Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  He retrieved James’ knife from the floor. The man’s chest was bare from sleeping. Patterson heated the tip of the blade with a butane lighter. As it began to glow red, he removed it from the flame and placed it against James’ chest. He had to do this eleven times to spell the word “KILLER” on his chest.

  James was only making very quiet sobbing sounds now. Patterson was okay with that. He’d given him a good beating, James deserved to be allowed to cry. Patterson sat the burner phone down on the dresser and brought in a chair from the kitchen. He sat down.

  “As I said, the problem with your generation of killers’ is their lack of communication. They never want to just talk about things. Wisdom has taught me that sometimes, talking is the best weapon. I’m going to sit here and talk to you until you die. It shouldn’t take long now. I’m sure your internal organs have been injured, you’ve already pissed blood all over the bed, a sure sign of kidney damage. I hope it hurts, James. I hope it hurts a lot. While people like you and I rarely think of the pain we cause others, we do cause them pain. Lots of it. Looking back, I know that those Nazis had families and they were probably on the front lines because it was either be a Nazi or else. Of all those you killed during the Congo Wars, how many had families? How many times did you make a parent watch as you slaughtered their children? I imagine it was many. Men like you and I only feel alive when we are killing. For me, it’s a genetic flaw or evolution. Were you always a killer, James or were you created by the situation? Were you one of those men that followed orders but found you liked it?”

  James made a gurgling noise. Patterson nodded at him and touched the tip of an imaginary cap. He checked for a pulse and found nothing.

  “Consider yourself lucky, James. I considered castrating you,” Patterson said to the corpse as he exited the bedroom.

  One

  Machines beeped and whirred. The heart monitor was steady. Aside from the giant bandage, Nyleena looked peaceful. Being in a coma was probably the best sleep she’d had in ages. My own experience a few months earlier with a medically induced coma, had proven that outside noises filtered into coma dreams.

  Because of this, I was reading to her for several hours a day. Crappy books that I would never have read on my own, but were her kinds of books. Top of the list was Janet Evanovich. I was hoping that Ranger and Morelli were filling her sleeping mind and not Patterson shooting her in the face over and over.

  However, the three days I spent at the hospital weren’t doing me much good. The grey walls were claustrophobic. The smell of antiseptic and the noisy machines had created a headache that wouldn’t go away. Multiple meals of hospital food was upsetting my normal diet and impacting my digestive system as well as my headache.

  The Justice Department was taking the shooting very seriously. There was a cop outside the door at all times. Nyleena had a private room, and they had been courteous enough to bring a bed in for me as well. I also had a special recliner and a chair to allow me to sit in different places and positions.

  The doctors believed the coma was caused by trauma to the frontal lobe. While the bullet hadn’t penetrated the area, the bone behind her sinuses had cracked causing damage to the brain. Emergency surgery had saved her life. If she woke, the doctors were confident that she might have some amnesia about the event, but otherwise would be relatively unharmed, but that was an “if.” People lived in comas for decades and Nyleena wasn’t showing any signs of waking up.

  If she died, I was going to beat Patterson to death, I didn’t care if he was our grandfather. If she lived and woke up, I would just break his legs and make the cane a necessity. If she stayed in limbo, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

  Several minutes earlier, he’d called. I’d hung up on him after updating him on her condition. It had shaken me out of my reading reverie. I stood up and paced.

  “That was Patterson,” I told my cousin. “He is still apologizing, claiming he meant to shoot you in the shoulder, not the face. I do not know if I believe him. I wish you would wake up.”

  “Think that helps?” Xavier came into the room.

  “Yes, I remember having weird dreams when I was in my coma. I believe they were caused by the external stimuli around me. I’ve been reading to her, but Patterson’s call broke my concentration.”

  “I brought you real food,” Xavier held up a bag.

  “If I eat one more salad or cheeseburger, I will die.” I told him.

