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"Phew, finally sorted it out," the policewoman said as she flipped her ponytail back and spoke into the walkie-talkie, "Negotiator's update, the west side is willing to compromise, but the east side must pay the burial costs, same old story."
The tall officer leaning on the police car folded the leg that had been resting beside him and straightened up to adjust his collar before responding into the walkie-talkie, "Have them move the bodies out first, both sides should retreat from their respective ends, then throw out a couple of troublemakers."
"It won't be that easy, one side is from out of town, it's too hard for them to find scapegoats," the interrupted voice of the policewoman came from the walkie-talkie, "They don't know the rules of Gotham, and they have such thick accents that I can't be bothered to waste my breath on them, let's just arrest them."
"You're still as fierce as ever, Desina. Alright, I'll alert the special operations squad to arm up, ...Attention all units! Attention all units!"
The police busily got to work in an orderly fashion, guarding several exits to the residential area, leaving only two narrow paths for the parties to retreat.
Locals from one side kicked out two minors who, upon being pinned down by the cops, still cursed and threatened to show the other side what for.
The police immediately hooded them, and once the hoods were on, the officer at the intersection signaled, and the reporters swarmed in.
"What caused this shootout?"
"What are the casualties like? Has anyone died? Have the ambulances arrived?"
"Will this affect the normal opening of the trading market? How many days is it expected to be closed? What do the stall owners and investors think?"
"Were any police officers injured in this crackdown? Did you strictly follow the no-shooting policy?"
And the police officers, going through the motions, shouted, "Make way! Make way! Arresting a criminal! Do not obstruct official business! Everything will be explained at the hearing and the press conference!"
"Please wait for the press conference! Don't come close! Don't come close!"
As the policewoman had said, the outsiders really didn't understand the rules about pushing out scapegoats and took off running at the mention of it, scattering in all directions.
Fortunately, under the policewoman's leadership, the special operations squad lay in ambush at the intersection, and two Taser gun shots took down the two slowest runners.
After the two men were subdued, the policewoman realized that they were neither minors nor pregnant women; they were in big trouble now.
Then the police, along with the nearby residents, helped to lift the collapsed stalls in the trading market so it could open as usual tomorrow, finishing the cleanup deep into the night.
"Pack it up!" Gordon's voice, still calm and forceful, came through the walkie-talkie.
Before getting into the police car, the policewoman stubbed out her cigarette, opened the car door, sat down, and looking at Gordon next to her said, "It's done, boss."
"Anything unusual about the two we caught?"
"Unusual? Does being stupidly unusual count?"
"I mean in terms of appearance."
"Unusually ugly."
Gordon covered his forehead and said, "Can you be serious for a moment? I'm asking about physical characteristics."
"Nothing distinctive about their physical characteristics, just ordinary Mexicans."
"What about tattoos?"
"They're outsiders, why would it be necessary to look at their tattoos?" the policewoman asked, somewhat puzzled as she looked at Gordon, but still said into the walkie-talkie, "Laudus, have Bigfoot strip those two down and check for tattoos."
A few moments later, the policewoman received images on her phone, which she handed to Gordon. Upon seeing the tattoo on one of them, Gordon's expression revealed understanding.
Numerous police cars with flashing lights raced through the night, declaring the end of another major case. Most officers dispersed after driving the cars back to the department, but Gordon still had paperwork to sort out, and today's incidents needed to be recorded, so he led a few subordinates into the station.
This operation was an all-out effort, or perhaps there just weren't many officers on the night shift to begin with; after they left, the station was dark except for the lights still on in the duty room.
Gordon walked in, turned on the light by muscle memory, and the next second, he stood frozen.
In that brief moment between darkness and light, cold sweat soaked his back.
Hanging in the center of the police station's lobby was a person.
A naked Mexican.
But this person was extremely eerie.
His dark skin revealed an unnatural pallor, bloated as if soaked too long, with a white film floating on top of the dark base color, a sign of lifelessness Gordon recognized.
