Inspired by season 1 of the show Hannibal, and character names are taken from therein.
#Serial #Murder
Well actually, the fictional author wasn’t very creative with making up names. Note, that the show is loosely based on the book “Red Dragon” by Thomas Harris, with some major changes. Like Dr Alan Bloom being female, and having affairs with both the eponymous Dr. Lechter, and the protagonist, Will Graham. (Also, he doesn’t have perfect polydactyly, nor radiating violet lines in his eyes that seem to rotate hypnotically when he was looking into you. Also, it was “A big amarone,” and not “A nice chianti.”)
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Alana (g-to-f Flashback.)
I guess there’s no question why he came to me. After all, my father was executed for murdering my mother, and raping a lot of women that looked too much like her.
So, I got therapy, and took an avid interest in Abnormal Psychology. Until I was old enough to take it, officially, I just asked questions of the doctors we had at the hospital. To better understand the motives of a psychotic serial rapist, and matricide killer.
Still working on that, but my greatest fears didn’t manifest consciously until much later, when it came to the Nature vs Nurture debate. I wasn’t afraid of becoming like my father. I was afraid of becoming like my mother: Co-dependent, and married to a man, too much like my father.
Not that I’m particularly attracted to wife beaters, alcoholics, and Anger-Retaliatory rapists, but at least I knew the Profile: He hated women, especially my mother, but he didn’t tell her that. Not in so many words, he loved her too, but a man like that. If they’re married, they get that way by being romantic. Promising the world, and the moon, forever, and ever.
They just need to find a woman who’ll believe them. So, then they had a great honeymoon, and when it was over, he didn’t just switch to being a monster, right away. Oh no, he kept his mask up, and only let it slip down slowly. Maybe give you a glimpse, with a ‘bitch,’ muttered under his breath before pushing it back up, and smiling.
“Nothing, oh no. Not you, honey. Her, look at that slut…”
That’s how he got away with looking at other women, at first. He pointed her out, “Look at her ass practically hanging out of the back of that dress. She looks like a whore, she probably is a whore, looking for business.” I overheard this from the back seat, in a child safety seat, from as early as I could remember.
Then, he’d drive her home, and fuck her, roughly. Oh, sorry, “Passionately.” That’s the way mom always said it, “He’s just so passionate when he’s jealous.” To explain why he tore her rotator cuff twisting her arm, or bashed her head against the wall so hard she had to go to the urgent care center for a concussion.
He drove her, and “I fell,” she probably told the nurse when she asked her how she hit her head. “I must have hit it on the kitchen counter,” when he bent her over, and rammed her face first into it, gripping the back of her neck.
Well, okay. I’d seen dogs do it, and the male biting the bitch on the neck so she’d hold still. Growing up like that, I thought it was normal. Maybe a little too “Passionate,” but likewise our house just felt like home, and not a prison.
She was a good wife, but as a mother, she taught me everything he told her, about being a good wife. A good girl doesn’t go out, wear makeup, speak to strange men, or even answer the door. She had to get home from shopping before he got home from work, because if she was late, he’d be waiting. “Where were you, who where you with?”
“No one, I just broke down on the way home from the supermarket,” or whatever. She tried to explain it, and tell her the truth, but everything was a lie, once he made up his mind that she was out with another man. Of course she’d never been with another man, she loved him, and she was faithful to a fault.
He wasn’t, but it wasn’t until after she was gone that the prostitutes started coming forward. “Look at those whores.” Well, he started with them, because they’re high risk, they can take a lot of abuse, and they can’t exactly call the cops, because they met him to do something illegal, but then his other victims started showing up at the hospital, or calling for an ambulance.
I’m not going to go too deep into Geographic Profiling, but by the time he started cruising, he knew what he wanted. He knew what he was going to do to them, and honestly, he didn’t care if they went to the cops after the attacks. By then, he was already carrying around a stocking. One of mom’s stockings to wear as a mask, and he was getting pretty good at jumping them from behind.
Driving away, far away from work, and the house was a forensic countermeasure. “Don’t shit where you live,” but I guess he went to the community college, because that’s where they met. Not to mention also having a good student body to find someone that looked like her when she was younger. Slimmer too, after years of abuse, she started drinking, and taking sleeping pills to escape, when she couldn’t really go out any more.
She wasn’t afraid to, she couldn’t. He’d reinforced that so much that she was a shut-in, and dad made sure that the store only sent women to deliver the groceries, but between self medicating with depressants, and lying around as much as she could after taking care of her chores, she put on a lot of weight, but it was just like his mask, slipping. It took so long that you didn’t even notice it was happening, until I felt like she was always that way.
He stopped making love to her, “Passionately,” or not, but she was way past even caring about her, and she was broken. So, he started going out, and breaking other women, instead. She was too far gone to wait up, and ask him where he’d been, and who he’d been with. Let alone what he did to them. The story was even forgotten, after a couple years on the news. It wasn’t news any more, the case went cold, and they just waited for him to make a mistake.
On the law enforcement end, it’s really hard to catch him, because there’s no pattern. Strangers, picked at random for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and fitting his victimology. Once they started warning women around the Community College, he stopped going there, and started waiting around bars. A different street, with a lot of bars, so someone was bound to stagger out for a walk of shame, and either pop a squat in the alley, or find a place to throw up, with some privacy.
He stopped caring what they looked like, which just made him even more predictable. Without a set schedule, he couldn’t accelerate, so he escalated. He disfigured some of them, crippled others. He broke bones, and dislocated one poor woman’s hip, for going out to drink without her husband.
