Chapter Three:

Where Did Precious Poppy Go?


If I retreat
Words, wars, and symphonies
Make room- we're taking over here


What precisely is a psychopath or sociopath?

That was typically the first question new students always asked at the BAU academy, itching to get out into the field and catch their very own one like it was a rare Pokémon hiding in the grass and a bloody ball was all they needed to get the critter out the bush.

The dilemma was, Poppy had found, there was no clear-cut answer to give them.

Psychopath on its own was a phrase people use, frequently indiscriminately, to describe someone who is, to them, without conscience, worth hate, worth ostracization. People casually tossed it about as if it were a game of kick-a-ball and the last one holding it was the loser, jokingly call their friends one with a shoulder bump or deride politicians as a few. The same, Poppy would add, could be said for the term sociopath, a commonly thought off less 'dangerous' Psychopath.

From her line of work, from her own perspective and personal experience, if one pecked and peeled the word down to its clinically cold bones, sociopath and psychopath were merely those individuals who exhibited characteristics of Antisocial Personality Disorder, with the far end of the spectrum being called psychopathy, the correct medical term to use.

So, the student would approach, most likely someone in the back, what is Antisocial Personality Disorder then, and how do we spot those with it out in the field?

A disorder characterized by the persistent disregard, in some cases contempt, of the rights and feelings of others. Sociopathy and psychopathy were simply two subsects of ASPD with some overlap. While often used interchangeably, each term, sociopath, if one was to use that term to encompass all those suffering from ASPD in a extreme manner, and psychopath as those rare bastards who clocked the charts, have their very own lines of distinction.

Psychopaths were classified as people with little to no conscience, the idea that they lack all emotions was a load of bullshit, while sociopaths had a limited, albeit weak, ability to feel empathy and remorse in a more logical sense rather than emotive. Psychopaths can, and often do, follow social conventions when it suits their own needs, while sociopaths are more likely to fly off the fuckin' handle and react aggressively whenever they're confronted by a glimmer of consequences or emotional discomfort.

Sociopaths were more likely to fail at masking, were additionally more hot-headed and impulsive, prone to fits of rage, recognize but rationalize their own behaviour, have profound difficulty maintaining regular work and family life, but can form emotional attachments even if it was extremely hard for them to do so, and not often in the form anyone else but a sociopath would identify as an emotional attachment.

On the flipside, psychopaths have a tendency to pretend to care when they are not displaying cold-hearted behaviour, often fail to recognize other people's distress, have relationships that are shallow and fake, but can, unlike the sociopath, maintain a normal life as a cover for criminal activity, neglect to form genuine emotional attachments, but against popular belief, may love people in their own fucked up way.

As Dr Willem H.J Martens said, most psychopaths, and thus sociopaths, do suffer from emotional pain and loneliness, have lead hurt-filled lives and have an inability to trust people, but as with every other poor soul in this world, they too want to be loved and accepted. In the joke of the century, it is their own behaviour that makes this nearly impossible to accomplish.

The sad thing was most psychopaths and sociopaths are well aware of this, their own deficits, and still can't fuckin' help themselves.

While it's common for people to think of sociopaths and psychopaths as being intrinsically dangerous, this is more a construct of TV, books and movies. Violence, while certainly possible, is not an inherent characteristic of either sociopathy or psychopathy or ASPD in general.

Your boss? That Wall Street wolf you admire with the yacht? That fireman who saved your son from the burning building? Yeah… ASPD, the lot of them.

They're risk takers. They enjoy the thrill. They don't do fear, not as a neurotypical would understand fear. Not every psychopath or sociopath turns to bloody murder, most live honest, hardworking lives, however, and it was a big however, most serial killers or repeat offenders do have some form of Antisocial Personality Disorder.

It skews the general perception.

That being said, people with any form of ASPD will often go to extreme lengths to manipulate, charm, disarm, and frighten people in order to get what they want, typically worse in their teens and twenties, but when one does become violent they are just as likely to hurt themselves than anyone else. Social isolation, sorrow, and loneliness are all contributing factors to psychopaths and sociopaths becoming aggressive and impulsive, and thus turning to crime, but that, Poppy would combine, counts for every other person too.

