Dahmer's Not Dead

“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.

The pallid face, eroded, bleached of any definition. The lidless, empty eyes and the soulless stare.

Its white-clay hands reached forward, to pluck at her raw breasts and pad stickily at her face. Eventually, a chalk-white finger poked into her mouth. She tried to scream, couldn’t, then bit down. The finger came off behind her teeth and began to wriggle on her tongue.

The dust-pale shadow chuckled…

It wasn’t the non-stop horror of the dream that woke her up. It was, of all things, a steady beeping sound. The dream-world and the real world merged then, like lovers hesitant to kiss until one tongue-tip touched the other. Helen’s eyes sprang open, and she jerked bolt upright like a b-movie cliche. A quick jostling to her left startled her nearly to the point of shrieking out loud. The beeping persisted as yet another shadow moved off. But, no, it wasn’t the putty-white specter of the dream. It was Tom.

The beeping pulsed on, then, in another instant, abated.

A beeper, Helen thought. Was it hers? She turned, winced in sweat damp sheets, then groggily checked her Motorola pager. No messages. Tom, she realized then. Of course. It was Tom’s hospital pager that went off.

Helen lay back, sighed. She tried to push the now actively recurrent nightmare from her head. At least, Tom’s pager had wakened her. If it hadn’t, she’d still be dreaming.

Her surroundings, at first, eluded her. Whaaaa… Most nights she slept at Tom’s; hence, she didn’t recognize her own bedroom now. Of course—he’d come to her apartment last night after work. She thought back, tried to remember more.

Tom hadn’t made love to her last night, had he? No, she felt certain. It had been the night before, at his place, when he’d made love to her on the floor and then faltered. Last night, he’d merely crawled into bed, kissed her, and rolled over. Even some rather forward—and uncharacteristic—inducements via her hands and mouth hadn’t roused his interest. “Aw, honey, I’m just not into it tonight, okay?” he said with his back to her. “Tough day, you know? Christ, I had to histologize three brains today, and ship a pineal gland to Berkeley.”

The latter comment had nipped her own interest. She’d shrugged and gone to sleep. So why, now, did she still feel this revenant of sexual arousal? Her fingers touched herself, for proof. They came away wet. Jeeze, she thought.

The dream?

But how could that be? There was certainly nothing erotic about her recurrent nightmare.

I’ll have to ask Dr. Sallee, she supposed, though she hated to think what his answer might be.

“Sure.” A muffled whisper. “Yeah.”

Tom’s voice. He’d gone to the kitchen to answer his page. But—

“Yeah? Maybe I ought to come over there right now and do the job right.”

Helen’s face turned rigid. The old demon returned—it never failed. The demon of jealousy and suspect. A mindless imp of caressing irrationality and jumping to conclusions. It was her “anomaly,” Dr. Sallee had told her. Acting before she would let herself think. Making judgments before surveying the facts. But in such times, her sense of reason stayed in bed.

“I’ll light you up real good,” she heard.

She pulled on her robe and walked very quietly into the front of the kitchen. Tom’s pager lay there, and she didn’t hesitate to pick it up. The message screen read 224-9855. Tom hung up and turned.

“Helen. You’re up,” he said.

Don’t let him lie to you, her not so better half ordered. He’ll probably