The Mortician in the Cage

Lucian Graves was a serial kidnapper who had lived alone for years, residing in a decrepit two-story house on the outskirts of the city. He had converted the basement into a private interrogation room, its walls lined with metal instruments that glimmered with a cold, ghostly light. The eleven people before this had all met the end of what he deemed a "tedious" acquaintanceship here. This time, the person he had snatched was named Isadora Vane—a mortician who had worked at a funeral home for six years. She was not much of a talker, too used to the faces of the dead, and when faced with his threats, she answered only with silence, which instead made him reluctant to deliver the killing blow. Isadora Vane thought that sooner or later she would die in this place, die beneath those pale, temperatureless hands, never knowing that he had begun to develop a different...