Mary, Mary

walleyed and dorky at the door. He shot them again when they were down on the floor. Just to be careful. Professional.
    And now he was really shaking, legs like J-E-L-L-O, but trying to walk very calmly out of the men’s room.
    Then out of the Sutton Theater onto 57th, heading east on foot. Everything outside feeling completely unreal and otherworldly, everything so
bright
and
brassy
.
    He’d done it. He’d killed three people instead of just one. His first
three
murders. It was just practice, but he’d done it, and you know what? He could do it again.
    “Practice makes perfect,” the Storyteller whispered under his breath as he hurried toward his car—his getaway car, right? God, this was the best feeling of his life. Of course, that didn’t say much for his life up to now, did it?
    But watch out from here on, just watch out.
    For Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
    Of course, he was the only one who got
that
. So far, anyway.

Chapter 2
    YOU THINK YOU CAN KILL
again in cold blood?
he asked himself many times after the New York murders.
    You think you can stop this now that you’ve started? You think?
    The Storyteller waited—almost five months of self-torture, also known as discipline, or professionalism, or maybe cowardice—until it was his time.
    Then, he arrived in the kill zone again, and this time it wasn’t going to be practice. This was the real deal, and it wasn’t a stranger who was going to die.
    He was just a face in the crowd at the 3:10 showing of
The Village
at the Westwood Village Theater in Los Angeles. There were a number of patrons, which was good news for him and, he supposed, for the film’s star director, M. Night Shyamalan. What kind of name was that? M. Night? Self-conscious phony.
    Apparently Patrice Bennett was among the last people in town to see the horror film. Also, Patrice actually deigned to sit in a real movie theater, with real ticket-buyers, for her movie fix. How quaint was that? Well, she was famous for it, wasn’t she? It was Patrice’s shtick. She’d even bought her ticket ahead of time, which was how he knew she’d be there.
    So this wasn’t target practice anymore, and everything had to be just right, and it would be. Never a doubt. The story was already written in his head.
    For one thing, he couldn’t be spotted by anyone in the theater. So he went to the twelve-o’clock; then, when the show let out, he waited around in a bathroom stall until the 3:10. Nail-biting, nerve-thwacking ordeal, but not that bad really. Especially since if he was spotted, he’d simply abort the mission.
    But the Storyteller wasn’t seen—at least he didn’t think so—and he didn’t see anyone he knew.
    Now, the theater had more than a hundred viewers, or rather,
suspects,
right? At least a dozen of them were perfect for his purposes.
    Most important—his gun had a silencer now. Something he’d learned from the thrill-packed run-through in New York City.
    Patrice sat in the balcony.
Works for me, Patsy,
he thought.
You’re being way too thoughtful, especially for you, you überbitch
.
    He was watching her from across the aisle and a few rows behind. This was so delicious—he wanted the luxurious anticipation of revenge to go on and on. Except that he also wanted to pull the trigger and get the hell out of the Westwood theater before something went wrong. But what could go wrong, right?
    When Joaquin Phoenix got stabbed by Adrien Brody, he calmly rose from his seat and went directly to Patrice’s aisle. He never hesitated for an instant.
    “Excuse me. Sorry,” he said, and started to make his way past her, actually
over
her bare, skinny legs, which weren’t very impressive for such an important woman in Hollywood.
    “Jesus Christ, will you watch it,” she complained, which was just like her, so unnecessarily nasty and imperial-sounding.
    “Not exactly who
you
can expect to see next. Not
Jesus,
” he quipped, and wondered if Patrice got his little joke. Probably not. Studio heads didn’t get subtlety.
    He shot her twice—once in the heart and once right between her totally shocked, blown-away eyes. There was no such thing as too dead when it came to this kind of power-mad psycho. Patrice could probably come back at you from the grave, like that reverse trapdoor ending in the original
Carrie,
Stephen King’s first story to reach the silver screen.
    Then he made his perfect escape.
    Just like in the movies, hey
.
    The story had begun.

Chapter 3
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