Most parents taught their children not to be afraid of monsters. Monsters where not real. They were...fake. Imagined. You look inside your closet, and there's nothing there. That wasn't the way Theodore Bagwell saw it.
He'd met monsters. When he was in prison. So many monsters. A man who had it all, a wife, a couple of kids. Family. He'd been loved, cared for. And he'd had an affair before being arrested for vehicular manslaughter. Who could do that? Throw something like that away? It rattled Ted's mind.
There were the more obvious cases. The paedophile who got a thrill out of sending pictures of the mangled victims to the parents. The man who ate those he killed. Monsters.
Ted realized at a very early age that the world was inhabited by monsters with the prettiest faces. So why fight it? Why not just give in to the impulses that plagued him? The only way to defeat the fear those monster implemented...was to become a big, scary monster yourself. So he became one.
He killed his first person for several reasons, but one stood out in particular: to see why people did it. And he understood why. It gave him power. A young man back in Alabama, had to be about eighteen, nineteen...passed all sorts of orientation slurs at him, and Bagwell had been quick to strangle him when he went for a smoke. That man could have gone on to influence a woman into making a decision. She could have gone on into different circumstances because of it...the amount of people he could have affected...why, Ted had changed the future. He had grabbed fate by the throat and taken control. He was a true master of destiny.
He had so many opinions about why he did what he did. An animal doing what nature dictated. A victim himself, made the way he was by unfortunate circumstances. A visionary thinker and a hero for those who are crushed by fate.
But it all came down to the simple problem: he liked to kill.
If he didn't kill, he needed a substitute. Drugs often sated him, as did alcohol. He was less likely to murder when he was high or drunk. He was a friendly, emotional drunk. And then there was love. Susan.
But that was long gone and over. He thought he had once...changed. Couldn't be true, though. It had all been a pretence. He would give anything to return to Susan's loving...consensual...arms...but that was all gone now. For all his theorizing about what he was, all his justification for his own actions, he would always see the truth with a powerful clarity: he was as the judge described him...a...sick...depraved...murdering...rapist. That was all he amounted to.
He was in the car, now. Not his, not his. The rain lashing down, so that anyone outside wouldn't guess that someone was inside, watching. The switchblade, he kept just by his side. Watching someone exit the club. Alone. Pretty. Dressed provocatively. Looking around for a cab that wouldn't come, not on a night like this. So lost.
He felt the attack of nerves that he usually got, but the image he always presented was confidence. He bit down on his lip, and got ready to-
A tapping.
Tap, tap, tap.
On the window of the car that belonged to the man hacked up in the boot.
A light in his face, and he suddenly realized. A cop, a damn cop. He wound down the window.
The cop leaned down. A big fella. In his forties, Ted estimated. He let the light shine in Bagwell's face for a moment, before the gravely voice spoke.
"You got a busted tail-light. Whatcha doin' out this late, anyway?"
Well, sir. I was planning to rob this pleasant young lady who's just disappeared around the cornor. If I was feeling up for it, I was also going to rape her. Then I was going to kill her, hack her all up, put her in a garbage bag and bury it. From then on, I was going to relax in my motel room with some videos I'd rented. Tell me, do you like Titanic? Oh, opinions on it are so divided but that I think that last scene that sweeps through the whole ship is just magical and enthralling.
"Nothin' much, boss. Paid a bit of a visit to the ol' Dockside Dolls." He gave a working class grin that the cop would hopefully identify with. "This ain't even my car, it's my friend Ernie's. Jerk probably knew the tail-light was busted too, I'm tellin' ya, he's always bustin' my chops-"
"Yeah, OK. What's your name?"
The tail-light must have busted from all the kicking the bastard in the trunk had done earlier, when he was fighting him. "Me? I'm Henry Gale, just came up from a holiday in Minnesota, kinda new to town-"
"Yeah, OK, whatever." Cops hated talkers. But talkers were confident. They were talking. They had nothing to worry about. They didn't have corpses in the trunk and were wanted in several states.
"License and registration."
The big question. This town was crap when it came to illegal activities. Seemed everyone just liked killing, fraud was a no-no. If the cop had have a brain, he'd see right through his fake ID. Best to play as if it was forgotten now, and if he presses, 'find' it.
He turned to the passenger seat, and sighed deeply. "God-damnit...musta left my coat at the dockside, it's in there."
"Oh, is it?"
"Can't help ya there, boss." he shrugged.
This was bad. He was a fugitive. If he killed this cop, it was different than some nameless bozo off the street, it was one of there own. They'd find him. He might even have to skip town, and that was always tricky, especially when you're wanted. But he couldn't let this cop take him in. Pop the trunk, and it's all over. He had to keep trying to talk his way out of this one.
The rain still patterning the car.
The cop was silent for a moment. Deciding. Contemplating.
Damn, the light hurt his eyes. Every time he squinted or blinked, the cop moved the torch closer. He started to raise the blade slightly, keeping it just out of the shadows. This was it. No way out. It was over.
Suddenly, there was a whirl of red that streaked past the cop in the darkness, accompanied by inane hooting. The cop suddenly stood to attention, and barked into his walkie-talkie, "This is Officer Ridley. We got a couple of drunk frat boys heading west on Minear. I'm pursuing."
He glanced over at Ted. "You're off the hook. Get that fixed, always remember your license, stay the hell out of trouble."
"Will do, boss! Good luck with chasin' them hooligans, why, they could kill somebody!"
A few moments later, Bagwell was still trying to wipe the smile off his face. The cop was gone. Ted was going home to his rat-fuck apartment for a relaxing night of James Cameron, stolen beer and the time life collection of the world's greatest love songs. Crisis averted.
He grinned to himself, and as he turned a corner, he saw something. A girl. Blonde. Pretty, even from this distance. But no. Too much excitement for one night.
The monster in the car turned out of Minear street, and the stolen car faded into the darkness.