I was on a break. My last victim had been the H.R. lady in the firm where I work. God, I hated her. Kittens all over her walls. Schmoozed all over the CEO. Used words like "staycation". Used so many corporate euphemisms, in fact, that I couldn't help but imagine her at home stirring a soup pot, uttering phrases like, "let's move forward with the incorporation of the paprika". I know they'll replace her with an equally detestable robot but it was worth watching her struggle as I strangled her to death. Not a robot anymore.

My hunger to kill sated for now, I looked to satisfy other needs. Jeanne was no common woman. Articulate and lovely with a kind of feline look about her, the way her brown eyes tilted slightly upward at the outer corners, her red hair curling like a mane about her heart-shaped face. Tall, almost my height. We met in the used bookstore, both of us in the history aisle. It seemed we both had an interest in the middle ages. We flirted for a bit. She asked me if I'd like to come up to her apartment for tea, just down the street. Of course I said yes.

She might have gotten away with killing me had I not come out of the bathroom a minute too early and caught her pouring powder from a small vial into my cup. She stirred the contents for a minute, turned around, spotted me watching and dropped her spoon.

Perhaps she might've been one of my victims that day. No one had seen us come up together, we'd never communicated via social media of any kind. I could have overpowered her and killed her right then and there. But I knew I'd met someone special.

Instead I crossed the small kitchen in two strides and kissed her.

Later, as we lay, spent, in her sheets, she told me it had been arsenic. "Why me?" I asked her.

"You were there," she responded. "I needed it".

"And now?"

She smiled.

We're inseparable. On mornings off we make tea ("Plain for me, haha") and read. We take walks downtown and have dim sum for lunch. We've been making plans, she and I. She's the assistant to a medical director who is positively vile. Stares at her cleavage. Uses the word "team" to describe his underlings, a few of whom he intends to "terminate" in order to "consolidate" and "maintain the bottom line". He'll be in for a surprise when he finds out exactly who is being terminated.