Favourite Killers
Ed Gein: trophies and keepsakes, flaky beard and that raw smile sure to split your fiscal ends with a head on a spike. Make a movie about a man with certain needs—let’s dig and we’ll find rows of eyeballs in formaldehyde. Beautiful. What do those sallow cheeks really say? Are you afraid the Hollywood fog will sail our ships of death? What did he want from a fat man’s paunch and leather belts? He’s just another player, I guess.
Jeffrey Dahmer: a man who needs love, love, love, like the pop song goes. Let’s make strange sandwiches and funky pots of soup with prime cuts of soaked bread and deviant rubber bands. There’s a river where the light strikes just so, and everything falls into his demonic grasp. Will there be more men who fall for a trick behind a paranoid facade? I’m not hungry right now, but I could be tempted.
The Son of Sam: it’s not me, it’s not him, it’s not them—no, it’s a form of transformation that he simply couldn’t resist. Oh, the beloved spirits in my right ear! There’s so much pride taken in his blood work and the sticky bullets framed like a da Vinci among the cotton fields.
The Zodiac Killer: mystery appeals to the simple minded, but don’t you just love it? He’s just an advert with a knife—but aren’t they all. And don’t let that stop you from enjoying the ride. Death is just another bell stop and you’re a Libra ready for disaster.
Ted Bundy: a man who knows how to wear a shirt and throw dice at the library wall, screaming with ripped knee-high boots and knuckles to the throat. Follow that male gaze—it’s more than dangerous, it’s a lifestyle with a psycho Filofax.
Conclusion: it’s so hard to know what the appeal of a killer is. Call me out, say it isn’t so, just realise you’re as bad as me—because I can’t choose between gnawed skin or a lost voice in the rain. Can I take them all?
A Minor Disagreement
My friend’s a liar. Or maybe just a fraud. No, he says, cocaine is not a drug per se, but a pale machine gun—a fix aimed at all the pretty girls and their ceaseless winter outfits.
But… I interject.
There’s more, he continues. You see you have your heart attack bosses and a canon of broken English. Ha! he says. Ha! Isn’t that enough? I mean, there’s snow globes and ruffled eyelids, what more could you want? Please, pay attention.
My friend dives deep into the horizon and spits braille onto my foot.
Listen, he barks, don’t dump ice cream into my ATM and don’t give me your sales routine either—rogue states are crawling like babies, and there’s a chance of the future at noon.
Take the dishonest car crash—there’s an LED that casts shadows on the moon—camouflaging tombs. I wear my wedding ring on the wrong finger—the ladies love me and I’m constantly dropping anchor.
The thing is, mate, I say, my AA group said I should keep drinking and my clenched fist is on the blink. I hate myself in offshore night clubs and I simply cannot find my ears.
Well, if you let me finish, he says, I’ll tell you how to stack cars and fold napkins. There’s a brutal lesson to learn: gnostic gospels, white noise, and children knocking down cinemas with bowling balls. And finally, fear the cigarette case full of clipped moustaches, delivered on Tuesdays.
Is that it? I ask.
Yes, he snaps. Yes, that’s it.
I think hard—about the toasters of the world, the playlists in doorways and my slurred drunken words serving metaphysical fries.
I guess there’s nothing left to say.
Dream Big
When I leave the house, I lock and unlock the door three times and then pull on the doorknob for thirty seconds. My hand goes numb and my eyelid does the electric chair. If I don’t follow the routine, my fillings melt and my hair bursts into flames, like wildfires across Europe. I’m trapped inside a mosh pit every time I leave the house.
If my baby boy gets the hiccups I snag a loose thread from his onesie, lay it upon his hairless skull and within minutes he falls asleep in my arms. My wife calls it witchcraft, I call it the Hollywood factor.
When I step into a betting shop and a man in dungarees is smashing the fruit machine like a army vet with PTSD, I bet on Mr Pink at 5-1 and spend my winnings on alien memorabilia. But if a dog is sleeping on a bed of ripped up betting slips, I call it a day and go directly to the pub.
I control the news by tapping morse code into the remote. I wrestle with poverty and war. I save Girl Scouts from talk shows and free lions from the zoo.
But I’m a failed god, my powers are waning, my baby cries through the night and I haven’t backed a winning horse in months.
So, I fight harder to bend reality to my will. I sit on my front porch and look out to sea. I split a tidal wave with my furrowed brow, exposing a three-lane highway forged in gold. I hook the sun and the moon around my fingers and spin them like plates. I flick a meteor from the sky and it lands on my foot.
Then my wife calls—we need some more formula from the shops. I juggle my keys and face the front door once again. It’s a dreaded monolith. My scalp bubbles and my teeth itch.
Damn.
What If We’re the Bad Guys Here?
What if the government had flowers in its hair, and hippies shrank like Alice into frustrated toothpicks?
There are cowards holding hands with dogs of war, smashing bottles, digging for sighs.
Think of the homeless on Rodeo Drive cuddling up to underage smart speakers, and the courtroom judges striking their elders with scented candles, plotting the demise of Chinatown.
Watch the patriots in spurred boots warping limousines with matinee spotlights and the children drowning in their fifteen minutes of fame.
There’s a bully who bugged a church confessional while smokers got lost in a matrix, sneaking up on Labradors drinking from hotel minibars.
The mafia boss fleeced his hungry girlfriend as she dabbed blood from her nose, flowing like ancient ley lines.
And look as the mother-in-law with a thousand fake passwords, took to the baseball field and slaughtered her children.
What if none of this is true, but the voters still believed? What if it’s all your fault but the television won’t tell you so? What if you’re the bad guy here? There’s a line in a Donovan song that eloquently makes my point—but I’ve forgotten it.
He is the associate fiction editor for Able Muse Literary Journal and lives with his wife and child in North London, England.
SULFUR 