The Mad and the Macabre

- 2 -

Charlie stared at the TV for about three hours, not really watching it.

* * *

He was deeply ashamed of himself the next morning. Grabbing her arm? How could he be that careless? That impatient? He was starting to lose control, and if he didn't shape up soon, he'd find himself on the receiving end of a three hundred pound convicted rapist's penis. At least, that was the fate he'd overheard a co-worker wish upon the person who stole her laptop. For what Charlie was doing, he'd probably end up with a much larger rapist. Or a much larger penis. Either way, he needed to get himself back to normal.

There was always his emergency shelter, but that was a last resort. He'd rather not spend his remaining years hiding out like an animal.

He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Shape up or ship out," he told himself.

Charlie brushed his teeth and rinsed with Listerine, then practiced his smile a few times. He didn't think it looked that creepy. Maybe it was his eyes. He knew people whose eyes seemed to sparkle when they smiled, but his never did.

Contacts might work. Lighten his eyes up. Turn them from brown to blue or green. Then the women might trust his smile. He should make an appointment to visit the eye doctor sometime soon.

After work the next day, Charlie decided to empty his change jar. All of his spare change went into the plain glass jar. When the jar was full to the very top, he'd dump it into the grocery store's loose change machine, get his savings in paper currency (minus an eight percent service charge), and then buy himself something special. With his last jar, he'd bought a really nice power drill with dozens of different bits. He found that he preferred the smallest one.

The jar was just over a third of the way full, and Charlie's official rule was that the top coin actually had to protrude over the surface before he could consider spending the money. But having already decided to break the biggest rule in his life, using the change jar early was a pretty minor infraction, and a handful of bills could possibly accomplish what his personality couldn't.

* * *

He walked out of the grocery store, disappointed. Only fifty-five dollars and twenty-one cents. Less than he'd expected. The jar must've been heavier on pennies than usual.

Still, it should be enough to get somebody into his car. Though it felt like cheating this way, he didn't think he had a choice. After this one, he'd get completely back on track. Follow all of the rules. He just needed to get this one out of his system and then everything would be back to the way it used to be.

* * *

The money worked. He didn't even have to promise that more was forthcoming. He drove with the hooker--really, a crack whore, though he hated that term--in his passenger seat and tried to keep his eyes on the road.

"So what do you want to do?" she asked.

Charlie shrugged. He didn't have a script for this sort of thing.

"I bet you have some idea."

"Okay."

"This your first time?"

"No."

She smiled. "Not first time ever. I meant first time for money."

"Oh. Yes."

"I can tell. I know a guy who can give us something to make us both feel better. It doesn't cost that much."

Charlie shook his head.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"You're the boss. Pity, though. You'd have a lot more fun if you relaxed a bit."

"I'm okay."

She pointed through the windshield at a building up ahead. "How about you pull behind that bank over there?"

"My house is better."

"How far is it?"

"Not far."

"You know I can't drive around all night with you, right? Not for what you're paying. Let's just go someplace quick."

"My house is better. It'll only take ten minutes."

"You got beer?"

"Yes."

"What kind?"

Charlie tried to remember the commercials. "Bud Light."

"All right. But we're gonna have to be quick."

The first thing she did when they walked into his house was excuse herself and go into the bathroom. When she emerged a couple of minutes later, her eyes were glazed over and she gave him a half-smile. She wasn't anywhere near as appealing now, but it was very easy to get the chloroform-soaked rag over her mouth.

* * *

"I never had any interest in finding my real parents," he told her, as he polished the blade with a cloth. "I could probably find them, I guess, but I don't see any reason to do that. I lost touch with my first foster family, too, and I spent a lot more time with them than I did my birth parents, so it's just not something that's important to me. I feel guilty about that sometimes, like I should care, but I don't. Why do you need parents when you're in your forties?"

She continued tugging on the straps. He liked that.

"I think maybe if I'd had a really good childhood or a really bad childhood, I'd be more interested. But I barely even remember being a kid. What would we talk about? I don't even use credit cards, so it's not like I'd try to borrow money from them. This is going to sting a lot, so brace yourself. I mean it--it's really going to hurt. I'm going to cut you right there. Not a long cut but a deep one. Are you ready? Blink if you're ready. I bet you can't keep your eyes open like that for more than a minute. Want me to time it? One one thousand, two one thousand, three...see, you blinked. Ready?"

