Hello readers. I'm recently returned to the wonderful world of fanfiction with a new story (embracing the cliché, it's a Harry Potter story), and I figured it was only fair I was update my old one. Dexter needs lovin' too after all. So here's a new quick chapter.
Disclaimer : I don't own anything
"A code for murder"
And that was it. Four words and a dead body were all it took to undo twenty years of the careful training, manipulation and handling that we call being a parent (once again, while that statement could most literally describe my own upbringing, I was coming to realize that Deb had her own conditioning to overcome, as did everyone else). By confirming for her that Harry was, and always had been, the root of all my evil (or was it the good? I didn't know anymore), I had just killed him in her eyes. I could almost hear the sound of the carbon steel saw cutting through bone, with that grinding noise I always found so soothing during those long nights. Because, an absentee father that spent all of his time focused on the noble pursuit of fighting evil was one thing, but one whose time was spent growing and teaching his very own killer was quite another. Deb's way of making sense of our father's behavior had been to convince herself that police work, and protecting the innocent from the monsters in the dark, really was more important than family, or a personal life. A mantra that she had started to emulate in earnest ever since her induction as Lieutenant. Of course she was now realizing that the monsters hadn't been in the dark, they'd been sitting right next to her at the dinner table, and Harry hadn't been out fighting evil, he'd been out creating it.
"He really did it, didn't he? He fucking did it…" she whispers in a scornful tone.
Finally! At last she can she him for he what was, in all his splendor and all of his sins, the same way I did in that cabin, deep in the everglades. With this revelation, it seems as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, for, after my enlightenment about the fallibility of our father, it had irked me to see Deb continue to pay homage at his altar. I had selfishly wanted to tell her every one of his sins, adulterer, liar, and ultimately, coward, in an effort to shift some more of her devotion unto me, but of course since I was the most unholy of them all, I could not. Still, it felt good to see the old man knocked down a peg or two.
"Yes, he really did Deb. He taught me how to spot them, how to track them, and how to take them out. But most importantly, he taught me how to not get caught. That's what this was all about Deb; he knew that one day my Dark Passenger would overwhelm me and that I would do something impulsive. I remember the day he told me I was a killer, it was like he could see my entire life stretched out in front of me, and he knew very well where it was leading and where it was going to end. That's why he created the code, it was a way for me to act on my urges without hurting innocents."
I looked up from my reminiscing and found her staring straight at me, her eyes still wet with unshed tears.
"How?" she asked in a small voice.
"What? How what?"
"How did he know that you couldn't have turned out differently? That all you could be was a killer? How do you know?" she exclaimed while steadily raising her voice. With her being so close, it feels like her voice is reverberating through my head. I reel back slightly.
"I…I don't know, it was Harry, you remember, when he said something, then that's the way it was. And it just…made sense. I knew I was different from other kids, from you. When Harry told me I was a monster, it just rang true, that's all."
She had taken me by surprise once again, I had thought she would want to linger on my hunting trips with Harry, and the way he taught me how to shoot and quarter an animal, along with his long talks about abstract concepts like control, and love; interjected with exhilaratingly concrete moments where he would instruct me in police and forensic procedures. Those were memories I now had no trouble sharing, I felt she deserved to know about the hidden parts of her father along with brother's, and most of them were good memories (which was, of course like many things, a matter of perspective).
"Dad told you that you were a monster? How could he do that?" she exclaims in a shocked tone. I didn't understand her outburst, had she not seen me kill someone just a few hours ago?
"Well not in so many words, but he could see the monster that was inside me, and it's the same difference really. What does that matter? I'm sure you've had some unflattering thoughts about me too in the last few hours. I've long accepted what I am Deb, I'm trying to help you accept it."
"What does that matter?! Look, I don't know just what the fuck you are now, but I do know that you couldn't have been a killer then! Whatever fucked up thoughts you might have had didn't make you a monster, you're not a fucking killer until you actually kill someone Dex! There is no fucking Dark Passenger! I…I just don't understand how Dad could have told you that…"
Well, that was something I hadn't expected, but really I should have. Deb as a regular and, mostly well-adjusted individual, just couldn't fathom an entity as all-consuming and powerful as the Dark Passenger, and so couldn't understand how some events could lock someone's fate as tightly as genetics. This was normal of course, the few others I've shared it with couldn't understand it either, Lila had likened it to drug compulsion, a simple pursuit of immediate pleasure, before she understood its true nature. She'd been wrong of course, this wasn't an addiction, a need issued from an imbalance in neuro-receptors, this was simply the natural instincts of a different species, which of course seemed alien and unnatural to its prey.
