Molting: A Profile in Echoes (Scenes 1–6)
Something—or someone—is leaving clues. And none of it makes sense. Yet.
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“We don’t know if he’s missing, or if he just wants to be found differently.”
— SSA David Rossi
Opening Hook:
A man disappears in Singapore.
But he doesn’t go quietly.
Voice memos.
X-rays.
Poetry entries signed off with: I am not missing.
The BAU is called in—not just to find him, but to interpret him.
Read the first six scenes of this experimental, procedural grief fiction, yet interspersed with reality.
Scene 1: Quantico Briefing Room – 3:47 AM
The BAU’s operations center is lit in a quiet, blue haze. A digital board hums with dim data pulses. The agents file in slowly—coffee in hand, eyes heavy, alert. The only sound: Garcia typing furiously in the corner. She spins her chair to face them.
Garcia (half-cheerful, trying):
“Hello, my lovelies. I wanted to start sweeter, but this one’s—yeah. This one’s a weird tangle of poetry, data drops, and a potential performance piece wrapped in a missing persons report.”
Garcia:
“Three mornings ago. Precisely at 4:07 AM SGT, every upload.”
Morgan (furrowing his brow):
“So he’s not hiding. He’s tracking.”
Rossi:
“It’s not a disappearance. It’s a performance piece.”
Hotch:
“We have to be ready for anything. This isn’t just a disappearance.”
Reid (oblivious, flipping through files):
“I flagged a recurring metaphor: ‘molting.’ Six references—posts, voice memo.”
Rossi:
“Molting… shedding skin.”
Morgan:
“Or bones.”
A beat of shared looks before they rise.
Hotch (final):
“Wheels up in twenty.”
Scene fades out with Garcia’s screen pulsing and the soft rhythm of the BAU gearing up.
Scene 2: SPF Headquarters, Singapore – 11:03 AM
The BAU steps into the sleek, quiet halls of the Singapore Police Force HQ. Cool fluorescent lights. Neutral walls. A few framed commendations. Officer DI Amir Tan, late 40s, brisk and precise, greets them at the operations floor.
DI Amir Tan (offering a quick handshake):
“SSA Rossi, SSA Hotchner. Thank you for responding so quickly. We’ve had our share of strange cases—but this one, honestly... it’s unnerving.”
Rossi:
“Appreciate the invite. Walk us through it.”
They’re led to a wall of screens—Shain’s Substack entries, audio waveforms, a timestamp map of his uploads.
DI Amir:
“His name is Shain Parwiz. Forty-two. Former educator. Diagnosed with PTSD and depression in his teens. No known enemies. No affiliations. Quiet life.”
Prentiss (scanning the board):
“So why flag this as abnormal?”
DI Amir:
“Because nothing about his disappearance follows a pattern. No signs of forced entry. No indication he packed. But then, there are the messages.”
He gestures to a screen where the phrase “I AM NOT MISSING” is repeated in bold, stylized font.
Garcia (via video feed from Quantico):
“These drops are pre-scheduled—every morning, 4:07 a.m., precise down to the second. Substack. Encrypted drives. Even DMs to obscure poetry zines.”
Hotch (to Amir):
“What made you call us?”
DI Amir:
“We’ve handled disappearances. But not ones that feel like they’re being… orchestrated. He left behind symbolism. Digital breadcrumbs. It’s like he wants to be found, but on his terms.”
Morgan (watching the screens):
“Guy disappears, then tells the world he’s not missing. That’s not just contradictory—it’s calculated.”
Reid (pointing to a timeline):
“Here—see the spacing? These uploads follow a Fibonacci sequence. 1, 2, 3, 5… and look at the tags on the posts. One of them literally says ‘shed-skin.’”
The team looks at him.
Reid (continuing):
“Which makes sense, considering he’s been using the word ‘molting.’ It’s a biological signal for transformation. Evolution under distress.”
Prentiss (quietly):
“He’s leaving a trail.”
Garcia:
“A poetic one. One of the voice memos ended with this line: ‘I’m not unraveling. I’m rethreading.’”
Rossi:
“He’s not running from something. He might not know it. He is walking toward it.”