  “Guess it’s a good thing I brought Chili’s and got you their southwest pairings. There’s a chicken soft taco and a sour cream chicken enchilada in the box with extra rice and a nice big Mt. Dew.” Xavier handed me the bag. I set it down on the table and checked the clock. Patterson had called before dawn. It was now almost noon. I’d lost time. Not uncommon with a migraine, sleep deprivation, or high stress situations for me. “Why don’t you take a walk, I’ll read to her for a while.”

  “Why? I’m starting to like the grey,” I lied.

  “What grey?” Xavier asked.

  “The walls,” I told him. “Who paints a hospital grey?”

  “Ace, the walls aren’t grey, they’re a pale eggshell blue.” He frowned at me. “How often do you see grey walls?”

  “All the time. I cannot figure out why the Marshals offices are always grey.”

  “They aren’t. Are you color blind?”

  “I see colors,” I told him.

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “Yes, they tested me for it when I was young because my dad had issues with color.”

  “What issues?”

  “I do not know.” I told Xavier. “What does it matter?”

  “That is a good question,” Xavier pursed his lips. “So, your sensory perception of color is off. What do you think about impressionist art?”

  “Those fuzzy representative paintings with color blotches? I dislike it.”

  “They aren’t fuzzy. When was the last time you had an eye test?”

  “A while.”

  “I think it’s time for another. I believe you have a rare condition in which color variations cannot be seen when they are near other colors that are of similar hues. It is occasionally inherited, but can also be caused by trauma to the brain or eyes. It might explain why light gives you migraines.”

  “Another day,” I told him, opening the box. The food smelled great. I had a pang of something as I took the first fork full, knowing that Nyleena was being feed through an IV. She loved Mexican too.

  “What are you reading?” Xavier picked up my Kindle.

  “Janet Evanovich’s High Five. I’ve been rereading the entire series to her.” I chewed and swallowed. “Shouldn’t you be out tracking down Patterson?”

  “Yes,” Xavier took a seat. “Unfortunately, now that the world knows he’s your grandfather, the FBI is handling it. They won’t even let the VCU handle it, they have some sort of task force. We are all getting ready for another case, except you. You’ve been granted a week of leave to deal with your psychological condition now that Nyleena’s out of commission.”

  “How are you going to work a case without Lucas, a geek and me?”

  “We have a geek, her name is Fiona Stewart. She started yesterday and the two of you are going to hate each other. Lucas has been released for work, so there’s four of us going.”

  “Where?” I chewed another bite very slowly.

  “Tennessee and I’m not to tell you any more. Besides, do you think this is the sort of conversation we should be having around Nyleena? Shouldn’t we be discussing happier things?”

  I sighed. Xavier began reading from the Kindle. I ate quietly, listening to him. He was good at reading aloud, for some reason, I found that unexpected. When I finished my food, Xavier stopped reading. He looked at me with a frown.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “I brought you clothes as well. It’s been three days, the nurses say you can use the shower in the room. And you need a shower, desperately.”

  “What
if she wakes up?”

  “I’ll be here, reading to her. When you get out, I’ll go,” Xavier said. I sat where I was. “Seriously, Ace, you’re starting to smell like road kill. Go take a shower.”

  I gave in. The shower was hot and the shampoo smelled of mint. It tingled on my scalp. It felt good to be under the spray, but my ears were constantly searching for the sound of Nyleena’s voice or excited noises from Xavier indicating she was awake. When I got out, I dried off and dressed.

  “No magic spell awoke Sleeping Beauty while you were away,” Xavier told me as I exited.

  “If she was Sleeping Beauty, I’d find a prince to kiss her.” I took my Kindle back. “Sadly, she’s Nyleena and there isn’t a prince in the world strong enough to break the spell she’s under. Our own grandfather.” I shook my head. Patterson could protest all he wanted, I was still going to hold a grudge over it. “So, what’s in Tennessee?”

