Dawn's Tale

by Nicholas Knight

  Dawn played with his hands, taking a closer look at his fingers, which had no fingernails, and whose tips actually appeared to come to a point. She gazed up at him, and looked into his deep, red eyes, and saw only perfection. Reuben’s eyes were as blood red as his natural hair color. He had a slight harelip, attaching his nose to his mouth, but it was barely noticeable, especially to her. His skin was so fair and white that it was almost ghoulish in texture.

  “What made you chase and assault that guy, anyway?” he asked her, dying of curiosity to know what motivated her to do such a thing.

  “I was in the Mall, with some girlfriends from my cheerleading squad,” she said, “A man came up, someone I never even met before, and…out of nowhere, he firmly grabbed my fanny, like he was entitled or something…like I had a fucking welcome sign plastered on my butt. I can’t explain it. I just fucking lost it.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind when I first got fresh with you,” he commented, “and we both know I got away with doing a lot more than he did,” he said grinning with accomplished pride.

  “It was different with you,” she said, smiling back at him.

  “How?” he asked, knowing the answer all too well.

  “I love you,” she replied. “I’ve always loved you, even before we met.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” he said back.

  “How are you so old?” she asked, changing the subject. “You don’t look like you’re 41,” she complimented him, being nice.

  “How old do I look?” he asked her, intrigued to hear her opinion.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “You just look a lot younger.”

  “I don’t know?” he said. “I don’t know what I ever did, Dawn, to be so lucky to be here with you now? You are so much more than I ever could have known I wanted. You could have anybody. I don’t know why you feel something for me, but I pray that I can hold on to it and keep it alive.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Reuben. I’m yours, and that won’t change after we’re discharged. I want a life with you. I need you to hold me and never let me go.”

  “That won’t be a problem. Just don’t leave me,” he begged her. Though she was his first, he knew that she would be the only one to ever want him. “Too many girls out there, say they love a man, only to later turn their back and backstab him, as if he meant nothing. I want to be a memory for you, Dawn, but I never want to be your past,” Reuben stated, proving he was wise beyond his lack of experience.

  “The past is the only dead thing that smells bittersweet,” she said half jokingly, failing miserably at trying to lighten the mood. “I’m the one worried you’re going to leave me,” she confessed. “There’s got to be a company out there that finds eligible people for a clinical research study, which would cater to or target people with diseases such as yours,” she said, still fretting about his blood disorder potentially stealing him tragically and prematurely from her loving embrace.

  Reuben tightly held her from behind, in the spooning position. She cradled his protective arms in her own, while kissing the back of his hands and sucking on the tips of his nail less fingers. Dawn wiggled and pushed her sweet ass against him, enjoying the feeling of his cock against her flawless, precious rump. As Reuben drowned in utter bliss, just holding her in his arms and laying there with the owner of his once lonely heart, he began to feel something moist soak his penis and thighs.

  “What is that?” Reuben asked, feeling a warm wetness engulf and drench their bodies. “Are you peeing the bed?” he asked, surprised but strangely not disgusted.

  “I’m marking my territory,” she answered. “I want to make sure that every other female in heat knows who you belong to. You’re taken, and I want to make that known.” Though the pee kind of weirded Reuben out, how could he reasonably argue with such a sweet sentiment. She loved him back, and that was all that mattered. The smell, though unpleasant, didn’t even cause him to gag. He was touched by the meaning behind it, and felt closer to her than before.

  Without warning, the two had dosed off to sleep, there in the pool of piss, practically simultaneously. They had also lost complete track of the time, before slipping into their joined unconscious. There were only a couple of hours remaining, for them to safely rest, before their privacy would be invaded and their security threatened. The nurse’s staff would undoubtedly be expecting to see them both at breakfast.

  The little time there was left to spare, flew by like a snap of the fingers or the blink of an eye. Nurse Carl peeked in Dawn’s door window, and found Reuben still spooning her, in her bed. She was laying in the fetal position, and Reuben was behind her, with his protective arm wrapped around her delectable waist and his other arm resting under her head for her to use as a pillow. They were buck naked, and keeping each other warm with their intense love for one another. Their combined body heat was all that kept them from being cold; lying in Dawn’s pungent but dried urine. Reuben had fully meant to leave in plenty of time and return to his room, but they had worn each other out and the impulsive urge to stay together was simply irresistible. They had earnestly tried to stay away from each other, but after their first taste, their profound hunger for each other only grew…and grew by the moment. Besides, the risk of getting caught kind of made it hotter for both of them, though neither would ever admit to it.

