Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

Helen skipped the rest. Even the legitimate papers, these days, were sounding like the tabloids. Anonymous “sources.” Conspiracies. Contracts.

Ludicrous, she thought.

Out of desperation, then, she turned on Tom’s Trinitron with the remote, then went back to the kitchen. A drink would be nice now, but Tom rarely kept any liquor in the condo. She settled, instead, for a beer—IC Light, whatever that was—and then went back to the den. A dark, monotone shape warbled out of the color-tinged darkness, fluttering shadows on the wall. Helen turned, began to sit down on the couch, then winced when she saw what was on the screen. You gotta be kidding me! It was Dahmer.

One of those tabloid shows. A stiff-haired brunet announcer with too much lipstick tried to appear professional as she recited, “…during P.M. Edition’s landmark interview with this crazed, cannibalistic killer last July.” Dahmer hardly looked crazed or cannibalistic. His drab face—thinner than more recent photos—barely moved as he responded to an interview question.

“…which is why I asked the warden for general pop,” he said in slate-green correctional coveralls.

“General pop?”

“The general inmate population,” Dahmer defined. “It’s too lonely in the segregation wings.”

“But, Jeff,” the interviewess said with a phony concerned look, leaning over as though she really cared. All any of them really cared about were their paychecks and being seen on tv. “Aren’t you afraid that other inmates will try to do you harm?”

“I hope they will,” Dahmer said on the badly produced video. “I deserve to die for my sins. It’s a sin for someone like me to go on living.”

“You actually feel that way?”

“Thinking back on what I did,” Dahmer reflected, “is sometimes too much to bear. I feel strongly that I’d be better off dead.”

“You’re going to be here for the rest of your life, Jeff. Is there any comfort at all? Anything you can still enjoy or feel fulfilled by?”

“The Bible,” replied the killer.

“I understand you were recently baptized.”

Dahmer nodded dully. “Yes, on May 10th, in the prison whirlpool by my friend Father Alexander.”

“I also understand you’re a lay reader now in the prison chapel.”

“Yes, I read the Word of God every morning. I consider it a privilege that God allows me to do this.”

“Do you have a favorite reading, Jeff?”

“Yes, I do. It’s from Revelations. ‘Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth. During that time, these men will seek death, but they will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.’“ Dahmer’s face remained chillingly expressionless. “‘Yes, I am coming soon, and bringing recompense with me, to requite everyone according to his deeds.’“

Dahmer’s deadpan voice flattened further, to an utterance barely human.

“And this one too, my favorite of all,” he said. “It’s from The Book of Isaiah. ‘Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven… Yet thou shalt be brought down into hell, deep into the pit.’”

Helen took a sip of beer, shook her head, and switched channels.

— | — | —

CHAPTER FOUR

He steps out of the shower, pauses. He stands and listens. The silence seems loud as a cacophony. It reminds him of something—

The silence.

—that he hates.

The silence drips. He listens and thinks back—

««—»»

The boy from Bath, Ohio, is hiding. He hides a lot.

It’s a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. His mother is always nice but he doesn’t see her much since the divorce.

There are dead animals in the yard. Little pieces of them, all in the little places he has buried them.

For some reason, the little animals help him feel something he’s never felt before:

Power.

Stray kittens and small stray dogs mostly, and sometimes he’d read ads in the back of the paper. There’s a section for PETS, people who are moving so they have pets to give away. Gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters. The boy picks them up, promises to take good care of the animals, and then he kills them. But he likes the dogs and cats the best, because he can see their eyes better.

It’s the look in their eyes just before they die, the tiniest glimmer: fear.

They fear him, and their fear gives him power.

But right now he is hiding because he knows his father has just gotten home.

And the boy from Bath, Ohio, knows that he will have the same look of fear in his eyes—just like the animals—when his father eventually comes into the room.

It is the boy’s fear that gives his father power.

So the boy remains, hiding behind his bed, and listening to the awful silence until he hears—

click

—the door click open.

“I’m back,” his father says.

««—»»

—and listens and thinks back and listens.

Enough, he thinks.

Weakling.

He fears the past, and he knows that his own fear makes him weak. Like—what was his name, back in eighth grade? Gil Valeda, the jock. “No way. You’re a weakling—”

And his father: “Don’t be such a weakling! Be a man!”

No, it can only be the fear of others.

The fear in their eyes.

The power it gives him.

Sometimes he even tells them what he’s going to do to them. It makes their eyes beautiful with fear…

He cranks off the shower’s annoying drip, dries off, then walks out into the quiet room. He dresses slowly, glancing around at the small room’s insignificance. A cheap lamp and a cheap dresser. A Magic Finger’s Massage box on the head board. But the word resurrection comes to mind when he spies the Gideon’s Bible on the writing table.

She took the fruit thereof and did eat it, he thinks.

He puts the hot plate in his leather bag, a few utensils, his Flair pen and one of his knives.

Thick, musty curtains part at the brush of his hand. Beyond the high window, the city teems in flecks of light and winter dark. Feel the fear, comes the plush, rich thought. It’s as though he is speaking to the world beyond the smudged window glass.

He pauses only for a moment to glance at the blood-sodden bed. Then he leaves the room and closes the door behind him.

“I’m back,” he says aloud.

— | — | —

CHAPTER FIVE

There was a roaring fire, and Helen struggled maniacally with the water hose. She had to put the fire out. But when she turned on the hose, nothing happened. No water issued forth. The fire raged. Next thing she knew, she was running.

Helen fled frantic down some nameless, stygian corridor. Someone—or some proverbial thing —was chasing her. Down one passage after another, she ran, breathless, steeped in terror. It’s the dream, she thought. It’s just the dream. But this knowledge did not allay her at all. Another, darker voice seemed to gutter: What if you’re wrong? What if this isn’t a dream? Pocked stone passed on either side; medieval torches sputtered oily yellow light.

What if this is real?

In another moment, she realized she was naked. A Freudian rape dream, perhaps. Symbolic birth-trauma or some such. Or perhaps the dream was a symbol of her impending menopause: the robust fruit of womanhood withering away to a grayed husk, her sexual self trapped in a labyrinth of cold stone walls and dead ends. There was no way out.

Laved in sweat, her bare breasts heaving, Helen turned at the final dead end. The shadow of her pursuer seemed to flow forward through the dungeon dark. A familiar figure indeed. Naked as she was but bereft of human feature.