He awoke in an alley, on his stomach in the rain. He was wearing a trenchcoat, tan, corduroy pants, a t-shirt, tennis shoes. He could feel there was something in the pockets. Two prescription bottles and a wallet with $500 in it. He went and got a room, to get out of the rain. He set the pill bottles on the bedside tables along with another prescription. He went out and got two Whoppers with cheese, a case of beer, and a carton of cigarettes. He sat in his hotel room with the radio on, Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, something about crop circles, and devoured the first solid food he had had in weeks. He lay on the bed sipping Budweiser, until he wrapped himself in the warm covers and drifted off to sleep.
The next day he awoke about noon and went out to get a job. He was light headed, and paranoid. He eventually landed a job as a janitor at a local shopping mall. It went fine for a while, drinking, taking medication, getting paid, listening to the radio. He was happy in a strange lonely way of his own. He was beyond all human companionship, in his condition, but didn’t really want it for some reason. It was going fine until he walked out of work into a crime scene, where he saw a man with a watermelon-sized hole in his gut, sprawled on the pavement. He made eye contact with the detectives, but avoided them and wondered what he had been doing for the past 8 hours. He made his way to his room and cracked open a beer, turning on the radio to 1100 AM, Coast to Coast AM. For some strange reason, he also felt very guilty. The next day he walked into a crime scene, on his way to work. Did he sleep all day, he wondered? He wasn’t sure. The body was without a skull. A headless body laid in the parking lot of the Cuyahoga Falls mall. He cleaned all night, in silence, sometimes losing himself in thought. Vacuuming the carpet, mopping the floors, polishing windows. He left work in silence, to his hotel room where he cracked open a beer, and lit a cigarette, after turning on the radio. He took his medication, and then went to sleep. The next day, while standing at the bus stop he began to root through the trashcan that stood there. He found a human arm, and called the police. They came, and questioned him. He told them that they thought it might be him killing everyone, but he wasn’t sure. They wrote him off, and he went away, spitting in the dust and garbage, to work, a couple minutes late. There were no killings for a couple of days, but a man was questioned after his foot exploded in public. Another victim of this rogue killer. Finally, one more man was butchered, his chest exploding in the food court of the mall where Dean worked, Children slipping and sliding around in his guts, falling down, dropping their ice cream cones. Dean finally confessed, tear-soaked, to all the murders, but was turned away at the door, because he was drunk, almost getting arrested.
*
Dean walked through the cemetery, with a noose around his neck, rope dragging behind, bottle of Jack Daniels in his right hand. He drained the last of the bottle, climbed the tree and knotted the rope around a high branch of the tree. He jumped out of the tree, and hung there, writhing. Blood dripped out of his skull as he writhed, suffocating. Soon, he was dead, and after Dean’s death, all of the random murders stopped, cold.
kurtice6@hotmail.com
he'd love some feedback
he's a very lonely man