Married, preferably, but if she wasn’t quite right, he was still impulsive enough just to take victims of opportunity. The cops never got their lucky break, nobody just happened to catch him in the act, and they couldn’t hear their screams, because he was too good at keeping them quiet.
He rubbed their faces in it, the piss, or vomit. If they didn’t do either, he waterboarded them with his piss, and their tops pulled up over their faces. One woman had her face abraded down to the jaw, and cheekbone from holding her head against the pavement, with her underwear stuffed in her mouth to muffle her screams, while he sodomized her, with a bottle.
He never killed them, any of them, because he wanted them to suffer. Pain, shame, humiliation, and terror, for the rest of their lives. He only killed one, my mother, and ended her suffering. She found her stocking, in his pocket, spattered with blood from the victim the night before. In the morning, she started yelling first, and my brother rushed me off to school, as soon as we’re dressed. I saw her waving it at him, and yelling at him, accusing him of hurting all those women.
Then, when he came back, dad was gone. My brother discovered her body. Dad wasn’t gone very long before they caught him, but he took to the road, and he wasn’t as experienced as a highway rapist. They caught him speeding, and had a description of his car, state wide. He didn’t even make it to the border, but he went the long way, for some reason.
I like to believe that he did that on purpose. He was an intelligent man, and heading south would be too obvious, but I don’t know. Honestly, they put him to death, in the gas chamber, before I even thought about that relatively minor detail.
They wouldn’t let me visit him, but then I don’t know what I would have asked him, if I was able. Why? He’s not going to tell me why, at least not the truth. Because they deserved it, that’s why. They all deserved it, because they were all whores, sluts, or unfaithful.
Because he was psycho, that’s why. It didn’t even take me long to get used to the children’s hospital, and the other patients at the psyche ward, because honestly, I was used to being locked up my whole entire life with a psycho. It was much larger than my house, and my old school put together, and I had my own room.
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Freddy (mfB. In this case, B is for Body.)
It wasn’t too hard to find her, in the stairwell, reading. As usual, she liked to look out the window, it had a pretty good view of the playground, and the gardens. “Like a princess in her tower,” some kids said, or they even called her “Rapunzel,” even though she didn’t have long hair.
She kept it short enough to not get stuck under her collar, and long enough to tie back. In a ponytail, like a brush, with bangs, or just tuck behind her ear, when she was reading. Ana, Alana Dobs. Named after Alan Dobs, if you know the story?
We pretty much left her alone. Even the cruelest bully, because honestly, what are you going to do, to get a reaction? We had some pretty sick puppies in here, criminally insane along with victims, and just basket cases that were more of a threat to themselves than anyone else. They tried to keep us apart, but let’s just say an exhibitionist gets to a window, and jerks off in front of everyone before they can run inside, and around the halls to stop him.
So what? Most guys are just like, well whatever. You know him, he sure is proud of his dick, and likes showing it off, but most girls, reacted differently. Depending on if they’re sexually abused somehow or not, but Ana. She didn’t react, she just looked up, when another girl pointed it out. Took a deep breath, and saved her place, then walked over, shaking her head to tell an orderly.
Big deal, her dad used to rape her mom right in front of her. Then, he raped 19 women over 3 years, and that’s just the ones we know about. There were real live monsters there, and you found out which ones to avoid from the other kids, but none of them even held a candle to her father.
At least I thought, until I saw something like that myself, but then the first person I thought to go to was her. I saw her in the window, she wasn’t looking out, she just had her head down. Her hair hanging over the side of her face, so when I climbed up the stairs, sure enough she was reading.
“Yeah, uh. Anna?”
“Auna,” she said, I’d never actually talked to her before, but the other girls said it both ways. “What do you want?”
“Uhm, you know how you’re always reading true crime books, and abnormal psychology?”
She closed the book in her lap. Red Dragon, the one with a print from William Blake on the cover, instead of the Chinese letter from a Mahjong piece. “Well, I’m starting to get into fiction,” she shrugged, “Maybe I can write crime novels if I can’t get in the FBI. You know, because of their psychological standards.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, so she could look up at me easier.
“Well, uh.” I didn’t come for the conversation, so I just came right out, and asked, “You want to see a body?”
She jumped up, on the landing. “A dead body?” Every other landing, the window was down at the floor level, then on the other side, it was higher, so they were even on on either side. They don’t open, of course. They’ve got chicken wire embedded, so you can’t smash one out, and jump to your death, even though it was a fire escape, so you could escape in case of fire.
“Yeah, uh. I’m pretty sure he was murdered, but. Nobody else knows about it, I just thought you’d like a chance to see it first, before the staff calls the cops.”
She just threw the book in the corner, and ran down the stairs, so I followed, and kept up. She panted at the door, to the outside. “Where?”
“Let me show you, but try to act natural.”
She laughed, but then I remembered how calm she was, when she went to tell the orderly that Calvin was at it again. She nodded, and took a deep breath. We don’t have the run of the hospital, or even our wing, but the stairs are an emergency exit. So, they’re locked from the outside, and inside at every floor, but you can push the handle to get out, and climb down, if the whole house is on fire.
Pembry House. Named after Arthur Pembry, the rich guy that donated his whole mansion to take care of sick, and injured children. It was a children’s hospital, but over the years, they added wings for the psych ward, for example. We had our own yard, to keep the predatory ones away from the sick, and injured, but there was a drain, in the corner.
“Over here.” I looked around, and pulled back the bushes. Careful not to brush the arm sticking out of the drain, and holding my nose. “Ngh, I thougd somebody tooga dump bag here, we sometibes use it to take a leak.” I took another breath, “That’s whad I cabe bagh here for.”
She nodded, and squatted down. “You didn’t touch it?”
