Just to See Hell

by Chandler Morrison

  Walt’s face is wrought with concern. “April, I’m really worried, here. You don’t seem...yourself. You haven’t for a while.” It’s been much longer than “a while”, but April knows he doesn’t want to acknowledge that. She almost pities him. Walt says, “Your life is all about diagnosing other people, helping them with their problems, and I don’t think you take enough time for yourself. Maybe you should...talk to someone.”

  “Really, I’m fine,” April says, flicking ash over the railing. “Really.” She reaches for her drink and then suddenly decides she doesn’t want it anymore. She wishes she’d thrown it at the waitress.

  Walt frowns and replies, “What’s that thing you tell your patients when they say that they’re fine?” He thinks for a second, and then remembers and says, “Fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional, right?”

  “Yeah,” April answers. “It’s just something a professor said in college.” She drags deeply from her cigarette and closes her eyes. She feels dizzy but it’s not from the nicotine or the alcohol. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  For some reason she thinks of Jake, and the accident, and all the blood. She thinks of him lying there in the road while she knelt by him, she having sustained a few scratches and scrapes while he had a hunk of metal sticking out of his pelvis. She thinks of the way his eyes looked when she held his hand and told him everything was going to be just fine.

  “Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am?” April opens her eyes and it’s the waitress, her brow furrowed unflatteringly. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you not to smoke. Some of the other guests are getting...offended.”

  April looks around. A group of twenty-somethings sitting a few tables away are watching, their faces scrunched up in disgust. One of them is actually pinching his nose. Another one is puffing from an inhaler.

  “Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me,” April says, glaring at the kids and then at the waitress. “You really can’t be serious.”

  “Please just put it out, April,” Walt says. There’s no firmness or command in his voice, and April thinks of how Lance would have said it...Put the goddamn thing out, April, you’re making a fucking scene. Don’t embarrass me. She would have preferred that. Walt just sounds like a pussy.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you really can’t smoke out here,” the waitress says, clearly straining to remain pleasant and to mask her growing irritation.

  April takes another hit from the cigarette and then hands it to the waitress. “You put it out,” she says. “Just...go away.”

  The waitress tentatively takes the cigarette, looking at it with exaggerated revulsion, and then scuttles off.

  Walt takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair, which April thinks is getting too long. And he should shave his beard, too. It’s starting to look unruly and gross. “April, you really don’t have to be like that. She’s just doing her job.”

  April considers saying something like, “Why are you defending her?” or “Why don’t you go marry her, if you like her so much,” but she doesn’t want to be one of those types of girls, because she’s not one of those types of girls. So instead she stands up, leans over to kiss Walt briefly upon his hairy cheek, and says, “I have to go. I have to go shower. I’m sorry. I’ll call you later. After I...shower.”

  She leaves but doesn’t go directly home. She lights a joint when she gets into her car and for a while just drives around getting high and listening to music she doesn’t recognize. She doesn’t want to go home to that thing but she wants to shower. She knows it will probably watch her shower, as it often does. She smokes another joint and gets lost and then calls someone and cries for a while, even after the other person has hung up. Maybe the other person never even answered.

  Maybe I’m losing it.

  She thinks of the patient and then muses, Maybe I’m dead.

  So much grime.

  All of the self-contrived problems of the “sick”, all their whining complaints and pitiful lamentations, their bleating pleas for a pill-shaped panacea to a chronic condition that can be diagnosed only as life, and whose prognosis is always nothing less than certain death…all of this grime, all of it and more, sliding from April’s body and swirling around the shower drain before being mercifully sucked down into the abyssal sewers beneath the shrieking pit of retarded children that is the World of Man.

  The steaming water pelts her with its forceful urgency, bursting forth from the shining chromium nozzle like revitalizing rainfall upon a barren desert wrought with drought and decay. She is purified once more, or at least as much as is possible at this stage in her rapid descent into the very ailment she claims to treat.

