1 The day I requested transfer to desk duty, the precinct practically sighed in relief. Approval was unanimous—almost celebratory. Only Ivy Hayes objected. The new M.E., my boyfriend’s childhood friend, and self-proclaimed "Corpse Whisperer." She burst into my office, red-eyed, clutching my sleeve. "Dr. Kearns, please stay. Keep fighting for the victims!" I shook her off and left without a word. In my last life, she was the real deal—a medium who recited autopsy reports after one glance. Families worshipped her. Me? The ghoul who desecrated the dead. I worked tirelessly, but she always unveiled the truth first. One family, mad with grief, abducted me. They did to me what they believed I’d done to their son. Dismembered. Scattered. Then I woke up—back to the day she first declared herself the Corpse Whisperer. … “Hey, Luke, the M.E. report’s in,” a voice cut through the haze. I snapped my head up, my eyes struggling to focus on the familiar faces around me. “Dr. Kearns, how many pages this time?” one of the detectives quipped, his tone dripping with a casual sort of contempt. But I wasn’t listening. I shot up from my chair, my eyes wide with disbelief. The sterile white tiles, the glint of stainless steel, the faint, cloying scent of antiseptic—I was back in the morgue. I had been reborn. “Clara? You okay?” a colleague asked, startled by my sudden movement. I ignored him. I shoved the door open and scrambled to my desk, snatching the freshly printed report. The pages were dense with my own handwriting, a testament to hours of careful, exhausting work. I had to get to the briefing room. I had to report my findings before she could. But just as I burst into the room, ready to speak, Ivy’s voice cut through the air, clear and confident. “Livor mortis is a deep, dark red. Bloody foam in the oral and nasal cavities. The victim was strangled. The perpetrator is approximately five-foot-seven. Time of death was between midnight and one in the morning.” I whipped my head around. Ivy stood at the doorway, her expression a mask of serene certainty. My face went pale. “How… how did you know that?” a detective asked, his voice a mixture of awe and confusion. Ivy offered a small, knowing smile. “I haven't had the chance to mention it before,” she said softly. “I’m what you might call a Corpse Whisperer. I can hear them. The dead. They whisper their stories to me.” The world tilted on its axis, and for a moment, my vision went black. It was happening all over again, exactly as it had before. This was the day it all began. The day the legend of Ivy Hayes, the Corpse Whisperer, was born. The story spread like wildfire: she was a guide for the departed, sent to our world to give them a voice, to spare their bodies the final indignity of the scalpel. Families, already terrified by the cold reality of an autopsy, clung to her. They saw her as a savior. “What’s the point of a Chief M.E. who just cuts people up when Dr. Hayes can get the truth with a single touch?” “You have no respect for the dead. You’ll get what’s coming to you.” Their curses rained down on me, but I never believed in ghosts or magic. I am a scientist. Driven by a desperate need to prove myself, I threw my entire being into every subsequent case. I refined my techniques, I documented every microscopic fiber, I cross-referenced every last detail. But it was never enough. Each and every time, Ivy would swoop in just moments before I could present my findings, revealing the complete truth to a stunned audience. To the families, I became a monster. The butcher who violated their loved ones for sport. They hated me for it. They hated me so much they kidnapped me, carved me up, and left me for the carrion birds. My parents were destroyed. They fought, they screamed, they demanded justice. But Ivy, the celebrated Corpse Whisperer, simply told the world I’d had a tragic accident—a fall from a cliff, my body ravaged by wild animals. When my parents refused to believe her, when they demanded she be investigated, they were silenced. Ostracized and persecuted by the very families who once lauded them, they died of broken hearts. And now, here I was. Back on the day it all started. This time, I would not let it end the same way. This time, I would uncover the truth. “For real? A ‘Corpse Whisperer’? That sounds like something out of a movie,” someone muttered. “Who knows? Maybe she’s just making it up.” The detectives exchanged skeptical glances, their whispers filling the room. Just then, my boyfriend, Detective Luke Garrison, took the report from my trembling hands. He scanned the pages, then looked up at Ivy, a slow, impressed nod breaking across his face. “She’s right,” he announced to the room. “It matches Clara’s report. Word for word.” The room erupted. Gasps of shock and murmurs of amazement rippled through the crowd. The same colleagues who had been whispering doubts just seconds before now turned to me, their expressions a strange cocktail of pity and disdain. “Guess all that time you spend writing those long reports doesn’t mean much if Ivy can do it in a minute,” one of them whispered, just loud enough for me to hear. “Seriously. She nails it in a sentence, and we have to read a novel from Dr. Kearns. Gives me a headache.” Their mockery was a familiar sting, a cold poison seeping back into my veins. I forced myself to breathe. It’s just beginning. You can change