Dawn's Tale

by Nicholas Knight

  “Goodnight, john-boy,” she said, to the damaged Vietnam Vet.

  One of the other scared nurses responsibly activated the clamorous alarm, initiating a containment lockdown. This was Dawn’s cue to get fully engrossed in her honorable endeavor of justified vengeance, while she still had the opportunity, freedom and the time to do so. Dawn lashed out in total retribution, mutilating and exterminating everyone in the facility, in brutal dismemberment. She ran around on her bare knuckles, much like the primitive characters in the acclaimed Planet of the Apes movie, savagely and barbarically tearing people limb from limb, methodically and one at a time.

  Dawn finally found herself in an overdue confrontation with the tyrannical Dr. Aaron, that was a long time coming.

  “Dawn,” Dr. Aaron said, “You don’t want to do this. Don’t let your hatred define you, or you will become what you despise the most,” secretly referring to himself, figuring that she was coming after him in a personal vendetta, for being one of the ones to take advantage of her sexual vulnerability. “Remember what we’ve discussed in my office,” he continued in vane to attempt to reason with her. “Hurt people hurt people. Don’t become one of those people.”

  “If that’s your way of calling me a monster,” she said, “just remember...you made me.”

  “Stop!” Dr. Aaron said, trying one last time to get through to her, “Your anger is misdirected! You and I both know that you really want to kill your father, not me,” he stressed, trying desperately to effectively remove the blame from himself and get her to add his contributed share to the pedophile crimes of her clergyman father. “You’re taking your anger out on me! Don’t do that! You’re out of control! If you kill me, you risk reverting back to the drawing board and losing all the progress you have made here with us!”

  “I know what my father is, and I know what you are,” she replied, “and I’ve never been more in control.”

  “You’re a sorry slut, Dawn,” Dr. Aaron said boldly, now accepting that he wasn’t going to get out of this alive, or at least not on two legs, “I always thought you were a lousy hussy.”

  “That’s funny, I never heard you complain,” Dawn said, after snickering at his conceited nerve.

  “Come on!” he tempted her, “If you’re going to do something, go ahead and do it! Don’t just stand there like a pathetic trollop, you fucking waste of flesh!” he provoked her. “You fucking tease! You Lolita floozy!”

  Dawn sneered at him in disgust, before jumping high into the air and landing in a scissor lock, with her inner thighs wrapped around his pretentious neck. As he began to lose his balance, with her crotch literally in his face, she twisted her hips and snapped his neck. Dr. Aaron fell straight backwards, with Dawn still straddling his face, while she firmly held the top of his head like it was the halter of a saddle bronc horse. Grasping his hair with her left hand, she threw her right arm up and behind her, while howling in victory, like some deranged werewolf cowgirl. When they settled, she landed safely on her feet, and the back of his head collided and cracked with the hard floor, with her help of course.

  Dawn immediately resorted and resumed to stalking her next prey, as the ward was in an intense state of panic and hysteria, as staff and patient alike ran around like headless chickens. Dawn targeted and attacked everyone, one after the other, whimsically and unsystematically as though her appetite was insatiable and her thirst for ferocious retaliation was unquenchable. Slaughtering these people left and right brought her a sense of contentment that was refreshingly emancipating. Then, to her appeased gratification, she spotted the obese and offensive Kenneth.

  “Damn, girl,” Kenneth said, “I always knew you were a circus freak, but I had no idea just how much,” he said daringly, somehow arrogantly confident that she had no power over him, and that she lacked the strength to conquer him.

  The doughty Dawn equably walked up to approach and engage with Kenneth, bare-naked and drenched in blood.

  “Kenneth,” she said. “You have just what I need.”

  “Damn girl,” he said again, proud of himself and happy to hear her boost his already inflated ego. “I thought you’d never come around,” he said with an obnoxious smile, as he began unzipping his strangulating pants, reaching under his grossly stout belly.

  “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she said teasing him, as she seductively closed in on him, where he anxiously stood waiting to see what she had to offer. “I was thinking more along the lines of something you could actually see...not something that’s totally out of sight.” Before he had a moment to identify her deception, Dawn punched a hole through Kenneth’s gluttonous stomach, and began yanking out his lower intestines, like she was a magician pulling tied handkerchiefs out of a trick top hat.

  While Kenneth spit out a heinous concoction of his vile blood and upchuck, Dawn turned around and used his intestines to rope Nurse Claire who was foolishly trying to make a belated run for it. Lassoing the intestines around the pitiless nurse’s neck, she tugged the human lariat, and literally swept Nurse Claire off her enlarged feet, bringing her to thwack the back of her head on the rigid, tiled floor. Dawn dragged the stocky nurse toward her, so that she could have better access to her corpulent body.

  “It’s morning time, Nurse Claire,” Dawn announced, “and you haven’t made the rounds yet. Slacking again on the job, I see. Don’t you want to dispense your favorite mystery pill?” Dawn gave the intestines one last hard heave, and snapped Claire’s neck like a brittle twig. “Guess you finally had a taste of your own medicine, huh?” she said to the portly corpse.

