Money and Innocence

My name is Frank. Frank Olean, I was born forty eight years ago under the loving eyes of my mother and father. I was raised in the same house my father was raised, and his father before him. It doesn’t matter where I am from. Nothing before my thirty fifth birthday matters at all.

The doctors want to know, they delved deep into my family history. Trying to find any signs of mental disorder beyond generic depression. They found lung cancer, Alzheimers and heart disease on my mothers side and Parkinson’s on my fathers. Nothing else. They talked to my boss at the newspaper, they talked to my coworkers, nothing.

The police took it further by interviewing my professors from college and what’s left of the staff of my junior and senior high school. Nothing turned up. I skipped class twice in high school but never got caught and never fell below a 3.2 in college. My instructors remembered little of me, I turned in my assignments and was always present. I was predictable. Only the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Nobody is going to care about that life. They want to hear about the journalist who killed thirty eight people. The guy who left his wife and two kids, in the middle of a family picnic to embark on a decade long journey of death and carnage.

***

But the story starts a few days before that picnic, which was actually my eldest daughter, Faustinas birthday party. It starts before the balloons and bouncy castle were delivered, and the presents laid out on the table. Before all her friends and their parents arrived.

I graduated college and got a job at a small paper outside of New Jersey, it was a pretty hefty commute but it didn’t matter. I had a job whereas most of my classmates were still scrounging through blogs and free press. I got a job alright. In the mail room. I spent the first few months trying to sneak my articles into the printing room. Uploading files and hoping someone takes the bait. I spent about a year doing this to no avail. The only responses were increasingly stern emails demanding I stay in the mail room and let the field experts do their job. I wouldn’t be a very good journalist if I had listened to them.

My apartment was more of a walk in closet. I didn’t have any dishes piled up or food rotting in the fridge like a typical bachelor. I did have a blanket of dust about an inch thick covering the larger flat surfaces and the lowest electricity bill in the building. Nine to five I was a mail clerk. After that, I was a reporter.

Night after night I tuned into the police scanners, their codes weren’t hard to deduce. Not with the internet anyways. I kept this up for a few months. Trying to be the first on the scene. The first one to get the story. And I was. I had my notebook ready and recorder going. But no one would talk to me. Not without a press badge. Sometimes I’d get lucky and the cops would start talking before they realized. But it was never enough. It wasn’t the hook. The Who, the why and the how.

I didn’t quit. I should have quit. I should have quit right there during my first descent behind the yellow line. No one ever does though. I started seeing familiar faces, the E.M.T.’s, the beat cops and their Sergeants. What surprised me was the amount of repetitive appearances of the same bystanders. Month after month they would come out and mourn for the family of the convenience store, who was just robbed for the fifth time this year. Or they would say, “she was such a quiet girl, such a shame.” As the middle aged woman’s corpse is wheeled past them. “I bet it was drugs, its always drugs.”

I lived in a pretty shitty area. Crime was high and my percentage of interception was 3:1. 1:1 as an unaffiliated reporter scraping the gutters of society for a story. But it wouldn’t happen to me. I went to school for this. I wrote papers on reporters who lost their lives to their trade. They infiltrated cartels and human trafficking rings. If they didn’t die it would be a surprise. I wasn’t doing any thing like that. I was looking for stories that would pull the nations attention. Finally Slisdale would have a lime light shone on it, and our cries would be heard.

As I write this, I cry out to have that limelight dimmed, then fade altogether. Now when you search for Slisdale New Jersey. My name is all you’ll find. I never thought the magnifying glass would burn away the truth and leave me holding the gun.

***

It was July, just into my second year at the paper. I was no longer in the mail room. I was a reporter. A writer. A contributor. To the opinion section. Didn’t matter. I had a badge and it was my birthday.

My first “official” case was a gang killing. A trio of white thugs stormed into their dealers place, killing him and stealing his cash and goods. They were cutting him out. From first to thirty second street is theirs. He knew he shouldn’t have been peddling his shit out here. It wasn’t a hard case for the cops to crack. So there wasn’t much coverage. Two news channels and few single column articles. If they would have known that this was where it started. Where I was reborn as a cursed man. They would have used more of their lexicon.

The cops found one of the guys outside the bar, near the T. He stepped out to smoke at the wrong time. He was well known throughout the neighborhood. They knew that when they heard gunshots it was him or one of his shit head nimrods.

I got “lucky” when I heard the call come over the radio. Code 719 outside Clydesdales. Murder suspect. My car couldn’t shift fast enough to keep up with my adrenaline. This was it. Finally I can flash my badge, keeping my finger over the “Opinion” sub header, revealing those beautiful letters, JOURNALIST. And they would spill their guts, desperate to have their names forever emblazoned in the press.

