Soup Shop Mystery

I couldn't take this anymore. "What do you want from me?" I demanded.

He lifted both hands, and only then did I notice he was carrying two plastic bags.

"I mean no harm!" Roger said quickly. "I… I shouldn't talk to people. Every time I do, I'm… I'm misunderstood! This is… fruit!"

For a moment, he seemed almost painfully sincere.

Maybe he hadn't been lurking outside my door all that time. Maybe he'd simply gone back to fetch fruit for me?

When I replayed everything in my head, I realized that if I ignored his unsettling tone and those unnerving eyes, nothing he had said actually carried malice.

"But your tone…" I started.

"I… I stutter," he explained. "If I don't force out my words that way, I can't even… finish a sentence. That's why… why people misunderstand me. So I just… I just stopped talking to anyone."

"I see…"

I was about to ask why his eyes looked so frightening, when it struck me: he was cross-eyed.

All day I had been convinced he was a murderer. Of course his gaze would seem sinister to me.

The realization made me want to slap myself.

A stutter. Cross-eyed. Minor defects, yes, but not a crime. I had twisted them into something monstrous. If I kept doubting someone who had only tried to be kind, I'd lose sleep with guilt.

No—wait. I still hadn't ruled out the possibility that he was a killer.

I drew breath to press him further, but he spoke first. His voice had flattened again, stripped of all warmth, and—tellingly—his stutter vanished.

"Sorry for frightening you. I didn't clean off the inspection stamp properly. When I saw you lived across from me, I thought I'd check if you were all right. Then I heard you were pregnant, so I brought you some fruit from my hometown."

He set the two bags down on the floor.

"If you're scared, wait until I leave before picking them up. One more thing, don't make up lies that sound so fake. Otherwise, people will know you live alone."

And with that, he walked away.

I stood frozen, my certainty unraveling. Had I really been mistaken when I saw that tattoo in the soup?

After a few minutes of silence, I cracked open the door, snatched the bags inside, and shut it quickly.

They really were just bags of fruit.

Could Roger truly be a kindhearted man, clumsy but well-meaning? I still didn't dare eat them, but doubt gnawed at me.

That was when my phone rang.

The caller ID made my blood run cold. It was my boyfriend.

He wasn't dead!

Relief surged, followed by a wave of fury. If he were alive, why had he vanished for a month without a single word?

I pressed the phone to my ear, ready to unleash my anger… only to hear his frantic voice spill through the line.

"Amanda! Help me! He's cutting off my skin, piece by piece! Ah—don't kill me—"

His scream pierced the receiver, then the call went dead.

I dialed back instantly. Once. Declined. Again. Straight to voicemail.

His phone had been switched off.

I stood rooted to the floor, heart pounding, unable to breathe. He was alive. And in danger.

And if he was being skinned alive… then that soup—

No. I couldn't let myself finish the thought. I called the police immediately.

I told them everything—every word of the phone call. Not long after, two officers showed up at my door and said they needed me to come down to the station to assist with the investigation.

The seriousness on their faces, the fact that they were taking me to the police station—and not just the local precinct—finally made it feel like they were treating this like it was a real case.

But as soon as I stepped inside, a middle-aged officer stormed toward me, his face thunderous. His voice cracked like a whip.

"You're the one who called this in? Do you want to go to prison yourself?"