REBUS

Don't hide your eyes...

The young woman cries into the gag placed around her mouth as he plays that song again. She lost count of how many times he played the same song. She even lost count of how long she has been kidnapped. She does not even know if the sun is up or not; there are no windows in the stuffy, half-lit room she is in.

She's so vulnerable like China in my hands...

She's so vulnerable and I don't understand...

The girl has lost all hope in trying to loosen the piece of rope wrapped tightly around both of her wrists. Even her feet are bounded to the legs of the chair by the same material of rope. She cries loudly as she tries for one last time to pry herself from the rope.

"Hey, hey, hey," the man softly coos at her, kneeling in front of the woman. He looks into her eyes with worry. "What are you trying to do?" He quietly asks. "Baby...you want to run away?" The woman closes her eyes and tries to forget his term of endearment he uses for her.

"My baby," he starts to sing softly, playing with some strands of the woman's hair. The young woman does not dare to open her eyes and continues to cry. "She's so vulnerable..." The man continues. He stands to grab something from the table where he placed all his materials needed to show...how much he loves the woman.

"You know," he starts, "the song means that a man must double his care for his lover since she is vulnerable to a lot of things...but I am taking very good care of you. Right, baby?" He smiles at the woman who, unfortunately, has her eyes closed tightly. He lets out a soft laugh with how cute his baby is acting.

He only loves her for her ears. So much.

The man goes behind the woman and unsheathes a dagger from its leather covering. Carefully, he cuts through the rope bounding the wrists of the captured woman together.

The young woman's eyes flash open as she feels the rope around her wrists loosen. She could feel the rapid beating of her heart as she regains her lost hope. There may still be a way for me to escape, she thought.

The man then leans close to the left ear of the woman. "Are you really vulnerable like what the song says?" He whispers before pressing a soft kiss on her earlobe. A tear escapes from the woman's eye. "Because if you really are," the man continues to whisper, "then you would have thought that you could still run away from me, baby." And just like how fast one person can blow out the flame of a candle, that is how fast she lost her newfound hope of running away.

After cutting the rope, he keeps his hold on the woman by gripping tightly on both wrists. "Now, be a good lover and listen to me. I just need your left hand, you can do whatever with your right...but there will be consequences." The young woman sharply intakes her breath. Slowly he lets go of the woman's right wrist and lets it dangle, then he brings her left hand to her lap.

"What are you planning to do with your free hand?" He eyes warily on the right arm of his lover.

Scared with what he might do to her, the woman shakily lets her free hand rest on her other lap. The man smirks with her chosen action. "How smart of you, baby," He compliments the woman.

He starts to play with the fingers of the woman's left hand with the tip of his dagger. The woman just watched him with wide eyes.

This is it, she thought. I have no chance of escaping and no chance of surviving.

"One of the reasons why I chose you," the man utters, stopping at the woman's fourth finger; her ring finger, "you're not married...and I like that."

Then the woman lets out a muffled yet piercing scream as the man started to slice off her left ring finger. He did it painfully slowly, but he loved how slow it was. Her screams, her blood...her mere presence- all was pleasurable for him.

"Baby, are you like china? Can you be as fragile as porcelain?"

The woman could not answer him as she kept on screaming in pain.

"Should we test how fragile you are then?"

----------------

"A morning jogger saw the scattered body around this area," their Chief regretfully informs his team of detectives. "This is the second incident this year. It might be the same killer since the person's modus operandi has only slightly altered."

The forensics team walk around inspecting the place and placing possible evidence on a clear sidewalk of the park where the body of a young woman was found. But one could not say that the body is still intact. The person who has caused this has separated some of the woman's external body parts.

"The person who has supposedly done this left a note- something similar to a past murder crime scene," the Chief continues, presenting a piece of white paper to his team. Lieutenant Copernicus Menard grabs it from him and inspects the words formed with newspaper clippings.

"I could never hurt someone I love, she's all I got. She's so vulnerable, oh, so vulnerable," He murmurs.

"They're lyrics of a song again," Detective David Chapman utters, leaning over the shoulder of Lieutenant Menard. "What's the body part this time?"

Lieutenant Menard scans the piece of paper and finds a small word, clearly cut from the newspaper, pasted on the bottom right part of the paper. "Ears," the Lieutenant reads out loud.

"The body part was nose in the other letter," Another detective, Luis Cheng, says. "What could their connection be?"

The team's Chief lets out a long and audible sigh, "Nothing as of the moment," he utters, eyes on the crime scene. "But one thing is for sure," he then faces his team of local detectives, "we have a rampant serial killer playing with us."