and he cursed lightly wiping grit from his clothing. Something was wrong.

"Fuck... what the hell's this doing out here. People are getting worse and worse for litter everyday..." he grumbled as he eyed the lock, even as a part of him knew something here was off besides the disposal of such a big container. He could see the tote was a hard plastic and looked pretty scraped up with a few dents in the side, likely given from a tumble over the river bed bellow.

he didn't have anything to break the lock so instead he took his pocket knife and stabbed the lid slowly sawing the hard plastic open. It was rather pointless to chain up a container that could simply be sliced or cut open. Whoever had sent this thing down the river was a bastard AND a fool.

the smell

As he peeled it open the first thing that his him was rancid. It stung his eyes, made his nose wrinkle, and his mouth was trying hard not to gag as he took a few steps back, smothering his nose in his lifted shirt to try and filter out the smell with the clean cotton instead.

It was rancid. Like blood, pee and sweat. Terrance kept his shirt hem over his nose as he swallowed bile rising in his throat before approaching again. He peeled the lid off fully now and he froze, that chill that had begun to creep up his spine now solidifying like ice in every nerve. A body. Someone was inside.

"Holy shit... shit shit shit..." Terrance whispered eyes widening as he stood there panicking, staring at the unmoving mangled form, stuffed into the tote like a ragdoll, clearly having little to no air before the lid had been lifted.

When he finally snapped out of his daze he managed to scramble forwards and tip the box, trying to dump out the person inside with desperate movements, not wanting to harm further but needing to be fast and get them down the hill to a medic as soon as possible.

"Hey. Hey are you alive? HEY!" He tried to shake their shoulder and gently tap on their face to wake them as he knelt beside the body of this stranger who he was just praying was alive.