cop is not supposed to die like this, Isa realized, not by a serial murderer targeting prostitutes. Despite being deep undercover on an assignment to survey a narcotics ring, her superior had risked both their lives to brief her on the murders. She hadn't listened, hadn't heeded the warning to avoid the 76th Street area. She'd taken care of herself for so long, after all.

"Scarlet locked another heart upon her chain," the man whispered as he caressed the breast of Nikki Carsen. His hands settled on the leg of Regina Michaels -- or was it Cindy Applebee's? Cindy's, Isa thought. Regina was missing her left leg.

The autopsy reports would have made a lesser woman retch. Five bodies found in a city dump, with trophies missing from each. Another four bodies were thrown into the grave after the forensics team finished their excavation. Some of the bodies, like Regina's and Cindy's, had been missing whole limbs. Lavella James was inexplicably carved open for muscles and arteries.

Then Nikki Carsen and two others were found on the opposite end of the dump. They'd been dismembered, each missing huge sections of the torso. The only thing not taken from any of the girls was a head. Isa's superior had said the murderer probably wanted the bodies identified.

Isa stared through the tiny window of the locked door, watched as the man contorted the headless composition to promote blood flow. It had taken Isa several hours to realize why the body laying prone on the heated granite slab retained the pink of living flesh. Now she saw the man work, knew what he had in store for her as he donned his gore-spattered apron.

"I'm not a whore!" Isa cried, knowing deep in her core she spoke lies. Too long undercover, left alone to the prostitutes who walked the streets by her side nightly. Too many Johns for her to claim herself any better than Nikki or Cindy. Soon Nikki's chest would be Isa's chest, Regina and Cindy's legs hers as well. Isa's own legs collapsed beneath her at the thought, tumbling her into a pit of desolation.

Would she retain her mind? she wondered. She thought of cheesy zombie movies, the monsters processing only the simplest of thoughts. That would be best, she realized. If her fate was that of Frankenstein, best she never realized it.

Her body would never make it to the grave. The man was too smart for that. She'd be a headless corpse left in the woods for wildlife to devour, or in a concrete slab to be exhumed a hundred years later when the house was demolished for a new skyscraper.

She tried to shut her brain down, block out the external sounds of beeping monitors mingling with occasional whirs of power tools and the words he sang over and over again. She had to escape but the lyrics haunted her every thought. The moves her body made while the music played were the like I've never seen…

"She became the envy of my dreams," Isa sang, knowing the song all too well. She felt along the bottom of the sealed door for something, anything. She could feel deep scratches in the wood but couldn’t tell if they were human or feline in nature. Didn't everyone turn into a wild animal in such a situation? On the ground she felt only cold concrete.

The door opened and the man lifted her to her feet, wrapping a ribbon about Isa's throat. "Young Scarlet took the ribbons from her hair," the man cooed in her ear, his breath warm and moist. Isa recoiled and the man tightened the string, suffocating her. The fluorescent light dimmed behind her eyes. She struggled briefly, flopping about like a docked fish, but her battle was short lived. Isa would die a prostitute.

he man lay her body on the granite slab next to his creation. She would love him as no one else had. After all, he'd taken her from the dirty streets, all of her, had harvested her from the best of each woman, making her better than the whores could ever attain for themselves. He selected a scalpel from his work bench and touched the flesh of the last jezebel's neck a final time.

"Come on in and watch young Scarlet’s body come alive."