The kitchen’s refrigeration unit was really loud with its fan and pumps. He had no idea how he had gotten to be here. He’d been asleep. That’s all he remembered.

Now, here he was. The lights were on. He was standing by the door, his back to the cafeteria. Something wasn’t right with his hands, and when he looked down, it was to see them covered with sticky blood. Lots and lots of sticky blood. So much that it was thick on his fingers, clotted on his nails, and rolled like little balls when he rubbed his hands to try and get it off.

For a moment he was terrified, a thrill of fear making him cry out.

“It’s all right,” the Voice told him.

As it did, the fear faded, and to Felix’s surprise, it was all right. Like being afraid just drained out of him.

Next he looked to see if he was hurt. But there was no cut anywhere. He was standing in his underwear, his legs, arms, and chest naked, but blood smeared.

So if he wasn’t hurt, who was?

Felix turned around, followed his bloody footprints back around the kitchen island. He should have been afraid. That’s what he told himself. But he wasn’t. The way Bill Martin was laid out on the floor was just wrong. Instead of running like good sense said he should, Felix stepped closer, heedless of the pooled and drying blood that tried to stick his feet to the floor.

Bill Martin was flat on his back. His clothes had been cut off and spread out like a sheet under him. Felix stared in fascination at the way the man’s skin had been slit up the front of his thighs to a place at the root of his penis, and then up through the man’s chest, up his throat, and through his head. Then the skin had been peeled back to expose the guts.

There they all were. Looking shiny. Mother had shown him pictures of human guts on her pad. Felix couldn’t remember what went where, but Bill Martin’s guts looked like they’d been moved around, and one, a dark-red oblong organ, had even been left out.

So, who had opened Bill Martin up like this? And why?

“Now we know how humans work.”

Again, the fear started down in Felix’s stomach. Started to make him panic. He wanted to cry, afraid like he’d never been.

But the Voice brought reassurance, and the icy-scared feeling went away.