While under the influence of Jack, Six murdered Liz, the mysterious woman who helped him back in the hotel. In searching the house that Liz brought him to, Six discovered that Liz was working for Lacuna, the secretive government organization that had some connection with the Whitechapel Project. Six discovered Liz’s cell phone in her pocket, which still had a line open to someone named Zachary McPhearson. Someone had heard everything that happened during the murder. Just as Six discovered this, he heard a door open, giving him only moments to make a decision.

Episode Sixteen – Under Her Skin

I glance at the front door, but it’s locked. They must be coming in through a back door. The creak of the hinges is long and low – they know someone’s here, and they’re coming in carefully. That gives me a few extra seconds. I look for a place to hide, somewhere I can see who’s after me before they notice me. The coat closet is the only place that makes any sense, but that’s the first place they’ll look. Still, I don’t have much time – I dive into the closet and leave the door open just a crack to look through. I pull one of the pistols from my jeans and carefully put it against the opening to the door.

Liz’s body is directly in my sight. I’m still disgusted at seeing what Jack has done to her, but the urge to vomit isn’t nearly as strong. I’ve been dealing with a lot of corpses since I woke up in that cell, and I guess I’m getting used to it. Liz, the false Lacuna cops, Dr. Tucci…

An idea leaps into my head. It’s crazy, but I don’t have a lot of options, and no time to think of anything better. I try to imagine what it’s like to be Liz, to move like her and talk like her and think like her. I’m just a young woman who’s trying to do what she thinks is best. The axe is in my hand again, and I can feel Jack’s breath on the back of my neck, ready to take over. He’s ready to go, ready to murder a whole lot of people and revel in the feel of their blood. I push him back and focus, using the axe to hack away at my identity. I imagine wearing her skin.

I open my eyes, and I can see Liz again. Where her clothes don’t cover her, I can see that her skin is gone. Her insides are already starting to ooze a little, mixing with her blood.

Just at that moment, a man steps in front of me, blocking my view of Liz. I instinctively step back, stumbling further into the closet, but he’s facing away from me as he studies Jack’s handiwork. He takes a step forward, and I can see more of him – black coat, gloves, dark hair, the uniform of the men in the black van. He puts his hand to his ear and says, “We found a skinned corpse, sir.”

I take a deep breath. This hiding space won’t last – the only way I might get out of this is if I can bluff this guy long enough to get away. I push open the door and point the gun at the man. “Get out of here, Jack, or I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head.”

The man spins around, pointing his pistol at me in turn. I don’t recognize him, but he seems to recognize me. “Parks?” he asks, the barrel of his gun not moving from my chest.

“Don’t bullshit me, Jack. I can see the skinned corpse. I know it’s you.”

A moment passes, then another. I put a little pressure on the trigger, ready to shoot. Jack whispers in the back of my head, urging me on, telling me how good it would be to feel the splatter of blood over my face. I’m ready to pull the trigger when the man suddenly puts his hands up and relaxes his grip on his pistol, letting it dangle in his hand.

“Relax, Parks. It’s me. We got your phone call, and we’re here to help.”

I ease off the trigger, but keep the gun pointed at his chest. “Prove it. Prove to me that you’re not that fucking psycho.”

He carefully sets the pistol on the ground. “I’m going to reach into my jacket and pull out my ID,” he says.

“Slowly,” I caution. “Very slowly.”

He eases his hand into his coat and pulls out a wallet. With one gloved hand he fumbles with the wallet and flips open a plastic-covered ID card. I don’t recognize the badge, but I can make out the words “Department of Homeland Security” and a name – Matthew Timm.

I take the badge from his hand and look at it before putting it on my pocket. “You could have taken this from Timm’s corpse. This doesn’t prove anything.”

“Call it in. They can vouch for me.”

Fuck. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I can’t tell if he’s testing me in return, or if he’s just trying to prove his identity. I decide to push the bluff. “Jack took my phone after the murder, and I’ve been in here since. You call it in and hand me the phone.”

Another pause before Timm speaks. “I’m going to reach into my coat again, same as before, to get my phone.” He waits until I nod, and he slowly reaches into his coat again, this time pulling out a cell phone. He turns it to face toward me and show that it’s already connected to Zachary McPhearson. “Did you catch that, boss?” he says, but it looks like he’s talking to the open air, not to me. He pauses for a moment, and then touches his ear again. “He wants to talk to you,” he says to me.

I carefully take the phone and put it to my ear. “Parks,” I say.

“We were worried about you.” The voice reminds me of bleak Virginia winters – cold, Southern, and harsh. Zachary McPhearson is the man from my dream, the one who claimed to be my owner.

I swallow my fear and focus on keeping my mask in place. “Prove to me that Timm is who he says he is.”

“He’s been in constant contact with me, Parks. Unlike you.”

“That’s why I left my cell phone call open. Jack was looking for me, but instead he killed someone else, took their face and my phone, and left.”

There was a long pause. Finally, McPhearson says, “Come out to the car. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

I look back at Timm, who’s looking at me expectantly. I don’t know if he overheard the phone call or not. Is McPhearson on to me? Should I try to make a break for it?

What should I do?

Play along and follow Timm out to the car?

Hang up, and convince Timm to leave?

Shoot Timm and run while I have the chance?

Try to kill Timm with my mind, and take his skin?

The choice is yours.

