Page 61 of Serial Killer Games

Egg whites tumble out of his mouth and back onto his plate. “What? Fuck off. What?”

“I’m getting my own place.”

“You can’t be this fragile! I just meant you look like you’re sick!”

My coffee is cold. I pour myself a fresh cup, and I top up Grant’s while I’m at it, but he accidentally knocks it off the table, the black liquid splattering the white floor.

“Youcan’t. Who will cook and clean?Ican’t do those things. And you’re supposed to get the sauna repaired—”

I stare at the coffee splatter on the floor, and in the pattern, I see a man whiling his short, pathetic life away blending into the walls, letting others be the main character.

“It’s my life, Grant.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

“Have a life?”

He loses it. He swipes the plate and cutlery onto the floor with the coffee.

“You’reabandoningme!” He clutches his head like the pain is incomprehensible. This is why he needs to stick to dolls.

It takes all of ten minutes to pack a bugout bag while Grant disintegrates in the kitchen. I grab a key fob from the drawer and leave. In the basement parking, I click the fob button untilI find the car, get in, and go. But where to go? Work doesn’t start for another two hours. I drive up- and downtown. I cross the bridge, and then turn around and drive back again. I feel prickly and sweaty. My hands are white, so I pull my gloves on. I find myself passing the building that houses Spencer & Sterns on autopilot. A block away is an overpass, and underneath, down by the river, a nasty, deserted stretch of urban wasteland littered with traces of tent living. I park the car and watch the river below—brown, sluggish, foamy. It doesn’t look like water. It looks like some fluid that would spill out of a sick person, or something Aunt Laura mops up at the end of the day at the funeral home. If I was wrung like a rag, this is what would come out.

28

Terminated

“Dolly”

Monday morning. Basement parking. Bythe time I register my fellow elevator passenger it’s too late.

“Haha, Dolly!”

“Good morning,” I say stiffly.

“Not a good morning without a smile from you.”

I imagine baring my teeth in a grin, my lips curling back to reveal several rows of fangs, my jaw dislocating to swallow him whole. I’d spit out his brittle, partially digested skeleton a few hours later. If Jake were here, connecting eyes with me across the elevator…but he’s not. I left him in a Las Vegas airport, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again. He never gave me a timeline for his illness.

Doug grows uncomfortable under my wordless stare and laughs stupidly one last time before shaking out his free city rag.

HO-HO-HO-MICIDE

Xmas Prank ‘Murder’ of Dismembered Sex Doll Under Investigation

My insides slip down onto the ground. “I need that,” I blurt out.

“What?”

I pinch the top of the paper and yank just as the doors roll open on Ground. I shoulder out before the incoming crowd pens me in and duck into the other elevator, paper held tight against my chest to contain that headline and my pounding heart.

Jake had the right idea. He skipped town. Visions of police officers banging down my door swim in front of my eyes. Cat, roused from sleep, watching me being led away in handcuffs in the middle of the night. Oh yes, Las Vegas bravado has left the house. I’m very much afraid of losing everything.

What the ever-loving fuck. It was justlittering.

The doors slide open at my floor, and I march with brisk purpose to the annex, avoiding eye contact, far too busy and important to stop for anyone, panicking, panicking,panicking, and I’m almost on top of him before I notice him.

Jake.

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