Page 26 of Serial Killer Games

She loses it over the name. I knew she would. She crawlsover to Verity and does what any normal person would do: she pokes one giant, gravity-defying silicone breast.

She looks up at me with a feral grin. None of our conversation before was a joke.Serial killer stuff, or dismembering Barbies in your footie pajamas?

“Why the fuck is there a hyperrealistic sex doll in your shower?”

I don’t know about hyperrealistic. She doesn’t look like any real woman I ever saw. Impossibly thick blond hair, dense caterpillar eyelashes, bee-stung lips, nipples that could poke an eye out. She sits firmly in the uncanny valley. She’d pass a first and second glance, maybe. But on the third glance, she’s off enough to make you do a double take, and real enough to give you nightmares when you do.

“This is Grant’s shower. It’s Grant’s doll.”

She bites her lip. “Right.”

“It is.” I experience a jolt of panic. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d think it was my doll. “It’s Grant’s doll,” I repeat.

“Oh, I believe you. It’s definitely your absent roommate’s doll.”

“It isn’t mine.”

She cocks one eyebrow. I throw the heavy towel on her and she cackles.

“Why does he want you to get rid of it? Is his parole officer coming to visit or something?”

“He cycles through them. When he gets bored, he needs a new one.”

“When the sex gets stale?”

I wouldn’t so much as touch one of these dolls if he was having sex with them.

“It’s not like that. He thinks sex is disgusting. It’s…a romantic thing.”

Her sharp little fangs show in another smile. “Aren’t these things ridiculously expensive? I find rich people fascinating. I also find perverts fascinating. There is a ripe nexus of interests here.” She sits back on her heels and narrows her eyes at me. “You said you took the last one to the river.”

The day I met Dolores in the elevator. It was a beautiful night. I even took a selfie of the two of us with a view of the river behind us. She saw it on my desktop. “That was Una.”

“Were there others?”

“The first one—Anastasia…” I hesitate for a second. “I put her in the building’s dumpster wrapped in garbage bags.” I’ve never stopped feeling uncomfortable about Anastasia.

She’s grinning at me now like I’ve delivered the filthiest joke she’s ever heard. That look makes me continue.

“I bundle them out of here in a rug or a blanket. Then I…dispose of them.” I get quite creative these days. I’ve come a long way from dumpsters.

“Boredom’s a chronic problem,” she says. “Would you get in trouble if someone traced one of them back to you?”

“For what? Littering?”

Her lips quirk. She staggers to her feet and I reach out to steady her, but she gazes at my hand with a confused expression. I look down and my hands are white—completely white—and cold as ice again. It’s a recent development, and one I don’t want to think about right now. I fold my arms and tuck them from view. She gives me a curious look but doesn’t ask. She pulls the towel tight around her and marches through Patrick Bateman’s bedroom, stepping over her dress pooled on the floor.

“Where are you going?” I call after her. “Wait.Wait.” I trail down the hallway after her, while she sticks her nose into Grant’s office, his home gym, his sauna, and finally—

“Here it is,” she says triumphantly. “Your lair.”

It’s smaller than the other bedroom, and it might as well be the inside of a fridge. White walls, surfaces bare and scrupulously dust-free. Not even a sock on the floor or a nickel on the dresser top. I like it like this. I don’t like having possessions. If I had possessions, I’d worry about someone rifling through them when I was gone.

She takes it all in. “Did you get your last major depressive episode to do the interior decorating for you? Can I get a business card?”

I’ve never been depressed. I lurk in the open doorway like a great awkward shadow and watch as she pulls open the drawer of the nightstand next to my bed. Inside the drawer are two earplugs and nothing else. What did she hope to find? Next, she inspects the contents of the top drawer of my dresser: a dozen identical socks, paired and folded. She swings open my closet door next: five identical white button-ups on one side and five pairs of gray slacks on the other. There’s nothing else.

Well, except the bathrobe. She drops her towel on the floor and turns to face me, and for the second time tonight ten years of Catholic schooling resurfaces from the deep. I freeze. The devil sighs in disgust, and Dolores lifts one eyebrow at me, unimpressed. She slides on my bathrobe.

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