Blood Dreams

Chapter Four

HE HAD TO CUT HER image from another photograph because the first one got all crumpled, but that was okay.

He always made copies.

With some of his tension eased, the jagged edge of his need blunted, he was able to carefully remove all the uninteresting bits from the picture, leaving only her.

He set her aside and reached for the next picture, this time cutting her out from the background of a gas station where she'd been standing by her car, pumping gas.

The next was of her walking a dog in the park. He debated but in the end cut the dog out as well.

Huh. He hadn't really thought about dogs, but-

His mind shied, and he frowned to himself. No, not dogs. Not animals.

She didn't even like animals. Could never bear to have them in the yard, much less in the house. Dirty things.

"Dirty, dirty things!"

"No. Not dogs. Not animals. They don't matter."

He cut the dog from the shot and dropped it in his trash can.

Just her, then.

Just her.

He worked steadily through the stack of photos until he'd done them all, cutting her meticulously from each shot and tossing the remainder of each photo into the trash.

When he was done, he gently gathered up the pictures of her and carried them into the next room.

The room was large, and the thick concrete walls made it both chilly and something of an echo chamber. He enjoyed both attributes, though his recent work had diminished the echo effect at least a bit.

There was a bright spotlight beaming down onto a stainless-steel table in the center of the room, but he ignored that for the moment. Instead, he went to one of the walls, where a long strip of halogen track lighting on one of the beams above provided smaller spotlights, which were carefully aimed and focused on the precise geometric arrangement of squares of corkboard that lined the entire long wall from concrete floor to open-beamed ceiling.

Everything lined up perfectly.

He had used a laser level. Nifty thing, very helpful.

Each square of corkboard was two feet by two feet, and each was framed by a thick line of black paint that served to separate it from the adjoining squares. Three of the squares were nearly filled with cutouts of women, each individual woman getting her own square, and no two of the squares side by side or even near each other.

"We live alone," he murmured. "We die alone."

He stood back for a moment, then chose a square near the center of the room, again making sure it was isolated from the others. He pulled a wheeled stainless-steel work cart nearer the square, placed his pictures carefully on the shiny surface, and opened a waiting plastic box holding white pushpins.

It took him at least fifteen minutes to place the pictures carefully, to pin them onto the corkboard. He left space, of course, for other pictures. There would be others.

These pictures came first. The hunting.

And then her.

And then pictures of her metamorphosis would join the others on her board. Until at last it was complete. Until she was complete.

He turned finally from his display wall and went to the center of the room, and to the table.

She was secure, of course. He was always careful about that. And the drugs had done their work; she was only now coming out of it, eyes fluttering, trying to focus.

He waited until they did, until she saw him. Watched those eyes widen and grow terrified.

He smiled down at her.

"Hello, sweetheart. We're going to have so much fun."