You hit a dog too many times, and of course the bastards going to bite you back.

As for nature versus nurture, there are those who still contend that sociopaths were made while psychopaths are born, but it was so much more complex that, more than genetic components or outward factors seeping in. There is research to suggest now that sociopaths are more likely to present in children when a sibling, even if the two had never met, had a diagnosis of psychopathy or ASPD, meaning there was some biological construction in a sociopaths creation, some form of poison in the family blood, and psychopaths were more likely to appear after traumatic events take place early on in their lives, devoid of the disorder should no trauma happen, meaning outward circumstances shape them too.

Psychopaths do and have missed adapting a societal mask, outing themselves in their reckless explosions, always taking the game one step too far, and sociopaths have gone on to secure long term jobs and live, ostensibly, like everyone else beating the streets.

ASPD was a spectrum, people, and persons on that spectrum ranged.

Then how do we track them? The ones who do become serial killers or criminals? How do we know what exactly to look for?

You don't, Poppy would sigh for the hundredth time at the student in the front row, the one with a squeaking, cracking voice like high-pitched static.

Because I'm standing right fuckin' here, right in front of you, a real life ten-toed, ten-fingered high-functioning self-aware sociopath, and you lot still don't have a bloody inkling even after I've spoon fed you the clues.

Hopeless.

Everything and everyone was hopeless.

It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad.


You're the galantine
Cold and alone — it suits you well
Won't find me perching here again


Poppy Moser thought people understood things differently when they got older. It was not really about getting soft, there was nothing soft about Poppy, or seeing things more in grey and less black and white that experience allowed a person to do, but just… Sensing things another way.

Better.

Poppy, at twenty-seven, understood herself better now. She knew her Friend wasn't really a friend, her years studying in the BAU academy exploring criminal behaviour had taught her that. Her Friend was a part of herself, a tiny shard of psyche that, under a mysterious incident in the intangible muddled years of her early life, broke off and went septic.

She understood her own impulsivity better, her own urges, had a myriad of tests done by a few psychiatrist when she got curious, when she began to realize, after the episode with Tom and his Death Eaters and running from England with blood on her hands, she needed to learn to hide better, mask better, be a real girl better, and got her shiny gold star of severe Antisocial Personality Disorder with a nice little side salad of PTSD each and every time. Now knowing what she needed to pretend she didn't have, she obliviated said psychiatrists and destroyed any evidence she had been there at all and moved on.

Keep it clean. No tracks. Should have burned the entire office complex down to ensure-

She understood why she had been drawn into this job, tracking down serial killers, repeating the same fuckin' cycle she had with her first kill, her terribly terrific Tom Riddle, and was, now, just like those she hunted, trapped in a sequence of rinse and repeat.

She understood how to blend in better, when to smile and when to laugh and when to not say a fuckin' word.

Poppy understood, she's a clever little fiend, and although she failed sometimes, still having trouble controlling her fits of rage and something else entirely when seeing blood or bursts of fetid green, she was doing-

Not better.

Better people didn't have a kill-count larger than a DMV receipt, but she was doing…

Alright.

Average.

And that was exactly where Poppy Moser wanted to be.

Middling.

Middling people got the job done, got the hell out, and got underneath the collective radar. It sounded to Poppy like a good gig. Of course, one might cock a curious brow at that, and call her out on her bullshit. She had climbed the ladder at the BAU too high to be thought mediocre even by an unseasoned eye, but, Poppy would suppose, it was a sacrifice to her privacy and invisibility she had to make if she wanted to keep herself from… Starving, shall she say.

Her position and her rank allowed her resources and, most importantly, access to things and people she wouldn't otherwise have entry to. It also provided excellent cover. Obviously Poppy Moser was chasing someone down. That was her job. Nothing more to see here. Move along. It's not ego-

It's not all ego.

