Page 2 of Serial Killer Games

“Is there someone you want to kill?” I ask.

She holds my gaze, and her lips quiver in a tiny, vicious smile. A good serial killer would never draw attention to her target.

We reach the ground floor and the public transportation cohort spill out when the doors open, nattering all the while. Normally I’d be with them, but I drove today, the first day of my new temp job. I have an errand after work. The doors sighshut, and I’m left alone with the shadow bundled stiffly in one corner, her black leather bag clamped under one arm. She glances at me—just a quick lizard-brain reflex to scan her environment—but our eyes catch, and I’m surprised to find myself talking again. Chitchat is not something I do.

“What would your MO be? Would you push someone off a roof?”

She answers immediately, as if she’s been waiting all day for this question. “I’m a straight razor kind of girl. Small, portable, quick. Wouldn’t require much physical exertion. And there’s a certain retro classiness to it, don’t you think?”

“Very Sweeney Todd.”

She frowns and turns to face me properly with dark, inscrutable eyes. One slim hand slides her phone into her pocket.

“I was thinking Black Widow. Kept her first husband’s razor as a trophy.”

“Sounds messy.” I don’t like messes myself.

Her red lips twitch. “Why do you think I’m wearing all black? How would you do it?”

I adjust my cuffs while I contemplate my answer.

“Ah. You have strangler gloves,” she says.

I flex my fingers in my black leather gloves. “Like Stanley said,” I say. “A true serial killer has the good manners to keep it personal. A good firm stranglehold and then eye contact till the end.”

She snorts. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

My insides twist pleasantly and unexpectedly. It’s not unlike that fairground feeling. “What’s your name?”

The amused twist to her lips flattens. She doesn’t need a straight razor. She slits my throat with a scowl and returns her attention to her phone.

A moment later the doors open onto the dim basementparking, and her heels fire a gunshot staccato that echoes in the cavernous space. I follow. She walks to a black car, swings her bag into the front seat, and turns to me.

“You’re following me.”

“No. This is my car.” I lean against the car next to hers.

She considers the sleek car and weighs it against my temp uniform. “That’s definitely not your car.”

“It is.”

“Prove it. Open up the trunk and show me your latest strangle victim.”

I don’t move.

She twists sinuously on the spot and flicks her eyes up and down, from my head to my toes. “You’re a creep,” she says, and I can’t tell if it’s an insult or praise. She hops in her car and I watch as she drives off. She flips me the bird as she vanishes around a cement pillar.

I stare after her, my thoughts twisting this way and that. There was something about how she looked at me and really sawme—the faceless office temp who no one normally sees, who no one is supposed to notice. It feels risky, and exhilarating.

I fish my keys out of my pocket and pop the trunk. There’s a rolled-up rug inside, blond hair spilling out one end.

Icouldhave shown her. Wouldn’t that have been hilarious.

2

The Temp

My life is like this:

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