  Salty tears mix with the water streaming down her face. From the stereo in her living room comes Framing Hanley’s “Built for Sin”, just barely audible over the sound of the shower. Her house is empty. If music plays and only Dr. April Diver can hear it, does it still make a sound?

  When she is at last cleansed and the water runs cold, she twists the nozzle and for a few long minutes just stands dripping in the tub, shivering in spite of herself, listening to the droplets of moisture plink down onto the porcelain. Everything else is silent; the music has stopped, leading her to believe it was indeed never playing in the first place.

  Or that something turned it off.

  This all feels eerily familiar. Like déjà vu, but worse.

  She tries to hear her heartbeat and cannot, and two delicate fingers pressed to her thin, faintly pulsing wrist is her only confirmation of her continued feeble existence. A brief look at the razor on the edge of the tub opens a world of possibilities, but only for a moment, for the thought is as fleeting as the glance itself.

  She gets out of the shower and dries herself off.

  She can already feel the grime beginning to collect again.

  Pleasant Times Away from Home

  People like explanations. They like things to fit into a nice, neat package, without exception. No inexplicable mysteries, no bizarre phenomena. Just clear and succinct clarifications, and nothing more or less.

  These same qualifications apply to serial killers.

  People love sentimental sob stories to go along with the serial killers they love to hate; it makes it easier to deal with the atrocities that these murderers commit. They like to hear that these killers had heinous childhoods, that they were abused, that they experienced some unspeakable horror that screwed with their inner mechanics and transformed them into monsters.

  They don’t like it when there is no clear-cut explanation for a serial killer’s malevolence, which is why Sterling McPleasant was such a despised man in American society. He came from a Catholic upbringing, raised by a family with intensely moralistic values that gave him no motivation to do the awful things he did.

  No, Sterling McPleasant was born as a bad man in a world that liked to think it was good, and he didn’t need motivation. No more than a person needs any motivation other than thirst to drink, no motivation other than hunger to eat. It was part of him, and he had no reservations about the person he was.

  * * *

  By the time the police arrived at Sterling’s house to investigate the crime scene in his sister’s bedroom, he was already miles away, huddled in a cramped railcar surrounded by crates and watching the landscape rush by him. It would be years before the law ever caught up.

  Rachel McPleasant lay in her bed, her sheets doused with blood, naked except for a torn, skimpy brassiere. She had bite marks on her arms and breasts, bite marks that had torn away bits of flesh.

  “Any suspects?” Officer Lyon asked Detective DeMint, looking at the corpse with sick revulsion.

  The detective shook his head, walking slowly around the bloody bed and biting his lip. “The parents have a solid alibi, and the brother was at a friend’s house.”

  “Where’s the brother now?”

  “Still at his friend’s. He hasn’t been told yet.”

  Lyon rubbed his tired eyes and turned away. “Christ
, DeMint, this is a fucking mess. How old was the poor girl?”

  “Sixteen. I’ve seen her before…her family goes to the same church as mine. Pretty girl. Well, she had been a pretty girl before she got her face bashed in with a pipe wrench. My guess is that it was a classmate, probably an outcast, who lusted after her. He probably sneaked into the house while the parents were at dinner, killed her, and then raped her. CSU said the rape occurred postmortem.”

  “Goddamn,” Lyon breathed. “I swear to Christ, these kids just keep getting more and more fucked up. I blame the media.”

  “Blame whatever you want,” said DeMint. “Doesn’t change anything.”

  Despite the buzzing in his head, which was always there, McPleasant felt good. He’d planned this for months, and he’d gotten away with it. Now he was free, free to do whatever he pleased and turn his gleeful malice towards the rest of the world.

  His sister had only been the beginning. Being but thirteen years old, he had his whole life ahead of him, and he was going to make the absolute best of it.

  The train began to slow, so McPleasant stood up and stretched his aching joints. He then moved to the opening of the railcar to peek out, and he smiled. The train was nearing a supply depot, but it was in the middle of a dense forest with no signs of civilization. He couldn’t have asked for a better place to disembark.

