He stared at the scissors he’d used to cut out the faces of the dead ones and thought about how easy it had been.
His mother had told him never to answer the door to strangers. If her mother had done the same, she clearly hadn’t listened. Jenny’s expression had turned from mild curiosity to terror when he produced the gun. Though why she was so surprised, he couldn’t quite imagine. Hadn’t she known it was coming? Hadn’t he made her feel it? Watching her. Following her. Scaring her half to death.
He liked it best when they were women.
Liked it even better when she began to beg . . .
Like a dog.
Eyes like saucers as she inched away from him, screaming at first, then begging for mercy, pleading with him – tears running down her cheeks. She’d aged considerably from the image he’d been staring at for as long as he could remember; brown hair faded to washed-out grey, lines around her mouth like a cat’s bum, ugly thin lips no longer smiling at him as they had done for so very long.
And then?
Then she began to calm herself, tried talking to him, pleading with him to stop and think about what he was doing – appealing to his better nature.
Ooops! Problem there . . .
So he lifted the gun and put her right back in her box. And, give her her due, she wound her neck in like a good little victim – just as he knew she would – until he mentioned his mother’s name and the realization dawned.
Poor, dear, Jenny.
That’ll teach her to choose her friends more carefully.
In his mind’s eye, he still sees her as she used to be. Not as she was when he left her, covered in her own blood – the card sticking out of her cat’s bum – dead eyes searching his face for the answer to a question she didn’t live long enough to ask: what had she ever done to deserve such a sorry end?
Curiously, not telling her had given him the greatest pleasure of all.