  Carl was one of the many male nurses who had been serviced by Dawn, but the only one among them who felt like Dawn was his personal property. He wanted Dawn for himself, and had often imagined himself ending up with her at some point down the line, though she had never given him any signals to indicate that she had felt the same. Nurse Carl had been one of the ones to give her special privileges, and let her get away with breaking the rules, in exchange for her keeping her mouth shut (that is, when it wasn’t open and sealed around his shaft). He had grown increasingly frustrated since Dawn had suddenly quit meeting him at the maintenance closet, at their agreed time, for his daily head. Now, seeing them together, Carl knew why she had blown him off. Nurse Carl, in his own twisted way, was very fond of Dawn, and felt he had put in the time and effort to earn and deserve her loyal affections. Nurse Carl looked around, to make sure no one was watching, and then gently cracked opened Dawn’s door, carefully and quietly shutting it behind him.

  Reuben tended to sleep like a rock, and could literally sleep peacefully through a storm of the century. Dawn was much more sensitive and alert to her environment, and had a sixth sense, even when she was a bit out of it. As Carl slowly made his way to her bedside, walking as if he was stepping on eggshells, Dawn somehow heard him coming, and opened her eyes. Before Dawn could process what was about to happen, Carl had pulled Reuben off of her, and soon had him pinned on the floor. Carl held Reuben’s skinny, gangly arms down, while he straddled him. Reuben’s eyes were still funky, and weren’t working quite yet, as they were contaminated with the morning crust and irritated redness that often plagued him.

  “You had to bogart her, didn’t you? Well, if I can’t have her, no one will,” the delusional Carl said, with unadulterated hate in his determined eyes. “Wait, is that piss I smell?” Nurse Carl asked in abhorrent and hypocritical revulsion, as he turns his head to look over at the saturated bed. “Aww, Jesus! You two are sick!”

  Nurse Carl picked up Reuben’s wrists and began pounding them against the hard, tiled floor, repeatedly and violently. Then, taking his right hand off Reuben’s left wrist, Carl started to punch him directly in the face, over and over again. Reuben began spitting out his teeth, which were already weakened and diseases from his porphyria. Dawn yelled for Carl to stop, and show her boyfriend mercy, but it got her nowhere. She grabbed the sides of her head and shook it back and forth, as she teetered her body like a rocking chair and cried for her one true love. Seeing that Nurse Carl meant business, Dawn tried to reason with him, while tears rushed down her face, like a waterfall.

  “You’re right, Nurse Carl,” she said with noble intent, and phony respect. “We need hel
p. Let us see the chaplain. Maybe he can save our souls,” she cried, thinking of anything she could say to try and dissuade him from hurting Reuben anymore than he already had.

  “It’s too late for that, luscious,” he said, “You both are damned, and I’m the Grim Reaper.”

  Realizing that he wasn’t going to dismount Reuben on his own and that she had no other alternative, Dawn courageously jumped on Nurse Carl’s back, trying to get him off and away from Reuben, as she screamed desperately for help. Carl reached behind him and somehow managed to grab her by her throat, violently throwing her off of his back. Her head and body struck the wall with great force, hence knocking her out cold. She lied there, helpless and limp. Though she had bellowed loud enough for the entire minimal-security asylum to hear, no one came rushing in to investigate. Nobody cared. Nobody helped. Not a solitary soul came rushing to investigate or intervene.

  Reuben saw what Nurse Carl had done to his true love, and in his battered, fatigued state, somehow found the strength and adrenaline to push Carl off of him, regardless of his injured being. Reuben, with blood clotting his eyes, brawled valiantly against Nurse Carl, but his chivalry would prove futile, and wouldn’t be enough to suppress Nurse Carl’s barbaric outrage. Though Reuben’s vision was severely blocked and blurred from the fierce beating, and the room was now spinning on account that his sense of balance and clarity were thrown way off track, he refused to let Carl win without a fight…even if the odds were stacked against him.

