Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

At one point I even caught sight of myself in the mirror in nearly the same position I d been in last night this time holding a bottle of Bluestar instead of a knife and the two disconnected realities came crashing together. For a few minutes, the sounds of the surrounding forensic hustle faded completely away, and I was all alone with myself. It wasn t terribly comforting; I just stared at my image, trying to make sense of a picture that suddenly made no sense at all.

Who was I? What was I doing here? And most important, why wasn t I running for my life? The idiotic, pointless questions ran through my brain in a repeating loop until even the simple words seemed foreign to me and I just stood and looked at my suddenly unfamiliar image.

I probably would still be there if Vince hadn t finally jarred me out of my fugue.

Very nice, he said, and still very studly. Now get over yourself.

His face swam into focus in the mirror, suddenly right there beside the image of my own, and the sound track of the room came back on. I realized once more where I was, although none of Vince s words had registered. I jerked my head away from the mirror to face him.

I m sorry, what? I said.

He snickered. You ve been staring at yourself in the mirror for, like, five minutes, he said.

I, um, I was thinking about something, I said feebly.

Vince shook his head and looked very solemn. Always a bad idea to cloud the brain, young Skywalker, he said, and he moved away to the other side of the room. I shook myself and went back to pretending to work. I floated through the rest of the morning in my cloud of adrenaline and alienation, the whole time feeling as if I might split apart at the seams at any minute.

But I didn t fall apart or burst into flames. Somehow, I survived. I know only too well just how fragile a human body is, but Dexter must be made of truly stern stuff, because I lived through that whole dreadful morning without suffering a stroke or a fatal heart attack, or even running out into the street with a shattered mind, yammering confessions and pleas for clemency. And in spite of their diligent and very practiced efforts, all the mighty labor of the forensics team failed to turn up even the faintest sign that I had been there the night before. Dexter had survived, against all the odds, and somehow he made it back to the office in one whole but badly jangled piece.

I slumped into my chair with real relief, and tried to concentrate on breathing normally for a little while, and it actually seemed to work. It does not speak well for my intelligence, but even with all the mounting evidence to the contrary, I still felt safe sitting at my desk. I closed my eyes and tried to make myself relax just a bit, trying to think things through in a calm and rational way. All right: I had been forced into the position of trying to catch myself. And I had almost been caught, but I d gotten away. It had not been fun to return to the nightmarish scene in my role as Daytime Dexter, but I d lived through that, too, and it didn t seem likely that anyone would find any evidence to connect me to the body on the table.

I slowly began to persuade myself that Things were really not as bad as they seemed, and through sheer pigheaded persistence, I very nearly convinced myself. And then I made the very grave mistake of taking one last deep breath, plastering a horrible fake smile on my face, and returning to the workday by dutifully checking my e-mail.

And when I did, all the carefully constructed artificial tranquillity flushed out of me like it had never existed at all as I saw that anonymous e-mail with the one-word title:

Closer.

I did not know what that word was supposed to mean, but I knew instantly who had written it and sent it to me and in that endless frozen moment of reading and rereading that one word I felt once more the awful churning panic and it crashed up higher and higher until I thought I would scream.

I took a deep breath and tried to wrestle down the panic, but it had me pinned to the mat, and my hand was shaking as I clicked the mouse to open the e-mail. And as I read, a wild hissing rose up inside me and all calmness drained out of the world.

Like the others, this one started with the heading:

Shadowblog

But this time there was one startling difference. The shadow of the title, which had previously been a faint red, had grown to an enormous pool of what was absolutely meant to be blood. And now a small trail of blood-red footprints led from the heading down to the blog s one-word title, Closer. With a truly sick feeling of dread, I looked under the title and began to read.

I am learning so much about myself and even more about you. For instance, I didn t know you were so fast on your feet. But you must be, because you got away somehow. You must have been quite a sight, racing through the night with your tail between your legs. Wish I d been there with my camera.

I ve learned a lot of other stuff about you, too. I ve been watching you when you have no idea you re being watched you, with your bags of groceries and your car seat, and on the job with that stupid spray bottle, trying to pretend you re just like everybody else. It s a pretty good act, and I ought to know. I ve been acting my whole life, too. And when I said I am learning about myself? Guess what I can do now?

I know you ve read my blogs. It s simple for me to know who comes to my page. I have to say I m pretty good with computer stuff. You re finding that out. So you read my blog and you know I am just divorced and I don t like it. I was raised that divorce is not an option, and my wife? Let s just say she didn t think that way, or maybe at all. And I tried to reconcile, and I tried to show her divorce was wrong, and she just got bitchier and bitchier, and worse than that I began to realize that it wasn t just bitchy, it wasn t just lazy she was amoral, evil, just as evil as if she d killed somebody. And she is incurable, because she is a psychopath who sucks the life out of other people and contributes nothing but pain and misery, and she can t change so she had to be stopped.

Some people just don t have a sense of Right and Wrong. Born that way. Like you, for instance. And like my ex-wife. And when she is screaming at me to get the fuck out and never come back and fucking mail the alimony check from now on and I step outside and see you standing there in the yard

Hey, I m pretty quick on my feet, too. You didn t see me, except maybe my back. And as I went back inside, and looked at her standing there with her mouth open, and thought about you standing outside and I know you re thinking about coming back to get me I guess I would say it just all came together and I knew who I am supposed to be now and what I am supposed to do. Old Me would have run for his life at the sight of you. But New Me saw how perfect this was, because it really is all about taking responsibility and suddenly I really understand for the first time just how far that goes and what I am supposed to do about it, which is Get rid of her and you at the same time. Take out two Bad People with one stroke. It all adds up now. That s who I am. I was put here to deal with the rule breakers, the ones who have gone too far and can t come back. You. My very-ex-wife. And who knows who else? There s lots of em. I see em every day.

So in a way I am becoming like you, right? The big difference is, I do it to stop people like you. I do it for Good. But hey, thanks for being a great role model. Maybe I should even thank you for my new girlfriend, except I don t think she s going to last too long.

I hope you don t think you are safe. I hope you don t think it s over. Because I know who you are and where you are and you don t know a thing about me. And think about this:

I am learning from you.

I am learning to do just exactly what you do, and I am going to do it to you. You will never know when or where. You can t know anything at all except that I am here and I am moving even closer.