I shook my head, but glanced over at the word [Faggot] smeared in shit on the wall of the tunnel. She pulled a little jar out of her purse, and wiped it under her nose. “Here.” She held it up.
[Vicks Vaporub. Medicated Petroleum Jelly.] I smeared it on, so I could breathe. It’s supposed to clear your nose when it’s stuffed up, but the wintergreen smell overpowered the shit, anyway.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s murder, too.”
“Rape, and murder, his pants are pulled down, and I think whoever did it bashed his brains out on the rebar.”
“Yeah, split his scalp pretty good, I can’t see if there’s any fractures, but it looks like he’s trying to get out, or reach in, and signal for someone.” His arm was still sticking out, maybe from rigor-mortis.
“What’s in his mouth?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not going to touch him to check.”
“You have any gloves in that murder bag of your’s?”
“It’s not a murder bag, but I’m not even getting them out.” There’s boxes of latex gloves all over the place, and also nitrile if there’s a chemical hazard, or you’re allergic to latex. Because it’s a hospital. “Huh, well, there’s not much more to see here, so we better go back, and tell someone, so the real cops can come and check.” She got up. “Thanks.”
“No problem, but is there anything you can tell me, that might make some sense out of it?”
“Well, obviously it’s homophobic rage.”
“Yeah, I saw that, but also, you think the killer might be gay, but trying to hide it from himself?”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know, but whoever did this was outside. So, I’m not going to ask you if you know anyone like that in here.”
“Just about everyone inside, or out. I mean, I don’t know if it’s normal, but. You know how guys are.”
“Not really. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Huh, well. Where do I start? You looking at my dick? That’s something you hear a lot in, bathrooms, the showers, and after lights out.”
“Unless you’re in with Calvin, Joe Gillespe…” It’s not an uncommon way to act out.
“No, even they said it, pretty much every guy asks you that, to make sure you’re not queer.”
“You too?”
“Hey, I only ask that if they’re creepy about it.”
“Well, you never hear you looking at my tits?” Okay, I checked. Couldn’t tell, they don’t exactly give girls revealing clothes in here. “In the girls’ rooms, or even the shower.” She shrugged, “So no, I never heard about that.”
“Well, I guess it’s just more socially acceptable for girls to be lesbians, or bisexual.”
“I guess, so you think that.” She stopped to pick the right word, “Paranoia is enough to drive our boy to kill? Hang on.” She waved an orderly over. “There’s a dead body in the storm drain.” She didn’t point, but she turned, and nodded. “Over there in the corner. Don’t touch it, just call the cops, and try not to freak anyone out.”
“Is this a joke?” She looked over at me.
“No, I saw it too, in fact, I found the body.” Knowing that made me the first suspect. Even though I couldn’t think of some way to lure someone down the tunnel, convince him to turn around, rape him, hen bash his brains out. Maybe offering him oral sex, so I can grab his head, and pull out so he doesn’t bite me.
“Hhuh!”
“You better both go inside.” She patted Ana’s back, but she just nodded.
Holding her hands in front of her, until she lost it, and started jumping up and down. “Ogmygod, omygod ohmygod!” Shaking her hands limply.
“Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right. Just go somebody, and call the cops, quick!” She sat down hard, and backed up to the wall.
“I’m a little freaked out too,” I didn’t know whether to get down, and try to hold her, “but how do you do that?”
“What?” She looked up, and pulled a pack of tissues out of her purse. She blew her nose, and wiped it, holding up the tissues for me to take on.
I did the same, then I offered her my hand. “Let me help you up.” She got her composure again, but she was still panting almost as hard as she did when she got to the bottom of the stairs. “How do you act so calm when you’re freaking out inside?”
“Huh, I don’t know.” She shrugged, “I think it might be a defense mechanism. I learned early on that if I cried in front of him, it would get his attention.”
I didn’t ask who.
“Huh, so I waited until I got in my room, where I could freak out, but I’m almost as excited. Where we going?” She looked around, then up at me, shaking her head.
“Well, you left your book up there, and I guess it’s also the best place to watch the cops do their thing when they show up.”
“Oh, good thinking.”
“Thanks.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what you’re in here for?” On our way up.
“Well, it’s potentially triggering but. Here goes: I’m still being treated for Survivor’s Guilt, but.” They have different therapy groups for different things, like grief counciling. “Huh, you remember that bad flood we had, almost 8 years back? Well, our house collapsed, there was a corner of it in a sinkhole, and I was so young that I blamed myself, but I still can’t help having panic attacks, whenever it rains.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I’m sorry for your loss.” Only 2 of about 10 things everyone says, because there’s nothing else to say.
“I don’t remember it, I barely even remember them digging me out of the rubble, but what I do remember. Huh, honestly, the first thing I remember was digging in the yard. I know it’s childish, and irrational, but I was 6. So, I thought that’s how I caused it, and killed my whole family.”
“So, you must be about 14?”
“Yeah, and you?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m twelve.”
“Oh,” but really smart for her age.
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Ana (Gm Amateur Profile)
I didn’t know how to handle it. Okay, I thought that I’d seen enough crime scene photos, that I could look at something like that clinically, and analytically, but it wasn’t just somebody that was alive, and then. Not.
He died horribly, terrified, and in pain. Brutalized, and filthy, for being gay, or somebody thinking that he was gay.
“Also, there was something suspicious about Where we found the body.”
“Mhm?” Freddy’s a good listener, but also, he’s a guy, so. I have to admit, I’m a girl, and right off the bat, he gave me some idea of how much homophobia is considered the norm for men, and teenage boys.