Poppy does her job, both the official daytime one and the one she keeps for the moonlight hours, her festering Friend is fed and full, she's learned to be just human enough that people laugh with her and joke with her and request her out for drinks, but never intimate enough to get tangled up in wedding invites and barbeque Sundays, and she gets shit done and moves on to the next big pursuit.

And that is exactly what Poppy plans to do in Miami.

Two weeks, she neatly schedules for herself, maybe three, and then she'll be back in safe waters in Quantico.

She doesn't want to be here long. Her Friend doesn't want to be here at all. This place, with its sunshine and colour and glossy tarmac makes her feel sore and itchy, as if she has a scab she has to continually tell herself not to pick at.

Irritated.

Inflamed.

Poppy doesn't remember how her Friend came to be, what caused her to be this way, whether it was in that nursery, manifested on the wake of Lily's last scream, or whether-

Whether it was here.

Somewhere.

This place, so alien, she was born in. The place Lily Evans's uncle carted her away from a wreckage.

Frankly, Poppy doesn't want to know. Possibly her Friend had seeped out the busted engine like fumes and into her mind when she had been in the car that had seen her birth parents totalled and Lily and James taking her in like those people who adopted a stray and find out it was actually a mountain lion cub.

Mistakenly.

Maybe someone else, anyone else, would feel this was a grand coming home trip, a chance to explore hidden roots and family homes and legacies thought long lost.

Poppy knows better, and she would sneer at their sentimentality.

Don't! Don't think! Don't look! Don't see! Don't!

Whatever incident shaped Poppy Moser from the rotten foundations up, whatever blood now swam in her veins like venom, whatever death put this monster in her head-

It's there now, and she doesn't even know who she would be without her Friend, Poppy is Poppy, and nothing would change that.

No point in crying over spilt milk-

Or spilt grey matter spread across a highway twenty odd bloody years ago.

Thus Poppy plans a quick entrance, a quick catch, and a quick exit-

And then she meets Dexter Morgan, and everything goes tits up in the wake of a candy wrapper.


May your feet serve you well
And the rest be sent to Hell
Where they always have belonged


Poppy introduces herself glibly, smiling, cracking jokes to crack the tension like eggs in a skillet, completely, utterly normal.

And then she spots the man standing beside the, clearly a police officer, one gun on left side, right-handed, six chambers, six bullets, stance shifted more on left leg, old sports injury, go for the right knee man in a fedora.

He didn't look like much on first glance, wearing a plain blue button up shirt and a pair of beige pants, he almost blended into the paint of the station, his ginger spiced hair slightly messy, like he barely remembered to run a brush through it, perhaps, maybe, just as curly as her own if left to grow out.

Watch on right wrist, right-handed, no gun, no hollow or lump of pockets or waistband, no stashed weapon, shoes, no boots, no knife in sock, broad shouldered, strong jaw, muscular underneath clothes, fist fight unadvisable, lanyard around neck, Dexter Morgan, might be able to reach out and grab cord, twist tight, turn, use shoulder and weight and force of spin to yank-

Her Friend, typically running a relentless soliloquy of danger and death, quietens as Poppy meets hazel eyes.

Then it's just her.

For the first time since she could remember, perhaps the first time in her life, there's just Poppy in her thoughts, no obscure dusky echo of a Friend who speaks like bone bouncing off steel.

That was when everything rushes at her at once, a thrashing, hammering sort of fluster that seizes every cell in her body and threatens to atomize it.

She's hostage to a pair of eyes.

Poppy wanted to reach out and grab him by the neck and squeeze, it might take two of her small hands but she would give it one hell of a shot. She wanted to fling herself at him, what for, she isn't sure, but she knows there's steps between them, distance, a whole bloody table, shouldn't be there, here-

For a split second, Poppy doesn't know whether she wanted to hold him or kill him, this stranger, this nobody, this-

It's dizzying, disorientating, and disgusting.

