Troy Weaver: Witchita Stories

I saw pictures of Joyland online, with the tagline, “Creepy Abandoned Amusement Park,” and I swear, I swear it, that was the last time I ever even looked.

There was this friend of mine who went into the bathroom after this other kid’s birthday party and slit both of his wrists. I was sixteen years old, the other two kids were fifteen, and the suicide-attempter was eighteen. It was two o’clock in the morning when it happened. We had been watching movies when he disappeared. The movie ended and he was still in the bathroom. That’s when we started to worry. We knocked and knocked and knocked. He didn’t respond. We knocked again, quietly saying his name through the door. No response. Alarmed, we took a coat hanger, bent it out of shape, and picked the lock with it. It only took a minute to work the lock and when we got the door open we found him, conscious, standing, watching his blood make small pools on the linoleum floor. There was panic in our hearts, but we were also fairly used to his behavior — we knew what to expect. We wrapped up his wounds the best we could, scotch-taping toilet paper around his wrists. But the tape kept falling off because he was bleeding through it. So we got into his car and drove to the 24-hour Walmart a few blocks away to get some supplies. It was a still, summer night. The stars were out, a cloudless sky, moon full and shining. When we got to Walmart, we came upon this aerosol stuff in the bandage aisle, a spray that seals up wounds (some kind of strange skin glue), also some butterfly tape, some gauze, and some duct tape, and went back to his house to get our nurse on. We were quiet getting back into the house, trying not to wake anybody, and then we made our way into the downstairs bathroom. It took some time but eventually we got him all fixed up, somehow stopped the bleeding. Luckily he hadn’t cut deep enough to rake a vein. By the time we were done with his damaged wrists, it was already closing in on five in the morning. We were going to caravan to Oklahoma City with our friend’s parents early that morning, part of the celebration, to spend the day at a water park. We’ll just be more tired if we only sleep two hours. We said that aloud a few times to convince ourselves of its staying power but knew it was a bad idea before our lips even moved. All we knew was that we were going to spend the day at a water park. We were going to smile. We had a two-hour drive ahead of us, a few packs of cigarettes and some weed to smoke. We made sure the slits in his wrists were watertight. We were not about to let anything get in our way. We were going to go shoot down some water slides.

Growing up, I’d heard about this guy — the serial killer who got away — but we didn’t talk about him much. I think people who were alive during the murders didn’t like to think about it. My mom and dad lived through it, as it was happening, and have relayed that it was definitely a pretty scary time around here. This guy damn near took out a whole family, the Oteros, not even counting the others. Jerking-off on his victim’s corpses and taking pictures of them in various poses, he sent letters into news stations and the police chief, tauntingly, with cryptic messages and clues, and nobody could catch him. By the time I was old enough to know anything about it, years had passed since he had actually killed somebody. So many years, in fact, that most people assumed he was in a different state, or dead, or for some reason or other unable to kill again — everybody had their theories.

2004. It was on every news station, in all the papers. He was back. In fact, he had never even left us. Leaving clues around the city again, too — at Home Depot (a cereal box containing a letter and trophies from his victims), The Wichita Eagle (a letter from one Bill Thomas Killman, a few postcards, etc., all detailing his crimes in grotesque detail), KAKE News (postcards detailing crimes, giving clues, toying around), off the highway up near Park City (another cereal box, this one containing a bound doll, apparently symbolizing the death of an eleven-year-old girl he’d killed). I remember a word puzzle he sent the cops. They published it in The Wichita Eagle hoping somebody would decipher the code or recognize his handwriting. I had a blast trying to solve that thing. I thought I’d crack it, help them put that creep behind bars, but it was clearly just a box of random unsolvable gibberish. I mean, the FBI couldn’t even crack it. It was evident that he liked the attention. It was also evident, if the case went cold, as it had in the past, he’d have one sad killer heart inside him, because that’s what really got him off, the attention — and nobody wanted that. No, he would undoubtedly kill again, if they didn’t catch him sooner or later. That’s the way they left it, the news coverage acting as an incubator for our fears. We were left with a sick feeling when we went outside at night. We’d hesitate in the thresholds of doors, do a little dance there. Our hearts pumped a glaze of adrenaline over the linings of our veins. I know it’s fucked up, but it was one of the most exciting times in my life. It made me feel alive again — and in a way that was healthy.

His name had been BTK for so long that when he slipped up and they caught him, I was disappointed to hear his real name was Dennis Rader. To me, he just didn’t look like a Dennis. But he sure didn’t look like a Richard or a John Wayne or a Charles, either. He just looked like a guy who got up every morning, went to his job, came home to his wife in the evenings, and went to worship his god in a church on Sunday.

And guess what?

That’s exactly who he was.

My dad took me and my friend to the flea market one weekend when we were nine. This was back when you could still smoke cigarettes in public places. So we were in the food court eating chili dogs and my dad was smoking his cigarettes and drinking a cup of coffee. We were into coin collecting, all three of us, so we were looking at our wheat pennies and our buffalo nickels. Then, out of nowhere, my friend started blushing, eyes fixed to his plate, very clearly distraught, so my dad asked him: What’s the problem? And my friend, he said: That lady looks like an old man, pointing his finger. My dad couldn’t hold his laughter. He doubled over the newspaper he was staring at, and when he finished laughing, he patted my friend on his back and said: That lady looks like an old man because she is an old man. Both of us were taken off guard. Why’d he dress like that? My dad laughed again, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, and whispered loudly: He’s a fairy. That’s what he’s into.

And then I wondered if that’s what I was into. I thought of all the times my older sister put makeup on me. I thought about all the times I’d ever played with Barbie dolls of my own free will. I thought about what my friends might think of me, if they knew I enjoyed it when my sister let me play with her girly toys. I wondered what it would be like to be a man dressed as a woman, especially in a world so clearly dominated by men who dressed like men.

Ian Curtis (hanging)

Ernest Hemingway (gunshot)

Breece D’J Pancake (gunshot)

Kurt Cobain (gunshot)

Albert Ayler (drowning)

Hart Crane (drowning)

Ann Quin (drowning)

Jerzy Kosinski (asphyxiation: plastic bag)

Vincent Van Gogh (gunshot)

Sylvia Plath (asphyxiation: gas)

Mark Rothko (slit wrists)

Anne Sexton (asphyxiation: carbon monoxide, The Awful Rowing Toward God )