“I mean, if it was just a homosexual fling that went wrong.” I tapped my pinky, “Then maybe he wrote that accusation thow throw anybody off, but. It’s kinda more than a little kinky doing it in a tunnel leading to the yard of a children’s hospital. So, you think maybe he wanted a child to see it?”
“I don’t know, it’s hard to wrap your mind around something that sick, even if you’re prone to morbid, or violent thoughts.”
“Oh,” I shook my head. “Sorry, I didn’t think about that, but. You mean you, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s not about my survivor’s guilt.” He took a deep breath, and looked up. His head between the window sill, and pane. “Huh! It’s just this place, and being surrounded by the mentally ill. You lose track of what’s normal or not, and I thought the dirty jokes were bad, on the outside.”
“When you’re six?”
“Oh, no. I got adopted, when I was about 8, or 9. I couldn’t really adjust to having a family, even in the foster home, it was too much. Especially whenever it rained.”
“So, they put you in with the violent ones?” They have girl wards too, for girls to sleep in bunk beds, and stuff, but I pretty much got solitary confinement, because nobody wanted to share a room with me. They had 2 bed dorm rooms too, but that was mostly for the sick, and injured. Well, physically sick, and physically injured.
“Well, even the nonviolent ones joke about stuff, that may or may not be a joke, and that’s not counting the nonviolent ones becoming violent. I don’t know if this is really a great place for anyone to get better, but nobody has anywhere else to go, so.’ He shrugged, “They keep us here.”
“Well, there’s violent girls too, but they’re. Usually the worst, and the non-violent ones don’t even joke about. Stuff like that.” I went back to the window, to look out.
“Not much to see.” The empty yard, that’s about it. Some detective types came out to look around, in suits, so they could have been doctors, but all the lights, and trucks were way out there, on the other end. Of course, they’d have to roll the body out through the tunnel, they weren’t going to cut the bars, then weld more up, let alone wheel that through the psychological trauma ward to traumatize anybody who might see it again. “You cold?”
“Hhuh?” I just realized I was shivering.
“No, I just. Huh, I guess trying to understand it, clinically, and analytically is another coping mechanism. I’m not coping with it as well as you or I assumed I might.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if I want somebody like that in my head, so maybe I’m better off not understanding it too well, either. I don’t think I’m capable of anything like that, but even he might not have known, if he was in denial.”
“Oh, no. I think that was a lie. The word, up there on the wall.” In feces. “Now that I have a chance to think about it, he brought him here. To the loony bin, or at least as close as he could get without breaking in. Huh!”
“What?”
“I think it was staged. The crime scene, there wasn’t enough blood.”
“Well, I don’t know how much blood is enough, it looked like plenty to me, but I guess a little goes a long way.”
“No, spatter. You remember how I thought he might have been smashed against the bars?”
“No, I think I said that.”
“Oh, right, but either way. All of the blood ran down. Straight down, but do you remember seeing any on the grass, or the bushes?’
“Oh, no. Huh, so what you’re saying is he killed him somewhere else, then bashed his head to make him bleed after he was already dead, and then pulled his pants town, and.” He made a face.
I nodded.
“It’s not just the, crap. It’s just the thought of how, he must have gotten it out, to smear it all over the wall.”
“Ugh!” I shook my head. “Well, thanks for that image!”
“Well, if he planned it, then he probably wore gloves.”
“Yeah, or maybe it was a crime of passion, and I’m mentally editing in, and out the details I didn’t notice. Like the blood.”
“Oh,” he looked down, and picked his foot up. “Is there any blood in the tread?” We’re both careful not to step in, any of the big puddles.
“Good idea.” I sat down to take my shoes off, and he looked away quick.
“What?” I pulled my skirt up, to my knees, and crossed my legs. “Oh, sorry.”
“It’s no problem, I just.” He took a deep breath, but it wasn’t steady, and then he shivered.
“It’s just what?”
She tied to swallow, and stuck his head in the corner of the sill, but he was really shaking now.
“It’s just a panic attack, I’ll handle it. Did you see any blood?”
“No, but that didn’t mean anything. It might be too dry to transfer, or it might have transferred to the dirt and grass on the way back across the yard. We didn’t leave any footprints, that made it all the way up 6 flights of stairs, so it’s honestly too late to check for evidence in our shoes. We walked too far.”
He nodded, and sat down on the sill.
“You feel better?”
“Yeah, uh. I have another phobia, and I didn’t think it would come up, but, it’s a weird one.” I just nodded, and he looked up, then he looked away. “It’s called Eurotophobia.”
“Well, that’s a clinical sounding word, so it’s easier to say than naming your fear. I’ll look that up later.”
“It’s all right, I think I’m past it, but I thought I was, before. About a lot of things, but what I’m afraid of is the sight of female, genitalia.” Even through the baggiest most boyish plain white medical undershorts you could probably imagine. They didn’t come even close to my crotch, you had to wear panties under them to hold liners close enough to the right position to do any absorbing, because you don’t want to risk any chance of your skirt blowing up out in the yard. Hell, I was the only girl brave enough to climb up past the boy’s floor to the top floor (Mostly administration, and storage) for fear that someone will jump out from the door from the ward and grab you on the landing.
“Oh,” probably could have guessed that, from what triggered it. “I never heard of that.”
“Childhood trauma.” He started pacing back, and forth, across the landing. “It’s hard to predict how it will affect you, but apparently.” Another, less ragged breath, “I don’t even remember the incident, but when I first got here. I started crying when I saw a baby getting a diaper change.”
“Because you’re in the, young children’s ward?”
“Yeah, they had a changing table in the playroom.” He shrugged, “I guess, I blocked out the actual memory, but according to my file, I thought that she’d lost her. Well, everything, that was supposed to be in there, because I’d never seen a girl’s. Well, a female, naked before.”
