I woke up suddenly to the sound of my phone buzzing on my nightstand. “Fuck.. What time is it?” I muttered to myself as I picked up the call, putting the phone up to my ear, I heard my boss's frantic voice over the line and that was when I knew the killer had struck again. Fuck.

I found myself arriving at the scene of the crime shortly after my boss had called, also after realizing it was not only the middle of the night but it was 3 in the goddamn morning. I could see the other detectives and the coroners doing their things by taking the body as well as marking where it was and everything. I slowly felt myself approaching my boss.

“What happened?” I ask, knowing full on well that it was a dumb question the minute I had said it.

“Well we had a 52 year old male, disemboweled and hanging by his intestines from his chandelier.” My boss, David, stated, ignoring how stupid my question was.

“Jesus,” I replied, shaking my head, “same MO?”

“Yeah, man’s name is Patrick Camden, his wife, Linda, found him after hearing noises coming from downstairs and not seeing her husband in bed with her,” David recalled, watching as the coroners and the forensic examiners haul the body off into the ambulance with the EMTs.

I nodded slowly and stepped away from David, moving towards the house and into the scene of the crime. Immediately, I was struck with a smell that was the mixture of something more putrid than I’d ever smelled before as well as a metallic smell. I tried to hold back my body’s instinct of vomiting as I continued smelling the putrid and acrid smell as I stared at the blood splattered walls and blood stained carpet. It was obvious he had not only been killed but also displayed here. I looked around the scene for any remnants the killer could have left behind, pulling my gloves out of my pocket and sliding them on as to prevent any tampering of the evidence.

I could hear the sobs of Mr. Camden’s wife outside as I felt myself trying to use any of my senses to figure out where the killer could have left anything. Crouching down to my knees, I saw a bloodstained piece of paper on the ground. I unfolded it gently, not wanting to damage the likely important evidence I had just found. “Uh, David, you might want to see this,” I called out as I stared down at the piece of paper.

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This old bastard knew what he had coming. He knew I was going to come for him. Like I came for his buddies, but I still won. I got to him. I still murdered him like the little mouse he was, he’s lucky I didn’t feed his own intestines back to him. I gave him an easier death. A death he didn’t deserve, he deserved to burn in HELL.

I felt David’s presence behind me but still jumped when I felt his hand touch my shoulder. “Fuck!” I screamed unintentionally, watching as the other investigators on the crime scene all glanced over when they heard me yell.

“You’re jumpy today,” David comments, a bit of amusement in his voice.

“Given the current scene we’re investigating, this note I just found, and the fact that it’s 3 am. I have a right to be jumpy,” I replied quickly before handing David the note I had found.

He opened it slowly before glancing over it just as I had. I watched as I saw a slight look of horror come across his face before he folded it back up and slid it into a plastic evidence baggy. “We’ll definitely need to be investigating this for any kind of DNA or clues we can use against this psychopathic motherfucker.” David spoke lowly.

I spent the next several hours with David investigating this scene and helping to gather as much information and data from the scene before leaving and heading back to my dorm to make it back to my morning class despite the fact that I was running on 3 hours of sleep.

Sliding into my chair at my Forensics class lecture hall, I could barely keep my eyes open. At this point, I wasn’t even worried about getting a window seat, I was more worried about keeping my eyes open for the duration of this 2 and a half hour lecture. Which clearly was going to prove to be a bigger task that I had previously imagined. There were plenty of moments where I felt myself nodding off before snapping back awake moments later and I’m sure my professor wasn’t all too pleased about that.

As I was finally leaving the lecture, I headed towards the cafeteria to pick up some form of energy and at this point, I didn’t care what it was, if it had caffeine, I needed it. On the way though I stumbled into none other than Brody.

“Woah there Bitch.. Not able to pay attention to where you’re going are you?” He asked before tilting my chin up to face him.Once he noticed the bags under my eyes and the fact that I was too tired to fight him off, his face softened.

“Late night huh, Jade?” He asked softly, I could feel his thumb brushing against my cheek, wanting both to fight him off as well as to sink into his touch which the latter side was winning. I felt myself sink into him a bit, before I went out cold from the lack of sleep as well as the stress I was under to help David and maintain my full-time classes.