AUTHOR'S NOTE: I couldn't figure out how to adapt out the CGI shots, so let's pretend that Thanatologist!Shannon is also an expert animator and created all of the CGI shots depicted in the fic.

…and pulls out one of the files, its yellow colour contrasting with her brown skin. After lifting it up and inspecting it, she wheels her chair over to the table where Shannon is now seated, her laptop booted up..

Ruby: "Will like, this one do?"

Shannon takes the file and examines it. On the front cover, there are the words "INCIDENT 08261998" in large red lettering. Below it is a crude drawing of a large semi-truck and a stick figure cut in half. After looking it over for a while Shannon nods.

Shannon: "Indeed. I reckon this is a good one to start things off."

She opens the file and peers over the first page. The first thing on the page that springs out to us is a photograph, which depicts a man lying against the running board of a semi-truck. The man's face is twisted into an expression of raw, agonising pain - which is understandable when we see that his lower torso has been crushed into a red mess, with intestines smeared on the road and blood oozing out around the wound.

Below the photo is a caption and "INCIDENT 08261998" in bold as a title. A paperclip is holding the pages together.

Shannon turns to her laptop and begins searching through her files. After about ten seconds of navigating she comes to a video file named " ".

Shannon: "I've gone through and used all of the available data to create a video that reconstructs what happened. I'll be interspersing the events with some of my own research and CGI reconstructions of what happens to the body. Now then, shall we begin?"

Shannon turns the laptop towards us and presses "play" on the video player. The camera peers forward so that the laptop's entire screen covers the camera…

The video file begins with a black screen. Eventually a grayscale image slides in, apparently depicting a blonde-haired woman in the driver's seat of a car. She is being filmed, if the alignment box and "REC" words near her head are any indication. White words are typed on the screen:

Date of Incident: 26 August, 1998

Location of Incident: Las Vegas, Nevada

The image fades to colour as the video proper begins, rest stops and houses passing by the car's window.

Unnamed Woman: "So your parents know where we're coming tonight, right?"

Shannon: (Narrating) "It's a beautiful spring morning, and lovebirds Jeff Stewart and Jessica Baron are making their way to Las Vegas to do what lovebirds do - tie the knot."

As Shannon narrates this the recording camera shakes slightly around Jessica's head and even zooms in on her face temporarily.

Jessica: "What if your mom doesn't like me?"

The video switches to showing footage from the black-and-white security camera of a rest stop, as we see Jessica and Jeff's car come to a stop in one of the parking spots. Across the road from the parking lot is a Ford F-350 ute with its hood open, a man under it working on something. We switch back to the video Jeff is recording as Jessica opens the car door and gets out.

Jeff: "Oh, wait, wait. 2 sugars and 2 creams, alright? Thanks."

Jeff zooms the camera in on Jessica as she walks towards the rest stop's window.

Jessica: "Fine."

We cut back to the security footage, showing Jessica walking up to the window and talking with the manager. Eventually, the manager leaves the window to prepare the coffees Jessica has ordered. Soon enough, we cut back to Jeff's camera. Jeff himself has apparently got out of the car too and followed his fiancée over to the window. Once Jessica takes the coffees, she hands one to Jeff. She looks somewhat annoyed that Jeff is recording her.

Jessica: "Take this for me."

Shannon: (Narrating) "But as they clowned around at a rest stop… they had no idea their day was about to come undone."

Jessica giggles as she walks over to the car on the security footage.

Jessica: "Stop!"

Cut back to Jeff's camera, which is now shaking and swerving around Jessica.

Jessica: "Please. Please, come on, let's just get in the car and go, we're so close."

On the security footage, as Jessica and Jeff bicker, we see a large 18-wheeler semi-truck emerge from the right side of the screen and drive forward across the road between the Ford and the rest stop.

Shannon: (Narrating) "While mugging for their video camera, the young couple heard a terrible screaming."

Shortly after Shannon finishes that sentence, a bloodcurdling scream whips through the air from behind the couple, and they whip around, wanting to know what the commotion could be. The 18-wheeler has also come to a stop, as its driver gets out to see what is happening.

Shannon: (Narrating) "It was coming from behind the semi-truck that had just pulled to a stop."

The screaming is still continuing as Jeff's camera records him approaching the semi-truck. The security camera shows the couple peering through the gap between the truck's cargo hold and cabin, and then suddenly recoiling in what appears to be shock.

Jessica: "OH MY GOD!"

Shannon: (Narrating) "What they saw was something that would haunt them forever."

The camera now pans over to where Jessica was looking to reveal the man from the photograph on the file, still screaming in agony. The road around his crushed torso is pasted with smeared guts, broken shards of bones, and blood, bright and menacing. He is clutching a wrench in his right hand.

Shannon: (Narrating) "A man torn in two, clinging to life."

A new camera shot shows a replay of the semi-truck running the man over, from a different angle closer than the one in the security footage.

Shannon: (Narrating) "Frank Soriani had been under his pickup truck fixing a broken muffler. The driver of the semi didn't see Frank lying on the ground below and ran him over, severing his lower body from his upper torso."

We now see a shot of the truck running Frank over from an angle between the truck and the Ford.

Shannon: (Narrating) "Remarkably, the poor man was still alive."

We suddenly cut away from all of this and to a shot of Ruby in the office, holding a tablet with an image of the human body's circulatory system displayed on the screen, zoomed in on the torso area.

Ruby: "Okay, here is some like, analysis. When the body is severed or blown in half…"

She draws a red line across the waist.

Ruby: "...You see this a lot with like, war victims, or people who get run over by trains… as long as you have complete blood circulation to the vital organs you should like, survive. Shannon has made some CGI for this."

Now the video depicts a CGI model of Frank lying down, his body made transparent with his internal organs and blood vessels visible, as the semi-truck crushes his torso. The CGI shot shows the wheel crushing the lower half of his intestines and kidneys, his bladder, and his pelvis.

Ruby: "For Frank here, although his legs are like, cut off his blood can still pass through his aorta and back to his heart, so he can still live for now even if it isn't very long."

Another of the rest stop's security cameras, positioned in front of the semi-truck that crushed Frank, shows that an ambulance has arrived and paramedics are rushing in to help Frank, who is still screaming in pain.

Shannon: (Narrating) "Frank is still kicking, more or less, so paramedics are quick to begin transporting him to a local community centre."

As Shannon says this we see a shot of the upper portion of Frank's body being transported on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. After he is loaded in the ambulance heads off for the hospital.

Shannon: (Narrating) "In a cruel twist of fate, the EMTs lost an hour because both halves of Frank's body were sent to separate hospitals by mistake."

The security footage shows the paramedics mistakenly loading Frank's legs into a different ambulance, that then leaves the parking lot in the opposite direction from the first one. Finally, cut back to the shot of Frank cut in half.

Shannon: (Narrating) "The doctors did what they could, but Frank expired three and a half hours after the accident."

The video image stops and turns grayscale again as words are typed on the screen:

WAY TO DIE #208

SEMI-CIDE

We return to Shannon and Ruby in their office.

Ruby: "Oh man. That death looked, like, SO painful."

Shannon: "I know. And to think we're only just getting started… You can narrate the next one."

Ruby nods. She takes a small yellow strip of paper and sticks it to the top of the file, before wheeling herself back over to the filing cabinet and opening it, returning the file to its position. She then reaches in for another file…