After a bout of screaming, Dexter had no other reaction but to chuckle to himself at the immediate irony of things.
How great is it to be a legitimate psychopath?
A dead wife and two hallucinations, in the back of a police car, cops searching his house to find the corpse of his wife in a bathtub of blood, perhaps some evidence of his secret life he might have forgotten to hide. His baby son covered in blood and in the arms of a stranger, after watching an old man murderer his mother; and in one second to the next, he was back to his old wooden, analytic self. How easy it is for one so empty inside! Yet it's what at this moment offered him immediate calm.
He fully understood the circumstances that led to his anger, and current situation.
Everything he had built up. A family to guise his real life, taken from him. Outsmarted from him.
"Life doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be lived."
Words he himself thought a few minutes ago.
Perhaps true for a legitimate family. Not for him. Not for his family, or, the family he had.
The life of a serial killer is one where every move, every thought, must be perfect.
Something he didn't think of whenever facing Trinity.
Killer versus killer.
Dexter won, but Trinity did his damage.
For all of humanity, the survivors were the best killers.
We now live in a society that abhors that which gave us birth.
Killing. Murder. Constant survival.
The story of humanity itself is killer.
And now he might be going up against the biggest serial killer of all: the Justice system.
There is nothing else but to survive.
Dexter's brain, with now any shallow water of emotion evaporated, along with Rita's life, thought.
Thought. A serial killer's best friend. Now with his biggest advantage gone, that of a family to legitimize his social and "legitimate, human" life, his next, best tool was thought, as it had always been.
The first step was to stop smashing his head against the police window. Dexter laughed again at the humor in only now telling himself to stop beating his own skull against a police car window. Blood continued to drip into his eyes. He cried. Not because this naturally came out of him. This was the first step. "Like our friendly neighbor said, we were in shock. I see my baby drenched, and trailing in blood, remember my wife covered in more blood, I pass out, and someone I barely know has my child. Could they have been the killer? My shocked mind had no way of knowing. I was a man protecting his baby, who wasn't in the right state of mind. And now I'm in the back of a police car? I have no other option than to cry. The blood in my eyes makes it easier anyways." He would keep this last statement and chuckle to himself, as well as all the other internal laughs. As he always had.
All the responses he would have to give to the law started adding up in his head.
"Witnesses report you admitted to killing your wife on the lawn of your house. Before you assaulted your neighbor."
"I failed to protect her. This man, Trinity, Arthur Mitchell. (This is where I start small sobs.) I work with the Miami Police department (he'll know my file history, he'll either nod or say, "we know"), we were tasked with capturing this serial killer. I'm a blood analyst, I test... blood, and, and (this is where I stutter and pretend to not be able to see anything else but my wife in that tub of blood; let's start practicing that crying now) (another chuckle from Dexter, in the police car).
"I could have saved her, I could have caught this killer." (Howling laughter in Dexter's mind. The irony, again! We DID catch this Killer! And you cops are asking another serial killer if he killed a woman the OTHER serial killer killed?!"
In the video version, as Dexter is playing this all in his head while in the back of that police vehicle, right next to his every move is a scene from his future self now adapt in the acting he's practicing now.
Harrison stared back at him.
Not the dead Harrison.
Well, not dead from the outside, Dexter thought.
A small, uninspired puff of laughter emmited from inside him.
His son. Staring right back at him, over his neighbor's shoulder, who was now answering questions to the police.
He knew it didn't matter or make sense, but at the time, the feeling and impulse gripped him as strongly as any desire to tranquilize, terrify, and sever a human body has ever had in his serial killer career.
He apologized to Harrison, through nothing but eye-contact.
It didn't matter if he could prove the message got to his son or not, but at that moment he made a genuine attempt at any sort of connection.
A genuine apology to the son he failed.
Real tears fell down Dexter's face.
