Into the Darkness

Chapter 2

Walking slowly, trying not to show his relief and excitement at getting another set of prescriptions to devour and thrive from, David worked his way to the checkout window where Erin awaited his arrival.  Rarely did Erin the receptionist ever make direct eye contact with David, there was something about him that really put her on edge, made her feel like creepy crawlies were all over her spine, causing a brain awakening shiver to run the length of her back.  I suppose we all have certain aspects of our jobs that we dislike, David Dahmer just happened to be that aspect for Erin.

Murmuring something to himself the entire way down the hallway, David drew closer to the after-appointment processing area.  Erin had his appointment card already scribbled up with November eleventh on it following a one o’clock and an ‘at’ symbol.  Her handwriting even portrayed the fear she had in her heart for David, if one looked closely enough, they would notice a slight tremble accompanying her penned letters and numbers.  

With a flannel button up shirt buttoned up to the top notch and tightly tucked into his denim pants, David plopped both of his pale hands up on the counter, “All done, my love.  One week from…”  Erin pushed the appointment card out of the service window and under David’s index finger, interrupting his thoroughly rehearsed exit speech.

Glancing up and back down again very quickly, “Twenty dollars, Mr. Dahmer.  Be safe and we will see you next week.”  David handed over a crisp twenty dollar bill he received from the bank just yesterday.  He worked for a small mom and pop shop working on lawnmower engines and the such.  It kept him busy and mentally sharp, as far as small engine repair knowledge went.  Mostly and more importantly, this work kept David from too much interaction with other folks.  The general public around these parts tended to keep their distance from Mr. Dahmer, just to be safe.

Erin quickly grabbed the twenty-dollar bill, retreated her hand back on her side of the counter, and promptly shut the plexiglass divider.  None of this seemed odd to David, this is how everyone acted when he was around.  To him, this is just how life was and he was the one that acted normally and respectfully, everyone else just acted like assholes.  

For the first time in his life, David was about to address the actions of others and attempt to correct Erin and how she treated him.  Just as he was about to open the plexiglass divider and give her a good tongue wagging, something caught his eye, deep in his peripheral.  It was Sasha, she was waving him out of the hallway and into the waiting room.  Her black low-cut blouse and skintight black pants stuck out like a sore thumb against the soft off-white walls surrounding her.

Her crooked eyeliner was eating away at David’s OCD, but there was certainly nothing he could do about it, nothing polite at least.  With an aggressive wisp, “Let’s go, David.  Don’t you have somewhere to be?  Leave little Erin alone, today is not the day that you take your stand.  That day is coming soon, but you’re not ready yet.”  During her degrading monologue, Sasha began bleeding, melting actually.  Her face began to drag down, as if gravity were three or four times its normal strength but only on her face.  Blood oozed from her eyes, but she did not flinch.  Her skin drooped heavily, but she did not react.  Her bones became exposed, but she did not mention it.

David immediately boiled over in fear, he had seen something like this before, his mother’s face when she was pulled from the house fire that killed her, the fire that David accidentally started while playing with a box of matches in the kitchen while his parents slept.  Over a decade and a half ago, that’s about right, the hero of our story, David Dahmer, accidentally had experience murdering humans, this would be the catalyst of his life.  Please do not ask me, your humble narrator, to explain why a twenty-year-old David was playing with matches. 

Scared and quivering with terror, David bolted from the checkout counter, past Sasha, and threw himself out of the door labelled ‘Winchester Psychiatric, LLC’.  The flashbacks to that night were incapacitating; a severe panic entered David’s body, filling him with a psychological cement.  He would soon be paralyzed, trapped in his own body, if this level of panic continued.  

Still framed pictures of his mother, Delila, burnt and charred, being carried out on a paramedics’ stretcher bounced between David’s ears.  The fire had reached his parents’ bedroom before they even had time to wake up, this left little time to make smart decisions, no time to save themselves.  David stood with a fireman and fought the first responder’s attempts to shield his view.  He didn’t know it then, but damn he really wished he had not seen what he saw.  Forever etched into his brain, the images of his medium-well mother, dead because of him, would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Like a barbie doll stolen by a little girl’s older brother and held to an open flame, Delila’s face had practically liquified.  Her cheeks tear dropped flesh, giving her an extraterrestrial type of appearance.  Flesh and muscle stood absolutely no chance when battling against flames; Delila's face was proof of that fact.  Unfortunately for everyone, Jeffrey (The soon to be Milwaukee Monster) was able to escape the inferno.  The screams of his parents dying didn’t bother David, they sounded like animals holding a conversation in the middle of a field, but the smell of cooked human flesh, that lingered with David to this very day.  It certainly stayed at the front of Jeffrey's mind considering what he chose to do later on in life.

As the blinding glimpses of his dead mother blocked his view, David did his best to capture the vicinity of the bus stop as the pictures slideshowed before his eyes.  The sound of the door opening behind him ceilinged the panic running through his veins.  Sasha had followed him outside, she placed a heavy arm around David as he struggled to clear his head, “What’s the deal, Dave?  Are you going to just stand here all day looking at pics of your dead mommy or are we going to get out of here and go cause some trouble?”

David had never had a girl’s arm around him before, that thought helped to pull him from the torment of panic and back to reality, “Trouble?  Wait, how do you know all this about me?  Why are you talking to me?”  He was running the gambit of emotions right now as a different type of panic entered his brain.  Side note, there are some good types of panic, normal people call those occasions excitement.    

Looking down at his shoulder, David watched as Sasha’s red polished nails transformed right before his eyes into razor sharp talons that resembled those of a hawk or eagle.  Sasha leaned her mouth right next to David’s waiting ear, “We can cause all sorts of trouble if we want to.  You’re crazy, that’s a get out of jail free card, Dave.”  A sharp pain engulfed David’s shoulder as the newly formed talons attached to Sasha’s fingers sunk into his flesh.  Dime sized dots of blood took up real estate on his flannel top, the crimson blended into the red and black square pattern of his shirt.

As his five o’clock shadowed jaw dropped, ready to unleash a horrifying scream, Sasha's warm breath enveloped his ear, “You can’t scream, I assure you, you are literally unable to scream right now.  So, are you going to go cause some trouble or should I continue to bloodlet you in a very unorthodox way?”  To emphasize her point, Sasha gave her sunken fingers a little wiggle.  

Unable to escape the pain rushing through his body, David nodded, “Yes, okay.  Let’s go cause some trouble.  Just please let go of my shoulder.”  Tears raced one another down David’s face, the pain from the puncture wounds and the pain from reliving his parents' demise was just too much to handle right now.  With each drop of heavy, salty tears, David felt slightly better.  Obviously, the physical pain was still eating away at him but releasing emotions, he rarely did that.  Poor David had a very hard time getting to that level of emotion, it felt good to him, euphoric.    

To finish off the creepiness of this encounter, Sasha outlined David’s boxy ear with a skinny forked tongue, “That ‘a boy.  Let’s get to the bus, we can decide where the trouble will start once we get moving.” She continued to manipulate David’s earlobe with her forked tongue, removed her talons from his shoulder, and gave him a big smack on the ass.

Off they went, onto the bus to do God knows what.