Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  Another thought occurred to me. Perhaps Malachi’s keeping secrets from me was a form of sadism. He knew I didn’t like them, so he kept them from me, keeping control and causing me pain and rage when I did finally find out. It made sense. His grandfather had been a sadist, torturing anyone close because it kept him in control and gave him power. August had been a sadist of a different sort. His feeding victims to predators had been both cruel and controlling. He’d been a sexual sadist and murderer, which didn’t exactly fit Tennyson Unger’s pattern, but it didn’t not fit either.

  Then there was Malachi. Malachi wasn’t a sexual sadist. Malachi liked to inflict pain because pain gave him control, it gave him power. It was the ultimate thrill ride, pumping him full of adrenaline and giving him a high. Sexual sadism was common place, non-sexual sadism was a different monster. It was harder to control and even harder to understand. I only understood because I had been around Malachi most of my life. When he couldn’t inflict physical pain, emotional pain was a perfectly acceptable substitute. Sometimes, it was even better than physical pain because it lasted longer and brought out the darker side of everyone.

  In comparison, my grandfather was a killer. His goal was to right wrongs and find some twisted sense of justice. Without realizing it, I had followed in his footsteps. I wasn’t a serial killer, not using the definition, but there were aspects of my life and personality that suggested it was a possibility. My brother, Eric, was the same. My father and sister were the anomalies in my immediate family, being genuinely good people who didn’t kill. Although, I still had some questions about my father. He’d been a cop after all and while this didn’t necessarily mean he’d never killed anyone, it raised the likelihood of it.

  Perhaps, August had gotten his sadist genes from Tennyson Unger, the man that made Malachi a monster, and gotten his killer genes from Gertrude, a woman I was sure could have easily killed if she had been given the right motivation. There was also the possibility that Gertrude, knowing about her son’s proclivities for murder, had killed via surrogate, letting August handle the dirty work and she just enjoyed the rehashing of their deaths.

  For the first time, I thought about children. My own children, that is. I had never given birth, had never had a desire to breed, I couldn’t even be bothered to have the desire to have sex. However, if I was going to have a child, I guessed that Malachi would be the father. Not because there weren’t any other offers, but because it seemed like Malachi was the logical choice. He was brilliant with good physical genes. However, our mental genes would create the ultimate killing machine. The child would go well beyond psychopathic. It would be an unstable creation from the bowels of Hell. No remorse, no empathy, no sympathy, no pain receptors, no feelings, and I was willing to bet it would be alienated even more by a lack of connection with its parents, since neither Malachi nor I could muster much in that department. While August was a perfect pairing of bad mental genes, a child between Malachi and I would be three times worse. Our child would be bat-shit crazy; a sadistic killer with a desire for notoriety and flair. An egocentric monster who only enjoyed pain and death. No one would be safe, ever.

  My door made a beep as a keycard was swiped through the lock. It swung open and Malachi came in. He was dressed in a different suit and tie combination and different black loafers. I wondered how many of those outfits he had.

  “I’m still really pissed at you,” I told the tall figure as he sauntered into my room.

  “The feeling is mutual. That wasn’t 150,000 volts, it was stronger.”

  “You do not have a right to be angry with me,” I informed him. “As for the Taser, I’m testing a new prototype that will go up to 250,000 volts with stronger barbs for military use.”

  “Why does the military need 250,000 volts?”

  “Beats me, but it works on psychopaths. You dropped like a stone. I will definitely be keeping this one.”

  “I’ve come to talk about a temporary cease fire.”

  “Afraid I will Taser you again?”

  “Something like that, and we freaked out the FBI and the St. Charles police. They’ve never seen two titans go at it before. Agent Rollins told me when you yanked out the Taser wires, he considered shooting you. It’s a good thing you ejected your Taser cartridge.”

  “That’s what I dislike about the model. Does not hold up very long. Truth is, I could not have run the current for more than a few seconds longer. I will be talking to them about it.”

