Elevator doors slid open, splitting my reflection in two as the expanse of a dim laboratory slowly came into view. I stepped out, peering ahead at what I had left behind the night before. The room was spacious, allowing for the placement of four slick black tables, as well as metal stools flipped on their faces against the counters' tops.

Tall, curtained windows stretched against the walls to my left, while sinks and empty test tubes sat dormant and shaded to my right. A coat rack stood outside the elevator; a humble carving with three wooden knobs poking out in every which way, as though offering to take my jacket no matter which direction I faced it.

I took up the offer, sliding my brown bomber jacket from my shoulders to toss it over one of the knobs. Just past the coat rack was an over worn and dulled-white light switch. With a simple flick brightness spread throughout the room. I strolled up to the table farthest left, scattered papers and photographs sprawled out before me, where most of my research was being done.

"Alright..." My hand went to scoop up a Polaroid snapshot, circled and streaked with red marker. "Let's see what we've got here." I turned to my board, plastered with a multitude of pictures as well as string used to connect each scene. Yarn from Mabel's craft store worked to stretch from photo to photo, relating news paper articles to things as minuscule as muddy boot prints.

I looked down at the piece in my hands. A snapshot of 64 year old Gary Figgers' grave, dug up six nights ago, his bronchial tube missing. In any ordinary situation, this bit of information would have been useless. The perpetrator was stealing all kinds of organs. This all just seemed like a repeat.

But it was a bit more complicated. I had been given authority over the case nine days ago, meaning all confidential files had been released to me. At first, nothing within them really grabbed my attention. They seemed to be a mimic of what the news reports had already disclosed to the public.

'Jessie Ripple: Body found drug out of coffin and probed. Pelvis removed.'

'Mike Gorvez: Body found drug out of coffin and probed. Sternum removed.'

'Richard Fulk: Body found drug out of coffin and probed. Vertebra removed.'

It was disheartening to read the reports. A literal repeat. Whoever had written them up seemed more interested in their game of solitaire than figuring out who this guy was. I scanned the list once more, looking at what had been stolen.

Stomach. Bladder. Hinge joints. A few ribs. Ulna. A heart. Capillaries. Humerus. Femurs. Bile duct. The names continued to mount, each desecration sprouting up in a separate county. I contemplated the possibility of sacrifices, but they'd want the bodies warm for that sort of thing.

Perhaps a strange fetish for mushy organs? In that case, why go around the state? Why not just hit it at one cemetery and dash? Maybe it was a beast, hungry for flesh. It'd eat the whole thing then, wouldn't it? And, why not alive snack while you're at it?

All of the information was too simple. The whole case sounded simple. And, oddly enough, that just made the motive harder to flesh out. For a while, at least.

I had been sitting on the couch last week, a cushioned mess of brown cloth and fluffy pillows, watching Mabel knit up a rainbow sweater.

"Who's this one for?" I leaned over the edge, my arms folded and draped casually over the couch's arm. She hummed a chipper tune, holding it out for her viewing pleasure.

"Waddles, of course!" Her eyes glittered, looking to me with pep as I nodded my head. "We're gonna be matchies!!" I laughed, looking at the thing, when something caught my eyes. The sweater was fat all right, large enough for myself to curl up into a ball and still have space. Waddles had grown several times since our adolescence, making him a chubby fool. So, the size itself didn't strike me as odd. However...

"Aren't those sleeves a bit... long, Mabel?" She stopped her humming, eyes cracking open at my comment. She peered down at the cloth, as though seeing it for the first time.

"...Drat." The sweater was Waddle's size, no doubt. But she had mistakenly sewn it up with human-length arms. It was a nice piece all the same, something Soos would have liked, but Mabel threw it out anyways.

"Hey, what are you doing? You can still fix it." I offered, walking towards the trash can to fish it out. Mabel slid in front of me, blocking my path.

"Nope." She said simply. "I've learned to let go of failed sweaters! The best thing to do is chuck it. Start from scratch, you know?"

"From scratch..?" I couldn't tell if she was being lazy or obsessing over the amelioration of her craft. "So, you're just gonna chuck it? I thought it looked nice."I shrugged.

