The bright fluorescent lights buzzed and blinked to life as I flipped the switch, instantly stripping the Autopsy Suite of any shadow or mystery. It was a cold, aggressive white glare, and I felt my eyelids twitch. It was well past sundown, and while the money was decent, the real reason I was here—the old, embarrassing tug of morbid curiosity—felt amplified in the late-night quiet. As a kid, I'd loved the manufactured horror of movies; this was the slow, clinical dread of reality.
I pulled on the thin, light-blue liquid-resistant scrubs. They offered no comfort against the deep, bone-aching 40° chill of the room. It wasn't preservation that bothered me; it was the silence. I secured the N95 mask over my face, filtering the heavy air—the sickly-sweet scent of formaldehyde and the sharp, coppery tang of old blood. I took a deep, unnecessary breath through the mask and immediately began to worry the skin around my thumb with my other index finger, a nervous habit I hadn't managed to quit. If I had a joint right now, I'd take it. But the morgue demanded sobriety. (At least on property.)
My hands, usually unsteady, moved with the calm, detached precision the job required. I was here to stage the scene. From the cabinets, I pulled the instruments and arranged them on the stainless steel tray. The unsettling weight of the rib cutters, the sterile, mirrored gleam of the scalpels. They weren't tools of violence, but of analysis. Still, I hated how they reflected my masked face back at me—a distorted stranger in a freezing box.
The quiet was a threat. It was a vacuum where a mind could spiral.
I reached for my noise-canceling headphones. I didn't want background music; I wanted a sonic fortress. I hit play, and the furious, gut-punching chords of My Chemical Romance—a band whose rage and dark themes I related to, a band that made noise where the world demanded silence—slammed into my ears. The world outside the music became a manageable, muted hum.
Shield engaged. Time for work.
I rolled the hydraulic gurney over to the refrigeration wall. The Unit C door was heavy, its lock clicking with a metallic sound that was almost swallowed by the music. When I opened it, the deep-freeze air hit my face, making my safety goggles fog instantly. I rubbed them clear, focusing on the toe tag tied to the foot: Jane Doe, Homicide, Probable Strangulation.
I transferred her, feeling the utter, dead absence of mass. It wasn't the weight that got you; it was the inertness. I closed the cooler door, sealing the rest of the silent occupants back into their drawers.
I began the incision prep. As I leaned over, my eyes caught the detail that hadn't been on the intake form: a small, dark bruise high on her left temple. Too fresh, too small, to be anything but a pre-mortem blow. A final, terrified moment.
My heart—a muscle I could still feel—sped up. The music was loud, screaming about betrayal and broken promises, but suddenly, the message of the song felt fragile.
I was alone, a living woman standing over a piece of silent evidence, and the cold, awful thought pierced the drumbeat in my head: If the morgue is where the victims end up, what if the killer saw this as a convenient drop-off?
I reached for my scalpel, my thumb worried the dry skin on my other hand, and beneath the layers of angry sound, I heard something, through the headphones—a thin, almost imperceptible scrape of metal on concrete that did not belong to the machinery. It sounded like something heavy being dragged.
I was alone, surrounded by the dead, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled with a feeling that had nothing to do with the cold. I had just prepped the tools that were meant to solve her murder.
But what if the murderer wasn't done?
"Okay Erica, chill out," I whispered, the sound deadened by the mask, "there's nothing here except the corpses and maybe a janitor or a few late night stragglers. Nothing to worry about, and definitely nothing to be worried about." I exhaled, the air hot against the plastic filter, and lifted the scalpel to make the incision.
I lowered the blade. My hand refused to start the cut. I felt the dry skin around my thumb splitting under the pressure of my other fingers, but the small pain wasn't enough to drown out the memory of the sound. A single tap. Slow. Rhythmic.
I yanked the headphones off my head, the music dying instantly. The sudden silence was a physical blow, heavy and immense. I stood in the dead center of the Autopsy Suite, bathed in the cruel, surgical light, listening to the lab try to breathe: the low thrum of the refrigerator compressors, the hiss of the negative pressure vents, the frantic, desperate pounding of my own pulse.
The sound didn't repeat. But the fear had already cracked the foundation of my control.
Late-night stragglers, I mentally challenged myself. A doctor grabbing a file?
No. The main entrance required a badge scan and a unique code. The only reason someone would be inside the secure prep room, where that sound came from, was if they had clearance. And clearance meant they were either me, a pathologist, or security—all of whom would use their keys, not tap on the other side of a locked door like a poltergeist.
