David Bowie was playing on the stereo when I killed Amanda Welsh. “The Jean Genie”. I felt my head bobbing and swaying from side to side in time with the music as I held the garotte. It was kind of irritating that her feet were out of synch when they flopped and thumped on the floor.  That didn’t last, though.
Some time after her last twitch I peeled the wire from where it had sunk in to her flesh. trapped air escaped in a huff and I leaned in quick to suck it into my lungs. Nothing like that last dying breath. It’s that connection with death that only certain people know well. It’s almost like breathing in their memories. The last of everything they were is in there.

One thing I do hate about urban kills, though, is the noise factor. So much easier to crack the skull with a bonesaw, but they seem to draw attention with the sound they make. They’re like a minigun winding up before it starts thundering. So no power tools tonight. This is old school. That’s why I have the toolbox.

It doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to. Back seventy or forty or even twenty bodies ago and it would have been a lot of work and time. I’ve got it pretty worked out now. Pop the skull cap, dig in with a blade. I make a little triangle pattern around it and just hoist out a chunk. Bingo. One pineal gland from a nineteen year old Caucasian female.  That leaves me eighteen more to go.

The younger it gets, the easier it is. Finding the women for ages ninety through one hundred was probably the hardest. Those that are alive at that age are usually under some kind of care. Eighty to ninety was a little easier. Mid-sixties up to the eighty mark? Gravy. No one remembers them much, and by the time someone checks on them I’m long gone. Down to about fifty was easy to find, but I had a few fighters. From fifty through the mid-thirties they all fought. After that I chose more carefully. I had a large pool to pick from. The one with the fresh cast on her arm. The one back from the rather painful ski mishap. Amanda had one of those inflatable boot things on her right foot. What’s she going to do? Run away?

Back at home the gland in its bath of oils and unguents goes into place with the other eighty-one of them in the safe. Miles away, Amanda Welsh’s home is turning into ash around her remains. All that is left of her now floats in a baby-food-sized jar. I can feel it staring at me as I close the door.

It’s a pain in the ass having to take this many glands, but the books are quite precise on what I need. All the non-perishable ingredients have been assembled. The basement floor has all the circles and shapes as written. Cut and polished by hand, two years work. Every groove filled with molten silver. Everything so precise. Nothing to chance.

Eighteen more glands. Eighteen and I will have the key to open the gate.

END