"Roll it over here, Arnold."

"Oh, hey, look, man, I do not think we need—"

"DID I ASK FOR AN OPINION?"

"Settle down, dude."

In three actions so quick and smooth they might as well have been the same movement, Christopher pulled the gun from the back of his pants, spun around, and fired a shot into the pillow on my bed; the gun made a short, sharp whistling noise like a single tweet from a bird, and the air was suddenly alive with dancing bits of stuffing.

"I swear to God," said Christopher through clenched teeth, "the next one goes through his right eye if you guys do not stop giving me grief.  Roll it over here right now, Arnold."

Arnold shook his head and sighed sadly as he rose to his feet.  "I hate it when you get this way, man.  This is not you."  He rolled the typing stand and computer around the bed and toward me.  He looked at Christopher as if he was going to say something else, then thought better of it.  He positioned the computer in front of me, then reached out and gave my forearm an apologetic squeeze before returning to the second bed.

Christopher stood beside me, pressing the silencer against my temple.  It was hotter than hell and scorched my hair and skin; I bit down on my lip and waited for the pain to ebb.  I wasn't about to try anything right now, even something as harmless as moving my head.

With his other hand, Christopher reached out and used the computer's trackpad to open a series of sub-folders labeled "Pictures", "Video", "Ravenswood", and "Cleansings".

"Please," I whispered.  "Don't…."

"Sorry, Pretty-Boy, but when we put on a show, you get the whole program."

He highlighted a file in the "Cleansings" folder:  Connie.

"Connie was special in more ways than one," he said.  "Grendel would schedule private meetings between her and his friends—one at a time, of course.  And these private meetings were expensive.  Connie never said anything about them—or, at least she did not say anything about them for a long time.

"After he took Denise, Connie started acting different.  She talked more.  She complained.  She started saying no.  She started telling us secrets, like where he kept extra keys and cash.  I think she realized he was training Denise to be her replacement for the trips into town.  I think she must have been jealous.  She would be rude to Denise, pinch her or slap her when she thought Grendel was not looking.  He put Connie in the basement with us, and gave Connie's room upstairs to Denise.  Connie did not like that.  She tried to hurt Denise the next chance she got.  She tried to cut her face with a knife.  And that was it."

He double-clicked the file and a video screen came up.  He enlarged the screen to three times its size; there was no loss of video quality.

He pressed harder against my temple with the still-hot silencer.  "You will watch every second of this, Pretty Boy, or I will put a bullet in your kneecap."

"Why are you doing this?"  I sounded on the verge of tears or hysterics, and hated myself for the loss of control.

When he spoke again, his voice sounded almost sympathetic.  "Because I do not want to be the only person who knows what he did down there, and I will not make any of them watch."

He started the video.  "Welcome to Ravenswood."

I was looking at a large room with gray cinderblock walls.  Everything in the room was illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling.  Metal shelves lined the walls on the left and right.  Specimen jars of various sizes were on the shelves; I couldn't quite make out what was floating inside them, then decided I didn't really want to.  In the left corner of the room sat two large medical waste barrels with locking lids.  In the center of the room was a long metal table with straps hanging from each corner.  The table was bordered with a gutter on both sides and both ends, and in each of the corners was something that looked like pool table pocket.

I had cleaned the School of Medicine's building long enough to recognize an autopsy table when I saw one.  Except none of those had straps.

Two medium-sized operating room lights, for the moment turned off, hung over the table.  A tray with a white cover sat next to the far right corner.

A door opened and a young man came in.  It took me a moment to recognize him; Christopher still had his nose and upper lip.  I suppose the metal jaw should have been the giveaway.

Christopher wore tight rubber gloves.  Leaving the door opened behind him, he walked to the table and uncovered the tray, revealing the medical instruments underneath.  Then he switched on the two overhead lights, positioning them with well-practiced movements.  After that, he pulled a step stool from under the table and crossed toward the camera; setting down the stool, he disappeared from view for a moment before re-emerging three times as large.  His eyes were glazed and dead-looking.  He checked the camera settings, shifted its position slightly, then dropped out of sight once again.

As he was replacing the step stool, an older man and younger girl entered the room.  Both wore flimsy hospital gowns.  The man had rubber gloves; the girl did not.

Even though I'd never seen her before, it was obvious from the characteristics of her face that this was Connie.  She was carrying a stuffed doll that I recognized; Blossom, of The Powerpuff Girls fame.  The man whispered something in her ear, and Connie, smiling, took off the robe and climbed naked onto the table, dropping Blossom to the floor as she did so.  The man signaled Christopher to close the door, and then, for the first time, stood still long enough for me to get a good, clear look at his face.

I had seen Grendel before.  Several times.  You've seen him, too, remember?  He's the guy who bags your groceries at the store on Friday night; the man who checks your gas meter every other month; the fellow who manages the graveyard shift at that Steak 'n' Shake twenty minutes from your apartment; he's that one guy who pumps your gas at the station downtown, or the other guy behind the Customer Service counter at the department store, or that dude who empties the trash receptacles in the food court at the mall.  Remember him now?

That's whose face I was looking at in the video.  Right—that guy.

Grendel checked the positioning of the lights, all the while whispering things to Connie that I was glad I could not hear.  She giggled and nodded her head; this was some kind of a game Daddy was playing with her.  Grendel signaled Christopher to assist him with strapping down Connie's arms and legs.  Once that was done, Grendel took off his hospital gown and massaged his penis into a stiff erection, which he then covered with lubricant from a tube Christopher handed to him.  Once he was satisfactorily slick, Grendel turned and climbed up onto the table, positioning himself between Connie's legs.  I watched Blossom then.  She was smiling, looking toward the camera with those terribly cute, oversized eyes.  I could almost hear her telling Bubbles and Buttercup that the city of Townsville was under attack again and Mojo Jojo was holding Professor Plutonium hostage and the Mayor was on the phone saying "Oh, dear," over and over and to top it all off, her favorite hair brush was missing, would the terror never end?

I stared at Blossom as the leg of the table behind her shook and shuddered from the constantly-shifting weight above; it would jerk slightly forward, then right itself before jerking forward again, a steady rhythm for a while, then getting faster, and sweet, sweet Blossom, she just sat there smiling at me, shaking from the vibrations, never complaining, not even when the shaking became so fast and hard she lost her balance and fell over on her side; she never stopped looking or smiling at me, and I decided then that she was my new favorite Powerpuff Girl, and I sure hoped that Buttercup wouldn't cop an attitude over this; after all, she'd been my favorite until now, but Blossom was here when the chips were down, and she lay there singing and smiling and telling me stories about cute pink fuzzy bunnies, never looking away, not even when the shadows above her began to shift and move and jerk and spread; not even when the straps began to pull so tight she could have bounced a quarter off them; not even when one of Grendel's bare feet stepped on her for a moment; not even when the shadows above began flailing as something slopped over the side of the shaking table and spattered her lovely outfit; at no time did Blossom ever behave in a less than ladylike manner, and I decided that I was in love with her.