Page 18 of Girl, Undone
Subject: Julia Dawson
Observation Date: [Redacted].
There.Simple.Factual.
His hands were steady on the keys, and it had surprised him how calm he felt afterward, when most people would expect the opposite.Guilt, maybe.Remorse.But those were emotional responses to moral frameworks he'd stopped subscribing to years ago.
Julia Dawson had walked the same route home every Wednesday for eleven months.He'd watched her do it sixteen times before he made his move.Sixteen was more than enough.Some people would call that overkill, but those people didn't understand preparation.
He typed: Subject displayed predictable behavioral patterns.Wednesday evening departures from group therapy sessions, 9:47 PM average departure time, walking route consistent.Low situational awareness.No defensive training evident.
The cigarette burned between his fingers.He'd forgotten to ash it.Grey crumbs fell onto the desk, and he brushed them away, kept typing.
Abduction required physical intervention, followed by restraint.Upon waking, subject responded to verbal commands when threatened.Transport to secondary location proceeded without complication.
That wasn't quite true.She'd tried to scream once, when they arrived, and he'd had to put his hand over her mouth until she understood that screaming wouldn't help her.But that detail felt extraneous.The report didn't need every fumble.
His surveillance notes on Julia filled forty-seven pages.Three months of watching, documenting, learning.Her work schedule.Her roommate's schedule.The medications in her bathroom cabinet - sertraline, 50mg, taken nightly.The online courses she'd been taking.Medieval history.Torture methods.The Inquisition.She'd written a whole essay on it that he'd read over her shoulder one day at the coffee shop where she studied.He continued typing:
Upon arrival at the predetermined location, subject was restrained using nylon rope, four-point restraint system, secured to wooden table.Induction phase initiated at approximately 00:46 PM.As the subject was confronted with the agents, observable changes in physiology and psychology were noted.Elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, a profound sense of dread.The response aligns with classical conditioning paradigms.The culmination of exposure resulted in ventricular fibrillation, leading to cardiac arrest.No physical intervention was necessary to induce fatality.
The rats had cost him four hundred dollars total.Sixty of them, bought across eight different locations over six weeks.Pet stores mostly.One breeder upstate who sold feeders in bulk.Nobody asked questions.Why would they?Rats were rats.
Eighteen minutes.He'd timed it with his watch, the same Timex his father had worn before he died.Cheap, reliable, waterproof to thirty meters.His father had been a practical man.
Julia Dawson had screamed herself hoarse in the first five minutes.After that, she'd just made small sounds, gasping sounds, like she couldn't get enough air.The rats had been everywhere by then, drawn by warmth and movement and hunger.They'd climbed the table legs.Crawled across her arms, her chest, her face.
Subject expired at 01:09 AM.Cause of death: cardiac arrest.Extreme physiological stress as primary factor.Zero physical trauma inflicted by operator.
That was the part he kept coming back to.Zero physical trauma.He hadn't hurt her.Not directly.He'd simply placed her in a situation and let biology do the rest.The human body was its own worst enemy if you knew which buttons to push.
He'd left everything there, including the body.All he'd done was prop the door open before leaving, and the blast of arctic air that rushed in was all the encouragement the rats needed to escape the heat.Then he'd shut the door and left Julia's body for some unlucky passerby to find.
That was it.Julia Dawson was dead, and the world kept turning.That was the thing people didn't understand.They acted like death was this massive event, this rupture in reality.But it wasn't.People died every day.Car accidents, heart attacks, cancer, old age.Julia Dawson was just one more.The method was different, sure, but the result was the same.
He checked his watch.2:41 PM.
The next one was going to require more work.Julia had been simple; grab her off a dark road, take her somewhere isolated.It had been clean and contained.But the next subject wasn't someone he could just grab.Wrong neighborhood, wrong routine, and too many people around.This one needed subtlety.
But tonight’s test subject was going to be much different.The prep work itself was an enormous task, and there was no room for straightforward abduction here.He had to be more discrete, more covert.This new subject demanded a different approach, one that blended seamlessly into the fabric of daily life, undetected until it was too late.He had already inserted himself into the life of his next subject.Just another face they saw regularly enough to stop questioning.Humans were pattern-recognition machines.Show up often enough in the same context and they'd stop seeing you as a threat.
Five hours until the next phase started.He'd already done the prep work.The subject wouldn't notice.That was the beauty of it.By the time they understood what was happening, it would be too late to matter.
Anticipation coursed through his veins like a potent drug.Julia Dawson had opened the door to unchartered territory, but the next subject would plant him firmly on the other side.
CHAPTER TEN
‘Okay, you’re going to have to walk me through this,’ Ripley said from the passenger seat.
Ella was doing 46 in a 30 zone, inspired by her unexpected theory.It had hit her in the autopsy room, and now she couldn't get it out of her head.
‘Rats.’
‘Rats?You’ve jumped from A to Z real quick here, Dark.’
‘Think about that wound in her stomach.It didn’t look clean-cut like with a surgical instrument.It was jagged and irregular.Remember what the pathologist said?Like a thousand cuts.’
‘Yeah, I’m not seeing it.Why would rats burrow into her stomach like that?It doesn’t make sense.’
