08 Sep I Dated a Dead Girl

My name is Marcus Zimmerman, and I need someone to hear my story without deciding I’m crazy from the start.  Call me stupid if you like, or worse, but I swear I’m not a liar.

The police kept asking me why I went into a condemned apartment building to meet a woman I had never seen before. I kept asking them how a woman who had been dead for three years managed to tie me to a mattress and cut open my shoulder.

They had explanations, of course. Someone had stolen her photographs. Someone had created a fake profile in her name. The woman I met had probably worn makeup or undergone surgery to resemble her. Trauma had distorted my memory. Blood loss had filled in the rest.

Those explanations might have made sense if I had only seen her Tinder profile. But I met Jody Francis. I touched her. Kissed her. Watched her move around that apartment for almost four hours. The woman who attacked me wasn’t pretending to be Jody. She was wearing her.

I was twenty-five and had been single for almost a year when we matched. I wish I could tell you I was lonely, looking for a meaningful connection, or trying to move forward after a difficult breakup. The truth is less flattering.

I wanted to get laid.

It had been a long dry spell, and the few matches I received either stopped responding or wanted me to follow an account somewhere else. By that Friday night, I had been swiping for nearly an hour while lying on my couch, half-watching a movie and drinking room-temperature beer.

Then Jody Francis appeared. Just joined, the profile said.

She had four photographs. That was the first thing I checked. Fake accounts usually had one professional-looking picture and nothing else. Jody had a bathroom selfie, a picture taken beside a hiking trail, and two photos of her sitting in different restaurants.

She looked the same in all of them. Dark hair. Pale skin. Brown eyes that appeared almost black in poor lighting. She had a warm smile, although it never showed her teeth.

Her profile said she was twenty-three and lived less than four miles away, and her biography contained only one sentence: I hate sleeping alone.

I stared at it longer than I want to admit, then swiped right. The match appeared immediately.

Before I could think of anything clever to say, she messaged me: You’re awake late.

I checked the time. It was 11:17.

So are you, I replied.

The three dots appeared.

I usually am.

The conversation moved quickly after that. She asked whether I lived alone. I lied and said I had a roommate. She asked whether anyone expected me home that night. I should have recognized that for what it was. Instead, I assumed she wanted discretion.

I asked what she did for work.

Nothing right now, she replied.

How long had she lived in Colorado Springs?

Long enough, the answer came.

Did she want to meet somewhere for a drink?

Everything is closed.

That wasn’t true, but I didn’t challenge her. I was too focused on the next message.

You could come here.

She sent an address on the east side of town. I searched it on my phone. The map showed a three-story apartment building, although the image was several years old. It looked shabby but occupied. Cars sat in the lot, and flowerpots sat outside a few windows.

I asked which unit.

Third floor. 3C, she said.

Then she sent another photograph. In this one, she was sitting on the edge of a mattress in a dark room, wearing an oversized gray shirt. The picture was grainy and a little blurred, but it was clearly the same woman, and I’m not ashamed to admit she looked incredible. Even in a casual outfit, her curves drew me in.

That image erased what little caution remained.

I told her I could be there in twenty minutes.

Before leaving, I received a text from my friend Jay asking if I wanted to play online.

Going to bed, I wrote back. I didn’t tell him about Jody. I thought he would make fun of me if she turned out to be fake or if I drove across town only to get stood up.

For nearly six hours, because of that decision, nobody knew I was missing.

* * * * * *

The neighborhood looked different from the one on the map.

Most businesses were closed, and several looked like they’d been empty for years. Plywood covered the windows of a laundromat. An old sedan sat on blocks outside a repair shop, its hood missing. Every third streetlight seemed to be out.

I checked the address twice. The apartment building stood at the end of a cracked parking lot behind a chain-link fence. Half its windows were dark, the others covered from the inside with cardboard or sheets of plastic. Only one window showed any light.

Third floor. Far right. Unit 3C.

I almost left.

I wish I could say some instinct warned me. It didn’t. I was embarrassed by the building and worried that Jody might be involved with drugs, but I wasn’t frightened. Not yet. After all, people lived in bad neighborhoods and fell behind on rent. Attractive women did not become less attractive because their landlords refused to repair the lights. That was how I explained it to myself.

I texted Jody that I had arrived.

Her response came almost instantly: Side door. Front is locked.

A narrow walkway ran between the building and the fence. Weeds pushed through the pavement, scraping against my jeans as I followed it around the side.

The door was already open.