“You’re still traumatized from losing your family, so that can also make you more susceptible to being traumatized, even by something that’s normal and innocuous to most people.”
“Huh, I guess. Hah.” He laughed humorously, “I’ts a good thing that we can’t get access to pornographic pictures in here, but even the pictures in the bathroom make me pretty uneasy. So, I don’t look at them.”
“What pictures?”
“You know, oh. Right, I guess girls don’t draw pictures in the girl’s room to look at when they masturbate.”
“Well, I don’t know. Most of the ones here are scratched out, or at least have drops of nail polish, or lipstick dripping from them. I don’t think they fiddle with themselves looking at them though. I think it’s just a coping mechanism. A way to lash out at what hurt them, in effigy.”
“Look, it’s just the sight, I’m probably going to have to turn off the light when I get out of here, and try to date.” He pulled out something from his back pocket.
“What’s that?” He held up a pad, he swiped from some office or another. They keep pencils, and paper under lock and key, and if you want to shave your legs, you have to do it with a nurse present so she can make sure you don’t break the razor to get the blades out.
He peeled off the top one. “I put this over them, so I can masturbate.” A post-it type sticky note, but an off-brand, like most of the stuff in here. Unless we get a donation from Band-Aid, Vicks, or Kleenex. We don’t get donations from stationary companies, so much as medical ones.
He doesn’t want to say that he’s not gay, knowing that even that is suspicious, because he found the body. Right, you found the body. Why don’t you tell me all about it in this nice quiet room with nobody behind the mirror, set into the wall, like a window?
“Huh, don’t worry. We all have issues in here, and I don’t think you did it.”
“Well, of course I didn’t do it!” He took a deep breath, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”
“It’s okay,” I lied, when it wasn’t okay, because he yelled loud enough to echo in there. So, he sounded like my father.
“I just can’t stop thinking about how. I might have done it, if I did.”
;
Freddy (Mm Psyche)
I guess we hid out there, until they started searching the building for us, but the female nurse knew right where to look for Ana, of course.
“Oh, good.” She said, when she looked in from the door. “You better come with me. Go to bed, Ana. Lights out.”
She just nodded, and headded down.
“I found him too.” She grabbed my hand, and pulled me down the hall, but I didn’t fight her. I don;t fight anyone, I just freeze up whenever I’m bullied. “Are you all right?” She stopped, and knocked at a doctor’s office door. Looked me over, but she looked concerned.
“No, but I’m coping, with Ana.”
“Well, you might have to talk to the police tomorrow, but.” The door opened, and Dr. Lounds looked out.
“Come on in. Huh!” He just let the door knob go, and dragged himself to his desk.
“You look tired.”
“Long day, and I’m going to get overtime on this, so. There’s that.”
He didn’t offer me the seat. “I don’t know how to process this, but. You think you could help me understand him, a little better?”
“Who?”
“The killer, we’re working on a couple of theories.”
“Who’s we?”
“Oh, me and Ana Dobs.”
“Our own Nancy Drew,” he laughed, but I didn’t ask. “Is she okay?”
“No, of course not. Nobody here is, but I don’t think she’s any worse off for seeing that.”
“Well, she’s. Resilient.”
“She’s not as tough as she looks, but she’s pretty good at covering it.”
“So, what’re these theories you two are working on?”
“Well, there’s the obvious one, homophobia. The killer might be an internalized homophobe, that lashed out from an advance, reacted violently, then displaced his sexual frustration, painting his victim as the. Homosexual one.”
“You don’t have to watch your language, this is a. Graphic subject.”
“Well, I don’t like the word, it’s as bad as the N word, if not worse, and while I’m not gay, I don’t hate them either, but you think the police will suspect me?’
“You discovered the body, but you should be easy to rule out, with all the trace evidence.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but if your theory is correct, he didn’t think to bring a condom, since he wasn’t planning a sexual encounter. What’s her theory?”
“Well, she thinks it’s possible that the crime scene was staged, or a secondary crime scene.” I wandered over to the framed certificates on his wall. Never been in here before, but he’s got one in Clinical Psychiatry, which is Diagnosis, I think. He’s not a profiler, but he’s a hell of a lot more qualified than either of us.
“I think, if I’m hearing this right that that would make it the Tertiary Crime Scene.” He held up a finger. “The primary is wherever he picked the victim up, the secondary where he committed the murder, and the third where he dumped the body.”
“No Criminal Psychology degrees?”
“No, but I deal with the criminally insane, and testify in court all the time. I had enough experience working with detectives to pick some of it up.”
“We don’t have any profilers here.”
“Not on staff, but I’m sure I could find one to talk to.”
“For me to talk to?”
“If we explore this understanding what happened through better understanding the man who did it. I’m not a therapist, but I can discuss it with the therapist, and I’d think this is the kinda case where they’d bring in profiler.” He nodded. “If they haven’t already.”
“So soon?”
He nodded, “There’s not much I can say about an ongoing investigation, but they’ve already released a press release. This is the 2nd incident.”
“Like this, a murder like this?”
“Similar enough to connect them, yes.”
“So, he is a serial killer. How far apart?”
“Again, I can’t go into too many details.”
“I mean, how long ago was the first one?”
“Well, that doesn’t matter, for the purposes of profiling, because there’s only 2 points of data.” He got out a pen, and clicked it. “You see, if there’s 2 murders a year apart.” He Taped a paper, “Then it’s pretty easy to connect the dots.” Drew a line between them, “But it doesn’t paint much of a picture.”