  “Nice try,” Xavier stood. He touched my cheek, rubbing away a droplet of water. “Don’t read into that, you look terrible, even for you. Are you sleeping?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “I think the nurses are drugging me at night, but I’m sleeping.”

  “Paranoid, interesting. Why would the nurses be drugging you?”

  “Because I did not sleep the first night. At all. Has it really been three days?” I asked.

  “Yes, it has. Do you intend to stay here for the entire week?”

  “I can’t think of anywhere else to go,” I told him.

  “We’ll check in as often as possible.” Xavier left. I returned to the book on the Kindle and resumed reading, but my mind wasn’t into it anymore. They had sent regular FBI agents to hunt for Patterson Clachan. Someone in charge was an idiot. Patterson would tear them apart; figuratively, of course, since he really liked to use knives.

  Two

  There isn’t much one can do at a hospital for long durations. When my voice began to give out, I’d put on an audiobook for Nyleena and played video games on my phone. I didn’t have a social networking profile on any site, I didn’t have anyone to keep up with. The thought of having to find people to “friend” made me slightly ill.

  As I had discovered during my long term stay in a hospital, it left a lot of time for thought. I had come to the realization that introspection was a bad idea for a sociopath. My ego tended to inflate and at the moment, I had no one to help humble it. While it seemed like a strange understanding, I knew that letting my ego grow was a negative thing. The larger it grew, the more convinced I became of my own superiority and I didn’t need more of that. I needed less. Less was hard to come by.

  I also couldn’t sit and fantasize about how I would kill Patterson Clachan. It was unproductive because I probably wouldn’t get the chance and frankly, the methods were becoming much more brutal. The Inquisition had nothing on me as far as torture methods went, I had already come up with about a million new ones. Some were more disturbing than others.

  My phone vibrated. The number was blocked. I answered it.

  “She is still alive, still in a coma,” I told Patterson. “You know I want to torture you, right?”

  “Yes,” Patterson answered. “I understand. I would prefer you wait for her to wake up that way I will know that she is going to be okay. Honestly, I didn’t mean to hurt her like I did.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. “I still want to torture you.”

  “I’m sure you’ve come up with some very creative ways to do it as well.” Patterson paused. “I killed someone this morning. For you. I beat him to death so you wouldn’t have to. He killed Michael. He knew the bomber, personally, and I watched as the final breath slipped from his body in the form of a gurgling sob. He didn’t die quickly. It was terribly painful. I’ve sent the address where he can be found to the FBI.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you?” I retorted, angry that I wasn’t going to have the pleasure of beating the shit out of Michael’s killer.

  “Not in the least, I just wanted to let you know that justice had been served. If you had found him, you would have ended up with your brother. We can’t have that. So I beat him to death to keep you from doing it.”

  “Great, now I’m angry about that too.” I admitted to my serial killing grandfather.

  “I understand that as well. Donnelly was right about you, the rage burns deep and strong. You might be more of a killer than any of us.”

  “You are not allowed to mention my father’s name,” I growled.

  “He was my son!” Patterson’s voice rose and even over the cell phone I could hear a small tremble in it. “I have just as much right to be angry about his death as you do, possibly more because I got to spend less time with him. Only after your incident with Callow did he begin responding to my attempts at communication.”

  “Liar,” I said calmly and hung up the phone. Surely my law-and-order father hadn’t been in contact with his serial killer father. As I thought about it, I knew I was wrong. He probably was in contact with Patterson. Maybe that had been part of the change in my father. He had a monster to raise, so he allowed a monster back into his life to give him advice. The letters had started coming to me after my father’s death.

  I put my head on the portable table. My father had been talking to a serial killer trying to find a way to keep me from becoming one. That was life altering information.

  Personally, my father had been dead too long for me to maintain an emotional attachment to him. Worse, our relationship hadn’t been very good at the time of his death. His oppressive behavior had driven a wedge between us, one I hadn’t had the tools to mend before he meet his fate.