A brick had been wedged against the bottom to keep it from closing. A faded notice had been pasted to the glass, but someone had torn away most of it. All I could read were the words MUNICIPAL CODE and UNSAFE. Against my better judgment, I stepped inside anyway.

The hallway smelled of damp plaster and old cigarette smoke. Somewhere inside the walls, water dripped at regular intervals. The only light came from a red EXIT sign above the door.

“Jody?” My voice carried up the stairwell.

Above me, something moved on the third floor. The next thing I knew, she was leaning over the railing.

“Marcus?”

She sounded exactly as I expected—young, soft-spoken, maybe a little nervous.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Come up.”

The stairs creaked beneath me. The second-floor hallway was completely dark, and several apartment doors stood open. I could see bare rooms inside them.

It was colder in the building than outside. My breath appeared in pale bursts as I climbed.

Jody waited at the top. She looked like her pictures, but not precisely. Her face was thinner, and there were faint hollows beneath her eyes. Makeup had been applied heavily to her cheeks and lips, giving them color that the rest of her skin lacked. Her dark hair hung over one shoulder. She wore the same gray shirt from the photograph.

For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. Then she smiled. It was the smile from her profile. Warm, but without showing her teeth.

“You found it,” she said.

“Eventually.”

“I know it looks bad. I’m sorry,” she said, a frown forming at the edges of her lips.

“It’s fine.”

It clearly wasn’t, but then she touched my arm and whatever concerns I had became harder to organize. Her hand was cold. Not cool from the hallway. Cold enough that I felt it through my sleeve.

She led me into 3C.

The apartment was almost empty. There was a mattress against one wall, a folding chair, and a small table made from two milk crates with a board laid across them. A battery-powered camping lamp illuminated the room.

There were no pictures. No books. No television. No shoes by the door or dishes in the sink. Nothing that suggested a person lived there. Was she a squatter? The thought crossed my mind.

A sweet perfume hung in the air, barely covering another odor beneath it. Something dry and medicinal.

“I just moved in,” Jody said, as if reading my mind.

She closed the door behind us. The deadbolt didn’t work, so she slipped a length of wood through two metal brackets that had been screwed into the frame.

“Security system,” she said.

I chuckled, thinking she was joking. She didn’t laugh with me.

Jody walked to the table and poured two drinks from an already opened bottle of vodka, and offered a glass to me.

She watched me swallow before touching her own glass to her lips. My drink tasted bitter. I never saw the level inside hers change.

That’s when I first noticed there was something cloudy at the bottom of my glass, and realized just how stupid I’d been.

“You’re nervous,” she said, interrupting my reverie.

“A little,” I lied.

“You don’t have to be.”

She stepped closer. Up close, I could see a dark band around her throat, hidden beneath a layer of makeup. It resembled an old bruise.

“Is that from something?” I asked.

Her hand rose to her neck. For a moment, her expression soured. Then she smiled again. “Something that happened a long time ago.”

She kissed me before I could ask anything else. Her lips were colder than her hand.

By then, my arms had begun to feel heavy. I blamed the vodka, although I had only taken one swig. Jody guided me toward the mattress, moving slowly, almost carefully.

I remember looking toward the window as we crossed the room, shocked at how thoroughly my inhibitions had been extinguished.

The room was so chilly that the glass in my hand had fogged around the edges from my breath. Meanwhile, the space in front of Jody’s face – and her glass – remained perfectly clear.

It was then I realized that I had been inside the building with her for almost ten minutes, and that she hadn’t breathed the entire time. Not once.

* * * * * *

Jody followed my gaze to the window, and for the first time since I arrived, her smile showed teeth. They were too white. Not a healthy white. Dry white, with dark lines around the gums.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, picking up on my concern.

“Nothing.”

She touched my chest and pushed.

I landed on the mattress harder than I expected, my reflexes slowed. My arms barely reacted in time to catch me. The bitter taste remained at the back of my throat.

Jody reached beneath the mattress and produced a roll of silver duct tape.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

I should have said no.

Instead, I forced a laugh. “That depends. What are you going to do?”

She sat beside me and wrapped the tape around my wrists, ignoring my question. I allowed it because I didn’t want her to know I was nervous. Because she was attractive. Because admitting I wanted to leave seemed more humiliating than staying. Because whatever was in the drink made resistance exhausting. Because in spite of everything, I was horny.

She wound the tape tighter than necessary.

“That’s enough,” I said.

Jody pressed the loose end down with her thumb. Then she grabbed my ankles.

“Wait,” I protested weakly.

She looped the tape around them before I could pull away.

“I said wait!”