He turned the page around, for all the good it did. Illustrated his point, though. “Once is an incident, twice coincidence, but 3 times is a pattern. So.” He made another dot. “If there’s another body, one year later, that’s evidence to suspect that it has something to do with the date. Especially if it’s the exact same date, it may be an anniversary of some significance, which points to a Repetition Compulsion.”
“Mhm?” I nodded, “I think it helps to think about what I saw more clinically, than emotionally. If that helps.”
“If it helps you, I’ll advise your therapists. Now, if it happens sooner, say 9 months later, then it may suggest acceleration.”
“But not if it’s random, like Alan Hobs. He attacked victims of opportunity, so there wasn’t any pattern to how often he attacked.”
“Also, there might be subtle pressures, stressors, or triggers that sets them off. What made Ana suspect that the scene might have been staged, to look like the attack happened there?”
“Lack of evidence, or blood spray outside of the bars, when he bashed his head against them. We haven’t ruled that out, but we can’t be sure whether there was blood spatter, or we missed it. Neither of us was thinking clearly until we got away, and had time to calm each other down.”
He flipped a page down, and ran his pencil over it. “I’m going to schedule a session with you, and her together. So we can see how you help each other cope.”
“And think more rationally than. I don’t mean to say emotionally, like we’re suppressing the emotions. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Mhm?” It’s a good idea to be as open, and honest with them as possible, while they’re trying to help you.
“It sounds too much like a sociopath, but it helps us slowly start to think about it, more than we feel about it, I think?”
“Well, I’ll pass that on to the therapist, as soon as I find one, but it’s late, and after lights out.” he checked his watch, “Yearh!” Yawned, “and it’s been a long day, so I’ll take you down to the dorm.”
“I’m definitely going to have nightmares.”
“Well, you are keeping a dream journal.”
“Of course.” It’s pretty standard, in class. English class, but of course we can bring it into therapy, if we think it’ll help.
“I saw Eurotophobia in your file, but I have to remind you, not to pursue any romantic attachments, or to display anything that may be misconstrued as affection, especially around the other patients.”
“No, of course not.”
“We’re also trying to. Contain the exposure, as much as possible, to avoid traumatizing anyone who may be in an emotionally fragile state.”
“Anyone else, besides me. I’ll run it bye the therapist tomorrow.” He unlocked the door from the stairwell to the hall.
On the boy’s floor, he waved to the orderly. “Here he is.” So he could get out his keys, an unlock the door. “Try to get some sleep.” He patted my shoulder, and said “Goodnight,” before closing the door behind me.
I was right, I had nightmares, and nothing but, but the disturbing thing was they were all trying to re-construct what happened. What he did to him from what little I saw, which just led my mind around in circles. Sexually violent circles, considering how brutal, and graphic what happened actually was.
“Huh!”
No, the truly disturbing part was waking up with an erection, over, and over again, with those images still fresh in my head.
;
Ana (Girls’ Talk)
“So,” the second I got back to the hall, “What’s with you, and fraidy cat Freddy?”
“Uh?” I shook my head, then realized that I couldn’t talk about, anything we’re talking about. “I don’t know, we talked about. Books, and stuff. Why do you call him that?”
“Because he’s a wimp, and he never fights back.”
“Yeah, so he gets his ass kicked all the time, or just runs away.”
“So, he’s a bit of a coward, he’s had it rough, we all have. You’d rather he was a violent sex offender?”
“Well, if he was a violent sex offender, then they wouldn’t let him out in the yard with us girls.”
“Huh, unless he’s like that.” I tried to think back, to the last one. “John, Johnny…” I snapped, “Gideon.”
“Oh yeah, he fucking LOST it!”
“Exactly, so just because he came in here as a victim doesn’t mean that he’s not going to lash out, and BECOME a violent sex offender, in here. And who the hell keeps drawing their castration fantasy pictures on the bathroom walls?”
That reminded me, so they all looked around, and played “Not me!”
“Well it wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, somebody’s been scratching out my best.” Someone, I’m not naming any names, pointed down, and shook 2 fingers suggestively “Fap material.”
“Well stop it, uh! Find a sheet of paper, or something. You know, there’s a lot of sex abuse victims here, so what do you expect? The last thing she’s gonna want to see first thing in the morning is a penis, when she’s just sitting down to take a piss.”
“All right, jeez. You sure get bossy when you’re not moping around, and reading.” She mimed a knife “Nyink nyink stories.”
“Huh!” I just pulled my nightgown on, and skipped the pajama bottoms, to throw myself in bed. “Well, if I’m going to write my memoires some day, I heah!” Yawn.
“Who want to read your Girl Interrupted ripoff anyway?”
“Huh! I’ve already had offers, too many offers to write my story. The daughter of Alan Hobs, are you kidding?” Not to mention the fact that writing Alana so that’s the same width as Hobs makes the Hobs part bigger on the cover, according to my publicist.
“Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of sick fucks out there, too.”
“Speaking of sick fucks…” I just put my pillow over my head, and tuned it out.
“Can you shut the door on the way out? You better get to your dorms before lights out.”
…
So then, I didn’t get to see him again, until I got pulled out of class, for an unscheduled therapy session. “I don’t have an appointment until 3:45.” It turns out, he scheduled it, with a Dr. Hannibal.
“No relation,” she assured me, but she read, “I see you checked Red Dragon out of the library.” Not the hospital library, I had to go to the public library, but of course they checked my our bags when we got back, just to make sure we didn’t try to smuggle anything in.
They wouldn’t let me bring in “The Silence of the Lambs,” because they know that one, but they just flipped through the pages, to make sure there weren’t any razor blades, or sheets of acid. That’s the second book anyway, so I’ll read it later.