Poppy was angry, so irrationally angry so ridiculously swiftly, enraged and frantic as if a switch had been flipped inside, as if someone had dug their dirty fingers between the soft spaces of her ribs trying to clamber in and take hold of her hysterically thumping heart, and she wants to shred him, this Dexter Morgan, like paper confetti, hold it in her hands and never let go, squeeze it until it was pulp between her fingers and hardens into a case she can't, and doesn't want to, escape from, and-

And she's other things too, so many things, suddenly lost, suddenly distraught, suddenly elated, suddenly wanting to smile an actual smile, a real one with her teeth on show and her dimples pressed, and truly feel it burn and strain on her face in that nice aching way she imagined true smiles would really feel like-

And she is smiling, Poppy belatedly realizes in a flush of warmth and wonder.

There's a true, honest smile on her face, maybe her first ever one, and it does burn, it does hurt, it does-

"Do I know you?"

The man, the Dexter Morgan, says cautiously, almost astonished by his own question, and abruptly Poppy is hurtling back into herself, her Friend is hurtling back into her head.

Who? Who?! Who?! Whowhowhowhowhowhowhowho-

It sounded like a fuckin' owl screeching in her eardrum, so loud and so shrill Poppy almost stumbles-

Almost.

It was the shock to her system that she needed, a jumpstart cable to a stalled engine heart, her Friend's squeal, to regain the reins of her body. She stood up taller, shoving her trembling hands into the dark depths of her jean pockets.

Out of sight, out of mind.

"I should hope not… Unless you've been on a little murder spree lately?"

It was a joke, it was meant to be a joke, funny to Poppy in a way no one else would get, the best kind of joke but a joke all the same, and-

And Dexter Morgan bites back swiftly.

"No."

Right-

OUT!OUT!OUT!OUT!OUT!

Poppy was in total agreement with her Friend. She needed to get out of here and breathe.

"Well, someone has, and I need to go find that person. So, if you will excuse me-"

She skirted by the pair, leaving a healthy space between them, a space wide enough should she lose control and reach out her arms wouldn't stretch far enough to nab that man by his shirt and-

Poppy picked up speed for the Lieutenants' door.

Poppy doesn't glance back.

She wanted to, she wanted to so much it burned, but she doesn't.


Cold hearts brew colder songs
Fate will play us out
With a song of pure romance
Stomp your feet and clap your hands


Lieutenant Maria Laguerta, narcissist, as most people in positions of power are. Doesn't care who she has to step on to climb that totem pole. Should grasp it and yank it out from under her. Watch her fall. Watch her BREAK- a woman in a fuckin' pink three-piece suit, giving Poppy uncomfortable Umbridge ambiances, backs down in the end and hands over all the files Poppy needs to start her investigation.

She gets it.

If Poppy had some upstart coming along on one of her hunts and trying to get their sticky fingers on-

Kill! Crack their skulls and bend their backs and grind their bones to dust-

Poppy gets it, she doesn't like it, but she understands.

Mostly.

With the files secured in a crisp, clean folder, and her own little place set up in the back of the station, some old rec room cleared out for her personal use during her stay, Poppy dipped the hell out, and she set forth for something infinitely more comfortable.

She makes good time driving Sirius's old bike to the Miami major hospital morgue.

The Miami Metro forensics department were reluctant to relinquish the bodies of the Ice Truck Killer murders just yet, afraid they'd lose some unforeseen evidence to cremation, release, or tagged, bagged, and buried. Poppy's only thankful they had some form of prudence unlike some of the places she's been to on the job. Paper and photos were good at getting the data across, but flesh-

Flesh speaks so charmingly.

Slipping out the boiling sun and into the entrance of the hospital, Poppy made her way down the corridors, working herself deeper into the belly, down into the bowels where all dead, dark things were kept on ice.

The linoleum of the hospital was cheery yellow, the ceiling above made from those polystyrene rectangles laid out neatly in a grid. Even inside, even with her sunglasses safely perched on her nose, the light was too bright for Poppy's eyes, abrasive to her senses, enough so that she felt, already, a pang of a migraine taking space at her temple.