  “If we were working with the VCU and SCTU, it wouldn’t be a big deal. They’d rock back on the balls of their feet and let us get it out of our system, but we aren’t. We’re working with normal people. When you and I both drop the masks and enter the darkness, they become afraid. Panicked people do stupid things.”

  “If you can promise me that you have withheld nothing else, I can promise not to Taser you again. But so help me god, Malachi Blake, if I find out you knew so much as his shoe size before today and you did not tell me, I’m going to send you into a world with so much pain, Hell will be calling me for ideas. Do you understand?”

  “I can’t make that promise,” Malachi answered. “I’ve kept a lot about The Butcher from you, for your own protection.”

  “That is bullshit and we both know it. You did it to feed your ego and fan the flames for your next power trip.”

  Malachi stood. He stretched his long arms skyward and his back popped multiple times. He released the stance, letting his arms fall down at his side and stared at me. A lesser man would crack as those vibrant green eyes attempted to search the soul inside the body. I didn’t flinch. He broke eye contact first.

  “It doesn’t bother me that you think I withheld the information for my own purposes,” Malachi turned away. “It bothers me that you think I did it intentionally.”

  “Everything you do is intentional.”

  “I can make mistakes.”

  “Yes, you can and this was a doozy.”

  “You should know, this goes deeper than Patterson. Yeah, he was born with those genes, but he had a lot of help during his childhood becoming the man he is today. He killed for the first time at seven years old, Ace. Sound familiar?”

  “I did not grow up to be a serial killer,” I told him.

  “Yes, but only because your father didn’t encourage it. If your father had you tracking down men at eight to kill, you would have become one, just like Patterson.”

  “You’re telling me my great-grandfather created Patterson?”

  “It was The Depression,” Malachi looked back at me, a quick glance over his shoulder. “I believe your great-grandfather did the killing until he realized that Patterson had a knack for it. Humans were cheaper than livestock.”

  Blood

  Patterson stood in the shower. The hot water ran down his body and swirled a bright pink as it entered the drain. He’d killed three men in twenty-four hours. Despite his condition, it was tiring on an old man. After two of the kills, he’d showered, getting the blood off. The third had been impulsive. It clung to his hair and filled his sinus passageways. He’d used a couple bottles of water in his sinus rinse system to get all the blood out of his nose.

  Now, he was washing his hair for the second time since he’d started showering and yet, the water was still pink. He didn’t mind the excuse to stay in the shower. The hot water felt good on his skin, his muscles. It had been a long time since they had been used this much in a single day.

  So far, they hadn’t found anyone but Williams, a despicable man to say the least. He’d been planning to kill one of the two FBI agents, just to get Malachi or Aislinn involved. He never imagined he’d get the chance when Williams decided to go to bed early. After the partner had left, a hooker had shown up. Even through the walls of the motel, Patterson could hear Williams beating the woman.

  He wasn’t interested in saving hookers, that seemed more like a task for missionaries than serial killers, but he was interested in the wedding ring on Williams’ hand. If Williams beat p
rostitutes to sate his bloodlust, what happened when prostitutes were few and far between?

  Patterson stepped out into the main room of his hotel suite. Now that he was older, he was learning to enjoy the finer things in life. For years, he’d been a master carpenter. He’d specialized in creating ornate wooden accents for the homes of the rich.

  However, his favorite piece was in storage, waiting for his death. The unit would pass to Aislinn. Inside, she would find a hand carved table. A slab of oak, finely carved with a tree on the surface, then coated to retain its beauty. Four solid legs, each given the utmost care in their design, depicting green men and fairies. He’d worked on it for three years after learning of her interest in her ancestral roots. The chairs had been carved to match, the same oak had donated to each of them. His hands had supplied the details, he hoped she would accept it.

