Eye Of The Beholder

** #1161806 Not An Image **

Eye Of The Beholder

by

P. A. Matthews

         “This one is gruesome.”

         I inhaled gloved fingers, the latex smell alleviating the pungent scent. I’d seen a lot of crime scenes during my investigations, yet these killings reformed my feelings about serial killers.

         Skirting the blood attached to the victim’s body like a scarlet scarf drawn from her neck, I stared at her rigor, death hadn’t come quickly. I inspected her face.

         “She put up a struggle; the killer’s mental state may be deteriorating. I want photographs of her eyes.”

         Ethan stared at the corpse. “You mean where they were?”

         “Just take the photos, I’m contacting the coroner, we need to rush this.”

         “Cassie, how many does this make?”

         “Forty-nine over two years. Get that stuff to the lab.”

† † † † †

         Joe watched me across the slab in his morgue after removing embedded disks from the victim’s eye sockets. “Same as the other victims—metal, imprinted with a hologram. This girl wasn’t lucky though, her eyes weren’t removed post-mortem.”

         “Thanks Joe.” I took the fingerprint-free disks for evidence, still wondering why every woman had her eyes replaced with holograms.

† † † † †

         A week without killing didn’t relieve my anxiety. Retrieving the evidence bags of disks, I poured them onto a lab table, trying to find the connection of ninety-eight disks. Maybe the killer had an Orphan Annie complex.

         Moving the disks gave me something to do as I thought. Suddenly the overhead light revealed a clue I’d never seen, one angle made the difference. Each disk placed revealed the killer’s face, with two disks missing—his eyes.

         I called Ethan. “Where is Joe?”

         “He called in sick.”

         “Find him, I’ve broken the case.”

         Joe’s disks covered his dead eyes, his lab lined with jars containing the forty-nine victim’s eyes, each labeled with Joe’s killing message. If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.

The End

Word count 300