Her expression changed. The warmth disappeared first. Then the smile and playfulness. Her face settled into something blank and patient.

“Jody, cut this off. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

She stood and walked into the kitchen. I heard a drawer open.

When she returned, she was holding a knife.

It was an ordinary kitchen knife with a black handle. That made it worse somehow. It wasn’t ceremonial or unusual. It was something people used to slice vegetables.

Even in my drink-induced stupor, clarity broke through.

“I don’t consent to this!” I cried. “Stop!”

She tilted her head. The movement continued a little too far. Something clicked inside her neck.

“You did before.”

“I don’t now,” I pled, straining against my restraints. “I’ve changed my mind.”

She climbed onto the mattress and placed one knee against my chest. The weight behind it felt impossible. I tried to roll her off, but my muscles responded slowly.

She drew the knife across my shoulder. For half a second, I felt only pressure. Then the wound opened.

Blood ran across my chest and soaked into the sheet beneath me. Jody watched it with an intensity I hadn’t seen in her eyes before. Color spread through her cheeks. I watched the skin beneath her makeup change from gray to pink.

She touched the blood with two fingers, then rubbed it across her gums. The dark lines disappeared.

“What the hell are you?” I stammered.

Jody leaned closer. I searched her throat for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

She closed both hands around my neck. The pressure came suddenly. I kicked against the tape and tried to force my bound hands between her arms, but she drove me deeper into the mattress. Her face remained calm while I struggled.

There was no anger in it, only observation. The room narrowed. Dark spots gathered across my vision. Just before I passed out, she released me.

I rolled onto my side, coughing.

“You frightened faster than the last one,” she said. “But it won’t matter.”

Her voice had changed. It still came through Jody’s mouth, but the cadence was slower, each word shaped with care.

I looked toward the door.

“What are you, Jody?” I repeated.

“This body no longer answers to that name.”

She said it casually.

I told myself she was insane, that she had drugged me and invented a character to frighten me.

That’s when I noticed the items lying atop what served as a bedside table, beside the mattress. Among the collection were driver’s licenses, bank cards, and phones held together with rubber bands. Most of the licenses belonged to young women. A few belonged to men.

One card lay face-up near the edge, and from my position on the mattress, I could make out just enough to identify one of the people depicted. Sophie Alvarez. Brown hair. Green eyes. Twenty-four years old.

“She was useful,” the thing said, noticing me staring at the IDs. “For a while.”

I pulled against the tape until it cut my wrists. “What did you do to them?”

“I learned.”

It touched Jody’s face as if reacquainting itself with the shape. “Men open doors for this one. They enter willingly and drink what they are given.” Its smile returned. “They let me have my way with them. I like that.”

* * * * * *

The thing became angry when it saw how much blood had soaked into the mattress. I imagined she was less concerned about me, and more that another victim would see the mess and run before she had a chance with them.

It cut the tape around my ankles and ordered me to stand. My legs folded beneath me. It dragged me toward the bathroom by one arm, pulling with enough force that my shoulder nearly came out of its socket.

The bathroom contained a stained tub, a bucket, and several dark towels.

It forced me into the tub. Cold porcelain struck my knees. Jody turned on the faucet, but nothing came out. She cursed in a voice that sounded nothing like hers, then poured bottled water over my shoulder.

Pink water collected around the drain.

The drain had been plugged.

She used the towels to soak it up, squeezing each one into the bucket.

“You need blood,” I said.

“I need what leaves with it.”

“What does that mean?”

She looked at me. “You would not understand.”

She took my phone from my jeans and forced me to unlock it. Then she ordered food through one of my delivery apps.

“You’re… ordering takeout?”

“The body requires sustenance still.”

Twenty minutes later, someone knocked. Jody stood behind the bathroom door with the knife against my ribs.

“If you call out,” she whispered, “I will open you further.”

She collected the bag after the driver departed. From the tub, I watched her sit on the floor and devour a cheeseburger. Her jaw moved stiffly. She chewed each bite for too long and rarely swallowed.

It was practicing.

When it finished, the thing lay down beside the bathroom door. The color had already begun draining from her face.

Minutes passed. Then her prepaid phone on the floor lit up. A dating profile filled the screen. The woman in the photograph wasn’t Jody. She was blond and smiling beside a lake.

A message appeared beneath her picture: You should come over. I’m alone.

Jody’s body went completely slack. Whatever controlled it was somewhere else.

I found a broken metal bracket where a soap dish had once been attached to the wall. I rubbed the tape against its edge until the skin beneath it tore. The tape tore next.