  As Good Omens played on the iPod I had borrowed from Gabriel, my mind began to think about my real relationship with my father. He had stopped being my dad after Callow, a distinction in my mind that was larger than the Grand Canyon.

  However, what teased me now was the question about how much of that difference had been him and how much of it had been me. I had changed as well. Finding the survivor inside had made me feel alive, capable, and awakened the monster as never before. I couldn’t even imagine what it had done to my parents. It wasn’t just a lack of sympathy, it was a lack of understanding.

  I wasn’t having children. I would never know the love of a child or know how it felt to love them back. I wasn’t even sure I was capable of such a thing. For me, children had never been an option. It wasn’t just a lack of impulse to have sex, it was that I was sure I would make a bad parent. I wouldn’t be able to connect to a child. They would be a burden, a nuisance, a road block to whatever it was that I wanted to do right that moment. Also, they would provide a weakness if I did connect, another way for the monsters to hurt me.

  Suddenly, I realized I needed to make a phone call. The speed dial screen only had seven phone numbers. There were only eight in my entire phone. I had removed Michael finally.

  “Good news?” Malachi’s voice came onto the line.

  “We will reserve judgment on that. I just got a call from Patterson. He’s claiming he beat a man to death this morning and that the man was our sniper. He also claims he found him because he was friends with the bomber.”

  “Is that Good Omens in the background?” Malachi asked.

  “Yes, it’s soothing, something for Nyleena to listen to when I need a break.” I told. “Now, about the dead body.”

  “I’m not on the case. You’re not on the case. I can pass along information, but that’s it.” Malachi said with a tone. “I have some reservations about it though.”

  “You have reservations about reporting The Butcher killed someone?” I couldn’t stop my mouth from falling open.

  “It isn’t about The Butcher killing someone, it’s about the FBI agents on the case. They’re good agents. I would hate for them to get caught up in this and die as a result.”

  “That sounds a lot like sympathy,” I told him.

  “It’s the right answer,” Malachi said and hung up. My mind twirled the answer over in
my head. It wasn’t a hidden code, I knew exactly what Malachi meant. He was fairly certain he’d be sending them to their deaths. That would be wrong, but if enough FBI agents died, the powers that be would ignore the conflict of interest and send Malachi and his team to get Patterson.

  Left to his own devices, Malachi wouldn’t have thought twice about it. However, I would and did have reservations. Death was rarely the best solution in my opinion. While Malachi listened to my voice tell him that, I heard it come to me from Nyleena.

  I looked at her. Xavier was right, she did look like a fairy tale princess. Her long, very dark brown hair was spread out on the pillow where it had been brushed. With her eyes closed, her lashes looked thick and dark, like a model’s. If one could ignore the giant bandage that covered her entire left cheek, she was picture perfect.

  Nyleena was a natural beauty, whatever that meant. I had been told it many times by different men that had come and gone from our lives. Her skin was pale and perfect, the only scars were covered by the sheets and she had far fewer of them than I did. It seemed unfair that she would now sport a nasty gash on her face if she woke up.

  With the limited range of emotions, I was struggling to figure out how or what to feel about my current situation. Mostly, I was pissed and looking at her made me angrier. What I couldn’t voice was why it made me angry. Yes, I missed her to the best of my ability. However, the reason behind the anger was more self-centered. She was my touchstone, without her, I was floating in limbo, searching for something to latch onto and claim as my own. Without her, it was harder to control the monster that lurked inside me. It was a dangerous situation to say the least. If I lost control, I’d kill and it would be Patterson’s fault for shooting Nyleena in the face.

  “Come on,” my mother suddenly hustled into the room. “You have things to do.”

  “What?” I looked at her blankly, wondering what she was blabbering about. I would never tell her to her face that I thought she was blabbering, but in my head, I could say it all I wanted. There were times I wondered if my mother was losing her mind. This was one of them.