Serial

1

Millie Graff’s feet were sore. She was a hostess at Mingles, a new and popular restaurant on West Forty-fifth Street near Times Square, and hadn’t sat down for over five hours. After work, it was a three-block walk and a long concrete stairwell descent to a downtown subway platform. In the crowded subway, someone would probably step on her toes.

She didn’t mind the work or the time at Mingles. Her paycheck was big enough that she’d soon be able to move out of her cramped Village apartment into something larger, maybe on the Upper West Side. Her job was secure, and there was still a chance she could land a spot in an off-Broadway chorus line.

Dance had been Millie’s first love. It was what had brought her to New York City from the small town her folks had moved to in New Jersey. Dance and dreams.

She’d kept her weight down and was still built like a dancer: long-waisted, with small breasts, muscular legs, and an elegant turn of ankle that drew male glances.

In fact, as she jogged up the concrete steps to the entrance to her building, holding level a white foam takeaway container from a deli she’d stopped at on her way home, a middle-aged man walking past gave her a lingering look and a hopeful smile.

Not till you grow some hair on your head, Millie thought- rather cruelly, she realized with some regret, as she shouldered open the door to the vestibule.

She saw no one on the way up in the elevator or in the hall. Pausing to dig her keys out of her purse, she realized again how weary she was. Just smiling for seven hours was enough to wear a person down.

After keying the locks, she turned the tarnished brass doorknob and entered.

She’d barely had time to register that something was wrong when the man who’d been waiting for her just inside the door stepped directly in front of her. It was almost as if he’d sprung up out of the floor.

Millie gasped. The foam container of chicken wings and brown rice dropped to the carpet and made a mess.

The man was so close that his face was out of focus and she couldn’t make out his features. She thought at first he was simply shirtless, but in a startled instant realized he was completely nude. She could smell his sweaty male scent. Feel his body heat. She was looking up at him at an angle that made her think he was about six feet tall.

He smiled. That frightened the already-stunned Millie to the point where her throat constricted. She could hardly breathe.

“You know me,” he said.

But of course she didn’t. Not really.

“I have a gift for you,” he told her, and she stood in shock as he slipped something-a necklace-over her head carefully, so as not to disturb her hairdo.

She was aware of his right hand moving quickly on the lower periphery of her vision. Saw an instantaneous glint of silver. A blade! Something peculiar about it.

He was thrilled by the confusion in her eyes. Her brain hadn’t yet caught up with what was happening.

The blade would feel cold at first, before pain overwhelmed all other feeling.

He was standing now supporting her, a length of her intestines draped in his left hand like a warm snake.

He thought that was amazing. Incredible! The expression on Millie Graff’s face made it obvious that she, too, was amazed. Her eyes bulged with wonder. He felt the throb of his erection.

Despite the seriousness of her injury, he knew she wasn’t yet dead. He lowered her gently to the floor, resting her on her back so she wouldn’t bleed so much. Carefully, he propped her head against the sofa so that when he used the ammonia fumes to jolt her back to consciousness, she’d be looking down again at what he’d done to her.

She’d know it was only the beginning.