I didn't have best friends. Or abest friend. I had wailing, weary animals that I spent my weekends with, wrangled from the neighbourhood after watching them in their wary ways. Cats, commonly, and dogs, dangerous due to their yapping yodels. The smaller dogs were much more of a challenge; cats could be baited and trapped and kept quiet. But the small dogs would howl and bark and cause me to dispose of them much quicker than I would have liked. The larger dogs were less inconspicuous, but one dog treat and they'd wag their tails and follow you for more. But you can't feed a dead dog.
This was what Dark Demonic Dexter spent his time doing, when all the other kids thought he was swatting for the next big exam. I didn't mind being Dorky Dex if it meant no one was suspicious of me when family pets went missing. But Harry, my ever-vigilant cop foster-father, knew the traits of a sickly son and it wasn't long before he went on hunts of his own. Needless to say, he soon found my boneyard. What can I say? I was young; I didn't have nice, neat slides.
Perhaps any other father would have showed such terrible trinkets to his wife and wondered worriedly what to do with the offending offspring. But Harry made sure I saw them again, and I made sure that he knew I could identify each animal bone by bone. His attempted inquisition, fuelled by his judgementally judicial outlooks on justice and a need to look after his family, faltered in the face of my Dark Passenger's ambitions. He and I aren't just Deadly Destroyers, but Clean Collectors, even more so working for Miami Metro.
It was this, I think, that made Harry reconsider any plans he might have laid down in his mind. Once he realised that we wanted nothing more than to be a neat monster, he saw that something could be done. He wouldn't have to send me to therapy to try and turn around any tumultuous thoughts of terror that lurked in my mind; he could teach me himself. A clean monster is a happy monster, at least in my case-file, and in his well-intentioned ways, Harry raised me to make the most of Miami's monsters, missing from jail.
This was how Harry's hunting expeditions with me started. He taught me to cut up big game so that when the time came, Diligent Dexter would be ready to carve up a criminal, closer in size to a boar than a beagle.
I didn't have a best friend. I had worthy, writhing adversaries that I spent my weekends tracking and hunting, and a foster-father who kept me away from the wary wonderings of the neighbourhood watch, newly established due to the recent spate of pet-murders…