Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
I watch the footage, my brows furrowed as all I see is myself working, but I know for a fact there was a black rose left on the autopsy table, only I don’t see it here. Knight jumps ahead in the video to where I’m freaking out and eventually race out of the morgue with no sign of anybody following me.
“Okay,” I say, confused why I’m not seeing a rose on the table. “How does that prove anything? I told you that night was only a feeling. I never saw the guy, I could just sense him there.”
“I know,” he tells me, “Which is why I kept digging. This video is from when that first body came in. The one that had your name carved across the knuckles and the internal organs all messed up.”
A shiver sails down my spine, remembering it all too clearly. It had fucked with my head in a way that I’ll never recover from. Even now I still remember the feel of the letters carved into the heart. It was horrifying.
Knight skips ahead in the video, only stopping when the morgue door opens and we see the coroner striding in with the body. “Wait. No, this isn’t right,” I tell him. “Detective Gray was there.”
Knight shakes his head, putting the video in fast forward so we don’t have to replay every single moment of the night. “No, he wasn’t. The coroner is the one who gives you the body and leaves. Only as you open the bag, it’s not the body your head perceives it to be.”
“What?” I mutter, leaning closer to see the screen better, and just as Knight said, I watch the coroner leave and get straight to work. Only as I open the bag, it’s not the body I remember working on. It’s an older Korean gentleman who appears to have perished in a fire. “No. No, that’s not the body I worked on.”
“Keep watching, doll.”
My brows furrow, and I watch the footage to the end, watching as I go over the body with great detail, taking down letters and making sentences out of markings that aren’t even there. “This isn’t right. Somebody must have doctored the footage.”
“That’s what I wondered at first, but with none of the detectives, first responders, or even the people who work with you in the morgue able to confirm even a snippet of your story, it leaves too much doubt.”
I shake my head. “I’m not crazy.”
“I know, doll,” he says, before letting out a breath. “Next up, the double homicide.”
Tears silently roll down my cheeks as I go over the footage, and just like with the first body, I feel more confused than ever. I see the two bodies come into the morgue, and just as Knight and Dr. McKullan had said, they’re the victims of a horrific car wreck, not the two men I had danced with in the club. They don’t even look a little bit alike, and yet my brain told me they were different people all together.
I watch as I go through the motions during their autopsies, searching for secret messages and documenting my findings, only there’s nothing to find.
“It got me thinking about what actually happened at the club,” he tells me.
“To the two men?”
Knight nods and brings up the next video. “I needed to know that there weren’t two bodies rotting away somewhere, so I got in contact with the club. I had to jump through more hoops than necessary to get the footage, but they eventually caved.”
“And?” I say, not sure I want to see what he found.
“The two men you were dancing with definitely weren’t the two men from the morgue.”
He jumps ahead in the footage again, showing me on the dance floor, grinding against the two men, and I feel the first bit of relief, seeing that I’m not going crazy. I even grin when I see Izzy in the background hooking up with a complete stranger.
That night was wild in so many different ways.
The footage plays, and I watch as the two men eventually leave, one heading for the bar and the other hoping to meet me in the bathroom, when I begin to wander away.
“Wait,” I say, knowing what comes next before realizing that if Knight has already watched it, that means that he would have also seen me with the stalker and watched as he made me come on his fingers before I pulled him away to the private booth, took him in my mouth, and then fucked him raw.
“So, you saw . . .”
Knight nods. “I certainly saw something, but I don’t think it’s exactly what you remember.”
“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He cringes, and I reach for his phone, only for my wrists to pull at the stupid restraints, and then as if on cue, I see myself wander off the dance floor and step in front of a strange man. Only, he’s not masked, and he’s certainly not tall and broad. Just some regular guy trying to enjoy his night.