It was sweltering hot outside, but she had never felt so cold. Her veins were thick with ice, her body slow and heavy like a glacier. She peeled her eyelids open in a half hearted attempt to blink away whatever was causing her to feel so sluggish.  Her world was spinning around her, causing her to screw her eyes shut against the dizzying assault. Nausea crawled up inside her, but she swallowed down whatever bile was in her throat and forced her eyes open once more. They rolled around in her skull for a few moments before she could finally begin to focus on her blurry surroundings. The first thing she could make out was the smell, a metallic, damp smell that had settled in her nostrils. She could practically taste rusty metal. Then she took in her surroundings visually. It was dark, the only light being a fluorescent bulb swinging above her head. Groggily she scanned the area. Lots of harsh gray concrete surrounded her, like a prison cell. Then the rest of her senses came back to her in a wave that almost caused her to retch. She was in pain, a slow dull ache that spread from the back of her skull down to her legs. She was thirsty, her throat constricting so much she could barely swallow what little moisture she had in her mouth. With a shuddering breath she went to use her hands to rise to her feet, but realized in silent confusion that her hands were stuck behind her back. She struggled, finally feeling the rough rope that bound her wrists together behind her. She hissed at the feeling, she must have rubbed them sore already. With a great deal of difficulty she managed to rise to stand on shaky legs, gathering her bearings. The last thing she remembered was taking a jog late at night, but now she was only in her bra and panties in a strange place. Her cold sweat dripped down her chest and legs, sticky and uncomfortable. She nodded to herself, an attempt to calm herself down and reassure her that she was alive. She was a smart girl, top of her class in vet tech school. She knew she must have been kidnapped, hit across the head or drugged while she was out on her nightly jog. There was no time to sit and ponder who or why or even where she was, she needed to find help fast. 

            There was a doorway in the little dark room she was in, the metal door was bent on it's hinges but she would be able to squeeze through without an issue. She took a tentative step forward, her bare feet splayed against the wet, warm stone floor. It was a bit of a struggle to fit through the door with her hands behind her, the door frame pressed against her cheek while she shimmied through, but she made it to the other side. She could see clearly now that she was in a warehouse or abandoned building of some sort. The ceilings rose high above her, pipes growing like trees and rising into the darkness from all around her. The only sound she could hear was dripping water and a lone cricket echoing from somewhere in the building. The only windows she could see were boarded up, but a sliver of moonlight peeked through one of the wooden slats. She tiptoed over to peer through the little slot in the window, and looked out to see nothing but tree tops. She was on a second or third floor, possibly in the middle of nowhere by the looks of it. Desperation clawed at her stomach, but she quietly began to move through the warehouse in search of another door, a staircase, anything that could lead her to the outside world. Anywhere but here. She could have a better chance of running and hiding outside in the thick Texas country side than out in the open in an empty building. Something glinted in the corner of her eye as she slowly padded across the wet floor, drawing her attention down to the ground. There was a glass shard about the size of her hand just a few feet away. It would be so much easier to escape if her hands weren't tied behind her back. Crouching down in an awkward position she sat on her backside, leaning backwards to feel behind her for the shard of glass. She finally grasped it in her fingers and thanked he lord she had long limbs and fingers. Her mother always said she had piano playing hands. Now she worked to twist and slice with the shard of glass held between her fingers. It worked against he rope, slowly inching back and forth like a tiny hacksaw. Occasionally the glass would poke into her forearm, and she would pause and readjust. Just when she thought she was making headway, she could feel the threads fraying at the edges, she heard a noise from somewhere in the belly of the building. 