They already had him in the back of the car, they were taking statements, when did he get here? Who was he with? Textbook spiel. Only one news crew was there, already wrapping up their equipment, satisfied that they had enough. Luck soured quickly as the badge had no effect on the cops nor the small crowd that gathered around the yellow tape. They got their fame in the background of the television crews. They waved their hands and smiled like they were on Good Morning America.

Disparaged, I turned on my heels and headed back to my car. I parked it a couple blocks away. The cops built a barricade in case the other two perps were near by. I had to slink under unwatched tape and creep through alleys like a rat looking for food scraps just to save time. Fastest way from point a to point b is a straight line. I should have gone around. I should have taken the long way. Where street lights and passerby’s can see me.

He was only about twenty feet into the shadows of the alley behind the bar. He was waiting till the heat died down so that he could get back home, pack a bag and leave town. He was running late to meet perp A at the bar. Just twenty minutes between freedom and a prison cell. He must have thought I was someone else, a friend of the guy he helped kill, or someone from his team tying up loose ends. He pulled his knife out the moment he heard me stumble over the bag of garbage overflowing from the dumpster. As I stood up he lunged at me, with his semi-serrated bench-made. If I would have seen him coming, if I didn’t turn my shoulders the way I had when I stood up. If I hadn’t turned around right when I did, that knife would have landed in my rib cage instead of his. It would have crept right through my intercostal spaces and pierced my heart, instead of his. But I did turn and stumble when I stood up, and I didn’t see him coming. I had no fight or flight, I wasn’t tense or nervous. I was embarrassed.

He grabbed my shoulders and his eyes looked right through my own. He couldn’t speak, but he garbled something about money and innocence. His death was intimately imminent. His grip was that of a bear trap. I was the last person he wanted to be touching. I was the last pair of eyes he wanted to stare into as he left this world. His legs gave way, and I lowered him to the wet garbage ridden pavement of the alley way. I screamed for help. I called out through the labyrinth of buildings for anyone to hear. His eyes never left my own. His fingers went weak, and his breath grew rapid and shallow. I could no longer feel his pulse through his palms.

It took an eternity for someone to hear my raspy shouting. I felt like an orphaned alley cat begging the world to take me too.

***

I quit my job, but I was going to get fired anyway. I enrolled in therapy. It wouldn’t be good if I hadn’t. No one is going to hire a guy like that. I prepared for life to get rocky. Rock bottom rocky. I knew my pay check to pay check lifestyle would go belly up one day. My bills would start collecting and I’d be out on my ass at the end of next month. But that’s not what happened. Two weeks after the incident. Four sessions with my therapist. Dr. Mena. I opened my email inbox to find not one, not four, but six job offers. Life was going to be ok after all.

I put the mess behind me. I started my new job, got a new apartment in a new city. I had a clean slate. Better. I was in the black. I had a savings account, I had an I.R.A. And health insurance. Finally things were working out.

My phone rang, a call was from Detective Cassopolis. He was the lead on my case. It wasn’t unusual for him to be calling. It had only been a month or so since the incident. And it was an attempted murder case. Though, they had their guy, and I was pretty in-depth with my report. It kind of comes with the job. Turns out alley guy wasn’t connected to the trio. Or to the drugs or to any active cases being investigated. He was just a guy in an alley, with a knife. Some Gotham style shit. I figured that would be the final “I” to be dotted and the manila folder would but put in a drawer and sent to archive. And it did, for a while.

First it was in my dreams. He would appear standing on the beach, hundreds of miles away. A tiny dot that I just knew was him. Each night he would get closer and closer. Till the thought of seeing him, face to face kept me awake for two days straight.

I saw him in the faces of my neighbors, as they checked the mail or waved hello. I saw him when I turned the tv off. I heard his voice, Not the blood filled ramblings of a dying man, when I was in the shower or taking a shit. When I was doing laundry or washing the dishes.

Eventually my eyes grew heavier than my will and I fell asleep.

We met outside the bar. The one where he died. We sat at the bus stop across the street. It was afternoon in front and pitch night behind. People without faces bustled around us, fading out of existence once out of sight.

He told me the story about how he came to be in that alley that night. He told me that he was but a messenger. A carrier. Patient one million. And that I was patient one million and one. I had two choices. Bear the weight of death or seek my own to pass my sentence to another. Dreams have no beginning or end. They have no sense of time or reason beyond the imagination of the beholder.

Not this dream.

This was my prophecy.

He wanted me to kill. He wanted me to rip the throats from peoples bodies and wave them in the air, laughing at the Gods. He twisted the faces of my neighbors into horrible facades of ghouls and monsters. Demanding their demise. For me to rid them from this world. To save those that would fall victim to their talons and fangs. One for the many Frank. One for the many.