  “You’re going to burn for what you’ve done,” Reuben said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m not the one who couldn’t be loved by his own blood,” Nurse Carl said back. “I’m not the one who’ll be forever remembered as a twisted fuck!”

  “Really?” Reuben asked, “Twisted fuck? Isn’t that like the pot calling the kettle black?” Reuben looked at Nurse Carl, and saw the deadly and sadistic conviction and determination is his eyes. He knew that very instant, that only one of them would survive this final battle, and walk away in one piece. “You hurt the only person who ever loved me,” Reuben said, “The only person I’ve ever known who’s worth loving.”

  “I don’t have to take your insubordination, freak show! Your swingin’ girlfriend was easy prey. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else. In fact, I have it on good authority that she’s shagged practically every male nurse in this ward. You’re going to judge me, because of a few indiscretions, when you’re sick enough to say that the world’s greatest prostitute is the very epitome of love? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Bored and weary of wasting his breath on what he deemed to be a pathetic loser, Nurse Carl violently shoved Reuben backwards, pushing him several feet against the wall and causing him to trip over his sedated lover along the way. Nurse Carl quickly pulled out his electric shock baton from its sheath, which hung off of his utility belt.

  “Come on!” Nurse Carl challenged in a hostile manner and threatening tone. “I’m calling you out! Let’s see what you’ve got, Reuben Ian Peterson!”

  Just as Reuben gallantly and dauntlessly lunged to strike back, Nurse Carl abruptly and aggressively speared him in the heart with his savage weapon, so ruthlessly that the baton broke off in his chest...thereby forever breaking Dawn’s heart as well. Nurse Carl then mounted the fallen hero, seized Reuben by the head, and using both hands, resumed bashing his head against the floor violently and repeatedly, until the back of Reuben’s head cracked open like a fresh head of iceberg lettuce, or an overly ripe melon. He then proceeded to take his thumbs and poke out Reuben’s red eyes, like he was crudely carving a seasonal jack o’ lantern.

  When the frenzied Dawn came to, Nurse Carl had cowardly split the scene, leaving her alone with the limp corpse of her bloodied and optically dismembered beloved. She sat there frozen in shock, staring at her butchered suitor, the one who had given her reason to live and the ability to love. Sitting with her legs bent, and her arms hugging just below her knees, she wept silently but frantically. Still, not a soul had come rushing in to check out the bedlam of commotion. She manically rocks back and forth, as she can feel her mind permanently snapping. She reaches down with her left hand and rubs her intricate, tribal dream catcher ankle tattoo, as if turning to her spiritual, native roots one last time for guidance. The ancient ghosts of her ancestors ignored her, much in the way that God had forsaken her and Reuben, and the last bit of humanity she carried inside of her had dissolved and disappeared.

  Reuben had hastily become everything to her, and had now been taken as rapidly as he was given. Tears rushed and washed down her grieving face, as she now knelt in her nakedness, as if praying to the God who had so clearly turned his back. Despite the sanctified appearance, she wasn’t calling out to God, but rather renouncing him. Goosebumps and cold chills covered her exposed and raving body, as she literally trembled in unbearable pain and indescribable anger. Her jaw was having involuntary tremors, and she couldn’t get her unstable hands to stop shaking on their own.

  Dawn brought her delicate hands up in front of her face, and watched in horror as her fingernails suddenly and graphically transformed into long, razor sharp claws. She didn’t know if this was an illusion brought on by rage, or if it was really happening…and she honestly didn’t care. She also felt every single one of her teeth grow into ferocious fangs. Again, she couldn’t decipher what was real, and what wasn’t. All she knew was that her soulmate had been brutally butchered, and she was going to make them pay. Digging her hand into Reuben’s open wound, she covered and coated her hand in his blood, then brought it up top her mouth and sucked it off her fingers, feeling that it was a way to keep him in her forever, even though he was gone. She looked up at the door behind her destroyed and demolished boyfriend, and instinctively knew what she had to do. As retribution fueled her adrenalin, the furious and nude Dawn jumped to her feet, and leapt toward the door like a rabid panther. Dawn would release a wrath of biblical proportions that even the celestial Almighty himself couldn’t match.