"Well, now I can make something that looks even more nice!" With that, she moved away from me, rummaging through the hallway closet for her coat. "I'm gonna buy some more supplies. Get ready to have your mind blown!" She turned to me, beaming. A peck on the cheek, soft and loving as though to say 'thank you,' before she slipped out of the apartment.

At first, I thought she was being silly. I spent that afternoon looking over my research, re-reading files, trying to sort out possible motives. 'Why are they doing this? What could they possibly need those parts for? If they need them at all, that is...'

I put on a pot of coffee, rummaging through the cabinets before deciding I wasn't hungry. I twiddled with the TV remote, contemplating possible updates on the crime, only to choose against it. I went to my room, pulling out two pens. One, I stuck between my teeth. The other, I began to write notes with.

What had been stolen. Where the parts had been stolen. Who they had been stolen from. Who they could have been stolen by. I gnawed on the pen snapped between my molars, frustration beginning to build within me.

A pop. The bitter soiling of ink over my taste buds. I retched at the flavor, dark saliva pooling at the corners of my mouth.

"Fucking gross..." My tongue flicked the pen from its cavern, letting it fall into nimble fingers. I looked down at the busted ball point, scowling at the blatant marks I had left without notice. Mabel was always getting onto me for these sorts of things...

"...Shit." I grumbled, sauntering into the kitchen where I intended on disposing of it. That's where I found my answer. Peering down, hidden beneath a used filter and ground coffee beans, was the sweater Mabel had thrown out. I paused for a moment, seeing the small mess I had made of her hard work, only to sigh and pull it out of the bin.

Bits of Folgers' coffee grounds still clung to its wool, smearing and entangling itself in the cloth's woven fibers. I bat my hand over it, combing away what lingered.

'It really is a nice sweater...' And it was. She definitely had a knack for anything artsy, something I never did. But, being the case, she was also a perfectionist. Anything that didn't scream 'Mabel Pines' was considered a flop on her part.

'She threw it away... And was making a new one...'

A new one...

A new one...

A new one.

"Holy shit." I sat the sweater down, pen flicked into the bin before I made my exit. I skid into my room, throwing myself onto my mattress before fishing out a laptop.

'What organs are essential for a body?'

'Human bone structure.'

'Organs that you can live without.'

'Counties in Oregon'.

I wrote it all out. Thirty-seven counties in Oregon. Twenty-seven labelled organs. Fourteen different bone structures, minus the six ribs and fibula bones that weren't essential. You could live without one of your lungs. Your spleen. Your appendix. Your gall bladder. Your adenoids and tonsils... All items left without theft.

For now at least. So far, the perpetrator had only been taking essential organs, like the heart and trachea. Perhaps he'd stop along the way to pick at a few extra ribs, or maybe even a few lymph nodes. But, for the time being, he only touched the big stuff. This guy wasn't trying to dig up old bodies. He was trying to build a new one.

I scanned the Polaroid of Gary Figgers once more, looking from its slick surface to my conspiracy board. The laboratory was always so quiet in the mornings, making it crucial I got most of my thinking done before someone came to slam me with crime scene updates and daily reports. The motive wasn't the only thing I had figured out.

In the picture taken sometime last week, the documentation of Mr. Figgers' grave was depicted. However, the markings left from digging him up were odd. Not wide excavations of earth by shovel. Instead, thin, shallow lines that road across the dirt, each about a foot long. The lines varied slightly in width. Some slender and small. Others more meaty and deep.

He was digging with his hands. And not just the perpetrator. This was a posse. A group effort, compiled of both large and petite hands, male and female. Perhaps a cult? Some radical satanists bent on reincarnating the Anti-Christ? I had run into a few of those, but they had been so much more organized before. They even brought shovels.

These people seemed to be doing it in the spur of the moment, digging with their hands. It was sloppy, really. Kind of awkwardly done. I wasn't sure what kind of people were doing this, but they sounded pretty crazy. Or stupid.

I looked to the calendar on my wall, bright red 'Xs' crossing out every day before this one. And, in two days time, I had circled 'Saturday.' As fate would have it, the culprit's trail was slowly snaking towards my home in Roadkill county. I had a hunch we'd be their last stop.

'Two days.' I thought. They'd most likely be here in two days. I turned around, once again facing my board. The photo was pinned up, linked to a picture of red mud and a clip-on nail half sunken in the dirt.

"See you then."