Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

I needed to find a clue the way a drowning man needs air, and I had nothing but this single page of blather. But wait: It wasn t technically blather; it was a blog. That implied that it was a semiregular thing, and if there were other postings, one of them might reveal something useful.

I copied the URL at the top of the page, pasted it into my browser s window, and went to the Web address. It was one of the sites that allowed anybody to post a blog for free, and Shadowblog was just one of thousands. But at least there were other entries, one every few days, and I scanned them all as quickly as I could. The very first one opened with, Why does everything always turn to shit? It was a fair question, and it showed a little more insight into life than I expected. But that still told me nothing about him.

I read on: Most of it was a rambling, unfocused whine about how nobody appreciated him, ending with his decision to start this blog to help him figure out why. It ended with, I mean, I don t get it. I walk into a room and it s like they can t even see me, like I m not real to anyone else, no more than a fucking shadow. So I m calling this the Shadowblog. Very touching and sensitive, a true existential call for human contact, and I very much wanted to make contact as quickly as possible. But first I needed to know who this was.

I read more postings. They covered a period of over a year, and they seemed increasingly angry, but they were all anonymous, even the ones that mentioned the writer s divorce from someone he referred to only as A. He wrote very bitterly about the fact that she wouldn t get off her ass and get a job and still expected him to give her alimony to pay for everything, and he couldn t afford two places so even though they were divorced now, he had to live under the same roof with her. It was a very touching portrait of lower-middle-class anguish, and I m sure it would have melted my heart, if only I had one.

A s refusal to work seemed to make him madder than anything else; he wrote passionately about responsibility and the fact that not doing your Fair Share was just plain Evil. That led him to a series of observations about Society in general and the assholes who refused to follow the rules like the rest of us have to. From there he rambled on into several tedious rants about Justice, and people getting what they deserved, and his apparent belief that the world would be a much better place if only everyone in it was more like him. Altogether, it was a portrait of someone with anger-management issues, low self-esteem, and a growing frustration with a world that refused to acknowledge his sterling qualities.

I read more. I hit a section of a half dozen entries in which he went on at great length about growing problems with A and I really did sympathize, but why couldn t he use real names? It would make things so much easier. But, of course, then he would have used my name, too, so I guess it balanced out. I worked forward through the blogs. They were all the same sort of grouchy, self-involved drivel, until I came to an entry headed,

Snap! I recognized the date at the top; it was the day after my rendezvous with Valentine. I stopped scanning and began to read.

So it was just too much with A, just one bitchy crack too many about how I couldn t even make decent money, which is a laugh since she can t make ANY. But it s like, no, you re the man, you re supposed to. And I look at her sitting there in a house where I pay the bills, and I buy the groceries, and she doesn t do shit! She won t even clean up properly! And I look at her and I don t see lazy and bitchy anymore, I see Evil with a capital E, and I know I can t take any more of this shit without doing something about it and I have to get out before I do it. So I take her Honda, just to piss her off, and I drive around for a while, just chewing on my teeth and trying to think. And after maybe an hour, I m up in the Grove and all I got is a sore jaw and a nearly empty gas tank. I really need to just sit somewhere and think what to do, like maybe Peacock Park or someplace, but it s raining, so I circle back south. The closer I get to home, the madder I get, and when I turn on Old Cutler some asshole in a new Beemer cuts me off. And I think, That s it, that fucking does it, and I can almost hear something go snap inside. And I put the pedal down and go after him, and it s like, Dude, wake up: He s in a new Beemer and you re in a beat-to-shit old Honda. And he s totally gone in about three seconds, and I m even madder. I turn down the street where I thought he went, and there s no sign. And I cruise for a few minutes, thinking, What the hell, maybe I ll get lucky. But there s nothing. He s totally gone.

And then I see this house. It s totally trashed, another foreclosed place. Some dumb asshole ripping off the bank and raising the rates for the rest of us. I slow down and look, because there s an old Chevy kind of hidden in the carport, like he s still in there, living for free, while I bust my ass making payments.

I park the car, and I go around to the side door by the carport, and I slip inside. I don t know what I was thinking or what I would have done, but I know I was pissed off. And I hear something in the next room, and I sneak to the doorway and peek

The counter. There s a hand lying there. A human hand.

But it s not attached to anything. This doesn t make sense.

And right next to it that s a foot, also not attached. And other parts, too, and oh holy shit that s the head right there on top, eyes wide-open and looking right at me and all I can do is stare back

And something moves and I see this guy standing there, totally calm, just cleaning up and looking like no big deal, another day at the office. And he starts to turn toward me and I see his face

The Priest used to try to scare us with these pictures of the Devil. Horns and red face and evil stare but this guy is scarier, because he s just so fucking ordinary-looking and real but so totally fucking evil and really, really happy about that, and about being there with this chopped-up body.

And now he s turning to look at me

It s too much. Something just popped and I was in the car and hauling ass out of there before I even knew I was moving. And I m almost all the way home before I think, Why didn t I do something? Even if it was only just calling the cops? It pisses me off to think I m being a wuss, like maybe they re all right about me being nothing but a fucking shadow. I should have done something. I should still do something.

But what?

In a very strange way, it was fascinating to read a description of Dark Dexter at play. A little creepy, perhaps, and not very flattering Ordinary-looking? Moi? Surely not. But other than that, it wasn t terribly helpful in providing clues to the blogger s identity.

I moved on to the later blogs. One of them described seeing me in the grocery store the Publix nearest to my house, no less and how he had slipped out of the store like a shadow and watched from his car as I came out with my groceries. And two blogs later he described our encounter that morning on the on-ramp to the Palmetto Expressway in his usual riveting prose:

I was just crawling along in the usual bullshit morning traffic, going to my stupid fucking temp job, and driving A s car to save on gas, and I m looking at the cars around me, and boom I see that profile again. It s him, no fucking question, totally him. Just sitting there in his shitty little car like all the other wage slaves, just totally normal. And I can t make it mean anything, because everything around me is so fucking normal, like it is every day, but there s that face in a car right next to me, that same face I still see in my head surrounded by chopped-up body parts, and it s right there in traffic waiting to get up on the Palmetto.

And my brain is frozen, I can t think, and I m staring, I guess thinking, like, Is he going to do something? I mean, flames shooting out, or make a cloud of bats come out or something? And I can see it when he all of a sudden knows I am watching, and his head starts to turn toward me, just like that night in the house, and the same thing happens I totally panic and hit the gas and I am gone before I even know what I am doing. And I think about it later, really, really pissed that I ran like that again because I am not a fucking nothing and I know I should do something, but I was out of there before I could even think, which is totally not the real me.