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been the first she killed, of course, and they might have lived had her mother not been a harpy. Christ, when she thought of how much they had bossed her around, she wished that she could find them and do it all over. But killing them had helped her to do a better job of the Jeffersons, who lived on one side of them. Then the Weeks, who had lived on the other. By the time the police had shown up, she had mastered it to the point where she’d been perfect.
    A killing machine was how she thought of herself. And she’d done so well with the old couple and their family when she’d first gotten out of the home that she could not wait to do it again and again. They were just the first of many. Ellen didn’t count the two men she’d killed. There had been no time to play, and she knew that was what had counted most to her.
    On one of the days leading up to Ellen being caught, her mom had been making some kind of dessert that she was going to take to a function at work the next morning. But her mouth had never shut up. She was forever complaining about how Ellie—as they’d called her back then—was dressed, how her hair looked, and how she wore mismatched socks. The knife was in Ellen’s hand and sticking out of her mother’s mouth before she could think that she shouldn’t do this in the house, but it was too late by then. After that, it had been a blood bath for her. And so much fun.
    Elaine Wooten had died much too quickly for Ellen’s tastes. Of course, Ellen had watched the blood pour in great buckets, it seemed, from the back of her mother’s throat. As it pooled beneath her, Ellen picked up another knife from the big block on the counter and began stabbing her mom in the belly and arms. Blood had squirted all over her unmatched socks and stringy hair as she brought the knife up and down over and over. Her dad, coming in to see what all the noise was about, she supposed, had her looking up at him and smiling.
    “What have you done? Oh my God, you’ve killed your mother, Ellie! I can’t cover this one up. I won’t! Not this time.” Ellen remembered looking down at her mom, thinking he was quite proud of her. “You’ve killed her, don’t you realize that? What the hell is wrong with you?”
    When he reached for the phone, she’d leapt at him. Her plan was only to stop him, but the knife had entered his belly just as he’d put his fingers on the handset. When he dropped to the floor, the knife still sticking out of him, Ellen realized that this was going to be great. She was going to watch them both die, and learn what she hadn’t the first time she’d killed someone. It had been a mistake to let her father find the man before she’d been done.
    Her dad lasted a little longer than her mom had. Not by a lot, but enough for Ellen to know that she had to do something more to make sure they would continue to beg her. That was what she’d enjoyed the most, she had figured out quickly…the way they pleaded with her to stop. Her dad had told her he’d give her anything should she just let him live. Ellen had all she wanted by then and told him so. Over and over. But soon there wasn’t anyone to work on. Her parents were dead, and she had gotten bored quickly with eating what she wanted and watching the porn stations on the television. It was not all that interesting, she remembered thinking. Taking a shower and putting on something clean, she made her way across the yard to the neighbors.
    The next house that she’d entered was the Jefferson house. They just let her in when she told them that her parents had sent her over to see if they had any aspirin. Mrs. Jefferson had told her she’d get it for her, and Ellen asked to use the bathroom. It was how she’d gotten to the kids first.
    They had six kids, but she’d had to kill them quickly. They whined and the sound of it, the high pitched noise of it, still made her angry when she realized they’d done it on purpose to piss her off. So much so that when