I wanted to dismiss the naïve plea from my mind instantly like I did before, but here, right in front of her, where I could sense the heat from her skin, was invaded by her scent, and couldn't hide behind my mask anymore, a notion crept up my spine, seemingly for the first time.
What if she was right? What if they'd all been right? And what if Harry had been wrong? What if I'd been wrong? What if all these years, there had been no Dark Passenger, no epic force pushing me towards the darkness, no great monster hiding in the dark pulling the strings? What if all I'd ever been was a fucked-up kid turned into a fucked-up man who did horrible things during the night, and lied to himself during the day?
I could feel eyes on the back of my head and knew that if I turned around I would see Harry there to reassure me that I hadn't imagined it all, but I didn't turn around, because…what if there was nobody there?
I was saved from going further down that train of thought by my sister moving to stand up. I moved back from my still kneeling position in front of her and she proceeded to pace, as if to clear her thoughts.
I lamented the loss of her close presence for a half-second, before making a desperate bid to clear my head, and finally succeeding in ridding myself of the doubt that had been dripping down my brain. Free of her scrutiny I could think rationally again, and quickly asserted to myself that of course the Dark Passenger was real, and that this "episode" had merely been a brief bout of insanity. Something that my sister seemed quite adept at provoking. What was she doing to me? I had come here this evening in an effort to gain control of a chaotic situation, but I seemed to be doing nothing but losing control. As if to prove point, her flushed cheeks danced popped in my head.
"Who knows? Maybe you're right and dad was wrong, it's all a moot point now anyway, I am a killer Debra" I lied in an effort to be congenial, and to get her to drop the uncomfortable subject.
She seemed like she was about to argue my point for a moment before she latched on to another subject.
"Yeah, I guess you are… So, when did you start? Who was your first victim?" she demanded, the "when did you stop being the brother I loved?" was left unsaid, but its weight could be heard in the silence.
Ah. So we had glossed over the Training Act, and went to straight to the next one: First Kill. I decided I would indulge her, though I sincerely hoped she didn't ask me to describe all of my kills. Not only would that take a while (a long while, I thought, half-prideful and half-shameful), but I also doubted she would really want to hear it. I was actually a little surprise she asked me that so casually. Still, I drudged up the fond (if messy) memory of my first kill. Ah, to be young again…
I was sweating. Those plastic coveralls that Harry had insisted on during my training might be forensically safe but they sure as hell weren't comfortable, I was really going to have to think of something better. I looked at her scrapbook again, and once again remarked how similar it was to the ones I kept beneath my bed as a teenager, minus all the flowery arrangements and pastel colors of course, and for the first time realized the sheer enormity of what I was about to do. It wasn't about the necessity or even the morality of the deed, with Harry's life threatened I had both on my side, and besides, this is what I had been waiting for. No, I had just understood the philosophical, maybe even metaphysical impact of what I was here to do, end a life. As I looked at her scrapbook filled with her sins splashed in black and white, I thought back to the long nights I poured over my own secret notebooks and how I longed to one day have my own work displayed to the public in tiny columns, and I recognized that Margaret Smithson (for that was her name), born in Miami was just like me. Her mind was a universe in itself, an ever changing maelstrom of creation and destruction that to her seemed absolute, she'd had a million feelings and a billion thoughts, lived entire lives in her head. I had of course understood in a purely intellectual manner, although he had never really spent time thinking about it, that my mind was the same as any other (at least in its most basic form) but I'd never actually felt it. It was an understanding of sameness, the first step towards empathy. In that moment I understood that to take life was not just the exciting and intoxicating violence I'd waited my entire life for, it was also extinguishing a vast collection of memories and feelings and destroying the chance for any other to be created. It stole my breath away. Because the sense of grandiose I now associated with any human life (I imagined that this feeling compounded by a thousand equaled the natural empathy regular people felt for their fellow man), was compounded by the fact that I was about to take one. The feeling grew. This had ceased to be shameful in my mind, it no longer felt like it should be done in the dark. This wasn't some back-alley brawl where a knife is shoved in a gut by shaky and desperate hands, this was a glorious act. It was choice. Pure, unadulterated and perfectly controlled free will. Freedom and control united. Perfection. The door opened…
Okay, so maybe I wouldn't tell her all of that. Just the basics should be enough.
"Actually you might remember her, it was dad's nurse from when he was in the hospital that first time"
Deb had the reaction that I really should have anticipated.
"What?!" she screamed while recoiling away from me.
Yeah, in retrospect I really should have guessed that admitting that my first playmate had been both a woman and a nurse, would have ended badly. Well live and learn as they say.
CLICK
Or maybe not.
You know what to do.