She was a creature of the night, not daytime, and Miami was a fuckin' sprawling city of sunlight.

Poppy passes poster prints on the wall on her journey deeper into the pot-bellied building, those ones she's seen in offices and truly dreary places, as if ink on ground-up woodchips could brighten a place up, tasteful in a dull kind of way Poppy doesn't understand. Kitten's on branches and mountain landscapes and goldfish in bowls telling her to keep on swimming!

Did those really work for muggles?

She might have to look into it further, buy some for her own office in Quantico. Maybe then people will stop giving her the worried two-step shuffle when she calls students into her department for a talk over their latest test.

Perhaps some flowers too.

This hospital seemed to have a lot of them as well, sunflowers and daisies and baby's breath, and the people seemed drawn to them like bees, buzzing over to paw at petals with pretty smiles. If Poppy placed her own flowers strategically enough, it might be just enough to act as a bait away from her office.

A cotton-candy trail to keep the kids out the gingerbread house.

Worth a shot.

Beside every door Poppy passes was a plastic plaque, white with fat, bold lettering, all-caps. She found the morgue at the very bottom of the last floor stashed at the far end of a snaking hallway. It seemed even nurses and doctors wanted to keep the corpses as far away as possible, the smell of death out from under their busy-bee noses.

The Mortician, short, thin, balding, one good jab at his throat would be enough to incapacitate nods her way when she stops at his half-moon desk and flashes her badge, allowing her through to the back examination room without fuss or following. Miami Metro Dispatch must have sent word of her imminent arrival ahead of her. Poppy doesn't know whether that's a good sign or a bad one for her liaison with the Metro, and only cares enough to wonder because if they decided to get their hackles up, they might just make it that much harder for her to get her work done and get out.

Poppy paused by the steel door, draft of frosted air seeping out the crack below where frame met tile, and she shuffled the magnolia folder tightly under her arm as she reaches back, into her jeans, and picks out a modest little remedy. She deftly rips the striped wrapper off one-handedly and bites down on the Blood Pop with an audible nom.

The tang of rust and corrosion quells and sooths that itchy-scabbed invisible quarry in her chest immediately.

Blood on tongue, documents in hand, Poppy shouldered through the door and into the cold bare light of a freezer.


Let's kill tonight!
Kill tonight!
Show them all you're not the ordinary type


Poppy slapped the folder down on the side table by the door, letting the metal swing shut behind her, and took a long, lingering look to the naked, unpacked gifts on display. Three bodies were laid out waiting for her senses on gurneys with wheels in the middle of the room, and Poppy imagines them, one by one, in their own macabre parade, Mardi Gras in a cemetery with all the bells and whistles but none of the living, being trundled into this very room from refrigeration and then back again to wherever the hell these bodies might end up.

Poppy pulls away from the wall and lumbers to the end gurney of the first dismembered body. She flicked her shades up, rests them on her head like a tiara, and squints.

They look like barbie dolls when her eyes are slits, when she tilts her head just right, dissected, disjointed, torn apart toys discarded when the fun was over.

And there was no blood, despite the bodies not having been washed to preserve evidence.

The record had been right.

Not a drop left behind.

Careless! Needless waste! Best Part! Makes the mouth wet and the heart throbbing! Squandered it all!

Poppy sucked faster on her lollipop, bit down on the stick to keep it from rolling on her tongue, from giving her too much… Taste and delight, turning her attention, as best as she could, from her stirring, churning, furious Friend to the body at hand.

The first victim was discovered set out in an empty pool. The document in the folder had said she was likely a prostitute, appeared to have been hurriedly worked on, speculation being that the killer was interrupted. Body, like all the rest, drained completely of blood, cut into twenty carefully wrapped parcels, and left outside the Seven Seas Motel. Not interrupted. Too careful. Too precise. Had time to wrap them all up in brown paper and lay them out like an anatomy block print in a medical text book.

Poppy traipsed right, down the line.

