A Self Made Monster

Other Boson Books by Steven Vivian

Flunky

Prelude to Hemlock

__________________________

A Self-Made Monster

by

Steve Vivian

__________________________

BOSON BOOKS

Raleigh

Published by
Boson Books

3905 Meadow Field Lane

Raleigh, NC 27606

ISBN ebook 1-886420-58-0

ISBN print 1-932482-36-9

An imprint of
C&M Online Media Inc.

© Copyright 1999 Steven Vivian

All rights reserved

For information contact

C&M Online Media Inc.

3905 Meadow Field Lane

Raleigh, NC 27606

Tel: (919) 233-8164

e-mail:[email protected]

URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com

For Theresa Vivian

Many thanks to Nancy M.

He lit his cigarette and tossed the spent match into his mouth, as a child tosses a peanut. The sulfur tasted good, and the Dunhill was a fine chaser.

The night was cold, but he did not button his jacket. He smiled as the students walked by in groups of two or three, their breath rising like puffs of steam. He suppressed a chuckle. He imagined the kids chancing to see him pressed against the cold brick of the library. They might be startled, might even drop their books and spiral notepads. But they did not see him, crouched ten feet away behind the shrubs. They hurried to their dorms and apartments. Tonight was Friday, and the parties had already started.

Above him, the library lights were being turned off. One by one, the windows went black. He enjoyed the steadiness with which the windows blackened. In a few minutes, he would walk with the same steadiness as he followed his victim. His victim would not see him standing ten feet away behind the shrub.
 
The victim would not hear the steps ten yards behind, then five yards, then one.

The library parking lot was normally brightly lit, but not tonight.
 
The maintenance crew had not yet replaced the lamps.
 
Still, Lori was not worried. Like other Tailor coeds, she had walked hundreds of times, day and night, across campus.

She opened the car door, tossed the books into the back, and dropped into the driver’s seat. The car door resisted her pull.

He gripped the top of the door. “Move over.”

“Where are you taking me?” She did not recognize the gravel road and flanking cornfields.
 
Old houses and leaning barns were bluish-black silhouettes in the moonlight.

“Do you have any cigarettes?” he asked.

“I don’t smoke.”

He laughed. “They’re bad for you, right?”

She nodded.

“They’re good for me.”

After ten minutes of silence and three more old barns, she gathered the nerve to study him. “I thought you were somebody I knew—” She cursed herself. If he thinks I know him, she thought, he might kill me.

“You probably do.
 
I’m a professor at the college.”

“You didn’t tell me where we were going.”

He faced her. The dashboard lights made his face a faint green. “I didn’t tell you because we aren’t going anywhere. I am going home soon. You are not.”
 
He said something more, but she did not hear him. She heard only her heart, amplified to a deafening volume.

“It’s surprising,” he remarked, “how quiet my victims get.
 
Must be disbelief, yes?”

She seized the wheel and yanked. The car swerved to the right. Professor Alex Resartus yanked the wheel to the left, but too late. The car careened into the ditch. The dashboard hurtled toward Lori’s face and struck her.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Alex complained. “Goddammit, the noise might have startled the farmers.” He rolled down the car window, heard the hissing radiator and a distant bark.

“Let go of my hand,” Lori pleaded. Alex had grabbed her left wrist when Lori seized the wheel, and he would not let go.

“You’re bleeding,” he accused. “Goddammit it you’re bleeding!”

He reached into his jacket packet as if to give Lori a tissue, but instead revealed a carving knife. The blade gleamed, and Lori now saw that Alex wore latex gloves.

“Don’t cut me, don’t cut me, don’t—” She jerked her arm, trying to free herself from his grip. A second jerk propelled pain through her wrist and up her arm to her shoulder. But she was free.

Lori tried to open the door. It was locked. Her now free left arm reached for the door lock, but she could not grip it.

Her hand was gone.

Alex held her severed hand away from his lap, so the blood would not stain his trousers.

“You cut me, you cut me, you—”

Alex gripped her neck and yanked. The dashboard hurtled forward again, striking her over and over. Each strike left more blood on the dashboard. Between my bloody nose and bloody wrist, she thought, I won’t have any blood left. She wondered if she should ask the professor to stop hitting her with the dashboard, but she did not have time. Her neck was being twisted, and now the steering wheel column hurtled toward her.

He wiped blood from the steering wheel and dashboard; he licked all the blood off the latex gloves and stuffed the gloves into his packet. He made a quick inventory: cigarettes, matches, knife. He had everything. He had to be careful because his memory was getting worse. But tonight had been easy.

He pulled a packet of cocaine from his pocket, opened it, and spilled the powder into the back seat. A nice little red herring. He walked into the cornfield, gathered himself, and began running.

Alex got home at 11:30. He had covered five miles in thirty minutes. He tuned his radio to the all-news station. No word of a tragic accident on county road 14.

