Horoscope: The Astrology Murders Read Free

was closed, but he didn’t need to see inside to know what it was like in there: dark and close. If you sat on the floor of a closed closet like that, under the clothes, some of them hanging down and touching you, surrounding you, you would feel scared and you would think that you couldn’t breathe. But gradually, you would realize that you were breathing, because otherwise you would be dead. You would still be scared, but after a while, a long while, you would begin to feel safe. Safe and private because you were alone.
    He found himself thinking about the needles. His mother’s needles. Then he thought about his mother. He pushed the thoughts away, burying them in the out-of-the-way corner of his mind where he stored all the things he didn’t want to think about. The black corner was even better than a closed closet; it was like a black hole.
    He looked again at the sleeping woman and walked towardher bed. He could see her pale, pretty face, her short black hair. She was twenty-nine years old. Twenty-nine years old, three months, and four days. She had not had a long life.
    He slipped his hand into his jacket and found the leather cord. The surgical gloves were so thin that as he stretched the cord tightly between both hands, he could feel the slightly rough texture of the leather. Whoever invented surgical gloves deserved some sort of prize, he thought. They were like an extra layer of skin, but better, because they would leave no prints.
    He climbed onto the bed, turned her on her back, and straddled her sleeping body, kneeling with a bent leg on either side of her. Holding the cord in his left hand, he opened the button on his jeans and pulled down his zipper with his right. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. He never did. It made him excited to feel his stiffness pushing against his pants, aching to get out. Or should he say to get in?
    Aroused to the point of pain, he slipped on a condom and looked down at her. She was still asleep.
    “You’re making this too easy,” he said.
    Reaching down between his legs, he pulled up her nightgown and gathered it around her abdomen.
    Her eyes opened. Seeing him above her, feeling the press of his knees against her body, holding her there, she gasped.
    He stretched the leather cord between both hands again and lowered it onto her neck, applying just enough pressure to let her know how easy it would be for him to kill her with it.
    Staring up at him, her eyes bulged with fear.
    “The more scared you are, the hotter I get,” he said.
    Her mouth opened, but she was too frightened to scream.
    Still pressing the cord across her throat, he lowered himself on top of her.
    “The astrological aspects are good for this. They really are. At least mine are.”
    She felt him working his way inside her and started to cry. Unable to look at him, she closed her eyes. She never opened them again.
    When he was through, he thought about how simple it had been. All the planning he’d put into it was worth it. For a moment he regretted that he’d decided on her first, because her house was so isolated. That had its advantages, of course, which was why he’d picked her, but now he realized it would take a while before someone found out what he’d done, and he wasn’t sure he was happy about that. He consoled himself by thinking that someone would find her eventually. As invisible as he was that night, soon, through her, he would be very visible.

One
    A SAFE PLACE? MARRIAGE is not. At least not for me, Kelly thought. I don’t even know why I would wake up thinking about it.
    But maybe it wasn’t really marriage her dreaming mind had been thinking about, she reflected; maybe it was feeling safe. She felt cozy in her bed. Yet warm and comfortable as she felt ensconced under her duvet, maybe her dreaming mind, like her waking mind, was preoccupied with the fact that suddenly everything about her life had changed, and feeling safe was something she could no longer take for granted.
    She