Quickly after I posted about my experiences during my late night drives(I take late night drives. The things I’ve seen are unnatural., I got a message from someone. He was a guy that lived near me. He said his grandpa worked on a similar case to Skinless. His grandpa was a detective in the 40s. He sent me a page from his grandad’s diary. I fact-checked it…and it’s disturbing to say the least.
There laid her body. The one we’d been looking for for a while now. The skin completely removed, stripped from the flesh with careful precision. The white nightgown was soaked completely with blood.
“Jesus…” Smith gagged into a handkerchief.
“What sick bastard could do this to a poor girl?” I barked as my steel toe boots digged into the hot, sandy dirt.
Daniels rushed over and began to swat the buzzing clusters of flies beginning to form on her. Poor Smith is a rookie. He shouldn’t be seeing this.
“Maggots?” I asked sharply.
“No, surprisingly. This was recent.” Daniels replied in a grim tone.
I crouched down by the carcass with my partner and helped him clear away the insects and flip the body over. She was face down. Oh god…the front was worse. Eyelids and lips completely ripped off, leaving her eyes bulging and her teeth showing like marble pearls in a pile of gore. It was disgusting. This is the most repulsive crime scene I have witnessed.
“Smith!”
“Y-yeah…?”
“Get the coroner and the cleanup crew. We’re bringing her in.”
“Ok…”
Around thirty minutes later, they loaded her up and drove the carcass to the lab. Me and Daniels followed quickly after. We sat in the outside area with a depressing silence filling the air.
“So…what do you think happened?” Daniels asked me, trying to break the blood-soaked ice.
“Just a sick fuck picking up a girl and killing her. Nothing new.”
“Crime of passion?”
“No. There was no relation. Yes, violent crimes tend to be of passion, but when they are this violent…the murderer has no social connection to the victim.”
“Hm…what if it’s a serial killer?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if it was.”
The coroner’s assistant popped out from the doorway. A petite girl with soft features complimenting her curious eyes and freckles. Her name is Allison. Me and her are good friends.
“Mr. Daniels and Mr. Rivers. You two can come in.” She invited in her squeaky and breathy voice.
I gave her a pat on the back as me and Daniels strolled into the lab. We saw her. The girl. Her fleshless jaw was agape, and the red mid section was pulled apart into two flaps.
“There are a lot of cuts and burst blood vessels. The cuts are too clean and deep to be from thorns and the such. She was fighting back. Off the top of my head I’d say…died of blood loss.” Allison explained.
“What are these slashes around the jaw?” I inquired, using my pen to tilt the corpse’s head.
“That, I can’t figure out. We’re gonna need the coroner for that…but he’s on leave.”
“When me and Daniels found her, she was face down in the ditch. The ditch had some rocks in it, especially near her face.”
“Well, if it was from her being thrown face down on the rocks she would have way more fragments stuck in her face. They appear to be from movement.”
“She was screaming, perhaps?” Daniels chimed in.
…the room went silent. Allison looked at me and Daniels with sudden realization. Her eyes quivered, and I hung my head down low. I made the sign of the cross as Allison gasped in horror.
“…she was alive…like this…” Allison murmured.
“It would explain…a lot. The streaks on the dress, drag marks of blood…” I continued.
“How long you think she was still kicking?” Daniels questioned hesitantly.
“5…10 minutes. Depending on how her wounds were treated before she was dumped. For someone in that much pain…must’ve felt like hours…”
“God rest her soul.” I sighed.
I only stayed for a couple more hours after that. I tried to get out of there as soon as possible. I loathed seeing that body. It unnerved me.
I heard they recovered the murder weapon soon after further down the road. It was an old butcher’s knife. Allison requested to have it during the autopsy to easily measure wounds. I didn’t care. I was gonna put in a request to be moved off the case tomorrow. I needed some sleep first.
As I slept…I had dreams about her eyes. Those bloodshot, green eyes…they were frozen in an expression of pure horror. Out of everything about her body, what the hell was so disturbing about those eyes!?
I was suddenly awoken by the phone ringing downstairs. When I awoke, I noticed a puddle of bile festering on my pillow. I had retched in the night. I groggily got up and stumbled downstairs to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
“Uh…uh…Rivers!?” Daniels stuttered in a panic over the phone.
“…what’s wrong? You ok?”
“The body is gone!!! GONE!!! And so is the knife…and oh god…Allison…”
My eyebrows furrowed.
“What happened to Allison?”
“S..someone cut her face off…”