The murderer

A storm lashes the night as a man slips back into a dim, rain‑splashed house, desperate to reclaim a single item he left behind after committing a murder. The darkness is thick, broken only by faint gray windows and the distant hum of a car engine, while the air is heavy with the lingering smell of burnt powder. He pauses in the doorway, heart pounding, aware that every creak could betray his presence.

Inside, a frail old man sits motionless in a chair, his throat torn by a fresh bullet wound, and a canary’s occasional song punctuates the oppressive silence. The murderer’s mind races between fury and terror as he hears a barely audible tapping on the tabletop—seemingly coming from the very corpse he just killed. This unsettling sound forces him to confront both his greed and the dread that something unseen may still be watching, leaving him teetering between a cold‑calculated plan and a primal, shivering fear.