Chapter Text
The knife cut a crescent. The smooth expanse of flesh beaded bloody in its wake. When the blade pulled back the skin, the exposed muscle, raw and wet, still twitched underneath. Then came the screams.
"Will?"
Will shuddered and blinked. The trainee next to him had cut and peeled the clingfilm from her microwavable lunch. It came off so neatly.
He passed a hand over his face and turned to find the voice that had recalled him back to reality: Alana.
"Yeah, hi. I'm here."
Alana gave him that smile of hers, the one so kind that Will could never help but see in it a trace of pity. "I'm glad you are," she said. "You okay?"
Will looked down at his sandwich. He had meant to sit down at the break room table and eat it like a normal person not consumed by daytime nightmares. He'd failed.
"Yeah. Just— the Stripper case—"
She wrinkled her nose slightly. "Did they really have to call him that?"
"He does strip his victims, in a manner of speaking. Their skin matters to him about as much as their clothes. Just another layer for him to peel back.” Will tore into his sandwich packet and took a bite. “The screams are what he really wants. They're more valuable to him than flesh. Personally, I thought they should have called him the Scream Catcher.”
Silence. The trainee, who’d been staring at Will while he rattled all that out, looked uncomfortable for a moment then quickly vacated the room. Will looked after her, then at Alana, who was settling him a familiar look: worried, mostly kind, again faintly pitying. She didn't know what to say. No one ever did.
At least she didn't leave. She sat down to unpack her own lunch with a gentle gesture for him to do the same. He dropped into a chair next to hers and tried to look away from anything that could transmute into a flayed human corpse.
“It’s a harrowing case,” she said. “How are you sleeping?”
"Not great. Not much." The past few nights, he'd been hearing their screams, the ceiling plaster above his bed peeling back and hanging down in raw strips like their skin.
"Tried anything?"
"All the usual stuff."
"You know—"
"Don't say therapy, Alana. I don't do therapy."
They were quiet again, just the two of them. Will tried to focus on the rhythmic crunch of Alana's cucumber slices, the sweet song of the dripping sink tap. It soothed him. He felt Alana watching him as they ate.
"Back when I was a stressed out student," she began, "insomnia nearly drove me nuts. I thought I'd flunk my finals. Then I found this CD." She laughed and shook her head. "It was the most obscure thing. A recording of Jung's Zürich lectures. The narrator had this soothing, whispery voice."
Will smiled faintly into his tuna sandwich. "Did it make your skin tingle?"
She nodded. "I didn't know anyone else who reacted that way to certain stimuli. It wasn't called ASMR back then, and I couldn't find much literature about it. But that recording really relaxed me. I used to listen to it before bed."
Will chewed slowly. "I get it too," he said after a moment. "The tingling."
"I still listen to a YouTube video once in a while if I can’t get to sleep." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Try it, Will. Might be worth a shot."
---
Will went home that night acutely aware of the soundtrack of his life: the satisfying snap of the clip on his briefcase, the rain on his windshield, the creak of his porch steps. For what it was worth, Alana's suggestion had at least afforded a distraction from murder.
The snick of scissors, the rapping and tapping of rain on metal gutters, the soft scrape of a hairbrush — they had always made Will's skin ripple with a curious sort of pleasure. He tried not to pay the sensation any mind. He didn't need to add to the clutter of oddities already hanging off his personality.
At home, he moved mechanically through his evening routine: feed dogs, feed self, let dogs out, grade papers, shower. When he'd run out of rituals that helped loneliness seem like solitude, he settled into bed.
Laptop in lap, headphones to hand. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He scowled at the screen. But then it was either this, or another broken night, flayed flesh hanging off the ceiling, walls full of blood.
The first search brought back a kaleidoscopic bounty of video thumbnails most of which Will was terrified to click on: Asian teenagers with alarming quantities of food, suspiciously attractive women with scissors or long nails next to oversized microphones. Was this what lulled Alana to sleep? Will kept scrolling. And scrolling.
Six pages in, he stopped.
He stared at the thumbnail. It looked mislaid among the shouting neon of the other videos. A channel calling itself "Compendium Ferculorum" had uploaded the video six days prior and had titled it "Calf's liver in Normandy sauce, simply prepared". The channel had no other posts.
Inside that little rectangle Will saw a pristine kitchen counter, arranged with ingredients for the dish like the canvas of Flemish still life. Behind the counter was a glimpse of a white apron, spotlessly white. A doorway to another world — and wasn't that just what Will needed?
Will put his headphones on, clicked on the video and set it to full screen.
The faintest backdrop of classical music, something orderly and Baroque, admitted him into that world. A pair of hands, manicured and masculine, moved into the shot and guided kitchen scissors around the periphery of smooth organ meat. The soft, rhythmic snip of the blades sent a frisson wave soaring up Will's spine. He sunk deeper into his pillow, pulled up the duvet and gave himself over to the pleasant shiver.
The muted strings and harpsichord continued. The meat was sliced, set on a silver platter and set aside. A vegetable peeler came next. It stripped the skin off an apple in a single coiling swathe, and Will felt, for a moment, faintly ill — the fruit looked flayed. But the little ripples of delight carried him through the unease.
He turned up the volume on his laptop.
The crisp crumple of onion skin. The clack of the knife as it diced. The sizzle of butter and flesh in a cast iron pan. The sharp hiss of a Calvados-fed flame, the babbling bubbling of the cream. Microscopic hairs danced with delight inside Will's ears. His muscles felt looser under the covers, eyelids heavier. And all the while, not a word from the invisible owner of the hands. So calm and competent, those hands. Will couldn't take his eyes off them. With each new tremor of pleasure, he sank further into the sensation that the hands had lifted the lid off his skull and were caressing inside, feather light.
The dish was plated, garnished with roses of dried apple slices dusted in cinnamon. Will could almost smell the brandy, the fatty sweetness of reduced cream. But the subtle symphony was over. The video ended. Reality had Will by the scruff and was dragging him back out far too soon.
He adjusted himself under the covers, pulled the laptop onto his chest, and put the video on a loop.
---
He woke up to daylight, curled up and snug in a bundle of dry sheets, headphones in an awkward tangle around his head. Time had slipped by — he'd slept.
No screams, no flayed flesh. Had he dreamt of that kitchen, those hands? The laptop was still in bed with him. He opened it quickly and saw the exquisite dish in the final still of the video.
No dream then.
He got up, let the dogs out and stood on the porch undressed in the sharp morning air. He felt absurdly lucid and refreshed.
A strange sort of gratitude crept over him while he started his breakfast. Echoes of the culinary symphony lingered in his brain. He found some pancake mix. He wanted to recreate something of last night's experience for himself, but found it lacking. His hands were no match for the hands in the video.
He needed to say something to the faceless chef. Sat on the edge of the bed, he stared at the comment box under the video and chewed his lip raw. He went through several drafts before he committed to something that sounded if not elegant then at least sincere.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but listening to you cook helped me sleep. Thank you."
Sent. He stared at the comment, debated deleting it. In the end, he slammed the laptop shut and tried his best to forget about it.
A few hours later, just before his first lecture, his phone trilled inside his bag. Will pulled out: a notification from YouTube.
Will opened it with less than steady hands.
"You are welcome", it read. "Any other soporific dishes you would like me to prepare for you? I'm all ears."