  Humming softly to himself, he grabbed his pack and hopped off the train, bounding nimbly into the woods. Walking felt lovely after four hours in a crouched position, and the air smelled of crisp leaves and early morning dew. The sun had not yet risen, but he could see perfectly. The darkness was his friend, his lover, his partner in crime. It embraced him like no human could, and it accepted him in every way that society would not. In the dark, the buzzing wasn’t quite as loud.

  He walked without slowing for an hour or two, and as the first rays of sun began to stab through the forest’s canopy, McPleasant spotted a young deer with an injured leg. It was dragging itself pitifully through the bushes, blood trickling from what appeared to be a bite wound on its ankle. When it became aware of McPleasant’s presence it quickened its pace a little, but it was not capable of moving any faster than McPleasant could at a slow jog.

  He’d already taken the meat cleaver from his backpack. It was still speckled with his sister’s blood, and he could have wiped it off, but he thought having a bloodstained weapon made him look more professional, like a real serial killer.

  He spent an hour with the deer. He hadn’t had as much time with his sister as he would have liked, so he did everything to the deer that he hadn’t gotten to do to her. He hacked its head open, giggling at the loud thuck noises, and scooped handfuls of its brains out of its fractured skull. He examined the pinkish brain matter, turning it over in his hands and squishing it with his fists. He took a small bite of it, but it tasted foul so he spat it back out and wiped his mouth before moving on to the animal’s stomach. He used the knife to cut a long, thick slice in its belly, and then reached inside and felt its warm, slippery innards.

  “Fuck,” said McPleasant aloud, liking the way it sounded. “Cunt. Cunty cunt cunt.” Curse words had always fascinated him, and he let out a string of his favorite profanities as he continued to butcher the deer.

  When it was no more than an unrecognizable hunk of bloody flesh, he attempted to copulate with it. When this proved to be boring, he pulled his pants back up and resumed his trek through the wilderness.

  He hiked for most of the day, never tiring, until he came upon a small cottage in a vast clearing. It was constructed entirely of logs, and wisps of white smoke billowed from the short chimney. As he approached the cabin, he caught a whiff of the aromatic scent of a freshly-prepared dinner. He was hungry, and he didn’t want to go through his granola bars too quickly, so he jogged up to the house and rapped loudly on its front door. A golden plaque was nailed above the door, which read, “The Humble Abode of Walden Thoreaugood.”

  After a few short moments, the door was opened by a short, thin, smiling man with tousled hair and a scruffy black beard. “Hello, there, young lad,” the man said, beaming. “What are you doing here out in the woods all by your lonesome?”

  McPleasant, who had never been good with words, said simply, “Hiking.”

  “Well, you look mighty tired. I just cooked dinner for myself, and if you’re hungry I certainly wouldn’t mind the company.” He opened the door wider and stepped aside, gesturing for McPleasant to enter. He complied without a word and set his pack down on the floor, quickly checking that he hadn’t missed anything when he’d wiped his hands clean in the pond he’d stumbled upon a quarter mile or so back.

  “My name is Walden Thoreaugood,” said the man, “and this is my…experiment, of sorts. I’m so sick of civilization, all the computers and cell phones and such, so I’ve come out here to live a simpler and quieter life.”

  “Okay,” said McPleasant, looking around at the small cottage. The furniture was very basic and makeshift, and the entire interior bore no signs of the twenty-first century. It was peculiar, but there was a hot and steaming turkey on the table, so McPleasant didn’t really mind.

  As they ate, Walden regarded McPleasant with kind eyes and said, “Where do you live, son? Anywhere close by?”

  “No,” McPleasant replied, shoving a forkful of turkey into his mouth and washing it down with a gulp of water.

  Walden blinked, never shedding that warm and ridiculous grin, and said, “All right, I understand…you don’t want to tell me where you live because I’m a stranger, right? Smart boy. Your parents must have taught you well.”

  McPleasant snickered, thinking of his dead and maimed sister, and ate another bite of turkey.