I reached through the doorway and grabbed the knife.

Suddenly, Jody’s eyes opened, and she lunged at me on all fours. Her movements were fast but poorly joined, as if each part of her received instructions separately. One leg dragged behind her. Her head swung loosely from the neck.

I stabbed her beneath the collarbone, the blade sinking to the handle. No blood came out.

Jody looked down at it, then back at me.

I ran.

I don’t remember reaching the stairs. I remember falling and striking the wall. I remember the wood cutting my hands as I tore it from the downstairs door.

Then I was outside, barefoot and bleeding, shouting for help.

Jody stood in the side entrance.

Under the parking lot light, her face sagged. One eye sat lower than the other. Her lips had pulled away from her teeth.

She looked dead.

Then something entered her again. Her back straightened. Her head lifted. The familiar smile returned.

She stepped backward into the building and disappeared.

* * * * * *

The delivery driver called the police after seeing me run into the parking lot.

Officers searched the building. They found the mattress, the tape, the bucket, and enough blood to prove I had been held there.

They did not find Jody.

They found six identification cards and three phones. The detective told me the woman who attacked me had probably been cycling through stolen identities.

I gave him Jody’s name and tried to pull up her profile, but by then, it had been removed.

He searched for her name in his database for a few minutes, then turned his monitor away from me.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

He said Jody Francis had died over a week ago. Her car had gone off a mountain road during a snowstorm. She survived the crash but froze before rescuers reached her.

There had been a funeral just a couple of days earlier.

Closed casket.

The detective decided somebody had used her photographs. He kept saying that even after I insisted the woman I’d seen didn’t just look like Jody, but was Jody.  Even after I insisted they exhume Jody’s body.

He agreed eventually, after it was clear I wasn’t going to let it go, when I expressed concern she was still out there and would strike again. He told me not to expect miracles, that exhuming a body isn’t like in the movies, and could take a while.

* * * * * *

Two weeks later, a local cemetery reported that several graves had been disturbed, and the detective contacted me with an update.

Jody’s coffin was empty.

The story made the news for one day. Police blamed grave robbers. No one matching Jody’s description was reported again by anyone else, in my town or otherwise.

I deleted Tinder and changed apartments.

For months, nothing happened. Then, last Tuesday, after several therapy sessions and a lot of consideration, I made up my mind that Jody – or whoever she was – wasn’t going to control me anymore, and I reinstalled the app, determined to move on with my life.

Almost immediately, I got a notification that I had a new match, and my response wasn’t what I expected.   Visceral dread.  I wasn’t ready for this yet, and this made it clear. However much therapy I’d received, it obviously wasn’t enough.

I nearly deleted Tinder then and there. Then I saw the photograph.

Sophie Alvarez.

I remembered her face from the license on Jody’s bedside table.

According to an article I found, Sophie disappeared several months ago, and no sign of her or her remains had ever been found.

Her new profile had already messaged me.

Let’s finish what we started.

A second message arrived while I was reading the first.

I know where you live now.

That was four nights ago.

Someone knocked on my apartment door about twenty minutes ago.

When I looked through the peephole, a woman I had never seen before was standing in the hallway. She was beautiful. Pale. Maybe twenty-four.

She hasn’t moved since she arrived.

At first, I thought the peephole was distorting her face. Then I realized her smile was slowly becoming wider.

She knows I’m watching her.

I can tell because she just leaned closer to the door, and she’s been scratching on it and gently knocking every so often.

I have been writing this while waiting for the police, but I don’t think they’re coming. The dispatcher stopped responding a minute ago, before I could even tell her what was happening or where I was. The call stayed connected for a moment longer, but all I heard was static. I hope my address came up automatically. Every time I try to dial again, my phone glitches and the key presses don’t register.

The woman outside has been standing there for almost twenty minutes now.

I take another look through the peephole and stare, horrified. She looks a lot like Sophie Alvarez. But wrong.

She looks dead.

And that’s when I realize she hasn’t taken a breath the entire time I’ve been watching. Not once.

I back away from the door slowly and try dialing 9-1-1 again.  This time, I manage to dial the numbers, but just as I move to hit the green call button, something slams itself into my front door, hard.

I’m afraid I’m out of time.

If you read this message, tell the police. Tell my family. And if you’re using dating apps, don’t agree to meet with strangers at their places, no matter how attractive they are.

There are worse things out there than narcissists and scammers.

Some of your matches don’t want your money. They want your blood, and they’ll do anything, and look like anyone, that it takes to get it.