“Sorry to call you in this late, Sir.” “It’s fine, Abigail,” grunted Sergeant Harold Dawkins, stifling a yawn as he folded his umbrella. Crime waits for no man, after all. “You said the killer sent something to your house?” Abigail nodded, faintly trembling. He couldn’t blame her, really. Rookie officer comes in and the first case to fall into her lap was someone finding the body of a woman nailed upside down to a lamppost? Anyone would do the same. “I-I… I didn't know who else to call,” she whimpered. “It’s okay,” he said. “Where is it?” “I-Inside.” She had placed them on the desk in his office: three identical flash drives, resting in a dripping, mud-stained Ziploc bag. With a grimace, Harold put on a pair of rubber gloves before unsealing it. A fetid stench immediately erupted from within, the room smothered in a scent that could only be described as cadaverous, prompting the sergeant to quickly reach in and pluck the drives out. “Goddammit,” he choked out amid his coughs, lunging out of his seat and deliriously pacing about the room. Abigail had already went ahead and threw the windows open despite the raging storm outside. “W-What do you think’s inside them, sir?” she asked as she caught her breath, fingernails digging into her elbows. “Is it… is it going to be like last time?” “Probably,” he grumbled, turning on his computer. “Seen a bunch of crazies in my time here, but not one with an ego this big. Fucking devil-worshippers like him think they know better all because they can fingerpaint some stars with pig’s blood.” A flash of light capped his sentence, followed by the slow rumble of thunder. “This is sick…” she muttered. “He’s killed like, what, thirteen people already?” “Twelve,” Harold corrected, plugging in the first drive. “I know it’s hard to tell these days, but he wants us nervous, Abigail. We can't let him get his way.” “U-Understood, sir.” “Good. Now then...” The first drive only held a single image file. With one final click on the mouse, Harold was in, and what he saw immediately made him jolt backward into his seat. “What, Sir? What is it— [i]oh my God![/i]” It was a photograph of a body desecrated in a most horrific manner. Harold could tell it was a woman’s, but that’s only because of the killer’s [i]modus operandi[/i]. The flesh from the sternum to the pelvis was cut and splayed open, her viscera on display for the world to see. “Jesus Christ,” he managed to impart as he yanked out the drive, clenching it in his fist. Abigail could only tear up and collapse into the nearest chair. Dread hung in the air as he plugged in the second drive, this one with a text file instead. Skimming through it, Harold understood them to be harmless words of praise, but no matter how hard they tried, he couldn’t make heads or tails of all the nonsense about unicorns and trumpets wedged in between. Harold proceeded to plug in and open the final drive, this one containing an audio file. “God...” he muttered, putting on his headphones before tentatively reaching for the mouse, the cursor waveringly hovering above it for a bit before he breathed in and took the plunge. A ruffling noise came first. Some heavy huffing and panting followed. Moaning. Groaning. A scratch scurrying from left to right, then silence. Then, a high-pitched shriek. Harold almost tore off his headphones. It was from a woman, no doubt the one from the image prior. Her scream clawed at his head, her voice twisting and convulsing in every contortion of agony he could never have perceived before now, so much so that the silence that came afterward felt divine. Sweating feverishly, he sat there, trembling. He wanted to turn it off, yet at the very back of his head, something urged him to play it back. And so he did. Multiple times. The screams were as distressing as ever, yet each time, the gnawing feeling at the back of his head grew. Harold leaned in closer, listening deeper into every which way the woman screeched. Even more so, he listened to the faint sounds in between— the sobs, the whimpers, the ragged cries and pleas for help, before realizing just what that feeling was. The voice sounded familiar. In fact, it almost sounded like... “A-Abigail?” he shuddered, turning around. The lights went out. A crack of thunder split the sky.