               She froze like a deer in the headlights, ears straining to hear anything else. When no noise followed, she began to work quicker at cutting her ropes, only pausing to wince when she sliced open one of her fingers in her hurry. Another loud noise, from somewhere closer by the sound of it, and she was starting to see tears well up in her eyes. Some part of her wanted to scream out for help, but another animal instinct in her swallowed that down and froze in silence. Afraid to make a noise, she paused again to listen closer. There was a new sound now, a melodically pleasant sound that sent chills down her spine. It was clearly human. A whistling jaunty tune that echoed through the bones of the building and closed in on her. She clutched the piece of glass tighter and struggled to her feet, head whipping around to find an escape route. She spotted an overturned freezer, and hurriedly tip toed to crouch behind it. She continued to work on cutting the rope, but was at the point where she couldn't maneuver her hands any further to reach the last thread of bindings. She shuddered and ducked her head at the sound of footsteps echoing around her. A lone tear rolled down her cheek, salting her tongue. She shrieked when a strong hand wrapped itself around her upper arm and yanked her upwards into a thick wall of human bulk. She struggled and thrashed, but her hands were bound behind her and the shard of glass had clattered to the floor in the attack. Another hand wrapped itself around her throat, black leather squeezing the column of her neck and causing her to wheeze out. She reared her leg forward and drove the heel of her foot back into the shins of her attacker, and a surge of satisfaction flowed through her when she heard a guttural grunt. It quickly died when a flash of silver rose in front of her eyes. A serrated hunting knife, like one from a horror movie, was held in front of her face. Her own reflection stared back at her in the sheen of the blade. She attempted to scream, but the sound only came out as a strangled noise. She was quickly loosing air, her vision turning black at the edges. 

               "Shh, shh shh," hummed the voice behind her, slowly tilting the blade to her bare stomach. She squirmed against her attacker, feeling the tip of the blade poking into her soft flesh. Suddenly, but yet achingly slowly, the blade began to sink into her. Layer by layer of skin and meat and muscle the knife was sunk into her abdomen. A guttural, animalistic sound ripped itself from her throat as the blade was buried to the hilt inside of her. Her body was wracked with shivers and sobs as the pressure around her throat grew unbearable, and finally her vision went black. The blade was ripped from the body with a jagged tearing motion, a loop of innards sliding out of the gaping wound before the body slumped against the attacker. With a sigh of relief and ecstasy, he began to work on dragging the body away. There was a lot of work to do. 

                                               **************

                 The dead often spoke to Cassidy. Not with words of course, she wasn't crazy. But a corpse can always tell a story. It's usually a good one too, if your idea of good is as morbid as hers is. This story before her was definitely something. It unfolded in front of her like a children's picture book, images and scenes dancing in her eyes as she absent mindedly day dreamed.  A man was dead. Not very shocking considering Cassidy's line of work. What would be more surprising is if the body was alive and rose from beneath the sheet to ask, "Hey, what's going on?" The mental image made her smirk a little, but seeing as how it was considered odd to smile over a dead body, she smothered the expression quick as it came. What was strange about this particular dead man, was that he was missing his head. Most people die of natural causes, in their sleep, after battling a deadly sickness. But those were of no interest to Cassidy. She clicked her pen a few times, a habit she developed in medical school that worsened when she focused on something. She held a sheet of paper and a clipboard under her arm, ready for note taking. The big metal doors to the morgue swung open, startling her out of her studious inspection of the decapitated body. She smiled when she realized who entered as he made his way over to her, sipping on a cup of coffee from a paper cup. Mike Winters was a short, stout, and balding older gentlemen with a cop stache and a sometimes hard to follow Alabama accent; and was the chief county medical examiner. She was very lucky to work under him fresh out of medical school, the opportunity to learn and work first hand in this field was hard to come by for someone her age. 

          "Well I spoke to the station on the phone, no sight of the head yet. We'll have to go ahead and get started without it," he chuckled, "ahead..." Cassidy stifled a grin at his equally dark sense of humor and whipped out her clipboard while Mike removed the sheet from the body, peeling it back with a flurry like a magician revealing a surprise. "Now if you were the murderer, why would you remove the head?" Mike quickly fell into his teaching voice, pausing with his arms crossed and awaiting Cassidy's response. She pretended to think hard about it to not seem too eager.

           "To make it harder to identify the body." She replied, already jotting down notes on her autopsy report. She scribbled out the drawn out victim's head. 

            "And why wouldn't that work in this particular case?" Mike asked, his lips quirked up into a smile. Cassidy tapped the corpse's arm with her pen.

             "Cause' he's still got his hands," Mike nodded, sidling away to slip into his medical apron and prepare the tools for the autopsy. 

              "Not the brightest killer clearly. Probably someone the victim knew. Should be an easy open and closed case for the uniforms," Cassidy nodded along thoughtfully while she continued to examine the body, jotting down any injuries or marks that she noticed. 