I knew it wasn’t real. I knew I should have talked to Dr. Mena about it. But I just got this job, my clearance went through last Thursday and I couldn’t risk it. If I had, maybe they would finally believe me. But there was no progress note to reference, there was no appointment on the books. I was deemed fit for duty and given the stamp of approval.

This was nothing but nightmares, PTSD twisting my mind. Shell shock screwing with my perception. Nothing I cant get through.

He didn’t quit. He spoke endlessly night and day. Through interviews and during my editing sessions. In the bath or on the subway. “That one, that one, what about that one? He killed someone ten years ago, he’s perfect, he deserves it.”

I never thought that I would give in. I thought I was better than that. Of stronger character than that. I thought eventually whatever this was would dissipate in the morning air, and nothing but the remnant of a dream would be left.

***

He told me that she had drowned her daughter in the tub. That she laughed while doing it. Her other daughter stood outside the bathroom; silent, watching. Before reality snapped her out of the trance and she ran for the phone. He told me that she was let out on good behavior. That they let her daughter live with her again. That she would do it again.

I bit my lip and played with my facial hair. I smacked myself hoping I would wake up. I started making a sandwich, something to distract myself. What even goes in a sandwich? I left the bathroom light on. Fans going.

“Do it now, today, while she’s at school. You have to save her.”

I called out sick. Told them it was coming out of both ends. They didn’t ask any questions and hung up the phone.

I got in my car and put on my seatbelt. I just wanted to see if there even was a Mary Spinelli at 42 Leaf lane. I turned the ignition, reached my arm over the passenger seat and backed out into the road. I had to know.

He was there. From when I arrived at the corner of her street. To the moment I was in her kitchen. Holding the knife. He was behind her in the living room, as she folded her daughters laundry. Pink shirts with cartoon animals. Tiny white socks. He was there when I opened my eyes. He was sitting in their Adirondack chair, on the back patio. I was sitting on the first step. Looking at my hands. Elbow deep in Marys blood.

He left when I got back to my car. He wasn’t there when I slowly drove away. He wasn’t at my apartment waiting for me. He didn’t show up in my dreams. I killed Mary Spinelli. He could Rest In Peace.

The next morning I woke in a feverish sweat, two hours late for work. That feeling I was seeking met me as my eyes adjusted to the mid morning light. Knowing it was just a dream.

***

I met Anne six weeks later. She transferred from a sister paper and was going to be the editor for my department. I knew the moment I saw her, I would ask her to marry me. I just didn’t know I would do it four times.

I spent every moment of that summer with Anne. We ate more Chinese food than Chinese people eat. I found any excuse to stay late and work with her. I even slummed to botching some of my stories so that we would have to talk. So that she would be forced to “help” me get the story out. I was only interested in one story. Ours. I’m not ugly, but I’m not handsome. I’m somewhere in between. Average? I guess you’d say I’m average. And an average guy like me has to work a bit harder to garner the attention of woman like Anne. Editors have a reputation. Not a bad one, they just call things as they are, feelings be damned.

Eventually she called my bluff and exposed my poorly crafted plan and agreed to meet over a real dinner, at a real restaurant. Of which I must choose. That dinner led to another and another. I was living a dream.

A dream that as some dreams do, spiraled into a web of lies and chaos. Into the world of nightmares.

Anne was going to move in with me, but my place was too small and hers too far from work. So we decided to just find a whole new place, our place. We moved in together on our one year anniversary of dating.

That was when He came back.

***

Of course I refused. I yelled and I told him he wasn’t real. That none of it was real. He was just the mask of a traumatic event, resurfacing.

Darren Ewing died two days after we moved in.

With only the essentials put away, our boxes were still strewn about every square foot of our new two bedroom one and half bath. I should have remembered that when I came home. I wouldn’t have tripped over the pots and pans set. I could have slipped into bed without Anne even knowing I was gone. But that wasn’t me. She came storming down the hall, bat in hand, eyes wide and ready to fight.

From then on, I rented a room and left clean clothes behind. To change into after. This was my second kill and I had a better sense of what to do. I never worried over evidence. Over the chance of being caught. He told me not to. That things were as they should be and I should keep going.

After the third or fourth, it got easier. His voice was softer. Less obtrusive. He let me live my life the way I wanted to. I got my promotion and we bought a new car. Anne was pregnant with our fist daughter and we were trying to pick out nursery colors. Convincing ourselves that no matter how many books we read or what sage advice is bestowed we’re going to make terrible first time parents. We laughed and that was ok. We were going to be parents.

I woke up an went to work. I paid my taxes on time, balanced my debt to income ratio and was even setting aside for Faustinas college fund.