His skin was abnormally wrinkled, as if it had not grown on him but was put on post-facto.
From the head down, brightly colored threads wove into intricate and beautiful patterns, with the maximum stitch work on the head, intertwining black, red, purple, blue, green, creating the image of a Day of the Dead skull mask leveraging the facial structure.
The interwoven patterns on his neck, spreading to his arms and shoulders, were all in the same Day of the Dead decorative style.
His hands were hanged up, fixed to the ceiling, with the rope used to secure him adorned with many Day of the Dead trinkets, and a long string of masks and sculptures hanging beneath his feet.
This was a human-shaped Day of the Dead Christmas tree.
"Get him down now!!" Gordon roared.
The officers behind him were motionless for a long time, apparently stunned as well. They'd seen plenty of bodies in Gotham and weren't scared of them, as most they came across were quite gruesome, but not this one.
The stitching was vivid yet harmonious, full of intense Mexican style that brought to mind the colorful nation; it wasn't ugly at all, and could even be described as pretty—if someone wore such attire to a Day of the Dead party, they would certainly be popular.
```
The decorations hanging above also harmonized well, the rustic sculptures diluted the visual stimulus of the intense colors, bringing an ancient charm to the overall arrangement, and evoking thoughts of Mexico's rich artistic culture as well as its long history.
The lighting was also carefully planned, the moment Gordon switched on the light, the small bulbs interwoven within the decoration lit up too, as though signaling the start of a grand party.
This thing looked like it didn't belong in the Gotham Police Department but rather in the National Museum of Mexican History or maybe even at the opening ceremony of the Day of the Dead.
At the same time, the stitching that outlined the features of the skull replaced the human body's original expressions, giving the impression that another soul within the corpse was watching, sending shivers down one's spine.
"What's that smell?" Gordon asked, shrugging his nose.
"Seems like something has been burned." The officer behind him immediately looked around and then noticed some traces on the ground.
The female officer squatted down to pick up the charred ashes, sniffed it, and said, "It appears to be resin."
Gordon didn't yell for them to put down the corpse anymore. Instead, he stepped forward, standing amid the pile of burnt resin ashes, gazing at the brightly colored sculpture.
A colorful feather fell from the top decoration and drifted into Gordon's hand.
"The dead in their coffins, the living in revelry..."
Gordon muttered a phrase in Spanish. The female officer stepped forward and asked, "What?"
"Nothing, it's a traditional saying from the Day of the Dead, meaning those who have died are now resting in peace, and the living should celebrate for them."
"Why? Shouldn't they be mourning?"
"They seem not to view death as an end," Gordon shook his head and said, "They see death as the beginning of another eternal journey, this is a celebration of their passage to a new heaven."
But the male officer who came last suddenly froze, disbelieving, he let out a high-pitched scream, then shouted, "He's moving!! He's moving!!! He's not dead!!!!!"
Gordon and the female officer immediately stepped back, only to find that the corpse's legs twitched.
They quickly called for more police, who clumsily removed the body. During the process, Gordon touched the back of the corpse and found it wasn't as cold as he had imagined.
The human body cools down very quickly after death, with an unusual sort of coldness, like the bark of a tree after a rainy night. Any hint of warmth would not make the sensation of the divide between life and death so starkly apparent.
But the temperature of this corpse was off. While not as warm as a living person, it was also not as cool as a dead one.
Having laid the corpse flat on the ground, Gordon saw the details clearly. Startled, he reached out to tug at the stitches, yelling to everyone, "This isn't his skin! There's someone inside!!!"
Eventually, Gordon was almost screaming. At first, nobody understood what he meant, but as they came to the realization, they all took a collective step back.
The body began to twist.
"Aaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!"
Unprecedented screams echoed through the Gotham Police Department, not from the corpse, but from all the police officers.
The tall officer fell to his knees, and the female officer even pulled out her gun and fired two shots, everyone else finding cover, screaming and running in panic.
