Richard’s
face felt red-hot and tears blurred his vision at the corners of his
empty, blue eyes. Anna screamed at him with the same old complaint--how
she wished that he would scream back. At least it would be some kind
of response, she said, at least she could tell that he felt something.
He
felt nothing.
He
gazed down at his left hand; it was clenched into a white-knuckled fist.
It was warm and wet inside that fist. He used his other hand to pry
back the fingers and revealed four crescent shaped cuts lined up in
a row and his fingernails highlighted with his own blood. He blinked,
but they were still there, like a child’s drawing of waves on a
sea.
Still,
he felt nothing; not even that paper-cut like stinging pain in his hand.
It did not even annoy him.
The
closest thing to feeling was that cold, hard spot in the middle of his
stomach, that twisted him and pointed him towards the door.
Richard
walked from the house, casually, leaving the door ajar and paying no
attention to the swear words or the vase full of dark red roses that
hurled past him from inside the house. The vase shattered on the walk
into a million pieces, and the swears hung in the night air a million
miles away.
X
X X
“I’ve
known Anna pretty much my whole adult life, and she’s been my little
‘belle the whole time ... we really (avoids eye-contact) love each
other, true love ... that’s so rare ... she’s the only person
that understands me ... she understands what I did to those other women
... Yeah, (picks at fingernails) the doctors think there’s a correlation
... I just don’t see it; Anna’s been nothing but good for
me ... no, (frowning) she hasn’t come to visit me here yet ...”
X
X X
“Richard’s
problems with women stem from his relationships with them ... now I
know that seems obvious enough to us, but not to Richard ... he can’t
harm anyone he loves--no, love is too careless a choice of word ...
anyone he needs, he can’t hurt ... people are surprised when they
learn that he never once even raised his hand to Anna Riley, but that’s
part of his problem ... in the simplest of terms, that’s why Richard
murders women ...”
X
X X
Richard
strolled slowly down the street, absently searching his pockets for
a pack of cigarettes. He wiped his palm onto his pant-leg until there
was no blood left on it and chewed his fingernails down until the bloodied
ends were spit into the grass and his hand looked normal.
He
stopped beneath a street lamp and tugged his fingers in the wrong direction
until the little cuts opened like they were breathing and he could see
the gleam of the insides.
The
cuts did not bleed, like it never happened.
But
it did happen; things happened--even if he forgot them.
If
Richard ever chose to reflect on his life, which was seldom, he could
remember most of it. But there were dark shapeless patches hiding things
from him; images glimpsed in his mind’s peripheral vision that
vanished if he looked for them directly.
He
remembered his mother and her dusty gray hair pulled back into a bun
so tight it seemed to stretch her whole face. But he couldn’t remember
the times she locked him in the cellar with the black, hissing rats,
or the time she caught him playing with himself and what she threatened
to do if he did it again. He remembered all his childhood pets fondly,
but not how they had died.
And
he remembered the first time he met Anna, but not the fights they had,
not even the one a moment ago.
Richard
held onto the good things and forced them to fill his mind, using them
to keep up his act, to keep everyone thinking he was normal. He pushed
the bad into that cold hard thing in the middle of his stomach. That
hidden horrible thing that he really was--that thing he really wanted
to be, because nothing could harm it, it was just too cruel.
And
when it took hold of him, when he glimpsed it on the surface of his
mind, it overwhelmed him because it came at once in a huge wave and
not as memories, but as emotion and energy.
A
droplet of blood popped from a cut and fell off his hand. He heard it’s
flat smack against the concrete.
He
opened his cold, hard eyes and felt the need to find that temporary
vessel--that something or someone he could control and pass these emotions
onto, at least for a little while.
X
X X
“Well,
sometimes ... things get by me ... I (sighs) just have to do things
... nothing I’m proud or ashamed of, but just ... damn ——
I can’t explain it ... it’s like (runs fingers through hair)
there’s another side to me, but that side is still ... me ... (softer)
I don’t know how to vocalize it ...”
X
X X
“Long
ago, Richard began pushing his bad thoughts and feelings aside ... not
dismissing them, hiding them ... he can’t deal with emotions like
you or I, so he puts these extensive blocks on his feelings ... he suppresses
almost all of his feelings and thoughts until they consume him ... sometimes
it’s as if, emotionally, he isn’t even there ...”
X
X X
Richard
watched from the alley as the woman pushed the baby stroller, framed
perfectly between the two brick walls and black sky for a brief second
as if it were some macabre postcard.
Even
as he stared at her, he could not distinguish her details or features,
for she assumed the guise of the woman--the woman that plagues his dreams
and whispers to him in the night.
