One leg eventually made a spirited kick, producing a ripple of dark fabric in her skirt. She made a low whimpering noise and, for a brief moment, Carl reconsidered rescuing her. Maybe she was having second thoughts about it? But her body was still mostly inactive. He continued to not interfere.

It was difficult to see beneath her dark, baggy clothing but it seemed like her entire body was going into spasms. The toes of her bare feet became pointed but her legs continued to only make slight twitches. Her face was a deep shade of red and was beginning to turn almost purple. Her eyes remained shut in concentration. Her tongue lolled from the side of her mouth and produced a thin line of drool as she made soft gagging noises.

After one last full-body spasm, it was over. Her purple face sagged into a neutral expression. Her hands lay limp against her side. Her pointed toes relaxed.

And then, Carl was left to contemplate what to do next.

His mind raced with the possibilities. The safest thing to do, obviously, would be to just forget about it. Close the peephole, re-cover it with the mirror and wait for something to happen. Carl usually played things safe and so it was a difficult decision to not follow this course of action. But the opportunity was so unique…

He donned a pair of latex gloves, originally purchased for the cleaning of his bathroom that had never gotten done, and grabbed a clean dishcloth. He stepped quietly out of his apartment and into the hallway. He closed his door and paused in silence. He and Maddie were the only residents of this upper floor and the hallway outside their room was almost always empty but he needed to be absolutely certain that nobody saw him.

When he was satisfied, he turned to doorknob to Maddie’s apartment. Locked.

He wasn’t about to break into her apartment forcibly and he had begun to turn back to his own door when a thought came to him. He produced the key to his apartment and tried it on her door. Success! Of course the landlord would be too cheap and/or lazy to get different locks for all the different rooms in the house.

He silently crept into her apartment and carefully shut the door behind him.

After a moment of deliberation, he decided to lock it. Should anybody come up to her room, his excuse for being there was that he had heard a suspicious noise and she had not responded to his knocks. He could even have his phone out, as if in the midst of calling 911. His excuse for locking the door was weaker: he had formed the habit of locking his own door as part of shutting it. And so, he had done the same with her door, out of pure reflex.

At any rate, he was now in the apartment of a dead woman, secured behind a locked door.
He began by approaching and inspecting her more closely that he had ever been able to from the peephole. She hung a good three feet or so from the ground--the height of the stool she had stood upon--so he had to gaze upwards upwards to look her in the face. Her skin had begun to lighten in shade, although it was still a distinct shade of purplish red. Her tongue lolled from the side of her mouth, its trickle of drool now shut off. Her eyes remained shut.

Carl was no expert in crime but he supposed that if there were an investigation into her death, dusting for fingerprints would be the first thing they would do. Hence, the pair of latex gloves he had put on. With this barrier guarding his prints, he reached up and pulled open one of her eyelids. A clear, piercing blue eye stared at him. This must be why she dyed her hair blonde--the brightness of her eyes would not have shone so brilliantly against a backdrop of her naturally brown hair.