I nodded, “You read it?”
“Of course,” she rolled her eyes, then Freddy came in. Or they let him in, and I contained my excitement. I know, we’re supposed to avoid any emotional attachment, with boys, or girls if you swing that way, because it won’t help our recovery, and if we get caught making out. What, they’ll lock me in my room?
“Now, you’re here to discuss what you found on the grounds, but it says here you’re requesting a criminal psychologist, preferably a profiler?”
She looked up, “Yeah, it’s driving me nuts, and it’s not so much what I saw as what I didn’t see, but all last night, my mind tried to fill in the blanks, but they are violent, homosexual blanks.”
“Well, I’m not supposed to discuss sexuality with you, but I don’t think there’s anyway around it, so.” She got out a sheet of paper, “You’ll have to read this, and sign it.” I’m not going to copy all the waivers, and forms of consent from memory, but you have some idea, just how much paperwork is involve, to avoid even accusations of inappropriate contact between the staff, and vulnerable minors in a children’s hospital.
So, he did most of the talking, since he had the most issues, concerning the sexual aspects of the crime. I was having a lot more trouble with the Murder, the violence, and the biological fluids. the blood at least as much as the fecal matter, and the sexual fluid I spotted before I could look away.
I stared into the abyss too long. Maybe a few minutes, and now it was staring back. Following me around, breathing on my neck, and ambushing me in my sleep.
“What about you, any nightmares?”
“Any more than normal?” I tore out the sheets from my dream journal, and she said. “Hm.” Her eyes scanning the first few lines. Then, she flipped back through some pages. “This is incredibly well written.”
“Well, about all I do is read and right, so yeah. My English is at the like.” I had to think. “9th grade. Level?” I shook my head. “My math sucks, though.”
I’m alrerady long past giving up my dreams of being a professional profiler, cop, or pretty much any other field that requires a background check. How long were you locked up in a psyche ward? I’ll settle for fiction, it’s a lot less disturbing if you know that it never really happened, but that requires learning prose, and grammar, and…
Runon…
Stuff.
So, we let her go, and, ‘So,” he stopped in the halls. “What do you dream about?”
“We’re not there yet. I trust you, but my nightmares?” I shook my head, “We’re not there yet.”
“Well, you wrote 3 pages this morning.”
“And that’s incomplete. I’m cursed with almost perfect recollection of my dreams. It sucks, most people are lucky to forget their dreams.”
“Yeah, I’m not jealous at all, but if you mind if we talk about that?”
“Your dreams?” he nodded, “Now?”
“Over lunch?”
“I’m not hungry, so we better go up to my office.”
“The stairwell?”
“Yeah.” It’s private, and I can’t believe how quickly I invited him back up. After what happened, or what we saw of it. After it happened. “Huh, I usually go up there to get away, and be left alone.”
“You’re an introvert.”
“I don’t know. Never got the chance to be too social.”
“Well, around here, it’s a good idea to avoid most people anyway. I’m trying not to get too paranoid myself, but why do you trust me?”
“Huh! Honestly? Because you came to me, I think. You trusted my opinion, and I was the first one you thought of when a body turned up.”
“You’re the only one that I thought could understand it, and help me to understand it, rationally.”
“Uh! We’re surrounded by doctors! Psychologists, criminal psychologists, emotional trauma therapists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors. I’m only 12 years old!”
“I know, and that’s the part that none of them can help me with, because they’re not. They’re too professional, and I have to stop to ask them every other second what that means, because we haven’t covered it yet. Well, that and like you said. You’ve done little more than read, and write about serial killers for, how long?”
“Well, what makes you think that this is a serial killer?”
“Oh, sorry. You weren’t there, but Dr. A Doctor, one of the administrators mentioned it, while he was scheduling more therapy. This was victim number 2.”
“Really? Who was victim number one?”
“He couldn’t tell me that.”
“Oh, right. I forgot, so he couldn’t tell you when, where, or, pretty much anything else.”
“Well, he told me enough about the methodology of pattern.” So, he showed me the 3 dots. “Once is an instance, twice a coincidence, 3 times is a pattern.”
“Huh!” So then, we just ignored bells, and skipped, but the next few hours were spent going through his loop, and teaching him how to break the cycle, when he kept circling back around the same thing, over, and over again.
Which took a long time, because I’m not a psychotherapist, and Repetition Compulsion isn’t one of my many, many problems. So, I didn’t have any experience with those techniques, either. It was frustrating, but at least I got to where I could point it out, and he could say “Sorry, I’m doing it again.” And stop.
“Well, what I need you for is all the. Male stuff, that’s the part that I can’t understand, because it’s a male rapist, and a male victim.”
“Well, why do we assume that he’s male?”
“Trace evidence. Fluids.” I rolled my eyes, “Sexual fluids.”
“Semen?” I nodded, “Are you sure?’
“Pretty sure.” He took my word for it.
“Okay, so I guess the next question is whether it was the victim’s or the killer’s.”
“Well, unless the victim ejaculated onto the back of his shirt, and the killer put it back on after, I’m guessing it was the killer’s.”
“Okay, so that rules out fingers, or a strapon.”
“A what?”
“A strapon, dildo? Oh right, I keep forgetting you’re 12.”
“What do you need to strap a dildo onto?” Of course, I’d heard the girls talk, so I knew what a dildo was, and I thought I knew what they’re for.
“Well, mostly for lesbians, so one can play the man.”
“Oh! You strap it on.” I waved my hands over the general area, before I remembered that he’s afraid of the genital area, but he didn’t look scared. “Wait, why do lesbians have to take turn pretending to be the man?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. Me talking about lesbians having sex is like. You talking about what you heard about gay men having sex.”