The second victim. Prostitute again. Body drained of blood, partially skinned this time at hipbone, cut into nineteen pieces, left at a fountain on the outskirts of a nearby festival. This time the head had been missing but had later turned up when the, suspected, killer threw it at the one and only Dexter Morgan's windshield when the forensics officer had chased down an ice truck he had found driving around in the middle of the night. Strange. Curious. Doesn't make sense. Odds? Unlikely. Dexter, Dexter, Dexter… Who? Who? Who?

Focus. One game at a time.

Prostitutes. Victims mean nothing. Props. Easy source. Not the cause. Not the explanation!

Poppy sighs, a hooting noise through her teeth, a burst of blood from her lollipop up her nose.

So they had a tourist on their hands, did they? Serial killer's who weren't motivated by the victim, characteristically choosing one type of person to seek and destroy, were rare.

Extremely rare. Good prize. Good trophy!

Ted Bundy had his brunette women with a middle part, Aileen Wuornos had her truckers paying for sex, Charles Sobhraj had his backpackers, and Harold Shipmen had his fifteen not-so-ill patients. The Miami Metro Homicide believed the Ice Truck Killer was just the same, targeting prostitutes, the only, so far, known victims-

Not the trigger!

But if he wasn't targeting prostitutes because they sparked something in him, talked to his own Shadow Friend, if they were simply there enough in abundant numbers to easy slip a noose around and pull into his playground, then what-

Poppy moved to the last table. The third known victim. Sheri Taylor, a prostitute, her fingertips were found inside an abandoned refrigerated truck that Metro believed the Ice Truck Killer was using to move his victims to his designated showcases, and the reason for his moniker. Her body parts were later discovered at the Ice Hockey Stadium, presented like presents in the goal area of the ice rink, head placed on top of the torso for display, positioned on CCTV by one Tony Tucci, the sole survivor of a run in with the Ice Truck Killer.

Aforesaid poor bastard in this very hospital missing a leg and a hand, and said missing body parts left in places around the city as a taunt to Metro Homicide. He's playing at being like the rest. Just another serial killer. Smoke screen in ice. The victims aren't his manifesto, his message-

Message.

Message?

Message!

The thought bounced around Poppy's head like a ricocheting bullet, blasting through her thoughts with eerie precision, stitching together the pieces of the people before her. She crept backward, right until she struck wall, plaster and steel against supple leather, until Poppy could see all the dismembered bodies in their pretty, orchestrated row.

She sees it then.

The clean sharp cuts, the purposeful, decisive dismemberment, she sees them at the pool and the festival and the ice rink-

Not his regular Modus Operandi. Not constrained by it. No death ritual for our deeply disturbed boy. Tourists adopt customs to fit into the city. He's-

"He's telling a story."

Poppy's voice came out as fog from her lips, and she imagined it as red as the missing blood, the wasted blood.

"He's learning a language."

Why do you learn a language?

Poppy chuckled, that scabbed over hollow in her chest itch, itch, itching, so much so she physically lifts her hand and scratches at the hidden wound, tries to mollify the unexpected rush of-

Fever.

Hot, boiling fever that breaks out across her skin like a flush, melting her from the inside out, like the lollipop being thawed in her mouth, threatening a sort of half-mad semi-blissful delirium. That sweaty-skittish sensation of taking stance at a white line with the race was just beginning to start.

"He's trying to talk to someone and I'm only seeing half the conversation... How rude."

Run! Catch! FEED!


I hate my work, but I'm in control
I'm fearless now, but it cost my soul


Poppy rose at the end of the Ice rink, gaze dead ahead, locked onto the goal a whole sea of chill away. She had come straight here after packing up at the morgue, perhaps broken one or two speed limits, too eager, too impatient, too unlike her carefully crafted pseudo-self, unsure whether the Metro Homicide team had kept this place locked down after so long.

They had.

Thank Merlin.

If her hunch was right, if the Ice Truck Killer was trying to talk to someone, this way-

If there was another person who would be able to see the signs and know them for the poetry they were-

If someone else was answering back-

The victims meant nothing. They were merely the paper the notes being passed in class were written on. Not worth her time of looking into. No blood! Worthless! Meaningless! Going to such tremendous lengths to get a message across… Everything else mattered just as much as the paper.

