The body lay in state on its throne at the morgue. No one had attempted an autopsy on it yet; it was fresh from the scene of death. It had taken police hours until they discovered the strange stitches on her chest, after they finally removed what was left of her clothes. The stitches had been buried below meat and blood and gore.
The doctors sighed, hating their job as they inhaled the mingled smells of decay and disinfectant. The fluorescent light cast no shadows, hugging the room in complete white, making it seem businesslike, distanced, formal. The snap of rubber gloves and the swish of crisp white coats filled the room, somehow echoing off the thick silence of death that littered the place.
They approached the body with the tiredness of experience. The doctor in the lead of the sad, silent race announced his wish for a knife. A rookie nurse with frightened eyes granted his wish, handing the gleaming instrument over with trembling, slim hands. The lead doctor undid the peculiar stitches in the girl's chest, one by one. All those present watched the skin, slack from death, part slowly with the sound you get when you stir something particularly gooey. The rookie nurse shuddered.
After a few of the stitches, loose and done in faded red thread, were cut, the rest gave in to the doctor's wishes and fell apart. It left him slowly pulling out the remaining thread, cringing at the dissonant feel of thread untangling from skin. Thread and skin only go together for healing purposes. Whatever the serial killer had meant to do with this one, it was just wrong. It felt wrong, it was morally unsound. The stiches were meant to hurt, to kill. Nothing was right about it.
Her chest was finally open. The doctor located the heart. There were ribs, lungs. There was nothing amiss. So why the stitches? Why had someone cut her up and taken the care to pull her back together?
There. An unordinary bump. The doctor felt for it, and felt it hard, waiting. A synthetic, manmade hard, impatient to be found, discovered, brought out into the white, cold light. He tugged at it, and it wouldn't come out. He tugged again, harder. The woman's body flopped like a dead fish, with no resistance that something with a semblance of life in it would have. The rookie nurse gave something like a moan and a whimper combined.
Finally, the girl's body surrendered its treasure. The doctor's hand bestowed to the world something gold, covered in gore. Sweat suddenly sheened on the doctor's forehead. He wiped the gore off to reveal a locket. Rather large in size, for a locket, it had flowers and hearts formed out of swirling, classic lines. It was actually very pretty. The beautiful yet disturbing thing was, the front of the locket had a picture of the girl on it. This girl's face on the morgue table was marred with scrapes and scars and bruises and death, but the girl in the locket was innocent and precious. Reddish brown hair frothed down the sides of her head to dance on the tips of her shoulders. Mahogany eyes glittered out of that rosy face, tight with a laughing smile. She was truly beautiful.
A catch on the side of the locket revealed that it opened. The doctor, with hands that shook even after 20 years of experience, hesitantly opened it. A tinkly, cheerful tune filled the white silence, making the nurses jump and the white flicker. A piece of paper was folded inside.
The doctor took the paper in his hands, dreading what he would find, what it would say. The paper made the sound a paper makes when you open it, and it was almost unnerving to have something normal underneath the haze of death. On the uneven paper, inscribed in blood, were the words...
"There's a hidden beauty
Finding its way out of everyone."