it. I knew, with every fiber of my being, that Ivy wasn't a medium. There was no magic. She had a method, a trick. She had to be getting my results beforehand. The next day, for a new case, I laid down the law. “I’m performing this autopsy alone,” I declared. “No one enters the morgue until I’m finished.” Ivy stood at the door, her face a perfect portrait of wounded innocence. “Clara… I don’t understand what I did wrong. Why are you being like this?” The others shot me accusatory looks, but I ignored them. My theory was simple: someone was leaking my reports to her. By locking the door, I was cutting off her source. Let’s see what tricks she could pull now. I sealed the autopsy suite and got to work. An hour later, I emerged with the completed report, ready to present my findings. But as I laid the papers on the briefing table, a wave of confusion washed over the room. Everyone was frowning. A cold dread began to creep up my spine. It was Ivy who broke the silence. “Dr. Kearns,” she said, her voice laced with feigned sympathy, “we’ve already been over all this. I told them everything an hour ago. Is there a reason you’re just joining us?” I stared at her, then at my colleagues. A few of them, people I’d considered friends, gave me small, apologetic nods. I was frozen. It was impossible. The door was locked. No one saw the body but me. No one touched the report but me. How? How did she know? I spent the night replaying every autopsy, every interaction, searching for a crack in her story. Then, it hit me. A detail I’d dismissed as irrelevant. Before every single case, Ivy would spend a long time in the cold storage, where the bodies were kept pre-autopsy. An idea began to form. A risky, desperate plan. That night, I swapped the body scheduled for the next day’s autopsy with a different one. Then, I installed a tiny, hidden camera in the corner of the cold storage room. Sure enough, not long after the precinct had emptied out for the night, the footage showed a shadowy figure slipping into the room. It was Ivy. She carefully examined the corpse on the gurney, taking notes, before meticulously putting everything back in its place and disappearing into the night. A triumphant smile touched my lips. The trap was set. The next morning, I announced I’d be performing the autopsy in the main observation theater, in front of everyone. No more closed doors. This time, they would hear the results directly from me, as soon as I found them. Ivy saw my setup and chuckled. “Decided to stop hiding, Dr. Kearns? I know you’re afraid of me stealing your spotlight, but you can’t fight a natural gift. Jealousy won’t change that.” I ignored her, my focus entirely on the task at hand. Once the detectives and senior officers had assembled, I began, narrating my findings as I worked. But something was terribly wrong. For every observation I made, every conclusion I drew, Ivy would speak it a fraction of a second before I could. The same words, the same details. My heart hammered against my ribs. A chill snaked its way up my spine. She had examined the wrong body. She shouldn't know any of this. But she did. How? How? I stared at her, searching her smug face for any sign of deception, but found only a cool, confident smile. My mind was a maelstrom of confusion and panic. I faltered, my words catching in my throat. Luke’s voice cut through my haze, sharp and impatient. “Clara, what is wrong with you? Your inefficiency is embarrassing. Honestly, Ivy’s more reliable at this point.” A cold numbness spread through my chest. “I… I don’t understand,” I stammered. He cut me off. “Just stop. You’re clearly not up to this. Take a break. Ivy’s abilities are proven. She can take it from here.” The assembled crowd dispersed, leaving me standing alone in the sterile, silent theater. I was completely and utterly lost. No matter how I spun it, how I analyzed it, I couldn't figure it out. How was Ivy Hayes doing it? From that day on, I was living in her shadow. The precinct’s faith in her grew exponentially, while I was treated like a relic, an inconvenient and obsolete part of the process. My colleagues’ eyes were filled with scorn. “Did you hear? Other precincts are asking for consultations with Ivy. She’s making a real name for the department.” “Yeah, unlike some people. ‘Chief Medical Examiner.’ What a joke. She’s an embarrassment.” I tried to fight back, to prove my worth, but every effort was effortlessly crushed by Ivy. It was all useless. Soon, her fame spread beyond the precinct walls. The families of victims started refusing autopsies. “You have a woman who can talk to the dead!” one father screamed at me in the hallway. “So why are you insisting on cutting up my son? Why are you torturing him even in death?” “You’re not a doctor, you’re a ghoul! A heartless ghoul!” a mother shrieked, her face contorted with grief and fury. It took the Chief of Police himself to calm them down. Ivy’s reputation soared. She was invited to give guest lectures at the city’s top universities. The day she left for one such lecture, a horrific new case came in. A young female student, her face mutilated beyond recognition, her head severed and grotesquely mounted on her neck with a steel rod. The brutality of the crime sent shockwaves through the city. The state command issued a direct order: solve this case, and solve it now. But we hit an immediate wall. The victim’s