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Three

The scent was what woke him. Antiseptic cleaner, blood, and a stranger odor he couldn't quite place. Jasper hadn't yet opened his eyes, but already could feel the room spinning. That part was okay; after all, he had spent most of the day feeling like the world was off its axis. What wasn't okay was the ache in his head.

"That was a pretty impressive fall you took." The man's voice sounded as if it were under water.

Jasper tentatively opened his eyes. Though the light in the room was meek it still stung; singing in collation with the throb in his brain.

"What?" He blinked, and tried to find the body to the voice.

"Your fall, it looked pretty painful." Across the room stood Mr. Masen, an eerie grey nimbus framed his red hair and cast his face in shadows, but Jasper could make him out by the imperious posture.

"It was." He replied, placing his fingertips to his brow. "Where am I exactly?"

"The cutting room."

"The what -"

The room came into a quick, blinding focus. The walls were an off-white, semi-gloss. There were shelves of plastic containers, all varying in sizes, and all containing samples of tissue floating in a sickly, brown fluid. Metal tables. Drains in the floor. Intimidating equipment attached to tubes and pulleys.

Jasper's jaw clenched as he realized he was in the morgue.

"You're not going to faint on me again, are you?" Mr. Mason's tone was complacent. The smug bastard.

"I think I'll manage." Jasper assured him.

"Good." Mr. Masen pushed off from the counter he was leaning against. "Then, if you don't mind, I'd like to show you something."

Jasper didn't respond. Instead he looked up at the medical examiner, wondering what he could possibly want to show him. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure he wouldn't like it.

"You coming?" Masen extended a hand to help Jasper out of his chair.

"I should probably get back to the conference."

"Cullen knows you're with me. You needn't worry about the seminar. You'll still get full credit for it. C'mon."

He would have liked to decline the offer, but his thoughts were filled with a mantra: You cut off people's heads, you cut off people's heads, you cut off people's heads. "Alright." He finally conceded, and got up, pushing the man's hand away.

Mr. Masen led him through the room to a pair of swing doors, the kind you might see at the entrance of a restaurant's kitchen.

"Where are we going?"

Masen glanced over his shoulder. "The cooler."

Jasper stopped at the threshold. The cooler. Where they kept the bodies. The dead bodies.

"Why?" He had to force his voice not to sound shrill.

Masen turned to look at him, then smirked. "You're a man of science, are you not?"

"What does that have to do with -"

"What you are about to see; what I am about to show you, will change your entire outlook on medicine, on death, on Jesus."

The man's words weren't making any sense. He figured this must be joke. Playing tricks on the guy with the weak constitution. Did Masen do this with every student that was uncomfortable with being around death? It wasn't funny, but then again, Masen wasn't laughing.

Jasper took a slow, deep breath. "Alright. I'll play along." He gestured for the man to continue.

Mr. Masen pushed through the doors and disappeared into the cooler. Jasper hesitated half a second before he forced himself to follow.

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