Gordon fell to the ground, sitting hard.
This was just too damn frightening!!!
Corpses are not scary, strange and beautiful corpses are not scary, warm corpses are not scary, and even moving corpses are not considered scary.
What's terrifying is the creature twisting inside, its skin not moving naturally like that of a regular person, the stitched human skin not fitting properly, its folds and stretches defying all logic.
The greatest horror comes from something that is similar yet different.
It was like a monster wrapped in human skin, struggling to burst forth through incessant writhing, provoking terrifying imaginations.
Gordon, with slightly trembling hands, pulled open a seam closest to him on the arm, finally finding a nearly seamless cut in the palm.
He pushed aside the wound, revealing not fat and muscle underneath the blood-soaked skin, but another layer of skin.
Gordon couldn't take it anymore. He threw the arm aside, retreating several steps, his voice quivering as he said, "Phone... give me a phone..."
The female officer beside him took out her phone and handed it to him. Gordon dialed a series of numbers, and after a long wait, the call finally connected.
"Hello? Professor Shearer? We have a corpse here... No, what I mean is, we have a goddamn weird, horrifying body that nobody but a killer devil would dare to touch!!"
"...I'm not telling you to come over, I'm telling you to hurry up and call all the goddamn killer devils you know to fucking rush over here!!!!!!"
Shearer hung up the phone, the echoes of Gordon's terrified shout still resonating in the room. He leisurely took off his raincoat and put on a coat, adjusting his hair in front of the mirror.
Before he stepped out, he saw the sculpture Martin had left by the door, thought for a moment, then took the box and got into the car.
Shearer soon saw Gordon and a few of his subordinates outside the main entrance of the Gotham Police Department. Note, outside the courtyard gate, even outside the duty room by 200 meters.
"Here's for you," Shearer said, shoving the sculpture into Gordon's arms and added, "To celebrate you coming back alive, not dead from your students' aggravation."
Gordon looked down and saw a Mexican-style sculpture.
"Ah!!!!"
The sculpture was thrown away.
Shiller stood leisurely at the entrance of the police station.
He straightened the sleeve of his shirt, which had become wrinkled from driving, checked if his umbrella used that afternoon had picked up any mud, and finally went over to pick up the sculpture that Gordon had thrown away, patting off the dust that had settled on it.
Inside the police station, chaos reigned.
After several calls from Gordon, his most capable men rushed over by car; upon arrival, they grabbed their guns and charged into the station, only to come back out with the same vigor, looking at the sky and the earth, questioning reality.
Of the seven or eight people who had arrived in that time, not a single one dared to touch that thing on the ground.
Mainly because, after Gordon had set down the sculpture, it seemed to gain some freedom of movement, continuously writhing on the ground, the blood seeping from the stitches leaving behind crimson traces on the skin, interwoven with brightly colored thread, making it look even more terrifying.
Shiller approached the entrance of the main hall of the police station, looking through the revolving door inside where Gordon and his men, all armed, looked from one to another, expressions on their faces as if to say, "Deal with this thing? Me?"
"Shiller!!" Gordon called out unavoidably, "I didn't call you here just to stand by and watch!"
"I believe the words you used over the phone earlier were a bit impolite..."
"At a time like this, you're still... Okay, Professor Shearer, I shouldn't have used so much foul language. Are we good now?"
"What I mean is that I think your definition of a killer devil is somewhat, slightly..."
Gordon really couldn't stand it anymore and cursed again, then told his men, "Call Jonathan Crane! And that Valentine, Pamela, Jack..."
His subordinate immediately began to look through the phone book, making calls for quite some time. Pamela was too busy, Jack had fallen asleep, and ultimately, the only ones who could come were Jonathan and Valentine.
After a while, the two of them arrived, both revealing a mysterious smile upon seeing Shiller.
Entering the main hall of the police station, they saw the still-writhing thing on the ground and hesitated in their steps.