After all, as professionals understood, half a conversation was had in body language. And that was funny, wasn't it? Poppy hoped she wasn't the only one to find that funny.

Poppy slithered onto the ice, heading for the goal ahead with slip and sliding steps. If the victims were a story partway told, then the places they were put meant... Something.

Who was this killer talking to? Were they replying? If so, where were the further bodies put together as memos? Had Metro Homicide missed them? Were they truly that sloppy? Were they still out there, lovingly sealed love letters, right now, just waiting to be found-

Or they could be speaking back in a different way, one less… Artistic.

Which meant Poppy was hardly going to find answers to the missing conversation here.

Poppy came to the red line before the goal, exactly where, as Lieutenant Maria Laguerta's elegant handwriting had stated, Tony Tucci once stood when he could stand. Her head turned, just so, to the left, over the way, exactly as the records depicted seeing Tony Tucci do in the CCTV.

He'd seen the killer there, there was no possible way he hadn't, at least in a ghostly-shaded form, over by the bleachers, resting right there maybe with a gun in hand, being told how and when to place the pieces of Sheri Taylor in the goal net. Score one for the home team!

Poppy turned and allowed her feet to follow her line of sight, sneaking through the Plexiglas barrier, ascending the stairs to the bleachers. Here!

Poppy stopped and rolled, shuffling between the benches, keeping to the end, sitting down on the painted timber to face the arena.

It was the perfect spot, precisely close enough to have a muggle weapon be threatening enough, and yet far enough away that, if Sheri was still there, if Poppy had been this killer, she would have a good view of it all. The show she was making, the song she was singing, the letter she was writing.

All of it.

Her hands latched onto the bench, over the rim, fingers tightening until her knuckles bleached white under the clutch and clasp.

Her Blood Pop was long gone now, nothing but a stick lost in a bin outside the hospital, and she wished she had another, just one more, always one more-

"You liked seeing Tony do exactly what you told him to. Your own little puppet."

Of course, the killer doesn't answer back. He's long gone, there's nothing but ice and benches and a mind-maddening puzzle.

We like puzzles!

Yes. Yes, we do.

Yet, half the pieces were missing, someone else had them, someone was hiding them from her, secreting them away, hoarding them-

Rude! Impolite! Ours now! Take them back! Take it ALL back!

Poppy exhaled through her nose, and eased her hands from their strangling grip, sweeping-

Chipped paint met gliding fingertip.

Poppy peeked down to her side, by her hip, by where the killer's own hip had been. She ran her finger over the carved graffiti, likely done with a pen knife, floating over engraved words-

She smiled.

Graffiti was so common now; Poppy didn't doubt at least twenty other benches in this stadium didn't have some name or number etched into them. What she did doubt, what made that fevered-glow come sweeping back with a vengeance and fill her up from toes to tits, was that Metro Homicide would have paid much attention to any of it, that any other bench there had her name carved into the seat.

Where did Precious Poppy go?

Poppy blinked at it, and blinked again, blinked some more-

It could be anything. A line from a TV show she hadn't seen, or a book she hadn't read, an inside joke between friends or lovers or whatever else normal people called each other, people Poppy couldn't understand, not like her serial killers, and-

Where did Precious Poppy go?

Poppy tumbled off the bench, let her knees strike concrete, hunched down, peering in the dark of the underside, feverish. Her whole life was one big underside, one dark belly, one hidden world beneath another, brighter one. She squinted to the end below where the innocent writing above would sit-

She reached under the bench, grasped the thing stuck to the underside with a little red ribbon, tugged, and brought it out into the daylight, into the top world, clasped between her two fingers, out in sunshine since someone had stuck it under there.

It looked like all her other Blood Pops, her bought ones and the ones she'd made-

Pale confectionary paper, rounded head, striped cellophane wrapped-

Not stripped cellophane.