Charlie winked at her, then slid in the blade. Not too deep. He left it there for a few minutes, giving it a slight twist every now and then.

Finally, he removed it and showed her the tip. "Don't worry, I'll make the bleeding stop now. Then you can relax for a while."

He giggled as he tended to her wound. This was well worth the risk he'd taken. Not that he planned to ever do it again--he had to follow the rules--but for this one time he deserved the pleasure.

She went into withdrawal on the second day and died on the third, but Charlie felt completely satisfied.

* * *

His September 24^th hunt went much more smoothly. He got her the first night. She'd begged him for money. It probably would've been harder to keep her out of his car than to get her in there.

She screamed so loud when she regained consciousness that Charlie worried that even the extensive soundproofing in his basement might be insufficient, so he put on the leather gag. By the third day, she wasn't screaming very loud anymore, and he took it off.

* * *

His November 24^th hunt was about average. Last year around Thanksgiving he'd told his victim that he was celebrating with human flesh instead of turkey, and then he read her some cannibalism jokes he'd gotten out of a book. He dug out his notes and did the same thing this year. He didn't really eat her, though.

He drove her pieces to the Body Pond, which was a small pond about an hour out of the city. As far as Charlie knew, hardly anybody ever went out to the pond, and he thought it was deep enough that even an extended drought wouldn't uncover the rock-filled sacks.

Of course, he hoped to fill the pond enough that someday he'd be forced to find a new hiding spot.

* * *

"What do you think you're doing?" Alicia asked, walking over to his desk.

"What?"

"What do you think you're doing?"

Charlie squirmed and desperately wished she would leave him alone. "I'm just trying to work."

"Everybody else is in the break room having Christmas lunch. Doing work is strictly off-limits. C'mon."

"I didn't bring anything for it."

"Why not?"

Charlie shrugged.

"You could have at least signed up to bring napkins. It doesn't take anything to stop on your way here and buy a package of napkins. But I won't tell anyone you didn't contribute if you don't. Let's go get some food."

"I'm fine."

"If I called it a holiday lunch instead of a Christmas lunch, would you go?"

"I'm not hungry."

"How hungry do you have to be for cookies?"

"I don't know."

"Get up, Charlie. The whole department is having a holiday lunch, and you're part of the department. It's silly for you to sit here by yourself. Don't make me drag you in there by your shirt collar. I'll do it."

Charlie looked back at his computer screen. "I'm not hungry."

Alicia stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged. "Whatever you want. I'm just trying to be nice to you. Hope you get a lot done."

She left, and Charlie let out a deep sigh of relief.

* * *

Charlie walked down the sidewalk, hands deep in his pockets, breath misting in the cold air. He had no interest in the Christmas lights or the music that played from one of the downtown shops, but he did enjoy the crunching sound the occasional patches of ice made under his feet as he walked.

The wind was starting to pick up and it was getting chillier than he liked. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and decided to cut through Klant Park. It wasn't usually a good idea to walk through the park at night (Charlie was confident in his ability to deal with a helpless vagrant woman; less so in his ability to fend off a group of muggers) but the small park seemed to be empty.

As he walked through the single path, past the swing set, he heard something.

A faint whimper.

He stopped and listened more closely. Definitely a whimper. Not human. Sounded like a dog.

He glanced around, looking for the source. It was difficult to hear over the rush of the wind, and the park was poorly lit, but it seemed to be coming from the opposite side. He picked up his pace a bit, curious to see what was out there.

He walked through the park until he found the source of the sound, which came from beneath a wooden bench. It was indeed a small dog, lying on its side. He crouched down and stared at it with mild interest.

Charlie had never owned pets as a kid, and didn't feel he was missing anything as an adult. He knew that a lot of serial killers started with animals and worked their way up to humans, but Charlie didn't see the point. Anybody could have control over a domesticated dog, unless it went on a wild rampage and started mauling infants. There was no trick to keeping a dog on a leash, no thrill to be gained from causing it pain. Why bother?

He wondered what was wrong with the dog. There didn't seem to be any blood. Maybe it was just starving.