  “You go hiking out here often? I get visitors from time to time, but never someone so young. I’m guessing you don’t come out this way too much, right?”

  “Nope.”

  Walden nodded slowly. “You aren’t much of a talker, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s all right, son. I can do enough talking for the both of us. See, people used to tell me all the time that my idea of living out here was ridiculous. They said it’d get me killed, one way or another. People aren’t meant to live like this, they said. Well, look at me now. I’ve been out here for almost two years, and I’ve been doing just fine. Shows them. You know, I know how to live, you know? They don’t, and that’s fine. I don’t mind. Really, I don’t. People can take what they want from my belief system, my little ‘experiment,’ if you will. I’m not really trying to prove anything. Honestly, I’m not. I just want to, you know, do. You know? I want to be who I am and not let what anybody thinks keep me from, you know, being who I am.

  “And speaking of individuality, would you just look at how conformist everyone has become? Look at everyone dressing similarly, talking similarly, living similarly. I’m so sick of the similarity in the world, you know, kid? Sick of it. Of course, I don’t blame the people of society. And I guess you could say I don’t really blame society itself, either. It’s not really a matter of blaming, when you get right down to it, because blaming doesn’t change anything. It’s a matter of just, you know, being. You know what I mean, right? Of course you do. Just like you know about, say, computers. Don’t even get me started on computers. They’re taking over the world, son! I mean, they’re everywhere, you know? Of course you do. You’re a smart boy.” He smiled and took a long swig of water, sloshing it around in his mouth and grinning stupidly. “Let me tell you something else, boy…there’s no modesty anymore. I mean, look at the way the girls dress, for God’s sake! Just look! It’s appalling! And on television, in movies, in music…it’s all about, well, ‘it.’ Dirty things, you know, son? You know?”

  Walden continued to talk inanely throughout the rest of the meal, and continued on even after they’d finished, but the buzzing was loud enough for McPleasant to block a lot of it out. But by the time Walden finally got up to take the dishes out to the pond, it was dark, and M
cPleasant wanted to kill him. He was tiresome and annoying, like so many of the other abhorrent adults McPleasant had encountered during his life. The difference now, though, was that he could do something about it. The others, he’d just had to tolerate them. Not this man. Out in the wilderness, no civilization…no one would know. So as he awaited Walden’s return, he crouched under the table with the knife clutched in both hands.

  When Walden returned, it seemed as though he was unaware of the fact that McPleasant was not in sight. As soon as the door opened, he was talking again.

  “Oh, the rain!” he exclaimed, shaking his mane of rain-soaked hair and stomping his wet shoes before bustling into the tiny kitchen to put the dishes away. “You, being a smart boy and all, must know the glorious wonders of the rain, the rapturous rain! The way it makes the trees glisten with sparkling moisture, the way it cloaks the leaves in jackets of natural perspiration, the way it makes Mother Nature herself sing an exultant chorus of mellow magic…surely you must know. Oh, how it just makes me swell with bliss!”

  He came back out of the kitchen, still unaware that McPleasant was hunkered beneath the table, preparing to spring out and take his prey. “You know, boy, there’s something about nature itself that makes me just want to explode with excitement, you know? That is undeniably my most favorite aspect of my time out here. Sure, I love the seclusion, the escape from society, but it’s nature that really takes the cake you know?” After this last statement, he turned to face the window so he could gaze out at his beloved rain. It was then that McPleasant pounced.

  When the blade buried itself in the side of the recluse’s neck, it made a pleasingly loud shuk! sound and sent blood the color of raspberries squirting onto the rain-streaked glass. Walden tried to scream, but all that escaped his lips was a wet, gagging groan. McPleasant wrenched the knife free, letting forth a thick freshet of redness that stained his shirt and spattered the floorboards. He fell to his knees, his dying, bewildered eyes reflecting in the window, and McPleasant finished him off by driving the cleaver deep into the top of his skull. The impact killed him instantly, and he fell to his side at McPleasant’s feet, pink and scarlet fluids dripping from the wound in his head.