It looked much as I had imagined it would. Cheap paneling covered the walls, leading upward from dark institutional grade carpeting and ending at an off-white acoustically textured ceiling. A single light fixture clung to the center of that light-colored plane, spreading luminance downward from a pair of medium wattage bulbs.

A full bed all but dominated the narrow room, jutting out from the wall to my left. It had already been stripped of linens, but the vinyl mattress cover showed several rusted smears of varying size and shape that I suspected were the product of blood that had soaked through the sheets. Along the wall to my right was a low dresser with a television perched on its marred top.

Also to the right of center, on the back wall was a doorway leading into a small room housing a vanity-style sink and dressing mirror; left of that, on the perpendicular wall I could see what was most likely the door to the shower and toilet. Oddly, in the far left corner of the main room, a table lamp and telephone sat on the floor between two outdated chairs. A small, round table that looked like it might have originally made a home beneath them was sidled up close to the head of the bed.

I stepped slowly through the space, negotiating the tight area between the foot of the mattress and the short bureau. All the while I was fighting against feelings of arousal. Under different circumstances I am sure I would have considered it a pleasant sensation, but at the moment it seemed sick and twisted. It kept hammering at me, gaining ground with each shuffling step I took.

I paused again and took a deep breath, focusing instead on the pounding headache I’d been trying so hard to forget. The pain wasn’t exactly what I would call welcome, but it was preferable to the sickening idea of being turned on by what had happened here, and that was the ethereal sensation I needed to deny.

Extreme arousal was almost too mild a description for the feeling that had been coming over me as I stood out on the walkway, and now that I was directly exposed to the scene, the excitation was taking over.