What's Under The Skin

Spencer’s day did not start out like any other day, and it was a sign that he should have just stayed in bed and skipped this assignment, but still he got out of bed, got dressed and ran out the door. He grabbed his keys off the table by the door and slammed it shut behind him. He was going to be late, which meant that the others would be bon the plane. Hopefully, the public transportation wasn’t behind today.

He hurried the several blocks toward the subway, taking the stairs at a pace that was probably much too dangerous. Weaving through the crowd of men and women who were on their daily commute to wherever they needed to go, he managed to catch the train that had just pulled into the station.  Riding for thirty minutes, he got off and walked the fifteen minutes to the FBI building. Spencer took the stairs two at a time and burst through the double glass doors to see the rest of his team leaving the conference room.

‘Crap.’ He thought, ‘I knew it…’

The group looked over at Spencer and gave him a funny look.

“Hey, glad to see you made it.”  Derek said teasingly.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m late.”

“Come on.” Aaron said, “We got an assignment.”

“Right.” Spencer grabbed his to-go bag and followed the others to the plane.

It was so going to be a very long week.

The case was one of the worst cases they had ever seen. Not the normal psychopathic and sadistic serial killer. This unsub really took the cake, frosting and all. All his victims were female from 18-35, blonde hair, and slender frame. Each young woman had been tied, gaged and left out in the sun for several days, leaving their skin bright red from burns, then long slits were cut down the arms legs and torso. The medical examiner determined that each woman was alive as they were skinned alive. Blood loss, hypothermia and infection was the result for each one.

“Yuck.” Garcia said as her face popped up on the computer screen before the group. “I will never get this nightmare out of my head. I’m pretty sure I’ll be seeing this every time I close my eyes now.”

“There is several ways that a person can die when they are skinned alive.” Spencer said to nobody in particular. “The skin is the biggest organ that we have, without it, we would not survive. The skin keeps us warm or cool depending on the weather and it protects our muscles, blood vessels and any mucus membranes. Without it, we will suffer from hypothermia and infection is guaranteed to set in right away since all the soft tissues are expos                                                                                                                                                                                                    ed to the open air. In addition, there will be quite a bit of blood loss. A person won’t die right away from any of these, some are known to live for a few days before….”he trailed off when he noticed that everybody was giving him a strange look.

Aaron broke the silence. “He’s pretty organized, takes his victims to a secluded place, where nobody can bother him.  Spending at least several days with them before he kills them. As Spencer said, there are many ways a person can die when being skinned and between kidnapping and the ME placing time of death is at least three days.”

Garcia made faces throughout the exchange before finally speaking. “I’ll let you heroes do your thing. This is just too much for me.”

The screen went black and Aaron closed the laptop.  Across from Aaron sat Emily Prentis who was going through several, pretty large case files of the many victims, trying to come up with who the unsub can be. Each light brown envelope was thick with several papers, pictures and details from the case. There were so many gruesome photos of once beautiful women, who had been skinned alive, their bodies laying there, muscles and blood vessels exposed and the ground below them stained with blood. Not enough that it was obvious that the event had happened there, but just enough that proved that the woman was still alive when she had been dropped off at the dump site.

“How can anyone do anything so…cruel?” Jennifer said as she glanced over Emily’s shoulder.

“Someone who isn’t human.” Derik replied.

‘Poor Penelope.’ Derik thought. ‘She always did hate this kind of stuff.’

“We will be landing soon.” Aaron said. “Derik, Emily go to the latest crime scene, see what you can learn from it.  JJ, Reid, go to the police station and meet with the chief. I’ll go to the previous crime scene and get any information that I can from there.”

The plane banked right and prepared to make its landing. Everybody took their seats and buckled up, as they mentally prepared for what will be their worst case yet. There was no telling how long it will last or how bad it will become before they will catch this guy, but they were as ready as they will ever be.

TBC..

OK thank you everyone who is reading this story. It has been a long time since I have written any fanfictions, but hopefully this is satisfactory.