               "Why does the family want an autopsy?" Cassidy asked, gesturing to the headless man who clearly had been stabbed to death. And was missing a head. Mike only shrugged, sliding the rolling tool tray to to the side of the body. 

               "police just want us to try and determine what we can about the death so they have enough to catch the killer. I'll probably end up testifying in court for this one." She sniffed in thought while she finished her report . Cassidy was fresh out of medical school at the young age of 25 and was very lucky to work as an autopsy technician for the medical examiner's office, her dream job. She graduated high school early, got access to one of the best schools in Texas, and worked her ass off to get to where she was today- poking and prodding at a dead man. She gathered her pen and paper and made her way to the back office to slide it in with the other recent reports. Tying her dark hair up and out of her face she made her way to the sanitization station in he back of the morgue to prepare for the autopsy. While she had examined the external areas, it was time to open the body up and look inside.  When she made her way back to the autopsy gurney mike had already brought out the scissors required to begin the Y incision.

           "Want to do the honors?" he said, wiggling his bushy eyebrows. She nodded and smiled, taking the scissors from his large calloused hand and positioning the edge of the scissor's blade to the body's chest. She got to work cutting, so used to the feeling of metal tearing through skin that it felt more like cutting a piece of paper. They worked to peel back the flaps to get a better look at the cavity. Sure enough, there was some internal bruising and bleeding where a blade had been thrust into the chest and stomach multiple times. Several of the internal organs had lacerations, blood and other fluids were pooling in the cavity like a disgusting soup. Yummy she thought. Gallows humor was a common thing in her field, the only way to stay sane truly. 

         They continued to work, examining the organs and internal damage the victim had sustained. Cassidy further inspected the bloody stump where the head used to be. She wondered what he looked like. Did he have a strong nose? A blue eyes or brown? Did he have a nice smile before he was brutally murdered? She often found herself thinking heavily on the victims that ended up on her gurney. They were all people like her. But at the end of the day she had to separate herself from those feelings in order to not lose it, so she focused instead on studying the dried blood around the jagged edges of the wound. They worked like that in comfortable silence, the only sound being the wet slimy sounds of hands digging through organs and the sound of metal clicking. They both were shook out of their intense work by the morgue doors swinging open and a pair of sensible high heels clicking across the floor. 

           “Mike, there’s a phone call for you.” Said Evie Hart, the front desk manager for the main office. She handled all the distressed families over the phone, directed grizzled cops with a stern but polite manner, and handled organizing any official paperwork that came through. 

           “I’ll take a message, thank you Evie.” Mike grunted, working to examine a damaged lung. She shook her head, black curls bouncing with the motion.

           “It’s the police captain. It’s very urgent he says,” she explained. Mike sighed a little at the disturbance and began working to remove his blood slicked gloves and gear. 

           “Take a break Cassidy, we’ll finish this when I come back,"

Cassidy's break consisted of doodling all over the back of a spare piece of paper while she sipped on a cup of tea she had in her portable cup, staining the sides of the cup red with her bloody gloves. It didn't last long however, as soon Mike was swishing back into the lab with a hurried pace. She leaped to her feet in an attempt to hide her childish drawings, but Mike paid her no mind. 

          "I'm going to have Ryan finish this for us," he began, referring to the other autopsy tech that usually stayed in the back lab. He specialized in records and toxicology, but often filled in on autopsies when needed. 

          "Why?" Cassidy asked, hands held away from her scrubs. 

          "We need to be at a crime scene. All hands on deck little missy," he explained. Cassidy froze, her stomach twisting in eager excitement. She had never been allowed to go on a crime scene before, it was rare for the ME to be needed on scene. This must be extreme. She swallowed down butterflies like a giddy schoolgirl and nodded vigorously.

            "I'll gather my things!" She exclaimed, trying her best not to run like a child. "What kind of crime scene is it?" she asked while she stuffed her duffel bag with the appropriate tools needed for the trip.

              "Sounds like a murder. And from what Captain Mooney said, it's connected to two other murders they've had in the last three months." Mike stripped off his bloody gear and set them aside, writing down a little note explaining his absence for Ryan. Cassidy could hardly contain her excitement. God she could use a big break, something to look good on her record as an autopsy tech to one day gain her the title of ME. Three was the magic number that would fuel her career. Three connected murders was the minimum to be coined the work of the most infamous type of criminal there is. A serial killer.