  In the room, the flyer on the table caught his attention. It was supposed to be a sketch of him, it looked more like Clark Gable and Danny Thomas had decided to have a child together. They’d gotten the dark hair right, but that was about it. A large nose demanded the attention of anyone looking at it. Large ears, which stuck out from the head, looked ridiculous. The eyes were too small and too narrow. The mouth was too large and the lips were too thin. It wasn’t even a good caricature of him.

  Disgusted, he turned away. Eyewitnesses were rarely reliable, he didn’t need to be a cop to know that. They might be able to pick him out of a line-up, but they certainly couldn’t describe the man who had done the shooting. To most, he probably looked like The Invisible Man. No one seemed to report his cane, something he considered strange since it had been dangling from his arm.

  A medium sized box sat on the dresser, it had been lovingly created by him years earlier. The details on the top depicted a pack of wolves facing off against a large grizzly bear. Patterson didn’t know if such an event would happen in the wild, but he liked the thought. The box was exactly twelve inches long by six inches wide by three inches deep with legs and had a locking latch.

  Opening it was always a joyful moment. The treasures inside were among his greatest accomplishments. There were about thirty swastika lapel pins, but only one set of the lightning bolt SS pins. That had been his greatest kill and worst failure. He’d been amazed to have caught the officer off guard. However, the moment had been short lived when it turned out the Nazi storm trooper had enjoyed the pain more than Patterson did. Patterson had to settle for slitting his throat and watching the blood pool around them both.

  Into this box of trinkets, he dropped three more items: Williams’ wedding ring, a silver chain from James Okafor, and a thick gold bracelet from a thug who had tried to mug him earlier. He also attracted violent, dangerous people. With the thug, he’d plunged a knife into his lower jaw, wedging his mouth closed while Patterson cut out his eyes and then hit him twice with the cane on the head. The second one had broken through the skin and skull. Fluid that wasn’t actually blood flowed onto the ground. Patterson jerked the knife free and left the thug for dead. Experience told him it was impossible to survive once the sack around the brain was broken. The would-be robber had only a few minutes to live when Patterson walked back to his hotel.

  It had been early enough that no one was in the lobby except a young lady at the front desk. She was busy typing furiously on her phone, uninterested in the old man. Baby wipes had cleaned his face and hands, while the dark clothing he wore hid the rest of the evidence. He’d been careful to also wipe down the bottom of his shoes before entering the lobby.

  Patterson crawled into the king-sized bed. The sheets curled around him. He sighed and got up, grabbing the DO NOT DISTURB sign from the doorknob and placing it outside in the key card slot. Once again, he returned to bed and climbed between the blankets and sheets.

  As tired as he was, sleep didn’t come for him. The older he got, the more trouble he had falling asleep. He’d never slept much to begin with, instead he stared at the ceiling. Memories came to him in place of dreams. The memories were unwelcome, they distracted him from his purpose. They were a random jumbling of his past. Flashes of things that had happened long ago mixed with more recent events.

  The doctors believed it was dementia. He believed it was his past catching up with him. How many times had he suffered head trauma? He didn’t know. He’d been stabbed in the head once, the tip of the blade stopped by his skull and helmet, during the war. The Nazi had fared worse, his first evisceration. He’d split the man from groin to sternum and watched as his insides had spilled out.

  Before that he’d killed, his father finding out that it was easy for Patterson to dispatch the farmhands, but his father had demanded that he kill quickly without damaging any of the body. The preferred method had been a pick axe through the skull. He much preferred his own methods.

  Eventually, he gave up and turned on the TV. He found a show about alien conspiracies and put the remote on the bed. He believed in aliens just as much as he did angels. He also believed that if aliens ever found humans, they’d annihilate the species because humans were obviously inferior. He imagined it would be like Independence Day without the happy ending.

  As he lay there, he realized why he couldn’t sleep. His stomach growled loudly. It was past noon. Patterson had few pleasures in life, food was one of them. It was something he could experience with a full range of senses. He appreciated it. He ordered a vegetarian burger made with a portabella top and covered with fresh veggies and a chipotle ranch sauce.

