I finished all my essays today, and I thought it shouldn’t hurt to share my Creative Fiction here – if the Uni asks, I can prove this is mine.
So yeah, here it is, very very Dexter-inspired.
Hear My Whispers In The Dark
These things tend follow a pattern, a routine that I sit through on auto-pilot, like the period of time between the wake-up alarm and the key in the ignition. Almost every aspect of my Ritual is done on auto-pilot, though I have to admit I do take pleasure in some parts.
I’ve often wondered – and I’m wondering again now, watching her show the first signs of consciousness – why I always wait for them to wake up. I suppose that the only variation I get in my Ritual is the conversation, which is why I let them wake up, just so I can talk to them. One can say that I am lonely, but I don’t like being around people enough for that to apply. I simply like to be stimulated by conversation.
“Where am I?” This is always the first question. I can’t blame her for the lack of originality; one moment she was about to get into her car – a normal, safe place in her life – and the next she wakes up in mine. The sense of displacement…I know that feeling. Except unlike for her, my experience won’t be ending within the next hour, but continue every day, no matter where I go. Everyone I see looks like me, but the things I do on a daily basis exist only in the most horrifying corners of their conscience.
I am that monster that slinks into people’s thoughts at night, the one who whispers ideas from the darkness.
The next part is interesting. I think I can tell what kind of conversation I will have just by what they do next. The kind that struggle, well, they’re bound to be the aggressive kind. Stupidly in denial, they would (try to) tear at their plastic wrap-trap, fighting against what they already know until the last strained breath.
I really like the ones who silently see what is happening to them, and then resign themselves to cry. They say they deserve it, because they’re guilty of one thing or another. I don’t really care about what they did; but I do like hearing their stories. If someone like me can have friends, I would call them my friends.
She says nothing, even though I know she’s fully coherent. I feel a small swell of satisfaction that I’d managed to find the better kind.
I dim the lights, like a cinema before the movie starts. I like going to the cinemas, and when the lights dim I’d know I am in for a treat. Maybe that’s why I dim the lights for her, and for the ones like her. Without the light, I get to see a great show without any light to distract me.
“Do you know why you’re here?” I ask. There isn’t actually a reason, apart from my own personal needs, but I like to know what she’ll say.
She still doesn’t answer, but she’s looking straight up at me. She’s fat – I wouldn’t pick her otherwise – so I try not to look at her body bulging under the layers of plastic wrapping. She’s not beautiful either, but under the dimmed light, and with her damp hair loosely framing her face, I can bear to look at her. She’ll look a lot better against the dark crimson of her own blood.
“Alright then, do you know who I am?” She moves her head side-to-side as far as the tape allows. She still doesn’t speak, but I can tell she is starting to abandon her initial shock.
I turn up the light again, drowning her imperfections. I move around the surrounding shadows, readying my equipment. The clanging of the blood collection tub that I toss unceremoniously near her head stirs some urgency into her.
“What is that? What’s it for?” she asks, starting to shift in her restraints. Once that shifting starts, it usually never stops, until I stop it.
“It’s to collect your blood. I find that having to mop it up is very hard work.” I pick up a pair of rusting scissors and a big, black garbage bag from the bench-top. Cutting a large hole into the bottom of the bag. I slip it over my head, and rip the plastic at the sleeves. I wrap the torn plastic around my arms, securing it with rubber-bands, making myself a disposable shirt with sleeves. Over this shirt, I put on my stained apron. During all this, she is quiet, but fully aware of every move I make; her breathing stops every time I make an exceptionally loud sound.
“Why are you going to kill me?” she asks the moment I appear in her field of vision.
“Well, there isn’t a section at the butcher’s for my liking, so I basically have to go out into the farm, or what you would call your neighbourhood, and kill one for myself.” I lean closer to her distastefully ugly face, “I’m just being a smart-arse. Yeah, I’m going to eat you.”
Her eyes grow big, as her face expands to accommodate for the sudden surplus of fear. The monster has swaggered into the light, announcing itself. But the thing that is really making her writhe harder in her bonds is the realization that the monster had always been there, just beyond the pool of light.
“Will it hurt?”
Of all the before-meal conversations I’ve had (that I remember, anyway), this is the first time that someone has accepted their fate so quickly.
“Will it hurt? Is that all you’re going to ask? I’m going to be eating you! Bleed you out, cut you up, and skin you! You’ll be made into stew, roast, stir-fry…come on!” I slam a fist down onto her torso, immediately regretting bruising her flesh. “Beg for your life! Don’t you want to get out? For fuck’s sake, woman!” She stares into my eyes, a glow burning in her eyes from the reflection of the light.
“Why would I beg? There’s no way of getting out,” she shifts slightly, and then closes her eyes, breathing out like she’s waiting for her attractive masseur to start on her. Through her closed eyelids, I can still feel the embers of that glow.
“Yes, yes it will hurt. I will cut your carotid artery, and let you bleed out. This table can be tilted sideways, and your blood will flow through these little channels on the table here, and into this tub. Through all this, you cannot move. I am good at this; I’ll make sure to draw out the bleeding for as long as possible. The only consolation I can give you,” I completely turn off the light, and wait until the friendly darkness has settled heavily before continuing, “is that at the end, you’ll be able to see ‘the light’ that you so believe in.”
In the darkness, just below me, I hear her breathing, slowly and deliberately. I synchronise my breathing with hers, pushing out my rare anger and pulling in a lungful of my old friend. The smoothness of my Ritual comes back to me.
When the lights go back on, she is different, her eyes are just another part of her flesh. I don’t want to talk to her, and I definitely don’t want to look at her. I’m simply hungry, and this is a step I have to take before I can satiate that hunger. I move to my bench. The familiar layout of my equipment brings the buzz back into my arms. I tug out two latex gloves, put them on, and pick up my scalpel. Moving back towards the table, I survey over the mass before me, making a final decision, and cut into the carotid artery by the side of the neck. A pool of dark red forms almost immediately, its clean integrity smeared by squirming. I slip the scalpel in my apron pocket, and move to the crank by the table. A few turns of the handle, and the pool of red slide down past her left shoulder and start rolling steadily into the tub.
I tear off my right glove, and turn on some music. Every piece of equipment that is in this room has its use in different steps of my Ritual, and my speakers have served me well. Chris Martin’s voice drowns out the growing whimpers from the table. Grabbing a chair, I dim the lights to the weakest rays, sit by the table, and wait.
Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you.
Alex.
the life and laughs of me 