DI Amir:
“His mother reported him missing. Said it’s completely unlike him. He rarely left home—mostly stayed in, especially after leaving his job due to illness. He lived with his mother and brother in a sixth-floor flat in Pasir Ris.”
Hotch:
“We’ll need to speak to both of them. And search the residence—carefully. If this is a message, we can’t afford to miss the language.”
DI Amir:
“We’ve already cleared your access.”
They begin moving. Reid lingers for a second at the board.
Reid (half to himself):
“If he’s shedding… what exactly does he think he’s becoming?”
The camera follows the team’s backs as they exit toward the car. Outside, rain begins to fall, just barely touching the glass.
Scene 3: Pasir Ris Mangrove Jetty — 1:26 PM
The camera sweeps over morning humidity and still water. Birds rustle in the trees. The team walks the worn boards of the Pasir Ris Mangrove Jetty, now cordoned off. Local SPF officers stand at the edge. The jetty is not abandoned—it’s a public attraction, typically filled with joggers and families. Today, it’s eerily quiet.
DI Amir (gesturing to the edge):
“This is where we think the unsub staged it. A local found his hoodie here, folded. Phone left on video mode. No recording.”
Morgan (taking the bag):
“Black hoodie. Jeans. Sneakers. And you are sure there’s nothing else?
DI Amir:
“Totally nothing. According to the family, he usually carries his backpack with him. But that it was left with the contents strewn out in his room. Family says it’s out of character.
Prentiss walks toward the edge, scans the horizon. Sunlight cuts through thick green foliage. Water laps beneath them.
Prentiss:
“This place isn’t obscure. It’s known. People come here for calm. You leave something here, it’s meant to be found.”
Rossi crouches where the hoodie was. Observes a small smear of what could be coffee on the planks.
Rossi:
“Careful symbolism. Intimate familiarity with space. It doesn’t scream panic—it whispers design.”
Reid (inspecting ground):
“Sand disturbed. Recurs across paths leading to his flat.”
Hotch (quiet):
“This wasn’t dropped in panic. It was placed.”
Rossi:
“Breadcrumb. Or bait.”
Morgan:
“So who’s drawing this trail?”
Hotch:
“What else do we know from the morning?”
DI Amir (checking notes):
“6:17 AM. His brother, Faheem saw him at the kettle. Said he seemed to be repeating a rhytmic phrase. Maybe re-reading something. Possibly a voice memo draft. By 7:02, he was gone.”
Prentiss:
“No camera footage?”
DI Amir:
“Unfortunately, none. The flat’s block has a camera malfunction. Likely unrelated. But the route here is unmonitored.”
Reid kneels. Touches the wooden planks gently.
Reid:
“He leaves without his essentials. Chooses a tourist site. No note, but preloaded scheduled content online. This isn’t about vanishing quietly.”
Morgan:
“It’s about being seen. Loud and specific.”
Rossi (gazing into the distance):
“More than that. It’s about control. And myth-making.”
Hotch:
“Keep processing. Get forensics on that stain. I want a timeline crosschecked against his Substack drafts. Let’s move.”
As the team walks away, the camera lingers on the hoodie in the bag. The sea behind it is silent, but thick with unspoken meaning.
Scene 4: Pasir Ris Flat — 3:33PM
The sixth-floor flat in Pasir Ris is quiet, sun filtering through sheer curtains. The BAU team steps in. Aged brown leather sofa set, the single-seater occupied by Mrs. Samsudin, Shain’s 67-year-old mother. She’s upright, composed—but her hands tremble. Mr. Faheem, Shain’s brother, stands by the kitchen. He’s protective, unsure.
Hotch (gently):
“Thank you for letting us into your home.”
Mrs. Samsudin:
“If it brings my son home, you’re welcome here.”
The team disperses. Reid walks slowly along the corridor, eyes tracing book spines, framed art, a wall calendar marked with past appointments.
Faheem (to Rossi):
“He was quiet lately. More tired than usual. But not... unwell. He barely left the house—just work, then home. And he hasn’t worked since the infection. Special needs educator. He had to step down last year.”
Prentiss:
“Has he ever disappeared like this before?”
Mrs. Samsudin (immediately):
“No. Never. He leaves, yes, but comes back like clockwork. So that’s why we called. Two days. Not a word.”