The campus would be teeming with talk of the tragedy on Monday. A few friends would feel shock and grief; most of the victim’s acquaintances would feign grief and revel in the exciting mystery: why was she murdered? Who killed her? A drug dealer? A drug crazed hitch hiker? Was she raped first? The autopsy would show that the victim had not snorted cocaine, but the cocaine in the back seat would inspire various drug theories. And the students would exchange gossip and theories ceaselessly between classes, during parties, and as foreplay.

Alex stood absolutely still in the middle of his living room, his senses on high alert. No discernible change. Satisfied, he walked to the living room window and pulled back the curtain. He could still clearly see his mailbox, twenty five feet away, at the end of his driveway under a street lamp. So far, so good. The student’s blood had not harmed his vision or hearing.

Nine years ago, Alex had murdered a dozing near-sighted truck driver at a rest stop. Alex did not notice the driver’s thick bifocals. Within the hour, Alex’s vision beyond forty feet was negligible.

Alex now walked to the bathroom, where he leaned forward and studied his reflection in the vanity mirror. His eyes were still blue, and his hair still nearly black.
 
The darker hair was a relatively new feature. One night, Alex took a long drive and discovered a subdivision under development. Only the streets, sidewalks, and basements were completed. A jogger came loping down the street. The jogger was in his mid-twenties, six foot two, with his black hair in a virile ponytail.

As the jogger approached, Alex swung open his car door, and the jogger collided with the door. Alex stepped out of the car and told the jogger to be more careful. The jogger jumped to his feet and punched Alex five times. When the jogger paused, Alex slapped him. The jogger rolled like a felled bowling pin and struck a fire hydrant.

Alex dragged the jogger behind a house, cut his throat, and filled an empty water jug.
 
When he was done, Alex used the jogger’s shirt sleeve to wipe his bloody mouth and chin.
 
Before leaving, he stuffed a newspaper clipping into the jogger’s throat wound. The clipping described the satanic ritual slayings of cows, goats, and a tax attorney in Los Angeles.

In one sense, the jogger had the last laugh. Within two hours, Alex’s light brown hair had turned nearly black. Fortunately, the change occurred during summer vacation. When fall classes started, Alex explained that a newly prescribed ulcer medicine had changed his hair color.

Such superficial changes were only an irritation. The internal changes were more serious. Alex sometimes half seriously wondered if a victim had suffered from Alzheimer’s. His memory and his concentration, once useful for weeks at a time, had worsened.

Until tonight, Alex had avoided Tailor College students. But he reasoned that college students were usually healthy, which lessened the chance of bad blood. Tonight’s blood seemed fine, and he celebrated with another Dunhill.

“Did you hear about the murder?” Jimmy Stubbs filled Holly Dish’s glass with more beer.

“Something about it.” She took a swig, licked away the foam mustache.

“It’s intense,” Jimmy promised. He scooted closer to Holly on the couch and shouted over the rock music. “Her feet and hands were cut off.”

Bob Beck appeared. “Great party for a Sunday.” Bob was the fraternity president, and he gauged his fraternity’s popularity by the size and racket of its parties. Tonight, about forty students lounged in the living room, enjoying the free beer and loud music. Bob now sat next to Holly and asked about Holly’s roommate.

“Kris is kind of a bitch,” Holly lied.

“Living with somebody,” Bob cautioned, “you always see them at their worst.” Bob hoped that Kris would show up tonight, but he was not optimistic, as the time was already 10:30.

“She is too a bitch,” Jimmy agreed, though he barely knew her. His declaration made Holly smile. The smile encouraged him, so he repeated himself.
 
I’m on a roll, Jimmy thought. Jimmy resumed his gossip about the murder.

As he talked, Holly paid reasonable attention, only occasionally looking away, waving at friends, or suddenly declaring, “God, I just love this song!” After praising a group–”The Hiss is so great!” or “Five Fingers On One Head is so great!”—Holly shut her eyes and gyrated to the beat. After thirty or forty seconds of gyrating, Holly swigged some beer and nodded for Jimmy to continue with the story.

Jimmy soon ran out of information about the murder, so he told the story again, but discretely exaggerated some details for dramatic effect.

“Her head was cut off?” Holly stuck her tongue out in disgust. “What an ordeal.
 
You know that’s wild. We read a story about a guy’s head getting popped off in Resartus’s class.”

“What, you read horror stories in there?”

“No.
 
It’s Modern British lit. The story is
The Prussian Officer
, or maybe
The Russian Officer
. Something about, uh, about Russia.”

“Sounds good.” Jimmy knew nothing about literature, so he did not know what else to say.

“No, it was boring. But the guy’s head did pop off.
 
It was symbolism, or a symbolic head.” She paused, waiting for the next song.
 
She frowned. “That song is boring. Hey, I’m out of beer.”