family flatly refused an autopsy. “Get the Corpse Whisperer!” they demanded. “Let her talk to our daughter!” With Ivy out of town, the precinct had no choice but to try and reason with them. The Chief spent hours gently, painstakingly explaining the necessity of a proper examination. Finally, they relented. He pulled me aside. “Clara,” he said, his voice low and serious. “This is your chance. I know what’s been said, but a break in this case… that would be a major victory. It would silence the critics.” I threw myself into the work, fueled by a desperate hope. I worked through the night, pushing past exhaustion, determined to reclaim a shred of my dignity. But just as I was about to present my comprehensive report to the family and the command staff, Ivy appeared. She walked to the front of the room and, without a single glance at my report, began to speak. “Time of death was approximately 3 a.m. The lacerations on the neck are irregular, with one blunt and one sharp angle at the wound corners. Tissue bridging is visible within the wound cavity, indicating it was caused by a heavy, sharp weapon, like a cleaver.” She paused, letting her words sink in. “There are multiple lacerations on her face, varying in depth. This suggests a crime of passion, an extreme hatred for the victim. The killer was likely someone she knew.” Then, she turned to the grieving parents, her voice softening with theatrical sorrow. “I am so, so sorry. If only I had gotten here sooner, we could have spared her this… and she could have rested whole.” Her words hit me like a physical blow. I stood frozen, a bone-deep chill washing over me. Every single word she had just uttered… was identical to what I had written in my report. The victim’s father snatched the papers from my hand and scanned them, his eyes darting between the page and Ivy. A moment later, his face purpled with rage. “You bitch!” he roared, pointing a trembling finger at me. “What’s the point of you? She knows everything without even looking! You just wanted to butcher my daughter for fun!” “You mutilated her!” the mother screamed, her voice cracking. “She couldn’t even have a proper burial because of you! Don’t you have a soul? Don’t you fear retribution?” “Get out of this precinct! Get out of our sight!” Like a pack of wolves, they surged forward. The father grabbed a fistful of my hair and slammed my head against the wall. A few of my colleagues rushed in to pull them off me. “Everyone, calm down,” someone pleaded. “Dr. Kearns was just trying to find the truth…” “Calm down?” the mother shrieked. “Our baby is dead and desecrated, and you want us to be calm?” Then, Ivy stepped forward, the picture of magnanimity. “Please, everyone, don’t be upset,” she said, her voice smooth as silk. “Dr. Kearns is still our city’s Chief Medical Examiner. Her professional skills are… undeniable.” She drew out the last word, her eyes flicking towards me with a look of pure, unadulterated contempt. “We simply use different methods,” she continued, turning her gaze back to the crowd. “For me, the most respectful way to honor the dead is to listen to them. To give them a voice. And I, Ivy Hayes, swear that I will do so for every single soul who needs me.” Nausea churned in my stomach. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop it, Ivy!” I shouted, my voice raw. “Stop this charade! What did you do? What dirty trick did you use to steal my work?” I advanced on her, my eyes locked on hers. “You claim to know everything? Fine. Tell me this: what were the residual contents of the victim’s stomach?” I had deliberately left one crucial detail out of the written report. A final, desperate gambit. Let’s see her talk her way out of this. Suddenly, Luke pushed through the crowd and stood in front of me. His face was a mask of fury. He raised his hand and slapped me, hard, across the face. The sound echoed in the silent room. “If you have no talent, then have the decency to shut up and stop embarrassing yourself!” he hissed. “Now get out.” I clutched my stinging cheek, staring at the man I thought I loved. He was a stranger. In that moment, I knew. He wasn’t just a bystander. He was in on it. He knew the truth, and he had chosen her side. A triumphant smirk played on Ivy’s lips. She spoke slowly, savoring each word. “The stomach contents,” she announced, “contained traces of cyanide. A lethal dose, enough to cause death in minutes. That was the true cause of death.” I froze, my eyes wide with horror. How? How could she know that too? The Chief’s face had turned to stone. “Clara Kearns,” he boomed, his voice shaking with rage. “Look at yourself. What have you become? You are a disgrace to this department!” I looked at the ring of accusing faces, at Luke’s cold fury, at Ivy’s victorious smile. A profound, soul-crushing cold enveloped me. It felt like being trapped in a dense fog, unable to see the truth that was right in front of me. And then, as if a switch had been flipped, a brilliant flash of light cut through the fog in my mind. It all made sense. The truth… it was so simple. So horrifyingly simple. I took a deep breath, my gaze meeting the Chief’s. My voice was steady, devoid of all emotion. “Chief,” I said, “I am requesting a transfer. I want to be reassigned to clerical work. Effective immediately. I am no longer a medical examiner.”
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