I LOVE YOU TO PIECES

It wasn't the way it felt against his skin, but the smell of the blood that brought back so many memories.  “So lovely,” Ian said, peeling the pallid skin covering Lena’s left breast away from her body.  He fondled the cool sticky-wet flesh, paying special attention to the dark nub in the center, then lifted it to his nose and inhaled.  It wasn’t the same heady aroma that had bubbled from her throat earlier, when he’d opened it from ear to ear, but still fresh enough to be pleasant. 

He allowed his thoughts to drift to the times before Lena.  First, there was Lucy.  What a Class-A bitch she was!  Doing her had been unplanned and sloppy.  A screwdriver in the neck and a hammer to the skull.  But it did make the relationship seem, well, satisfying.  Laying low for a few months afterward really sucked too, but then Laura came along.  One night, half a dozen valium made their way into her rum and coke while she was taking a bath.  Convenient, considering she was on the schedule to have her wrists opened.  Next there was Lisa, then Leila, another Laura, and now Lena.  And the news whores came up with a crazy cool moniker, the Killer from ‘L’.  Gotta love it! 

But now, he had work to do.  He laid her left breast on the floor next to the other one.  The rest of her was arranged on a ten by twelve plastic sheet that covered nearly half the basement.  Her feet and hands had been severed from their limbs, which along with the head, had been separated from her torso.  The blood had flowed down the gentle slope of the floor to a small hole in the sheet over the drain.

He placed a sturdy table on the sheet next to the drain.  From a storage area behind a faux wall he hefted a Kensington meat grinder.  The heavy duty unit had cost a bundle, but the alloy blades would grind railroad spikes into thumbtacks.  When he finished, he would flush it all down with a few gallons of sulfuric acid purchased last night at Home Depot. 

He had finished processing Lena’s thighs, hands, and one arm when his cell phone rang.  He wasn’t expecting any calls.  Everyone knew they were leaving this morning to do charity work in some third world shit hole of a country.  Only he knew she wouldn’t be coming back.   

The caller ID came up as a number.  Not one he recognized.  He flipped open the phone and listened.

For a second, there was no sound.  Suddenly, a small voice blurted, “um, hi, are you there?  I hope you remember me, from the diner yesterday?  I waited on you?  We talked?  You gave me your number?  You said you thought I had a pretty name?”

The tiny voice stopped for a breath.  Ian smiled.  “Oh, hey there, Linda," he said, dropping a foot into the grinder, "I was hoping you’d call.”


WORD COUNT: 499