  Gradually stepping out of her room, Dawn heard the song Eve of Destruction, by Barry McGuire, playing. Nurse Carl had put it on, and was playing it over the intercom, as if either to be deliberately boastful or unknowingly prophetic. She began walking leisurely and eerily towards the nurse’s station. As she did, staff and patient alike stopped dead in their tracks, and stared at her in both amazement and repulsion. A couple of people even keeled over and vomited on the floor, after seeing her shaggy, unclad self. Dawn pinpointed Nurse Carl, who was standing behind the counter, casually going through paperwork, as if nothing had happened and it was business as usual. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow to acknowledge her, as she serenely approached the desk.

  “You need to go back to your room,” one of the female RNs ordered, while fighting not to puke at the sight of her.

  Dawn, not dignifying her edict with a response, focused on keeping her eye on the bigger fish. Effortlessly leaping over the crescent-shaped counter top, as if she had suddenly become an accomplished Olympic gymnast, she now stood merely inches away from Nurse Carl. People around them continued to goggle, remain still, and just spectate in unadulterated disbelief. Nurse Carl strangely couldn’t see the claws or the fangs, but he did see the fatal look of certain death in Dawn’s vengeful eyes.

  “Are you scared?” she asked Nurse Carl. “If not, you should be.”

  Nurse Carl started to speak, but before he could have the chance, Dawn grabbed him and pushed him up against the wall, knocking several things onto the floor, such as a Playboy Playmate calendar and a Lux Smiley Face Have A Happy Day yellow, electric wall clock. Dawn had used such blunt force, that Carl’s fat back had made a body-shaped crack in the wall. The other nurses on duty hung their mouths open in dreadful awe, as they watched Dawn rise up Carl, who hefted at least twice her own weight, and held him with one hand, nearly a foot off the ground.

  “What do you want?” Nurse Carl asked, noticing that nobody had the balls to restrain o
r sedate her, and that he was clearly on his own.

  “I want a confession,” she said.

  “Confession to what?” he asked, standing his ground, and sticking to his fabricated alibi that he had premeditated in his warped, self-absorbed head.

  “It’s okay,” Dawn said. “I lied. I don’t need a confession.”

  “So, you’ll let me down then?” he asked, relieved that she had come to reason.

  “Let you down? But I thought you liked being up?” she said, as she used her free hand to stick down the front of his pants. She began playing with his sweaty testicles, cupping them in her soft hand, as the frightened Carl began to get sexually aroused, even in this immediate realm of imminent danger.

  “Hey,” Nurse Carl added, “You know what they say, right? Absence makes the mind grow fonder. They also say you don’t know what you got till it’s gone, but…I think we both know that you didn’t lose much. Reuben wasn’t worth your time. He wasn't good enough for you. He didn't have what we both know you need.”

  Just as Nurse Carl began to moan in jubilant pleasure and conveniently forget about her deranged mental state, Dawn tightened her grip on his filthy scrotum and ripped it clear off of his bloated body, causing his covetous groin to spew and gush blood all over the front of his pants. Everyone who witnessed this began to scream in terror, and run for their very lives. The psyche facility had become a den of chaos and it was everyone for themselves. Nobody had any intention on trying to exact revenge for Nurse Carl’s murder, nor had any interest in getting anywhere near enough to Dawn to foolishly attempt to subdue her rage. Everyone on staff knew Carl to be a despicable scumbag, and neither his execution nor their salaries were worth risking their own lives. Dawn was clearly on a death mission of dire determination, and no one wished to stand in her way.

  “I want my boyfriend back, you son of a bitch!” Dawn said, as she pulled out his severed nuts from the front of his pants and shoved them into his mouth, pushing them down his throat, as he gagged in futile resistance. Dropping him on the floor, Nurse Carl twitched and convulsed dramatically, as he choked on his own balls, until he finally quit breathing and his cold heart finally stopped. Dawn looked down one last time at Carl, whose blood still flowed through and out of his pant legs, and continued to make a vast pool around him of both blood and urine. She spit on him, as her way of giving herself closure to what he had so unjustly purloined from her.