Jonathan immediately looked up at the string hanging from the beams of the police station. He almost instantly visualized the original state of the sculpture and, with a hint of regret, shook his head, "You shouldn't have taken it down; such a perfect sculpture."
"I kind of want to go to Mexico now," Valentine exclaimed.
"I didn't call you here to mope around. Move that thing already!!" Gordon yelled at them.
Jonathan just shrugged and said, "I think its current form is another expression of this piece of art, and I do not wish to destroy..."
"Just fucking move it!!!!"
Jonathan gestured with his hand for Gordon to calm down. He walked up, crouched on the ground, looked at the state of the skin cocoon, and then beckoned to Valentine, "Looks like this is a job for you."
Valentine went over, pulled back the ear of the outer layer of skin, and sure enough, found a cut behind the ear.
"Hand me a pair of scissors," Valentine said.
A nearby officer immediately handed him a pair of scissors, but they were the blunt-tip kind commonly used in offices. Valentine snorted in dissatisfaction, "If you still want to leave some evidence for the forensic team, find me a pair of professional surgical scissors."
At that moment, a pair of surgical scissors were handed to Valentine. Valentine looked up to see the hands offering the scissors were paler than those of the officers; it was Shiller.
Without saying a word, Valentine took the scissors and gently cut along the invisible stitching of the cut behind the ear, carefully dismantling the thread, then working from bottom to top, opening the stitched cut on the scalp.
"Unbelievable..." muttered Valentine, "From the marks where the stitches fused, this person has been dead no longer than 12 hours. And to accomplish a perfect full-body stitching within these 12 hours, he must be a top surgeon."
Gordon's ears perked up upon hearing this, and his men, without need for instruction, turned on their recording devices.
"More importantly, all of these cuts are precise when being cut and flawless during stitching. Perhaps he had already envisioned the kind of work he wanted to create before making the incisions."
"Because only sufficiently hidden cuts will not let the suturing stitches interfere with the effects of the decorative stitches, not overshadowing them but..."
"Can you stop talking?" said Gordon, "I know you're a killer devil with a great sense of art. Or maybe you can save it for your day in court."
Valentine pursed his lips and stopped talking. His movements were slow, even meticulous.
Also because he was unwilling to use swift movements to ruin the cuts and stitch marks, the skin was peeled off just as it was wrapped on.
The head was divided into two parts, the cut running from behind the ear upwards, the skin of the entire occipital area was intact; astonishingly, the skin of the facial features was also intact, not cut and stitched separately but a complete human skin mask.
When the last stitch was cut, Valentine, treating it like a treasure, carefully lifted the facial skin.
Crane's face was revealed.
He sprang up like a revived zombie, took a deep breath, and then started to vomit violently, but precisely because of his abrupt movements, more blood seeped out from the stitches and wounds, causing several officers to back off even further.
"Can you be a bit more cooperative?" Valentine said, "These decorative threads are all stitched into your skin; doesn't it hurt to struggle like this?"
Crane just emitted nonsensical shouts, and Valentine moved closer to take a good look, realizing that his lips were also stitched, using the same invisible threads, sewn extremely delicately.
"Looks like he needs to calm down," Jonathan turned back to look at Gordon.
Gordon turned his head away, his face clearly expressing: do whatever you want; I've seen nothing.
Jonathan pulled out an injectable needle and stuck it in Crane's neck, and not long after, Crane's eyes rolled back and he passed out, finally allowing Valentine to work in peace.
It didn't take long for him to peel off the entire human skin.
The human skin was astonishingly intact, with a single complete incision that ran from the right armpit down to the ankle, and no other cuts anywhere else.
Setting aside how he managed to stuff a person in through that single cut, the key was how he could use that single incision to peel off the skin, which could truly be described as a masterstroke.
Valentine couldn't stop marveling at the perfect cocoon of human skin.
