"Oscar Martin tho... The, the serial killer?" Marsha gasped.
"One and the same," Philip agreed. "I was actually his first human victim; he'd graduated from torturing his mother's cats. Anyway, he tried to decapitate me with his machete but I fell to the ground at the last moment and caught the blade on my face and arm instead of my throat."
He pushed the sleeve of his left arm up, showing them the long scar that ran from wrist to above his elbow.
"My God!" Angela gasped.
Philip turned to look at Bordeaux. She stared at him, eyes wide with horror. Slowly, she reached out and touched his face, touched his scar. They stared at each other for a long moment as her fingertips traced the scar.
"You're learning," he said, then concluded his tale of how at the age of seven he had managed to su
