Adrenaline was making my hands shake. My partner Gill gave me a stern look from the corner of his eyes, and I got the message. Relax. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and set my shoulders straight, feigning calm. It was something I had learnt at the police academy. But all the training I'd done had not prepared me for this. The call had come in over the radio roughly an hour ago, a dying voice in the last hours of light. Gill told me to buckle my belt and had spun the car into a nauseating u-turn. Today hadn't been a good day for my stomach.

We were the first at the scene, probably due to Gill's psychopathic driving. The first thing that hit me was the smell. I was expecting the decomposing smell of dead leaves and brush under foot, the smell of disturbed soil. But the closer to the thick scrub I stepped, another stench wormed its way up my nose. A heavy metallic fog hung around the scene, tickling at my gag reflex. I didn't want to get any closer, but Gill shouldered past my slow pace, and I had to follow.

"Get your arse over here Ben." I nodded hesitantly and sidled past a bush, refusing to look down as my boot stepped in something that squelched. Gill looked disturbed for a moment, but the old school policeman shone through soon enough. "What do you make of that?" It was a rhetorical question. Gill was gazing down at what I imagined was a dark slick in the dirt. But Gill had to shine his torch on it.

The ground was stained with blood, pooling away from a ghostly naked corpse. Whoever it was had been caught unawares, eyes wide and mouth open in a terrified scream. It wasn't so much the expression that disturbed me. I'd seen a lot of murder scene photos with the victim looking afraid, horrified. It was more the way that the body was laying. Huddled, curled up. "Praying?" I cleared my throat. Gill had his hands at his sides, clenched and white-knuckled. He was as disturbed as I was.

"Begged for the end." Gill murmured huskily, his own voice soft. Torture. If there had have been much flesh left, we would have noticed intricate carved patterns, lacerations. Anything that would have signified a prolonged period before death. As it was, all I could comprehend was a body, an open chest cavity, and a large pool of blood.

"Is it just me, or are there..."

"Things missing?" Gill followed on from my ill train of thought. "Yeah." He swung his torch away and the darkness swallowed the body. I felt better, even though I knew the corpse was still there. "Liver over there." He illuminated another detached lump of flesh. "I think that is the stomach." I felt fear creep up my spine, sure that he would soon point out an organ with my clumsy boot in it.

A sharp snap echoed out into the empty night. I swung my torch; Gill was quicker with his firearm, trained at a hulking shadow lumbering through the scrub.

"Stop, police!" Gill shouted, waving me off to the side to pursue. I drew my gun and charged forward, running a parallel route to our potentially escaping suspect. I couldn't hear Gill any more, caught up in the pound of my feet in the dirt and my shallow, struggling breathing. Torchlight flickered across the bush, swaying unsteadily with the swing of my arms, barely illuminating my path. I was gaining on the dark figure, turning my shoulder as I swerved and collided with him, knocking us both into the brush. My shoulder struck a hard patch of dirt, jarring as I rolled to my side, slipping a little down the embankment. The man lying face down close by groaned into the dirt, fingers clawing into the soil to draw himself up. I lifted myself up, searching around for my fallen gun. I managed to locate my torch, swinging the beam of light wide. Unsteadily climbing to his feet, a familiar figure squinted in the light, raising a hand to shield his eyes.

"Matteson?" I lowered my torch out of my colleagues' eyes, aiming somewhere around his sauce-stained belly. He was in his civilian attire today, off duty.

"Benji," he croaked, out of breath from the run. That damned nickname. "Gill must be around here. He never goes anywhere without his rookie buddy."

"What are you doing out here Patrick?" I didn't really want to know any more, watching as Matteson lowered his hands from his face. His lips were dark, shining with moisture, rolling in red drooled streaks down his chin. I swallowed thickly, wishing I had my firearm in my hand. I wished I had my partner with me. Blood was under his fingernails as well, dried and caked with the dirt of our fall. The calm of the policeman cracked and I saw the switch in his expression. Lip drawn back in a bloodied snarl, Matteson took a heavy, threatening step towards me. "It was you." My voice was quieter than I would have liked.

"Only the last few." Matteson crouched, producing my gun from the scrub. The barrel of my gun was trained towards me, cocked and loaded.

"You carved into them while they were still alive!" My revulsion only seemed to amuse him, grinning victoriously at me. His bloody teeth told me where the missing pieces of his victims had gone. Swelling his already bloated gut. "Now you're going to kill me." Matteson shrugged like he had no say in the matter. My heart thundered in my ears.

The loud rumble of the discharging fire arm made me flinch, body held taught as I waited for the searing pain. Matteson frowned, kneels buckling, that smile gone from his face. Slumping forward, he hit the ground.

"Ben." I looked around slowly, dumbly; eyes finally focussing on Gill's outstretched hand. "Let's get you the fuck outta here."