Rick Mofina - Into the Dark

He would stalk her, study her, and obsess about her until a spark would ignite a glorious, all-consuming inferno, leaving him to question his fate as a force from hell.

Will I ever escape this curse?

How much longer can I exist as two beings?

He searched the distant mountains for the answers, letting the hypnotic rhythm of the road carry him back through his life to his earliest memories.

Pain.

He’s staring at a naked lightbulb burning bright against dark flashes as the leather belt slices through the air, whip-snapping over and over.

Each lash bites into his tender skin.

He is four, maybe five, years old. Wedged into a corner, he tries to shield the blows but his foster mother grips both of his tiny hands in hers and with alcohol-laced grunting, she continues beating him.

“Don’t ever piss in your goddamn bed again! Do you hear me? You’re lucky to be alive! You’re a filthy little worm!”

He’d been told that he was orphaned as a baby after his parents had been killed in a car crash. He’d been placed with social services and moved from home to home.

At age six or seven, he was placed in yet another foster home. His foster mother, who’d lied to social services in order to get her check, was an unstable, manipulative drug addict. Whenever she was working her shift at some dive bar, she left him alone with her boyfriend: an ex-con who watched pornographic movies in front of him.

At that time, he felt the stirrings of another force within him, one that compelled him to spy on his foster mother as she undressed, showered or had sex with her criminal lover. One summer afternoon when she was on the apartment balcony tanning in a bikini, she caught him staring at her cleavage and slapped his face so hard he bled.

He glances out the window at the vapor trail of a jet cutting across the sky. At that moment he wishes he were flying above the earth, above the pain and humiliation this bad woman is inflicting on him.

He also wishes he were smashing her head with a hammer.

Eventually, he was passed to another home where his foster mother was an ex-prison guard who looked more like a man than a woman. She had a teenage foster daughter. One day, he was alone in the house with her. She was in her room putting on makeup, drinking beer and smoking pot. She saw him in her mirror, watching.

“Stop staring at me, you little asshole!” She pauses for a second before her eyes glint with an idea. “Come here, it’s time you learned the truth.”

She takes him to their foster mother’s bedroom, goes into a dresser drawer and produces a photocopy of an old news clipping.

“You can read, right, moron?”

The short news article reports that:

A newborn baby boy was found in a Dumpster at an abandoned northeast apartment complex, according to police. A homeless man searching for cans in one of the large trash bins near the old Stone Mill building found the infant in a bloody blanket…

“This story is in your file. It’s about you, garbage boy. And you know what I heard? Back then, they called you the throwaway baby. They never found your whore mother and all the families that tried to adopt you brought you back because you’re a freak.”

At that moment he struggled to comprehend that his fate was more than being unwanted and unloved.

I am nobody. I came from nowhere. I was never meant to be.

He’d come to realize that he was utterly alone in this world. His isolation deepened, giving shape to the second being growing inside him, the one that was taking control.

He was not alone. The other being was with him and together they were better than all of them. They would make them, and everyone like them, pay. One day, everyone in the world would know and fear his name.

He retreated to his dream of becoming a pilot. He lost himself in books, spending hours alone in the library reading about aviation, aviation history and aviation engineering. He read entire sets of encyclopedias, classic literature and textbooks on science, everything he could find, gaining knowledge while strengthening his determination to escape his misery.

During this time, as he grew into his teens, he’d continued passing through a succession of homes. Nearly all of the cities and towns he’d lived in blurred by like the suburbs along the freeway.

His time with one family changed him forever.

In one small town, his foster father was a barely educated, self-pitying man whose job was to destroy life. He took him to his workplace.

“You ain’t ever seen nothing like this.”

The old man worked in the slaughterhouse at the edge of town, where he was “the killer.” He spit on the ground, as if to dare you to challenge him. “Because that’s what I do for a living.”

The stench from the barns was choking. The mooing, the clang of chains and rattle of metal gates was deafening. The cattle were prodded along the chutes one by one toward the death pen where his foster father waited. When the animal was positioned, he fired a penetrating steel shaft from a bolt gun point-blank into its head.

Crack .

The animal collapsed dead.

The side of the pen opened, a chain was affixed to its leg. It was hoisted and hung from an overhead conveyor and cut so all the blood drained from its carcass. It was then moved farther through the process.

“Right now, I am God,” his foster father said, standing there in his rubber apron and gloves as blood swirled around his boots. “I control life and death.”

He passed the gun to him and nodded to the pen.

“Go on, you give it a try.”

His heart beat faster.

He felt the weight and seductive power of the sticklike device in his hand. Amid the stinking chaos of the slamming steel pen, the mooing, clanging chains and snorting, the frightened animal lifted its head to him, its nostrils flaring.

As he raised the gun and pressed it against its skull, he met its eyes.

They were flashing with wild fear.

He felt nothing for the animal. Instead, he imagined its eyes to be those of every one of his abusers and he squeezed the trigger.

At the moment of death, his heart raced, his breathing quickened and he experienced a sensually cathartic release.

The other being inside him raged triumphantly.

He remained motionless for several moments, as if he’d fallen into a trance. As he watched the carcass being hoisted, he smelled the hot blood splashing onto the floor and his body rippled with waves of pleasure.

“I want to do it again.”

He became good at killing.

Several months after he’d polished his skill as a detached killer, he’d moved into another home. As he adjusted to a new foster father, he continued dreaming of becoming a pilot. Throughout his youth, to escape his upbringing, he’d worked. He got jobs, pumping gas, washing dishes, stocking shelves and landscaping, whatever he could find.

He saved every penny he earned, often hiding it from his foster families. But whenever he could, he sought jobs at the local airport where he would learn everything he could about flying from ground crews, mechanics and pilots. Soon he set out on his own, working while putting himself through college and, later, flight school.

It was not easy.

In addition to the grind of physical jobs, the monster grew stronger and more demanding. At times it took control, dominating every thought until he was certain he’d go insane. There were frightening instances when he’d blacked out and couldn’t recall the previous hours or remember where he went or what he did. The other being demanded he give in to its overpowering urges to replicate the ecstasy of the slaughterhouse with a woman. He battled to satisfy the hunger that was devouring him from the inside. He watched porno movies, visited strip clubs, paid for prostitutes.