I focused on the steel door. It was thick, fire-rated, secured by a high-gauge industrial lock. I knew the specs—I cleaned around them every week. It was designed to keep biohazards in.
My gaze darted to the instruments. The rib cutters seemed to wink in the light. They were too large. I quietly slid the smallest tissue forceps—about six inches of cold, heavy steel—into the deep pocket of my scrub pants. A pathetic weapon, but it felt better than nothing.
I took a half-step back from the autopsy table, putting Jane Doe between me and the door. The logical, realistic part of my mind, the part that dealt with evidence and cold facts, now took over, and it was screaming in terror.
One. If there was a colleague, they would have called out.
Two. The lock had been silently engaged, not opened.
Three. The cold, hard fact: the only thing that should be making noise on that side of the prep room—where the cleaning supplies and spare gurneys were stored—was the sound of wheels.
And then, I heard it again. Not a tap. It was a faint, wet schuffling sound, like wet leather being dragged across the tile floor. It was getting closer to the door, closer to me. It wasn't loud, but in the echoing stillness, it felt like thunder.
I didn't need a horror movie to tell me what was happening. I needed my morgue manual. And right now, the only logical procedure was to abandon the scene. I took another step back, my eyes fixed on the door, planning my desperate sprint for the emergency exit down the hall.
My foot caught on something low and metallic. I stumbled, my gaze dropping just long enough to see what I'd tripped over: the bone saw, the one tool capable of cutting through solid defense. It was charging on the floor, its cord unplugged, the battery indicator light flashing red.
The schuffling stopped directly behind the steel door.
Then, slowly, deliberately, the sound of three sharp knocks echoed through the cold metal. A pattern. A response. A challenge.
I knew, with chilling, objective certainty, that whoever—or whatever—was on the other side was no late-night straggler. It was waiting for me to be still.
The sound of the three knocks—a clear, measured rap-rap-rap—demolished the last of my self-control. This wasn't a pipe. This wasn't a janitor. This was deliberate.
I didn't scream. I didn't even drop the scalpel I'd picked up again, my knuckles white against the handle. My response wasn't panic; it was a cold, objective assessment of my surroundings, the way a mortuary technician deals with a sudden, catastrophic equipment failure.
The nearest exit was the main doors, fifty feet down the hall past the prep room. The steel door to that prep room was now my immediate problem.
I pivoted on the slick, tiled floor, moving away from the table. My eyes scanned the room: the refrigerated storage wall, the sink station, and the large, open bone saw on the floor. I didn't grab the saw; it was too heavy and unwieldy. Instead, I remembered the only truly robust, handheld item in the room.
My hand slapped against the wall next to the main sink. I grabbed the heavy, thick-gauge steam hose used to blast debris and disinfect the tables after an autopsy. I yanked it free from the wall mount with a sharp, metallic clang. It wasn't a weapon, but it was a solid, nine-foot length of rubber and brass.
I kept my back against the refrigerated wall, moving backward toward the furthest corner of the suite. The sheer silence from the other side of the door was now more terrifying than the knocks. They were waiting. They knew I was listening.
My brain was running through safety protocols. There was no internal lock on this door. No panic button that wasn't already tied to the general alarm system.
I felt the sudden, desperate urge to turn on the alarm, but the thought stopped me: if the person outside was a killer, alerting them that I was taking action would just rush the attack. They had the element of surprise; I needed the element of quiet defense.
I slowly backed up until my heels hit the base of the storage units. I slid the heavy tissue forceps from my pocket—useless, but comforting—and transferred the steam hose into a two-handed grip.
Then, the doorknob turned again. This time, it didn't just stop. It ground against the housing, turning slowly until the lock mechanism strained. The sound was a horrific, drawn-out groan of metal.
The person on the other side wasn't just turning the knob; they were trying to force the lock.
I looked down at Jane Doe, still laid out on the table, her body a silent lure. My morbid curiosity had finally brought the horror show home, and the script was officially broken. I crouched, gripping the hose, every nerve ending screaming. The groaning of the lock intensified, followed by a sudden, sickening CRACK!—the sound of the latch plate splintering wood or metal giving way.
I knew I only had one second left.
I didn't think; I only moved. I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, my eyes locked on the refrigeration unit I'd just pulled Jane Doe from. It was the only hole to crawl into. The hydraulic gurney was still positioned next to the cooler wall. I wrenched the empty metal drawer wide—no time to be gentle—and shoved my body inside, kicking my legs up last.
Lying on my side, half-crushed, I reached for the handle. I didn't dare slam it. Using the full, agonizing extent of my reach, I gently pulled the drawer. The heavy steel slid back into the frame, creating a long, chilling hiss of friction. I let it drift closed, every nerve fiber bracing for a loud click.
