Hey everyone! Thanks for clicking on my little story. I had this idea of Dexter needing to do the wash in my head for some time now.

Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own anything...or do I?

Rated: T for language, and Dexter-style violence.

"You know, you put a little vinegar on it, and that stain will come right out."

I look up to see a miniature version of a person leaning anxiously over the washer in front of me. The fluorescent lighting buzzes above our heads within the twenty-four hour laundromat, while two dryers rattle off the seconds of silence between us.

"Excuse me?" I say, unaware where her attention had fallen.

Taking the shirt from my hands, she continues, "That stain. Right there," she points beneath the button of my brown thermal. "Just put a little vinegar and dishwashing soap and that annoying wine stain will just disappear."

I hold my breath, which I had long ago discovered leaves others to release their own for you.

"Let me guess. Merlot? A Cab?"

A cab driver, I think.

"You're pretty quiet, huh?" she says, not allowing response. Her voice carries the musical quality typical of the young at heart, although the lines around her eyes betrayed her song. Small as she was, the girl had a lean figure. Probably practiced yoga or martial arts when she wasn't standing on her toes to get a decent view in front of her.

"Yeah," I hear myself mumble into my water bottle. One night's dismemberment can leave a man parched. But the water's nice. Cool. Refreshing. Relaxing.

"Cute, too," she remarked, propping her head in her hands.

Choking.

"Oh god, are you alright?"

"Wrong pipe," I manage to find the words between coughs. "Water...went down..."

She immediately pats my back, a human reaction to comfort another, and I fight against my decades-cultivated instinct to grab that same hand and pin it behind her back. For now, my body convulses as I survey the person beside me.

"Name's Madison," she says, a sweetness clings to her eyes and smile. "But you can call me Mad, even though I don't ever really get mad," Her hands pat a rhythm into my back with her words. "Well, except for these stupid wine stains!"

With that she lifts my shirt as easily as if it were her own and flings it across the washers.
"Woah, there!" I contribute. "That's my best one. You don't find these fancy thermals just anywhere, now. Do you?"

I smile the way I was trained, confident in the disarming powers of a cheesy joke. Her laugh fills the white-blasted room, echoing across cheap cracking tiles and lending a more pleasing sound than the last hour's.

Although satisfying, the screeching drone of steel on bone is more a soon-forgotten sound effect than soundtrack.

There was something about human laughter, however, that I had yet to understand. And it was with voices like these, like Madison's, when I was able to find cracks in mankind's supposed dark destiny. Despite the blood and the sin, there were people like these, in laundromats across the nation, cleaning and laughing.

Maintaining innocence and, tonight, Madison was doing just that.

"No, I guess you don't," she responds. She twirls her hair around one finger, a strange ritual that girls tended to do around me growing up. "Well, good luck with your wash!"

Before I get a chance to respond, a shadow flies across the floor. Unaware of any change, Madison continues to her personal pile of clothing, humming a song that resonates deep alongside the machines' beats.

One of the fluorescent lights above flickers and, beside me, the windows vibrate indicating some subtle movement of the door. From inside this laundromat, it's damn near impossible to see what's outside. Still, the unmistakable movements among our reflections, tiny as they were, all pointed to one thing.

At three a.m., without ringing the bell from the entrance door above, someone was decidedly crashing our cleaning party for two.

***

And there he was. A fidgety young man in a black mask, crouching low behind a stand alone washer that guarded the entrance, eyes fixed on a woman humming ten paces away.

Instinctively, I fall into my surroundings, gliding behind a load-bearing concrete pillar directly beside my corner washer.

And I could feel it again. The sensation was rising, a dizzying vertigo of the senses if I wasn't careful. It would be so easy, so black-and-white. But as I was trained, I slowly begin to steady the rapid beating of my heart.

Survey your surroundings. Research your man.
From my vantage point, the man in the black ski-mask does the same. Nervously, he would jerk his head from left to right, and behind, making sure that his entrance and exit is sealed. No, he had already locked the door with a plastic fastener, the kind used to tie garbage bags, and nobody could get in or out without his knife.

Props for ingenuity.

The man in the mask proceeds his stealthy hunt, taking a few small steps in crouched position to close in on the blissfully unaware songbird. As she sings, her clothes, perhaps her old world, seem to fall into place. Everything in its right place, in order, and serene at this corner laundromat.

A glint of steel and the scene unfolds as quickly as the wardrobe from her falling laundry basket.

"Give me your money!"

Not a killer, but a thief.

"What?!" the startled brunette drops a stack of papers, each dripping with red ink.

Not a yoga master, but a school teacher.

Black ski-mask shouts louder now, "I said, Ha-hand over your wallet!"

A first time thief. Even better. The intruder comes within three feet of Madison, closer than I was planning to allow. I take a deep breath, savoring it while I still have it and my fingers tighten around my weapon of choice. Then, a quick lunge.

"Hey there!" I say, casually, then frowning unsure of my salutatory choice.

The anxious thief shouts an obscenity and backs into a dryer behind him, stunned.

My heart begins to quicken and I decide to throw caution to the wind. Hunts do not always have to be so calculated now, do they? I could feel the chaotic mindset of my dark passenger seeping into my better judgments. Right now, the thrill of the hunt is what moved me. The fear in the thief's eyes ultimately awakened Him.

"Shit, back off. I got a knife," he threatens, empty and scared. His movements become increasingly uncomfortable for me as he edges towards Madison.

Madison shivers. I could see from the corner of my eye, a hand shaking to cover a sob.

"I see that," I say, nodding towards his dinner utensil, knuckles white.

"I said, back off, pussy, or else...,"

Don't do it. Don't fuckin' say it.

"Or else, I cut up your girlfriend here."

Shit. As if that would stop a monster like me.

"Look, I was just looking for the restroom and --," I continue, not changing my stride as I approach the thief. Appealing to an emotion I don't have has never weakened my resolve. Harry's code to hurt the wicked only gives the illusion that I am some hero.

In fact, I've come to grips with the truth. The code only allows real human beings like my father a way to sleep at night, as his wisened vigilante patrols the streets. For a sociopath like me, a kill is just another kill, right? A set of bloodstained slides conveniently repackaged and sold under the guise of justice.

Therefore, I won't ever be a part of Madison's world. So what part of me would want to keep her?

"Listen asshole," the thief's arm juts out like a snake and bites into Madison's porcelain arm. She looks so weak. "You either back the fuck off or the bitch dies!"

Something freezes my feet in place. That look in her eyes. That terror.

Were those not the same eyes behind the man's black mask? That driving force, the fear that awakened my sinister passenger, unruly and wild? Those eyes, now...

They were changed.

And something in me wanted to change them back.

To be continued....

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Well, the battle and conclusion will be up shortly. Just tell me what you think, what you'd like our neighborhood serial killer to do, and I'll work it in somehow. Thanks for reading!