Decorated cellophane.

A painted picture of a poppy printed on its fat face.

Where did Precious Poppy go?

Poppy ripped the wrapper off, brought it close to her face, sniffed-

Copper, rust, and something darkly sweet.

Blood!

The lollipop was made from blood.

Poppy Moser bolted from the ice rink arena.


It's alright to scream
I'm screaming too,
Why'd you think I do these things I do?


Poppy Moser was a live nerve as she came crashing into the hotel room of the Hampton Inn and suites Metro Homicide had hooked her up with. A big, exposed, live nerve that was throbbing and pulsing and pounding in the cold air, the tight air, the closing in air-

She ignored her unpacked suitcase, her empty duffle on the table, the TV and the mini fridge, and dived right for her bed.

He can't be that fast. He can't be fast enough to break in on her first night. He can't be fast enough to have figured her out. No one did. Ever. Never. Forever. He'd have to know she was coming, had to know where Metro would have put her up, had to know what she was-

Poppy fell onto the carpeted floor on her belly like a big, wet floundering fish on a deck, keep on swimming! reaching under the dark frays of her bedsheets, reaching underneath the bed where even children knew bogeymen lived.

Her finger's brushed the jar she had stashed under there this morning when she had arrived, the jar she took everywhere, the jar she always placed underneath her bed-

She pulled it out roughly, tremulously unscrewed the metal lid and threw it off, the Blood Pop from the ice rink burning a cavity in her pocket, spilling the jar out across the floor, wrapped lollipops rolling in the green carpet like a blood spray from a slit vein.

Poppy ditched the jar mindlessly and counted them where they laid.

Five. Fourteen. Thirty-six. Forty-eight.

They were all there. Every single one. Dirty Donny who prayed on little boys in the yellow wrapper. The black widow in her black stripes. The poisoner from Jacksonville banded in green.

Her Blood Pops.

Her kills.

All there.

Poppy rushed for the one in her pocket, pulled it out, hastily re-wrapped, poppy contemptuously staring back from its face as if it was mocking her.

Then where did you come from?

She gazed around her, gazed at the mess she was sitting in, the strewn suckers and the scattered memories, saw the jar sitting not so far away-

Not quite empty.

Poppy dumped her newfound lollipop, reclaimed the glass jar, dipped a hand in, and pulled out what she had missed in her frantic counting.

A small, square, embossed piece of paper, no bigger than a business card, a poppy imprinted on the side beneath a note, was squirreled away at the very bottom. The same writing from the bench glared back, loopy and classy and world shattering.

A sweet treat for a sweet-toothed girl.

Poppy dropped the jar, she dropped the card, she dropped it all and glanced to the new lollipop sitting innocently amongst the others.

It wasn't one of hers-

Sugary-Sheri! Have a lick! Have a lap!

Poppy fell back, back knocking into bedframe, knees curling up like a dead spider on a window sill, elbows finding purchase to run hands through her messy hair unpicked from a bun, the chainsaw back in her ear, her Friend howling in her mind, laughing at this, laughing at her, the fever-flush now a burning bloom.

He knows what I am.

He knew I was coming.

He knows what I've done.

He knows what my Blood Pops are.

Be careful what you wish for.

"Oh fuck."


Woo or Boo?


Next Chapter: Poppy takes some risks to get some answers, and visits Tony Tucci just as a certain doctor is paying a call...


A.N: Happy Tuesday everyone! I currently have two chapter's of this fic sort of polished up enough to post, but I'm likely going to be updating this one once a week on Tuesdays if interest in it keeps up. That gives me some time to get some extra chapters lined up and work on my other fics too. Thank you to everyone who sent me well wishes! I am feeling so much better now.

P.s: The lyrics used in this chapter are Let's Kill Tonight by Panic and the Disco, and Killer by the Hoosiers.

Thank you to everyone who has followed, favourited and a huge thank you to those who reviewed. I hope you guys are enjoying this so far, as things start heating up next chapter! As always, if you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all again next Tuesday with a shiny new chapter.