Morgan:
“No enemies?”
Faheem:
“No, at least I don’t think so. He’s just quiet, minds his business. Lives too much in his head sometimes.”
Prentiss:
“Tell me about his illness.”
Mrs. Samsudin:
“Systemic infection—left his teaching job. He got better… until now.”
Reid:
“May I see his room?”
Scene 5: Shain’s Room — Minutes Later
Reid opens the door slowly. The room is dim but not disordered. A long desk runs under the window, lit by a reading lamp left on. Open books sit in deliberate stacks—pages dog-eared, some bookmarked with receipts and sticky notes. A corkboard on the wall is pinned with quotes, clippings, song lyrics, printouts of poems, and one singular framed black-and-white photo.
In it: a younger Shain stands in the rain, embraced by a Chinese girl, arms wrapped around him. Their foreheads nearly touch. They look every bit the couple completely in love.
Beneath the frame, scrawled in faded black ink:
“She took the light away. I now dwell in the dark.”
Prentiss (tilting her head, absorbing it):
“That doesn’t sound like closure.”
Reid (softly):
“No—it’s a wound, sealed in a frame.”
Morgan (opening the bottom drawer):
“Whole drawer’s full of notebooks. Journals. They go way back—earliest one’s dated 2011.”
He pulls one out carefully, flips through pages dense with handwriting, some margins scrawled with sketches, others with clipped poetry taped inside.
JJ (quietly):
“He kept everything. A full record of himself.”
Reid (reading over Morgan’s shoulder):
“This isn’t casual journaling. This is… curated. Structured reflection. An architecture of memory.”
Rossi (entering):
“And there’s that word again.”
He gestures to a notepad on the desk. The word “Molting” is scrawled and underlined five times.
Reid:
“I counted it—six times across his last ten posts. Also referenced once in a voice memo. He’s not just dropping hints. He’s building a metaphor trail.”
JJ scans a shelf lined with books.
JJ:
“Camus, Sylvia Plath, The Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson… Henry Miller, Hubert Selby Jr., William Burroughs.”
Reid (lighting up):
“They all wrote from fracture. From somewhere deep and guttural. Selby gave voice to suffering, Gibson writes in open wounds. If he’s echoing these, he’s not just reading them—he’s emulating their grief, their survival.”
Faheem, quiet until now, gestures to the desk.
Faheem:
“He was obsessed with meaning. Even that sticker there—on his desk drawer?”
The team leans in: a weathered sticker of Singaporean punk rock band Plainsunset.
Faheem (half-smiling):
“That’s his favorite local band. He listened to their albums constantly and said their lyrics spoke to him. Said they made him feel like a part of something.”
Morgan:
“He’s tracing himself in pieces. Like breadcrumbs—only in reverse.”
Hotch (from the doorway):
“He left the frame behind—but took the lens.”
The team shares a look.
Reid (pointing at the corkboard):
“These aren’t just poems. They’re locations. Times. Symbols. There’s a pattern here… it’s not random.”
Prentiss:
“Are we looking at a map? Spence?”
Rossi (interrupts immediately, but quietly, almost to himself):
“No... it feels like we’re stepping through someone’s memory. One page at a time. And maybe it was planned to make it look this way. The Unsub is organized, highly intelligent, and methodical.”
Scene 6: Temporary BAU Field Office – 11:02 PM
Inside a converted SPF meeting room, evidence boards are already taking form. Laptops hum. Case files fan out across the conference table. Maps of Pasir Ris and the Mangrove Jetty are marked with red pins and yellow threads. A digital screen plays the loop of Shain’s last confirmed sighting—him exiting his block, hood up, alone.
Garcia (through the projector):
“I’ve indexed every blog post, audio note, and metadata flag from his uploads. They’re not random. It’s a drop schedule—patterned to 4:07 AM, Singapore time.”
Reid (flipping through one of Shain’s journals):
“He uses recurring motifs—‘molting,’ ‘weightlessness,’ ‘noise beneath the skin.’ Not just metaphors. Repetition like that… it’s layered. It implies intent.”
Prentiss (gesturing to the corkboard):
“Locations. Snippets of lyrics. Time codes in his recordings. Are these places he visited?”
