Dave Zeltserman - Bad Thoughts

“Now breath deeply,” the killer ordered, “smell that beautiful smell of death.” And Shannon did what he was forced to do.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it, boy?” the killer asked softly. Then he jerked Shannon away from the table and applied pressure on his bent fingers until Shannon was kneeling on the floor.

“I was fifteen before I had my first chance to smell that beautiful smell,” he whispered. “How old are you, boy?” A little twist made Shannon answer. “Aren’t you lucky,” he whispered, his breath obscenely hot. “Starting off so young. But this will be your only chance, boy. ’Cause you know what I’m going to do to you after this?” He described it in great detail, his breath flicking in and out of Shannon’s ear, tickling it like a snake’s tongue.

At times Shannon would black out from the pain. When he’d fade back in the killer would be whispering to him about how little time Shannon had left.

“Time to get up and kiss mommy good-bye,” the killer breathed lightly as he escalated the pain. He forced Shannon to his feet and back to the table. The killer pushed harder on his fingers, trying to force him forward. The pain screamed through Shannon’s head like a siren, exploding into a fiery burst. Then it went black. With the next twist, the pain reached a new level, a level beyond any conscious awareness.

The pain was no longer a part of him. It had gone beyond that. It was as if Shannon was outside of himself, observing the scene from a distance.

Something distracted the killer. Without being aware of it, Shannon swung his free elbow and caught the killer in the groin. There was a dull moan as he released his grip of the boy’s broken fingers. Shannon scrambled forward and pulled the knife from his mother’s mouth. Then he turned on the man.

The rest was only a dizzying whirl of images, with him slashing and stabbing at the killer, knocking the killer to the ground, then pulling at his dirty ponytail and yanking his head back and… and trying to sever that malformed ugly head from his body. Hacking away, again and again.

Someone pulled him off and twisted the knife from his hand. Shannon stared blankly at the man until he recognized him as his next-door neighbor.

“I heard you screaming,” the man said, his face white as a sheet. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered as his face grew even whiter, his eyes scanning the room, “let’s get you the hell out of here.”

The police came. They put Shannon in a cruiser and took him to the hospital where he underwent surgery to save his badly mangled fingers. The doctor performing the surgery was more shocked than anyone that he was able to. Afterwards, Shannon was put on pain killers and sedatives, and put in a private room. Both the police and the reporters wanted to get to him, but only the police did and that was after a week of fighting with the hospital staff. Shannon stared into space as they questioned him, telling them only his mother was already dead when he got home. He wouldn’t tell them anything else, not what the killer later did to him or any of it.

His mother…

The autopsy report showed bruises along her neck, but only the one wound inside her mouth. The knife had shredded her tongue and severed both her larynx and windpipe, and had cut through to the back of her neck. She actually had died of asphyxiation, unable to breath in air after the damage to her larynx. The police reasoned that she had been strangled until reflex forced her to open her mouth and then was stabbed. Most likely, the killer took a great deal of pleasure in letting her know what was going to happen as soon as she gasped for air. They were somewhat concerned about the lack of marks along the killer’s wrists and arms. They were also bothered by the fact the only fingerprints on the knife were the boy’s, but they were willing to accept that the killer must’ve wiped his off after the murder.

The killer…

He was identified as one Herbert Winters. His family was from Mornsville, North Carolina. Upper middle-class, his father a doctor, his mother a high school English teacher. They had no idea what he was doing in Sacramento. They further claimed they’d had no contact with him since he’d left home three years earlier. The police sent his picture and prints to the FBI hoping to tie other murders to him. Herbert Winters’s death was ruled justifiable.

Bill Shannon ended up hospitalized for five months, most of it in the psychiatric ward for severe depression. His father visited him only a few times during those five months, and when he did, neither of them talked much or made eye contact. When he drove his son home from the hospital it was in silence.

Shannon’s father was only thirty-four when his wife was killed. Before the murder he looked enough like Robert Conrad to have people stop him in the street. He and his wife used to joke about whether he should try and get a stand-in job for the Wild Wild West. Five months after the murder no one bothered to stop him. He no longer looked like Robert Conrad. He had aged, become an old man almost overnight. His hair more gray than black, the flesh around his face loose and sagging, his jowls hanging from his jawbone. It was his eyes, though, that had changed the most. They had become hollow and bitter.

Days would pass without Shannon or his father saying a word to each other. Sometimes Shannon would catch his father looking at him a certain way, the way you’d look at something you detested. Shannon would stare back and his father would end up averting his eyes.

One day Shannon felt his father staring at him. When he turned to face him, his father didn’t look away. Instead, he kept staring at the boy, his lips twisting into something hateful. Then into something insane.

“Was your mom alive when you got home?” he asked.

“What?”

“You heard me, was she alive?”

Shannon stood with his mouth hung open, too confused at first to answer, and then it hit him what was really being asked. A cold fury took him over. As he turned away, his father grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled.

“I asked you a question, was she alive?”

Shannon struck out, catching his father along the cheek. Then he watched as his father’s eyes went blind. The older Shannon threw his son against the wall and then stepped forward, punching him in the ear and knocking him to the floor.

“Answer me, goddamn you!” he screamed, his face twisted like a wounded animal’s. “You were there for over an hour. Was she dead when you got there? And what the hell were you doing to her?”

For awhile it was like it was with Herbert Winters, near the end anyway, with Shannon seeming to observe the scene from a safe distance, detached, only vaguely interested in what was happening. As if he were floating in a corner of the room, watching as his father slapped and punched at him. It seemed to last a long time. Then it was as if he were sucked back into his body. At that instant he could feel a mix of hot tears and humiliation and pain surge within him. As it took him over he told his father every hurtful thing he could think of.

The words hit his father hard, his body wincing with each one. He stood up, backing slowly away from Shannon, his body shaking like a drug addict’s. Shannon didn’t let up as the words poured out of him, as the words chased the older man out of the room and finally out of the house.

That was the last time they spoke to each other or even looked at each other. At seventeen, Shannon left both the house and California.

Shannon jerked his eyes open, a cold sweat breaking out along his upper lip. He sat up and reached over towards Susie, his hand finding her small hip. Still asleep, she pushed his hand off her. He stared slowly at her before squinting at the alarm clock. It was only three-thirty.