Havernathy (Death of a Murderer)
This is the land of the dead. There was less life here than at a mortuary, and that’s saying something, considering how everyone here was (sadly) very much alive. I should know, I’ve seen more death than most surgeons. Although, when they saw it, it was due to an accident. For me, it was usually because I had shoved a knife into their abdomen.
My family had no idea about my secret life. I had four daughters and no sons. They always thought that I was out at a sports bar or going fishing, anything remotely masculine to get me away from the cloud of glitter that I breathed in whenever I was in that house. And my wife, rest her soul. didn’t think a thing whenever I told her that I was going out. For most wives, whenever your husband leaves the house for hours at a time three days out of the week, an alarm bell goes off. But not my wife.
Thankfully for me, my girls shared the same naivety as their mother, not even when they were well into their teens. They grew up thinking that having their dad not be there when they were going to bed was perfectly normal, as long as he was there when they woke up.
Although this did end up biting me in the ass when Lily was none the wiser to her husband's affair, it did give me plenty of time for myself.
Originally I was going to sports bars. I was going to a lot of sports bars. I managed to hide my drinking problem, but as the compulsions screamed louder and louder, it became harder to ignore. I started missing work, faking illness, and going on fake business trips just so I could spend some time at the bars. Eventually though, my addiction was replaced by something else. Something that would spark an energy into my heart that liquor never did. Death, is what gave me life.
You hear about hit and runs all the time, but until you’ve been in one, you can never really know what they’re like. No, I wasn’t the victim, although if I was, many lives could have been spared. June Haverly was killed on May 13th, 1989 in a car accident. Of course I was intoxicated, I never would’ve done that in my right mind (I was an excellent driver). After the second thud as she passed under the back tires finished echoing across the deserted highway, I calmly stopped the car and shut off the keys. Cautiously, still hoping it was a deer and not the bespectacled thirteen year old girl I had seen riding her bike just moments ago, I stepped out of the car.
With quavering steps of hardened lead, I made my way over to the twitching form of June Haverly. Her glasses broken, yet still on her head, did nothing to damper the intense look of fear in her auburn eyes. Looking into those mirrors of the soul, it was as if my mind sobered up in an instant. The clarity I felt at that moment, staring into her eyes, it was like alcohol had been replaced with a stronger and more condensed drug. One that would finally make me feel alive.
To this day, I cannot say what compelled me to reach over and touch her neck, but the power I experienced in that moment... The twitch of fear in her eyes as my finger danced across her jugular vein... The deep thrum of her heartbeat, steady but fading... The warmth of her skin, slick with blood...
She died before my mind managed to piece itself back together. Her last image being my face, red with tension. My hands over her neck. Our bodies pressed together in perfect sync. My arms pushing down, her’s thrashing upwards. Her broken bones grinding as her mind ignored the signals from her nerves and kept struggling. Fighting.
By the time my heart beat slowed down, I was halfway home. The body of a teenage girl rattling in the back of my trunk, her soul still trying to figure out that it was dead.
The next morning I suffered the worst hangover of my life. the very idea of my girls coming in and waking me up to take them to school sent tidal waves of pain crashing through my head. Luckily, my wife woke up before me and assumed that I had the flu. Under normal circumstances, I would have simply rolled over and gone back to sleep, but everything came back to me all at once.
I needed that high again. My body was already gearing up for more, but my mind was saying no. It was still stuck in the morals that I had been taught since birth. I was struggling beyond all comprehension. My mind was telling me to feel guilty, to turn myself in, but my body produced no tears. It said nothing that would suggest anything was remotely out of the ordinary. The only change was the cravings. I wanted desperately to go out again. To drink myself into a stupor and then go for a drive, but the spirit was fighting hard. Just as June had.
And if the flesh is willing...
June was my first, but certainly not the last. That night on the highway was the beginning of the rest of my life. After the original withdrawl, my mind was sharper than it had in years. My family was stunned by the turnaround. For nearly a month, I was a new man. But then the twitches started. I would see a woman at work and flash back to the image of June, lying dead in the trunk. And the urge came again. So I would take some “guy-time”, as my daughters called it. And in the morning, another person would be dead.
Even though I was murdering people, I protected myself. I never killed in a specific demographic. I never repeated methods. And I never left evidence.
Ashton was the only male staff member, but he was also the director of the home. Not even the worst nurse paled in comparison to Ashton. When he came around, most of the residents of Calolinii Homes for the Elderly cowered in fear. He would openly berate staff and citizens alike. He’d cane those who forgot medicine. And loss of visitor privileges were a common punishment for any sort of offense. And I would kill him.
The pills under my tongue tasted like warm copper. I was glad for the taste. It reminded me of the job at hand. Ashton was gone for the moment, probably in his office, but he had left his favorite coffee cup sitting on the administrative desk. Thankfully I was sweet with the receptionist, and she let me have free reign whenever she was around. Ambling past her in my walker, I managed to snatch the coffee cup whilst disarming her gaze with a compliment on the attractiveness of her ugly-ass baby. Her bashful gaze flicked back down to her paperwork, and I took the opportunity to unleash a horrendous coughing fit into the crook of my walker.