It stopped short. The latch hadn't caught.
My stomach dropped out. I had to push it again. Using a single finger, I exerted the tiniest pressure. The last half-inch of metal scraped with a sound that, in the silence, felt deafeningly loud. Finally, the latch slid home with a barely audible, definitive snick.
Total, absolute darkness swallowed me. The cold was immediate, a paralyzing shock, stealing the air from my lungs. The trapped formaldehyde scent was so potent it burned my nostrils behind the mask. I pressed my back flat against the bottom, trying to dissolve into the metal.
The steel door to the prep room burst open.
It wasn't a violent slam, but a forceful thud as the door hit its stopper. I heard the muffled schuff-schuff of heavy boots on the tile floor, then a brief, guttural sound of satisfaction. He was breathing the cold air like a predator.
The boots moved. Slow. Calculated. They approached the autopsy table. I felt the presence—heavy, cold, and utterly wrong—right outside my sealed box. My heart was a frantic, useless drumbeat against my ribs.
Then, the low voice, hard and clipped, speaking in what I can only assume was German:
"Wo ist das lebendige?"
He didn't sound angry; he sounded amused. He knew. He hadn't been testing the lock; he'd been breaking it to trap me.
He moved again, a heavy thump as he leaned against the steel table, just feet from my head. I bit down hard, hard enough to kill the scream building in my throat, tasting a sharp rush of my own blood.
The figure circled the table. The flashlight beam didn't hit my drawer, but I saw its movement streak across the ceiling of the unit. He was methodically scanning the room.
Then, he stopped right next to the bank of refrigeration units. So close I could feel a faint vibration through the steel. I heard the snick of his leather jacket rubbing against the metal.
He tapped a finger, once, sharply, on the metal of the drawer directly next to mine.
Ting.
Then he tapped mine.
Ting.
He was playing with me, teasing the mouse before the final, inevitable snap of the trap. He leaned in, his face pressed against the cold exterior of my tomb, his voice dropping to a terrifying, mocking whisper that cut through the silence like a jagged blade.
"Komm raus, kleine Maus. Das ist nicht dein Schlaff."
He paused, a deliberate, agonizing silence that stretched my nerves until they screamed. Then, he scoffed, the sound heavy with contempt. I heard the distinct, chilling sound of a heavy bolt-cutter sliding into the gap between the frame and the drawer handle.
"You really thought a sheet of steel would save you?" he murmured, switching to English, his voice a smooth, velvety purr of impending doom.
With a monstrous, shrieking tear of metal, the latch plate—my only line of defense—was ripped away like paper. The drawer shuddered. My hands flew up to brace the inside, but he was stronger, a titan of violence. With a sharp, rhythmic jerk, he pulled the handle.
The drawer slid open, spilling the sterile, harsh light of the autopsy suite directly onto my face, blinding me.
I gasped, trying to scramble backward, my heels scraping against the metal, but he was there—a looming shadow blocking the light. A gloved hand, smelling of copper and antiseptic, shot into the drawer and clamped around my throat. He hauled me out, not with malice, but with the terrifying, practiced efficiency of a butcher moving meat.
I tumbled onto the cold floor, gasping for air, clutching at his wrist, but it was iron. He pinned me to the floor with a knee to my chest, his face obscured by the harsh, overhead glare. I tried to scream, but the pressure on my windpipe was absolute, turning my cry into a pathetic, wheezing rasp.
He reached down, his other hand flashing in the light—a surgical scalpel, the very one I had abandoned on the tray. He held it up, inspecting the edge with the appreciation of a connoisseur, the light reflecting off the steel and onto his pale, unreadable eyes.
He began his work with a slow, deliberate incision across my shoulder, a bright, hot line of agony that blossomed into a spray of crimson against the white tiles. I thrashed, my fingers clawing at the floor, but he only leaned closer, the scent of his cloves mixing with the metallic tang of my own blood.
He didn't rush. He savored the anatomy of my terror, the way my eyes widened, the way my body betrayed me. As the blade danced across my skin, carving deep, artistic paths of ruin, he leaned in close, his voice a chilling lullaby directly into my ear:
"Deine Angst ist die einzige Wahrheit, Erica. Jetzt... schlaf für immer."
The blade descended for the final time, biting deep, and as the world began to dim at the edges, the last thing I felt was the sudden, overwhelming warmth of my own life escaping into the freezing, sterile air of the room. The lights buzzed once, flickered, and then, for me, there was only the velvet, absolute dark.