Hotch:
“Garcia, run those against his phone pings—historical, not just recent.”
Garcia (nodding):
“Already pulling it. But… there’s something else.”
She clicks, pulling up a photo on the screen: the message submitted to the poetry journal, attached to a scan of Shain’s spine X-ray, scrawled with a note:
‘I am not missing. I am shedding.’
Morgan (frowning):
“That sounds like a manifesto. Or a warning. Just something is off with this picture ”
Reid (half to himself):
“Molting. That’s a biological process of shedding what no longer serves. But in certain species… it’s also a defense mechanism. A way to evade predators.”
Rossi:
“So you’re saying this could be self-protective?”
Reid:
“Symbolically, yes. If he sees himself as the prey. The shedding becomes strategic.”
Prentiss (quiet):
“Or it’s ritual. And we’re the ones arriving too late to stop it.”
Beat.
JJ (reading over Morgan’s shoulder):
“There’s something in his earliest journals—dated just after his father’s death. More than just grief. There's a fragmentation. Loss of narrative self.”
Hotch:
“He was diagnosed with PTSD and depressive disorder. Witnessed his father’s death at fifteen.”
Rossi:
“And no known affiliations. No enemies.”
Prentiss:
“Then who’s the predator?”
Long silence. Then Garcia speaks, voice low:
Garcia:
“The way he writes… it’s like he knew he was being watched.”
She clicks again. The screen changes. A new file has uploaded. Timestamped just minutes ago.
Garcia (looking panicked):
“Guys... this wasn’t scheduled. It just popped up.”
A new audio file begins to auto-play, just five words, distorted through static:
Shain’s voice (whispered):
“Don’t follow me this time.”
The room freezes. Every agent and officer turns toward the screen.
Rossi (grimly):
“He’s not missing. Not exactly. But someone else might be directing this… his voice,it sounds like he was made to say it.”
Hotch (quietly):
“Garcia, check the timestamps of the time of that voice note; it might help us get closer to identifying the unsub .”
Garcia (absolutely baffled):
“Guys... it keeps looping. I can’t stop it. I’ll…(static)
Morgan
“Garcia? talk to me……. Garcia…….?”
[SMASH CUT TO BLACK]
To Be Continued...
Author’s Note:
To those expecting a spoken word drop—I know.
But sometimes, story hijacks you mid-sentence.
MOLTING is me bleeding in metaphor.
Inspired by a chat between
This is a soft howl. A journal with an echo.
Thanks for staying close.
—Shain
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Just more echoes. More pages. More clues.
The next part drops tomorrow.
i watched this episode in my head while i was reading it. lol you did a great job :) 🎀🔥💯
CAUTION: Unsolicited Thoughts Incoming
Shain, I really liked this piece. It’s like a closet drama (if I’ve got that right), with characters that have distinct voices, and a literally metaphorical theme that piques my philosophical interest. Your opening hook section is an excellent opener, priming us for the scenes to come. I’ve included more thoughts below:
I’m not sure what “The BAU” is (whether you clarify in the opening or later in the piece is up to you, just letting you know).
Morgan’s clarification regarding molting (“Or bones”) is foreshadowing par excellence.
Scene two reads more like telling than showing. (Then again, it’s almost necessary at points given the form and that it’s the second scene.)
This line from Rossi is delightful: “It doesn’t scream panic—it whispers design.”
The metaphor trail JJ and Reid discover is an intriguing idea. It does have a bit of jargon that might risk losing less familiar readers. You might consider having a character ask for a more clear explanation. Prentiss does this to a certain extent towards the end of the scene.
You cruelly leave us on a cliffhanger (well done on that front). Overall, nice work. There are some moments where the metaphorical/symbolic/shedding/motif description gets a tad repetitive, but if you do a little trimming you’ve got yourself a gripping first part of something I think could be a most impressive work.
Also, just a heads up, when I read “SPF” anywhere, I immediately think of sunscreen. (This isn’t a bad thing, and you can definitely play with it, but just for your information, that’s where my mind went.)
P.S., if I’ve got this right, this piece is a work of fan fiction. I am not familiar with the Criminal Minds series, so please forgive my ignorance wherever relevant. Excellent stuff, Shain. Keep writing!