Page 24 of Body Tox

The room was fucking cold. The air from the fan in the ceiling blasted me in the face with the smell of chemicals, iron, and old cheese stink, like meat that was left out for too many days.

The space was full of things but empty of people, dead or alive. The only sound was of an AC unit kicking on somewhere farther away.

I cleared my throat and tentatively walked forward, eyeing the metal table with blood smeared all over and tools scattered on it.

That isn’t exactly hygienic. It could have at least been cleaned up.

“Fancy doctor, person?” I called out, continuing forward, getting an eerie feeling chasing the chill of the room.

The smell of rusted metal became overwhelming when I rounded the table. Gagging and holding my nose, I fell flat on my ass, landing with a ‘squelch.’

Confused why I’d tripped, I assessed the area, and there was a corpse on the ground below me—not the ‘long gone’ kind, but a ‘fresh one.’ He had on white scrubs that seemed to be made of paper-like material and a blue medical mask. It was half covering his face.

Reaching forward, I pulled the material off his face. His mouth was frozen open as if he’d been scared to death or had been in a state of shock.

“What the fuck?” I scooted away from the stiff.

Damn, he really did look like a gaping fish.

“Thought you were the only one to leave a mess behind, Little Wraith?”

I jolted, my eyes darting to the corner of the room where that fucking nuisance of a man skulked out of the shadows. He pulled his smiling skull mask off his face and stuffed it into his pocket.

My initial reaction was to run at this fucker, claw his eyes out and make him eat them, but…

I beamed at him, standing and walking toward the center of the room.

“You followed me here. What an interesting freak you are. Really dedicated to those good reviews, huh?” I mused, dancing around the aisle on my tiptoes. “Or did Daddy Dearest have you fetch me like the bitch you are?”

His jaw flexed, and he smiled back with a dangerous and powerful smirk.

It was true what they said: ‘Monsters were the prettiest people you could find.’

Too bad, Pretty Boy, you’re about to have a few scrapes on that good little face of yours.

“You are anelephant in a china shop, Little Wraith. Not like you’re very hard to follow,” he said with a smirk.

His steps matched mine from the opposite side of my destination—the autopsy table.

I giggled, letting out some of the mania I felt. The metal came up a little past my waist, so I turned around to hop up on the table. My feet dangled from the metal bed as my hand lay covertly over the abandoned scalpel.

“I like to make an entrance,” I said, shrugging and checking my nails.

The blood on the tabletop was running down my wrist. The man’s eyes zeroed in on that little trickle, and my eyelids lowered with satisfaction. He seemed to shake himself from the daze, his sparkling hazel eyes going back to meet mine.

“Well, as fun as this is, Pretty Boy, I think I will play later, I have some shit to do.”

Grabbing the scalpel and some other sharp thing, I hopped off the rickety table and dashed toward him. I came to a complete standstill when he pulled his hand from his pocket, a plush pink object in his grasp.

“I know how much you loved her tongue, Little Wraith,” he said, dangling the flesh in front of me as I tripped over my own feet, barely managing to keep myself upright. “Well, I felt a smidge guilty for giving her the lethal poison that was meant for you.”

I blinked, blindsided, and pissed as all hell.

He did kill her…and it was supposed to be me.

Truly looking at the squishy pale-colored part in his grip, my blood felt colder and colder. He was holding…her tongue. The object in his gloved hand was Cali’s fucking tongue. I stared at the blood on my shaking hands, knowing now it was Cali’s.

This monster butchered her to taunt me?

---