“Oh, good point.”
“The point is that such things exist, so if a woman wanted to murder her husband, or boyfriend, then make it look like it was a fit of homophobic rape, she could do it, but she couldn’t leave semen on his back, so that theory’s out.”
“Huh?” I nodded. “Uh huh?” But then that got me thinking about 2 women with a strap-on dong, taking turns being the man. “Sorry, yeah, you’re right.” I think I just had my first lesbian fantasy, that was a fantasy. Instead of some poor girl in therapy group talking about how her mother molested her, or getting assaulted in the bathroom stall, or waking up in the dark after lights out so she has no idea who held her mouth and felt her up…
Because that sort of thing doesn’t just happen on the boy’s side. I guess that was the first time I thought about 2 women having consensual sex, instead of one sexually assaulting or abusing the other.
My problem is that I never got a good experience of anything normal. So, that was the hardest thing to learn.
I can’t even dream of being normal, because I don’t even know what that box looks like, from the outside. I’ve never been close enough to see it. Like this, friendship. He was my friend, my first real friend, and boyfriend. Yeah, we’ll get to that too, but it’s not even a question of Best friend.
I would have to have 2, to make that assessment.
;
Freddy (mG Talk…)
One of the things you hear a lot from therapists is “These things take time.” Well, talking about my dreams, so she could interrupt me when the record skipped back also helped her open up about her’s. Like trusting her with the crime scene helped gain her trust, so I was invited back up to her safe place.
“Huh, well I guess I understand your Eurotophobia a little better. Uhm, what’s it called when it’s male. Parts, instead of female?”
“I don’t know,” don’t really have a problem with that, yet.
“Huh, well. After lights out, the girls ambushed me in the halls, and asked me about you, because they’d seen us together and.” She turned around, holding her hands so they didn’t shake, and looked out the window.
Not much to see, because they wouldn’t let us out to play, or walk around the yard. Instead of [Police Line] tape, they put up [Caution: Biohazard] tape with the little red trefoil we knew from around the hospital, but the story was that a dead animal turned up in the drain, so they burned a few rabies and TB tests to sell it, and the cops dressed up as Animal Control to take pictures, and samples on the outside. I assume that most of the evidence, and cleanup was on the inside, but at least it didn’t rain.
“Huh, well I didn’t find out who’s been defacing all the graffiti in the restrooms, but one of the girls admitted that she drew some of it for. Fap material, she called it.”
“Oh.”
“So, somebody, or my guess is that a lot of girls, that were sexually attacked scratched them out, and only one of them was creative enough to add nail polish so it looked like it was dripping blood.”
“Well, thanks for that image. I guess we’re even.”
“Hhuh!” She shivered, but I didn’t ask if she was cold. One of those shivers, I know how that feels. “Well, I guess that’s why I added a detail, to the crime that didn’t happen. Last night, in my dreams.”
“He wasn’t castrated?’ I guessed. “Wait, you saw it?”
“Yeah, I kinda regret getting down to look under his, shirt.”
“So, he was flaccid.”
“Of course, no pulse?”
“Well, I heard somewhere that a body can have an erection, especially with rigor mortis.”
“No, that’s usually only from hanging, stranglings, smothering, and asphyxiation.” She said, as if she was talking about the weather. Partly sunny, unseasonably warm, and asphxiation, with a chance of necrophila.
“Hm.” I swallowed that thought. “So you had a castration nightmare.”
“No, I. Uh. Huh!” She shook her head. “I woke up.” She turned around, “And then I had to go to the bathroom, take a shower, and get dressed for class.”
“Okay.”
Her face got really red, and she looked down. Shrugged, and turned away. “I never really thought about. Sex. Before. I mean consensual sex, not rape, molestation, bestiality, frotteurism, picarism…”
“You lost me on those last two.”
“I never tried to. Play with myself, oh!” She turned away, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“What for?’ I shook my head.
“You’re not. Well, I don’t guess, you always get triggered to a panic attack.”
“No, I.” Thought about it. Then, I tried to think about it, but I couldn’t. “I think I mentally blocked it? No, I just. Feel more concerned about you, because you sounded upset. Why, because you couldn’t? I mean, you said you tried to, so what happened. Did you get interrupted?”
“Huh, I don;t know, if upset is the right word. I just feel a little disturbed, because I got so aroused, looking at the picture on the door.”
“Well, what was the.” We were talking about. Castration. “Uh!” I shook my head.
“So, thanks for that image.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh no. I mean it.” She hopped up on her toes, and kissed my cheek. “Thanks.” Then she skipped off, back down the stairs.
“Well, when I said we’re even, I did’t mean for you to get me back!” I didn’t follow her. I waited until I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs. “Wait.”
Then I realized. All the doors are locked, for this side. Except for the one at the bottom of the stairs, because it’s a fire escape. I don’t have the keys, if I did than i could get into the offices, or the girl’s floor, but she’s not supposed to be out there.
In the yard, with the crime scene. She said that she trusted me. Enough for me to come up here, where she came to be left alone. Her space, her office, her little princess tower where nobody would come bother her.
I didn’t even realize that ment that I trusted her. In her lair, her comfort zone. It didn’t even occur to me, until she admitted to playing with herself, fantasizing to a a picture of castration, with nail polish blood.
“Hhuh?”
There. There’s the panic attack. Better late than never?
;
Author
I don;t know if I can go on. This is hard to write, on so many level, but if you see something you like, let me know. There’s plenty of bother impregnates sister writers on this site, to fill all of those requests. I’m not going to try to compete with them…
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