The dog kind of amused him. It had a funny black-and-white face (white down the middle, black on the sides) that almost looked like a clown. He didn't know the name of the breed, but this kind of dog appeared in television commercials a lot. He liked the way its eyes bugged out a little. Very silly.

He gently brushed his hand across its fur. The dog whined, though Charlie didn't think he was hurting it. It wasn't wearing a collar.

Would it bite him if he put his finger next to its mouth? He'd never been bitten by a dog before. Maybe it would enrage him enough to want to bring the dog to his basement. That would certainly be less risky than a homeless woman.

Of course, the dog could be rabid. That was a good reason not to see if it would bite him.

It didn't seem to be foaming at the mouth at all, and it certainly wasn't being aggressive. Admittedly, Charlie knew very little about rabies, but everything he'd seen on TV and movies involved foaming at the mouth and growling. A rabid dog wouldn't just lie here under a park bench; it would be going berserk.

He took off his right glove, extended his index finger and carefully placed it in front of the dog's mouth.

The dog whimpered and licked his finger.

Charlie wiped its slobber off on his jeans. Disgusting.

But he wasn't going to kill it simply because it got some dog spit on him. He put his glove back on and stood up. He might check back tomorrow to see if it had starved to death, just out of curiosity.

As he walked away, the dog let out a pitiful howl. Charlie kept walking. It wasn't his dog, and if the owner didn't care enough to watch his property, Charlie wasn't going to do it for him. If he saw the owner frantically searching for his dog, he might point out where it was laying, but beyond that, the animal wasn't his problem.

He left the park and resumed walking on the sidewalk, once again enjoying the crunch of ice under his feet. He tried to remember which commercials he'd seen that kind of dog in. At least one of them was for flea medicine--the clown-faced dog was scratching and the pug wasn't. Or maybe it was the other way around. He also thought one of those dogs was in a car insurance advertisement. It might have talked.

It was definitely a popular type of dog. Not only would the owner probably be looking for it, but there might be a reward for its safe return.

Charlie had no idea how much a clown-dog cost, and he had no idea what kind of reward might be offered for finding one...but what if it was a lot? What if it was five hundred dollars? Though it was unlikely to be that much, what if the owner was really attached to the dog? It wasn't as if Charlie had anything else to do tonight--he might as well take the dog home and hope there was a reward. If there wasn't, he'd throw it back outside. No harm done.

He turned around, walked back to the park bench, and crouched down next to the dog again. Now that he was looking at it a second time, he seemed to recall that it was named after a state. Or a city. Something like that.

"Don't bite me," he warned the dog. He was fine with the animal biting him as part of an experiment in rage control, but not when he was trying to help it.

Charlie immediately felt like an idiot. Dogs couldn't talk. And, more importantly, dogs couldn't understand human speech. He was glad that nobody else was around to hear.

He carefully slid his hands underneath the dog's side and lifted it off the ground a few inches, then pulled it out from beneath the bench. The dog whimpered some more, but lifting it didn't seem to hurt it. He hugged the dog to his chest and stood up.

The dog licked his face.

Even more disgusting.

He couldn't wipe it off without dropping the animal, so Charlie merely scowled and left the slobber on his face. The wet warmth quickly turned uncomfortably cold in the chilly night air. Stupid dog.

The dog nuzzled its face into his jacket, as if trying to burrow inside for warmth. Charlie supposed he couldn't blame the poor creature, though he wasn't about to unzip his jacket and let it get any closer to him.

It was a bit heavier than he'd expected, but Charlie was used to dragging corpses around, so he was pretty sure he'd have no problems carrying the dog home.

As he stepped onto the sidewalk, the illumination from the streetlights revealed a couple of streaks of red on the dog's fur. He hadn't noticed the blood before. He wondered if the dog had gotten into a fight, maybe with a squirrel. There hadn't been a shredded squirrel carcass lying under the bench, so it was kind of sad that the dog had been beaten by something so much smaller than it.

Well, okay, he had no evidence that it was a squirrel. It could've been a bigger dog. Or a human with a knife.

Either way, the dog didn't seem to have lost all that much blood, certainly not enough to account for its weakened state. Possibly a lack of food and water is what made it lose the fight. Much of Charlie's success at hunting came from seeking prey that was hungry and thirsty, so he understood the dog's plight.

The dog fell asleep in his arms as he carried it home.