  Waiting for it to arrive, he sat at the table. It had no character, no life. The reflective surface reminded him of eyes though. He hated that dead, vacant stare that the lifeless had. As a boy, killing to feed the family at his father’s threats, he’d found the eyes to be repulsive. They were even worse when his mother plucked them out and used them in soups. She’d refrigerate them for a day in a glass of milk with some salt and pepper, then take them out, drain them, mince them, and put them in soup.

  He ate slowly; savoring the flavors, smells, and textures. Food was a forgotten pleasure these days. It was just something people shoved in their bodies to keep them going.

  After eating, he placed the tray outside. His body was starting to feel tired. He knew it was coming as he slipped between the sheets again. This time when he closed his eyes, he slept.

  Five

  There was another body. Another body missing his eyes, lying in an alley behind a convenience store. Agent Rollins was attempting to get security footage from the store. He hadn’t been as brutally slain as most of The Butcher’s victims. A large wound under his chin entered his upper palate in his mouth, piercing his tongue. Two hard blows to the head, one breaking through the skull, were the cause of death.

  From the looks of him, he wasn’t our sniper. He was maybe twenty. Baggy jeans and a shirt that was three times too big clothed him. His shoes were neon green Converse tennis shoes. His white skin had paled with his death. A ball cap lay on the ground near him. Malachi and I both frowned at the body.

  “Well, I’m thinking it’s obvious,” Malachi pointed to the kid’s hand. A few inches from the outstretched fingers lay a small pocket knife.

  “You would think robbery would be a declining crime,” I told him. “When any intended victim could be a serial killer who is badder than you are, why stick a knife to someone’s throat and demand money? Senseless.”

  “No one has ever tried to mug me,” Malachi said.

  “That’s because you’re tall and scary looking,” I pointed out. “Patterson is not very tall from what I understand, but he is still badder than most people.”

  “A seasoned criminal wouldn’t have picked him as a victim, just like they wouldn’t pick you. Victims like you and Patterson are a cosmic joke, so to speak, you look like you should be easy to intimidate, a quick snatch and grab. Only after the would-be mugger gets in close do they realize their mistake. A rookie mistake that results in death.”

  “I have never killed a would-be mugger,” I informe
d Malachi.

  “Yet,” Malachi added quickly, “you have maimed a few as memory serves.”

  “They should not threaten me or,” I didn’t finish the sentence. Saying her name out loud was a form of torture at the moment. The only person in my life more important than Nyleena was my mom. If it had been my mom lying in that bed, Patterson would have been begging for someone, anyone to kill him.

  Rollins kicked the wall as he neared us. Judging by his body language, he’d gotten zilch from the convenience store surveillance. This didn’t surprise me. I had never been attacked in an area with a camera.

  “So, Williams was most likely killed second,” Rollins walked up to us.

  “No, first,” Malachi said. “Williams was killed before midnight. The Butcher didn’t call Aislinn until almost seven a.m., which means he didn’t get done killing the sniper until then. This one was probably last. The sun’s coming up, he has to be quick. He stabs him under the jaw to keep his mouth closed, then kills him and cuts out his eyes.”

  “I would disagree,” I was looking at the vacant sockets. I had been in hundreds of autopsies, I wasn’t an expert, but I had a pretty good understanding of it. “I think he cut out his eyes while he was alive based on the blood pooling around the sockets. He cuts out his eyes, then he bashes him over the head.”

  “He’s never cut out the eyes while the victim was alive,” Malachi informed me.

  “How many times have you found bodies of muggers that he’s killed?” I asked. “See no evil.”

  “Somehow, she’s creepier than you Blake,” Rollins said.

  “That she is,” Malachi agreed. “Ok, so he cuts out the eyes first, he deviated.”

  “Did he?” I jabbed at him. “I would not know.” Malachi let out a long sigh.