Free Pretty Little Dead Girls by Mercedes M. Yardley

packaging.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
    A Brief Essay on Gifts
    There are few people who are not genuinely delighted when it comes to gifts.
    Whether you are giving them or receiving them, there is something undeniably magic that skitters up one’s spine and makes one shiver in anticipation. A gift! A surprise! Something unexpected and shiny and sparkly where before there was . . . nothing! Suddenly there is something new to squirrel away and whisper to in the dark, quiet parts of the evening.
    And when one gives a gift, one is transformed from Billy Next Door to A Generous Benefactor, and when the receiver opens their box, they are full of gratitude and awe for the kindness and insight of the giver, who knew exactly what they wanted.
    Unless, of course, it is a particularly terrible gift that is delivered in an undeniably ill-chosen fashion. And it is a sorrowful thing to say, but that is exactly what happened with the murderer and his carefully chosen gift for Bryony.
    The gift itself was a charming thing, a delicate star on a chain that inspires whimsy and sparkly rainbows of happiness, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was where the murderer found it. It was a trophy he had taken home from an earlier kill—a rather mannish brunette with a penchant for fine things. And after she had been stashed away in several places across the valley, he placed this necklace along with the others in his stash.
    Oh, he had beads and rings and a tongue bar, and even the gruesome second joint of a woman’s pinky finger he had a special fondness for, though even he couldn’t explain it.
    But the young girl on the trail, the one who radiated her own soft light, needed stars, and a star he had, and he was quite certain the earlier owner wouldn’t put up a fuss if her necklace was passed along to somebody else, somebody a little more deserving, and—dare he say it?— a little livelier than her. Really, wouldn’t it be quite selfish of the muscular brunette to begrudge a thing of such beauty to the glowing girl on the trail? After all, she wasn’t using it, and would never use it again, this much was certain.
    Now the murderer was left to ponder the exact way he should get the wondrous gift to the girl. After all, if he were to simply hand her a creatively wrapped package and say: “Hello, dear girl, I am the man who shall be the death of you, but first I would like to present you with this trinket in order to commemorate the event. I do hope that you like it. See? It’s shiny!” Well, then. She would look at him askance and bound off to the nearest police station, and his life would certainly change, and most likely not for the better.
    So that was right out.
    But he wanted something that would really make an impression; something that she could reflect on for years to come, or at least, for the rest of her life, which he was fairly certain wouldn’t stretch as long.
    He considered himself a patient man for the most part, but didn’t think he could wait that long. He wanted his hands around her throat, his teeth on the back of her neck, the knife zipping along in its usual friendly, productively busy manner.
    Bzzzzzzz, it would hum as he slid it between bones and joints and across the fluid surface of her skin. Did she have tattoos, he wondered? He so hoped she had a discreet tattoo hidden away from the eye of Every-Day Every-Man, a tattoo that he would be able to study and feel and eventually cut away, and frame as art. Yes.
    But he digresses. He will save that luscious thought for later, and instead focus on the subject at hand. The gift and its packaging, and the ever-so-sticky problem of delivery.
    He clicked his tongue and thought of the things he knew about her; her tendency to be gregarious and the way her soul washed out on the waves as she stared at the water after a tough run.
    Ah, yes. How perfect, truly.
    He would be able to combine pleasing the Star Girl with his first love, which of course is the stalking, the