While she pretended not to notice, my liver cancer ravaged body rocked with each wave of coughs. Replacing a breath with a spit of three brightly colored dots into the Yankee’s cup.
Another distraction, this time a slam of my palm onto her desk coupled with a stumbling of the knees, allowed me to place the coffee cup back into it’s original spot unnoticed.
Just in time to, as Captain Asshat had just exited his office. While the receptionist rushed over to help me, he nearly hipchecked me out of the way to reach his precious coffee cup. I watched with unwavering eyes as he took a sip and entered his office, frowning slightly at the different taste.
The moment that door slammed, I got the rush again. The feeling of being fully and totally complete. Passing his office window on my way back to my bed, I realized that I’d been holding my breath. The little prick didn’t even look up when I had to lean against his door to steady myself as the rush hit my brain. I walked away smiling.
He’d be dead in 36 hours.
My daughters put me here nearly six months ago. I got about a visit per week, maybe two if Ashton wasn’t around. At least that’s one problem I won’t have to worry about anymore. But now all of my girls were around me. They laid in wait as the rhythmic monitor to the left of my head quietly clicked down from 98 to 97 to 96, 95, 94, 93....
The “accident” I had set for myself had caused irreversible damage to my digestive system. For the first three hours, I’d been in hypoglycemic shock, and the neurological damage was starting to take it’s toll. I could feel the darkness enclosing on me. Enveloping me with it’s delightful embrace. And with that, I drifted away as the monitor dipped into the 30’s.
The memories started slipping away. It started with the happy ones. Tamera Cale, the drill bit still lodged into her skull. Casper Grant, his little ten year old tears still moist on his cheeks while his blood rained down into the bathtub above which he was strung. Frank DiAngelo, his unborn child shoved down his throat, the umbilical cord around his neck, placental juices trailing down his legs from where it rested comfortably in the vena cava while his no longer pregnant wife, Lisa Silverman, lay dead against the oven from which I’d cooked her baby.
Then the important thoughts left. The birth of my daughters... My wedding day... The hole in my backyard with the bottle of cyanide... My dad dying... The spark plugs from our old Lincoln... My mom dying... My first birthday... Everything.
I was stripped to the bone and standing naked in front of the gates of Hell. I didn't know why I was there or why I was being punished. All I could remember was a name. June Haverly.
I couldn't remember my wife, my children, or even my own name. But I could remember June Haverly. Her impetuous smile. Her cherry red lips. Her intense gaze never wavering. The feel of her pulse under my hands. The look in her eyes as her last breath left her body.
And then I saw June. Except she was older. And beautiful. Her skin, still as pale as the glow of headlights. Her eyes a deep blue, like the lilies in my backyard. She was dressed for a fancy party. A dark purple dress flowing behind her as she crawled out of the fire. The most intense excitement in her smile, as if she had been waiting for this moment her whole life. God, she was gorgeous. With a look of pride on her face, she extended her hand.
Our fingers laced together, as did our arms. The skin across our shoulder blades drew to each other, joining into a patchwork quilt of the flesh.
The small of her back attached to mine just as our other hands made contact. The pain of it all was excruciating, but it was a sweet pain.
The feel of her breaths becoming mine was like the feel of sitting after a long day on your feet.
The feel of our hearts merging felt as if we tires were rolling over our bodies, collapsing the chest cavity and the bones puncturing the internal organs.
The feel of our calves stitching as one was as if we were rubbing away a cramp. A cramp that had been there so long that we never even noticed it anymore.
But when our heads began to coalesce into one single specimen, I realized the problem with this. June wasn't in hell. June did nothing wrong. I did.
The memory of burning her body came back. The stink of the ashes permeating my car on the drive back. The feel of the leather on my bare buttocks as the heat of my clothes attacked my exterior with waves of guilt. The knowledge that I had caused the forest fire that killed another three people that next morning punching me in the face with the sick pleasure of death.
This thing wasn't June. June would be disgusted by me. June wouldn't want this, to become me. June would want more. June would want better than this.
And with that, I began struggling. I fought against it, but fighting it was fighting myself.
Our skin started to tear along the palms and forearms. I managed to get one finger away before a tendril of dark, black, demon skin shot out of the wound and dragged the appendage back into place.
Our feet and torso had completely merged by now. The only thing left being my head. Left only so I could feel the pain of being the devils eyes. My mouth sunk into my head, as did my neck.
The nose began sinking just as June started to walk back into the fire. The heat burned what was left of my ears, but was nothing compared to the terror of my eyelids disappearing just so I could see the full wrath of the fire. June began descending into the flames, and immediately I could feel the pain of 136 deaths. With steps of pure molasses, the heat bombarded into what was left of my body. Still though, June held her smile.
As her purple dress wrapped around my neck, choking me while the train crawled down what was left of my throat and into the empty space where my soul should be, June placed the last of us into the fire, and eternity washed over. Forgive me
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
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