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… I can see metal and plastic and leather and glass, all in a thousand different shades of black. My body aches, throbbing in time with the vibrations of finely-tuned machinery…

… I can hear water crashing against the rocks as I watch a white bird spiral into the sun. The water sprays against my face like arterial blood, warm and salty, but I don’t wipe it away…

… I can taste old jellybeans in my mouth, gummy and dusty. I want to spit them out, but I force myself to swallow as a brown dog with one ear sits next to me, hopefully wagging her tail…

… I can feel cold, sticky, gritty stone on the side of my face. An axe splits my skull as my throat suddenly fills up and I start to gag…

I wake up just in time to puke all over the floor, adding to the puddle I’m laying in. Vomit splashes on the concrete floor, and the stench fills my nostrils. My eyes tear up, and for a moment my world is nothing but the smell of puke, the sound of my own gagging cough and the feel of someone trying to cut my skull in half.

A lifetime passes, and I can breathe again. I start to wipe away the tears and the vomit with my hand, but even moving my arm brings a swing of the axe and a wave of nausea. A plastic loop slaps into my cheek, dangling loosely from my wrist. I blink my eyes open to focus on it. It’s one of those hospital bracelets with a little piece of paper in it, neatly filing patients into a system of bruised, bleeding and broken victims. Only I’m not last name, first name, middle initial, not a room number or a case number or any number at all. Two letters in Times New Roman stare up at me — VI. Out of curiosity I spin the bracelet around my wrist, but the only other thing on it is one of those one-way, one-time-use fasteners, a white ring of mockery next to a jagged cut where the excess plastic was snipped off.

I rub my face against the sleeve of my shirt, but I don’t have a sleeve. Or a shirt, for that matter. Looking down, I’m wearing one of those thin backwards gowns that tie closed behind you but never quite cover you in the back, so you feel like you’re always going to fall out of it. Still, at least it matches the bracelet’s story; I’m in some kind of hospital.

The walls don’t fit into the story, though. They’re covered in thick rectangles of foam, each one sheathed in ivory cloth and quilted with thick gray stitches. It looks like someone nailed a couple dozen used motel mattresses to the walls. It’s a shame they didn’t have any left for the canvas cot sitting in the corner next to the metal toilet. I notice that my pool of vomit isn’t anywhere near the toilet, and feel vaguely annoyed about that.

If this is a hospital, I’m guessing it doesn’t get any awards for customer care.

The axe takes another swing, and my brain is about to explode out of my ears. My eyes water up again as I press my hands to my skull, trying to keep it from splitting apart. Somewhere in the distance I can hear one of the mattresses open up, and I can barely make out a man coming in before it closes again. He’s wearing a white shirt and black slacks and he’s saying something, but all I can hear is my skull creaking from the pressure.

I just want it to end. I want to curl up on the floor and beg for release. I want to scream that I’ll do anything to make it stop. I want to get the fuck away from this concrete box covered in mattresses.

And suddenly, I know that this unknown jailer with his mysterious mumbling is the one that’s keeping me here. I don’t know why, but I understand that everything he does is designed to make me stay in this room, in the same way that I understand that my own puke is still dripping off my face. This man, this thing in business-casual dress is keeping me caged.

I close my eyes, and I want him to hurt.  I want him to scream and bleed and fall to pieces so I can walk over his broken body and reclaim my life. I can see myself taking the axe out of my head and chopping at his throat; once, twice, until his head flips back like a candy dispenser. In my mind I feel my arm pumping as I slash open his stomach, his chest, his sides. Every time I cut him, more of the pain bleeds out of me, and my mind becomes a little clearer. Every slash makes me feel more human, more powerful, more everything.

I hear something fall to the ground with a wet thud, and I realize that it’s not in my head.

I open my eyes. Blood quickly spreads all over the corpse’s white shirt and black slacks. His neck is nearly severed, and his chest is a mess of flesh and nylon scraps. I look at the floor, at my hands, but there’s no axe anywhere to be seen, no gore-covered blade to explain how my captor is lying in bloody chunks at my feet. There’s no way I could have done this, but I know, I know that I’m responsible. He’s dead and I’m not, and it’s because of me.

I look at the wall where he came from, and I’m pissed. The fucker couldn’t even keep the door open or leave it unlocked before he died. I check the bloody mess of my former captor, and manage to fish out a plastic card attached to a chain. I try to ignore the sticky warmth covering my hands as I yank hard on the flimsy chain, breaking it. A quick look at the door, and I find a discreet slot and a tiny red light hidden behind a quilted flap. I have to keep smearing the blood off the card and swiping it before I can see the light change from red to green. The mattress swings open, less than an inch.

What the hell is going on? What kind of person can cut someone into pieces in his dreams? How can I casually search a pile of gore that used to be a man and be more irritated at the blood on my hands than the loss of a human life?

The bracelet slips down my arm, and I see the letters VI looking up at me through a smear of blood. I realize that I don’t know what kind of person I am, and I don’t know why I can do the things I just did. I don’t even know what these letters represent.

Do the letters VI stand for my initials?

Is it the roman numeral for six?

Or am I not the person they think I am?

The choice is yours.

Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Two – Honor

Episode One in French

Episode One in Spanish

A man wakes up in a padded cell with a headache, no memories and the ability to kill with his mind. The only clue he has to his past is a plastic bracelet printed with the letters VI. From there, he enters a strange and twisted world. What happens next?

The choice is yours.

Whitechapel is an interactive horror novella in which you, the reader, can vote after each episode to direct the flow of the story. You can read the story so far, subscribe to the podcast, find places to talk to other fans and much more at whitechapelproject.com.

Whitechapel – the choice is yours.