He
had first met the woman as a child. She would come to him in his dreams
and fall in love with him. He would not forget her in the morning like
he forgot his other dreams, but she would fade as the day played out.
In
the past two years while awake, Richard had seen the woman seven times.
Every time he had met her like it was brand new again. Every time she
fell in love with him again, and every time she died.
Richard
stepped out of the alley and walked down the street to attack, rape,
and kill a woman for the eighth time.
X
X X
“The
dreams started when I was a child ... they weren’t violent really
... not at first ... they seemed just fine (eyes closed) to me ... they
got worse as I got older ... blood ... I don’t know, it doesn’t
matter (unblinking) I don’t have dreams anymore ...”
X
X X
“Richard’s
fantasies, more or less, are the only images in his head he can’t
stop, so they control him the most ... in them, he kidnaps a woman and
takes her to his secret hiding place and she falls in love with him
... but when that leap from dreams to reality is made, the women don’t
love him and he is forced to make them ... or rape them ... this hurts
him, this is not turning out the way he planned, so he kills them ...
the killing was always like an afterthought ... I don’t think he
ever planned to ...”
X
X X
Richard
followed her for blocks, moving his head with the sway of her white
shoulders. He stuck to the shadows at first, but she looked better from
under the lights.
She
glanced behind her for the forth time and this time he did not avert
his eyes, or whistle softly. He smiled. She moved faster.
He
stepped harder in his shoes so she could hear him behind her.
She
moved even faster, the stroller weaving and off balance. The baby made
little sob sounds.
He
became anxious, almost giddy, a new energy moved and pointed him towards
the woman. It was close to pleasure and it was the only feeling that
ever excited him.
His
whole life he lived without care or concern from behind a kind of glass,
like it all happened to someone else.
But
Richard felt real now.
X
X X
“God,
this is even harder to describe (bites tongue in teeth) ... it’s
like it gave me a rush, kind of a ... charge, you know? I knew that
they knew that I was following them ... they were scared (traces circle
on table with index finger) and I liked it ... I liked it ... it was
(half smiling) my favorite part ...”
X
X X
“It
gave Richard control, the upper hand ... to use a cliché, he
was the hunter and, she was the hunted ... but what Richard won’t
admit is that he saw these women as Anna ... even though he could never
hurt her, in his mind he was turning them into Annabelle Riley ...”
X
X X
Richard
laughed as she tore blindly up a walk to a house that wasn’t her
own. She got off half a scream before he clamped her mouth shut with
his strong hand.
He
threatened her, and she fought back with everything she had. He threatened
her baby, and she stopped.
She
held the baby up to him with watery eyes and said something he couldn’t
hear.
He pried the baby from her hands and held it gently, caressing the baby’s
face. Even when the woman went into the house and used the phone, he
never moved.
If
Richard could have waded through his mind during those moments he would
have seen that he never thought of Anna the whole time.
X
X X
“I
remember it ... every second of it ... I remember telling her that if
she didn’t let me do what I wanted, I would smash her baby’s
head against the wall ... and then she just showed the baby to me ...
I wasn’t thinking anything ... I don’t know how she didn’t
get killed ... it was nothing I did ... (clapping his hands) oh yeah,
the baby kept crying, I remember how I wanted it to fucking shut up
... so I just kept rocking it ...”
X
X X
“Richard
was trying to kill Annabelle, and that’s why he never stopped killing
... she was always still alive ... and Miss Jones is very lucky she
didn’t become the eighth Annabelle Riley ... uh, yes, I have an
opinion on what happened with the infant ... if you, uh, go back to
Richard‘s, uh, childhood, it‘s ... obvious, that, uh ... ”
X
X X
The
arrest meant nothing to Richard. He even absently told the police where
two of his victims that still hadn’t been found were buried. When
they asked him why he let the woman with the stroller live, he merely
shrugged. When they tried to take the baby from his arms, he was reluctant,
but eventually complied, giving the baby one final pat on the head.
The
reports in the papers and on TV meant nothing to him either, he didn’t
care, and he felt nothing if except the occasional boredom.
In
his suit, thick reading glasses, and with his notebook, he sat in the
courtroom and listened to the horrible things he had done. But it didn’t
move him. He wrote in his notebook through the entire trial, and wouldn’t
respond when asked what he was writing.
While
the woman with the stroller gave her testimony, Richard filled his notebook,
scribbling a line from margin to margin like waves a child would draw,
holding a crayon like a dagger, and making stabbing, sweeping motions
across the page.