Now, without the internal support of a body, the skin cocoon presented itself even more completely to everyone; it looked like a costume used for the Day of the Dead. If one didn't mention it was made of human skin, people would certainly marvel at the craftsman's clever mind and sophisticated aesthetic.
More importantly, after Crane's struggle, blood seeped from the wounds at the seams, saturating the originally too-bright threads into a uniform shade of dark red.
The more violent the struggle and bleeding in areas such as joints, the closer the color tended towards that of blood, while the static parts retained their bright colors, creating a dazzling gradient against the slightly dark skin, as if transitioning from life to death.
A person's death is not the end; everything from their lifetime could become another person's cocoon, either stifling the larva within or allowing it to break free and be reborn. It was as if proclaiming the traditional Aztec saying, "The dead lie in coffins, the living revel."
The room fell silent for a time.
After a while, Director Gordon exhaled deeply and gestured to his subordinates to put the blood-covered Crane on a stretcher and send him to the hospital.
When Crane woke up again, he was wrapped in bandages, with Gordon and a few policemen speaking on the side, while Shearer, Jonathan, and Valentine stood by the door.
After Crane awoke, he let out a scream. Seeing Shearer, he turned even paler, desperately shaking off the blanket's restraint and ignoring the pain, he shouted, "You damned killer devil!!!"
"Director Gordon, why don't you arrest him?! He sealed me inside a human skin!! This damned freak, madman..."
Shearer turned and walked towards him.
Crane's roaring ceased abruptly.
Pale-faced, he kept arching towards the direction of the head of the bed, fiercely shouting, "Don't come any closer!! I'm a policeman!!! Don't..."
"Are you feeling better, Mr. Crane? It seems that Jonathan overmedicated you, causing you to have some illusions."
"I didn't have any illusions, it was you..."
"Tell us what happened," Gordon interrupted Crane's meaningless shouting, saying, "Start from when you left the police station this afternoon, and don't leave out any details."
"I drove to a manor to investigate..."
"What time? What car were you driving? Which manor did you go to?" Gordon said impatiently, "You are also a professional graduate in criminal investigation. You don't need me to teach you this."
"Around 3 p.m., I was driving a department-issued vehicle assigned to me by the station, and I went to... Rodriguez Manor."
"Firstly, I allowed you to investigate but didn't grant you the use of a car, and secondly, you'd better not tell me you entered the manor."
Gordon's gaze grew increasingly hostile, but Crane shouted at him, "What are you focusing on these rules and regulations for at a time like this? I was nearly killed by a horror murderer!!"
Gordon struggled to contain his displeasure, saying, "Can you say that your dangerous situation had nothing to do with your reckless actions?"
"That's blaming the victim!"
"Did you actually enter the manor?"
"So what if I did?!"
Gordon finally lost his composure; his face turned darker than the bottom of a pot, but he still stood up and said to Shearer, "I'm very sorry, Professor, I should have signed his termination notice earlier."
"Do you think you won't be responsible if you do that?"
"What I mean is that we could have arrested him directly without going through the internal review process," Gordon said, pursing his lips tightly. "If he weren't a policeman, it would have been a case of unlawful entry, but he is a policeman, so it's a matter of misconduct."
"I was just trying to investigate the killer devil's home!"
"So did you find any evidence?"
"What more evidence do you need? He kidnapped me and sewed me into, sewed me inside a human skin…"
"Good, then where is the crime scene?"
"How should I know?! I was knocked out by him, but it's definitely in his manor!"
"Was there a witness?"
Crane opened his mouth then immediately looked towards Brock in the police squad and said, "He was with me for the investigation, he must have seen it!"
"Sorry, but I didn't see anything," Brock said. "I heard a thud from the backyard, and then you disappeared; I had to leave on my own."
"But I was attacked in Rodriguez Manor!" Crane bellowed.
"But you shouldn't have been at Rodriguez Manor," Gordon said.
"You must have been bribed by him, you damned corrupt cop!"
The atmosphere in the room froze.