I did once have a crush. I was in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood, eager to experiment, and, luckily for Dear Doting Dexter, Randolph Moor was very obliging. I had already devised my cellophane-wrap technique to keep the otherwise thrashing villains on my table, but I was curious to see what else I could use. It was with this curiosity in mind that wriggling Randy came to on a gurney borrowed from the dissecting lab of Miami University, with his wrists and ankles held rather too tightly for his comfort in between four large clamps made of concrete, and worked by thick steel levers. It was by some earlier trial-and-error that I was able to attach the clamps to the gurney without over-balancing it.
It was two weeks after Harry's funeral, and any psychologist might say that I was working through my grief, under the assumption that I felt any. But really, my curiosity was genuine, and held no thought to sorting out my non-existent suffering. Unfortunately for Randy, however, his suffering would exist, and it would not be sorted out in time for him to have a happy death.
My Dark Passenger and I had watched and waited and waited and watched as Reclusive Randy, murderer of two four-year old girls, finally came to. I had wondered if he would struggle, and then immediately wondered about the sound of his wrists and ankles snapping between the pressure of the vices. He had soon become Roaring Randy, and quickly aggravated the finely-tuned ears of the Passenger. Fear and screaming was one thing; babbling about false innocence was just annoying.
"Shut up," I had growled, and my Passenger had growled in return, as I slapped Randy's face.
"What do you want from me?" he had screeched back. For all his talk of innocence, he had a determined glower on his face that looked like a challenge to the Passenger. And if he was willing to try and scare the Deep Drowning Darkness of Dexter then it left me – of all the words – feelingabsolutely certain that he had no problem taking his wrath to small children. That, and the photographs of two young, bruised and battered bodies I had found in Randy's dresser. It was these photos that I had snapped his head toward in between my gloved hands.
"I didn't do it," he had squealed. By then I presumed that even his calm everyday monster-hidden-away voice had a high, keening quality to it. The brief image of cutting out his tongue delighted my own monster, but even I had to maintain some discipline over the Passenger.
Watch any old cowboy movie and you're likely to hear the words, "Tell it to the judge," and after justice has been delivered the cowboy-hero rides off either to or withhis woman. But I was no Dirty Harry. I didn't have time then, nor do I now that I work with blood as my job and as my… hobby, for court. My jury-duty is strictly one-on-one, and my verdict always comes back as guilty.
"You can't do this to me," Randy snapped.
I let go of his head before he could start thrashing too wildly, and started turning the lever of the clamp holding his left wrist in place. His passionate pleas soon became squalling screams. I might have been worried had it not been 2:00am. The janitor, the cleaning-ladies, the teachers, the students, all had gone home hours ago. Except for this student, Determined Dexter, drumming up the knowledge to earn his doctorate in serial-killing.
But all the same, a swatch of black tape went over Randy's mouth, and his screams were henceforth muffled as I proceeded to crush both of his wrists and his ankles between the clamps. He didn't show any remorse for the two innocent lives he had taken – and I may well have been the same as him had I not been taught the Code – but his tears were a step in the right direction. Not literally, of course.
As it was, with Regretless Randy's ankles broken, he would never be able to move forward with his life – certainly not in my company – but I thought he could at least appreciate the irony of his situation: we must, or so I've heard, first learn to accept ourselves before we can move on from repetitive, damaging behaviours. Is that why I, Demented Damaged Dexter, kill over and over again? Is there some other part of me that I'm not accepting? If Harry hadn't intervened and taught me the Code, would I have moved on from murder by now and have become normal, like everybody else? It's a nice thought, but I think some psychiatrists need a reality-check of their own.
But introspection aside, I wasn't yet done with Randy.
"It's Valentine's Day," I informed him. Still he had persisted to scream through his masked mouth, but it just came out like the droning of a particularly angry wasp.
Occasionally I use hammers in the Metro's Blood Room, and it's harder than it looks to swing a 5lb metal mallet. I had to start somewhere.
"You're my crush," I had whispered, raising the thick iron tool above my head.