Then at night, when He would come, I would slip out of bed, grab my bag and drive away. Wash my hands, change my clothes and return to the warm loving embrace of my sleeping, pregnant wife.

They weren’t people anymore. They were monsters. Scourges on society. Drug dealers and rapists. Murderers and pedophiles. I was their judgment. He found me in that alley, to save the lives of innocent people from the insidious plans they were unknowingly a part of. With each death another child was saved from being shuffled out of the country to fill the sick desires of some pervert in the sand box. A wife saved from the brutal beatings of her husband. A nephew avenged. I was killing those that would do worse to others.

I slept soundly on this. I cradled the growing belly of my wife, knowing that each time He came, it was to make the world she would be a part of, safer.

***

I expected to be called to these scenes. The ones that were local anyways. A mother of two found strangled in her kitchen. Man found dead in his tub. But the cops must have kept the lid tight, called them suicides or accidents. Because nothing short of an obituary ever made it to print.

Everyone is under the impression the day I walked away from my family was the beginning. But that was just half way.

He must have met his quota after our initial spree. It wasn’t until Anne was three months pregnant that He came back. Three years and two days since I killed Martin Lynch. Number nineteen.

I put fourteen notches in my belt in the four years since Matty was born. Faustinas Birthday would end with number twenty three.

We spent the weeks leading up to her birthday reaching out to her friend parents, and hiring a caterer. We’ve done enough parties to know it was smarter to just pay someone else to cook and clean up afterwords. I called the bouncy house and entertainment. Anne dealt with the cake, food for thirty, and decorations. She was a machine. I was the out of work tradesman. She ended up taking over the whole thing when she saw the clown I had booked. No preteen girl is going to want some creepy clown ruining their party. My mistake.

In complete Anne fashion, everything was going off without a hitch. The cake arrived the day before and was chilling in the lay down freezer in the garage. The caterers showed up half an hour early just to run rehearsal. Good thing. They forgot half the appetizers. I needed my spinach spanakopitas. I paid extra for them. Anne has a very special look when things don’t go as plan. It’s not panic or anger. It’s excitement. She gets to fix something.

It was only about a half hour before the cake was due to come out. Before the candles would be lit and songs would be sung. The adults had broken off in their phone tree cliques and I found myself with the fellow Dads. Feinting interest in Golf was a lot easier than football. Football is America. America is free. I should know football.

It was then. With hotdog in one hand and beer in another, that He arrived. He stood behind Mr. Stetson, Cassis’ father. He nodded his head. I returned the gesture. I put my food down, excused myself and left out the back gate.

***

It has been twelve years since Ive seen my wife and children. It’s been two years since I admitted myself to Norwich State Asylum. I admitted myself after the last kill. Something about it felt different. It felt wrong. I felt something about it. And that sent me into a splashing array of emotional frenzy.

I never went to court. I never had a lawyer tell me to plead the fifth. I never met with detectives to review evidence or to try and cop a deal. I just asked the kind lady at the front desk of the asylum if murder counted towards rent here. She laughed. I didn’t. She picked up the phone and one thing led to another. I’ve been here ever since.

Dr. Mena is here too. His main office is down the hall to the left. He is the one who told me to start this journal. This memoir. He told me that it would help me address what happened. That it would help me see the truth. But he doesn’t want that. He just wants to see what’s going on in this head of mine.

I told him about Him. How we met in the alley and how I contracted his curse. Nothing I’ve written isn’t scribbled in one yellow pad or the other. But he wants me to do it, and what else am I going to do.

***

My names is Dr. Enrique Mena. The story before you was composed by one of my most interesting patients. She is seventy eight years old and has been a resident of Norwich state for forty of those years. Eunice Hempstead was brought to our doorstep, fighting tooth and nail, by her father at the age of thirty eight. It was apparent after just a few sessions that her affliction was deeper than anyone had expected. While otherwise euthyimic during the day. At night she was riddled by night terrors. Night after night she seized and convulsed violently. Her gagged screams could be heard all through out the floor.

She grew a tolerance to the sedatives, something that I wasn’t even sure was possible. She killed four people during her attempt at escape, including herself. It was the quick thinking of an orderly, who was able to pry the syringe from her trembling hands that kept that number from increasing. Regrettably, his actions led to the death of Eunice Hempstead. While the two grappled on the floor, the needled pierced Eunices pericardium and let loose the cocktail inside. Her last words were of money and innocence. Nothing more than the ramblings of a Paraphrenic. Remember this, Psychosis is a symptom, not an illness.

Please turn to page eighty four in your textbooks and read silently while processing the story you’ve just read. After a while we will break, then regroup for discussion.

Welcome to your first day of Psychology 101.