  The feral Dawn killed indiscriminately, not aiming for just the ones who deserved it, but demolishing everyone in her path. She had broken not only mentally, but also in every aspect and on every level. Mankind had incurred her indomitable wrath, and it was not going to subside until the earth became her personal slaughterhouse. The other patients, whom she had gotten to know so well, and even befriended in some cases, all begged her for exemption, but she showed no mercy. Dawn tore through her peers as cutthroat and as effortlessly as she did her shameless tormenters.

  Walking into different rooms to ensure that no stone was left unturned, Dawn stumbled upon Barbara, who was still catatonic and had since been placed in a straight jacket, as if she had posed some kind of threat to others, by not being able to move or function. Barbara was sitting on her lower bunk, just staring off into space, as if trapped in a looped nightmare which she had no route of escape. Dawn looked at her in sincere commiseration, before ruthlessly tearing her throat out with her bare hands, and throwing the bloody contents on the floor.

  “I’m deeply sorry, Barbara,” she said, as the lobotomized woman toppled over to the floor, face first, “but I’m sure you’re probably better off this way,” she said, considering this more or less of a mercy killing. “My condolences.”

  The blaring alarm continued to annoy and deafen, but Dawn unremittingly stayed the course, butchering the few remaining victims who were misfortunate enough to be left occupying or wandering the loony bin.

  Nurse Gregory hurriedly came running around the corner, and saw Dawn, completely immersed in the blood of those lives she had taken.

  “Dawn?” he called out to her. “What are you doing? This is crazy! Stop! Just stop!” he tried with futile effort to rationalize with her fury.

  “Nurse Gregory,” she said softly, “You were the only male nurse in this ward who didn’t screw me in one way or another,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that I truly appreciate that.”

  “So, we’re copacetic then?” he asked her, relieved to hear her say that she hadn’t taken his kindness for granted. “You’ll let me cut out?”

  “You’ll leave here, alright,” she replied, “but only in a doggie bag.”

  “I thought you said we were cool?” he said, backing up from her, as she slowly and calmly walked toward him.

  “We are,” she confirmed, “but, I can’t have any witnesses.”

  “
Please,” he pleaded again, for her thoughtful consideration to let him be the exception.

  “No way, Jose,” she replied.

  “Dawn!” William said from behind her. “What are you doing? You have to stop this! Please!”

  Dawn turned around, looking like Sissy Spacek at the end of Carrie, and faced her self-righteous friend. “William…another male resident here, who never tried to get a piece of this tail” she said, as she patted and rubbed her ass with both hands. “You better look away. Scripture tells us that if you even look at a woman out of lust, you are sinning against God,” she quoted, as William swallowed his saliva and his pride, not wanting to own up to his own infatuation of Dawn. “What’s wrong, William? I’m not good enough for you to Bible thump…or I should say, hump?”

  “Dawn...listen...you can talk to me. I’m your friend. Jesus loves you, and so do I. Let me be here for you. Please.”

  “Your Jesus never loved me, William. God only blesses the callous and the cruel, and pisses on the pure of heart. That’s the God you serve, whether you see it that way or not. God forsook me a long time ago, and stonewalled me when I asked him why, much like he did to his own son. God took away the only man who ever really loved me, as quickly as he gave him to me. God’s nothing but an Indian giver; that’s the God of the Bible, William, not the figment of fantasy you make him out to be.”

  “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” William said in response, not sure what else to say.

  “AAHH!!” Dawn screamed, as she leapt towards William and slashed his face with her razor-sharp talons, in the formation of the Sign of the Cross, forever marking him the way that God had historically marked Cain. “What the fuck does your God think I am?!”

  As Dawn was butchering William, Nurse Gregory used that as an opportunity to cut loose. Scared shitless, Nurse Gregory was actually able to reach the exit, and escape with his life in tact, while Dawn was preoccupied with her distraction. Though Dawn had logical reason to be concerned about leaving witnesses, Gregory had no intention of ever telling a soul about her or what she had done. He was just grateful to be alive, and to survive such an atrocious genocide.

  When Dawn was finished massacring whom she could lay her hands on, she walked into the same shower stall that she had earlier shared with Reuben. When she got there, she found Nurse Monica cringing and hiding in the shower. Dawn just stood there over her, as Monica shook like a leaf in a whirlwind.

  “Why didn’t you come see what was wrong, when I screamed for someone to help Reuben?” Dawn asked her. “Why? Why didn't you come? I know you heard me. Did you think I was just crying wolf? You were the one nurse in this hellhole that I actually thought gave a shit.”

  “That’s not true,” Nurse Monica refuted. “Nurse Gregory cared about you and Reuben too. He cared about all of you, like I do. I’m sorry, Dawn. I would have come running, to help Reuben. I didn’t know anything had happened. I just came on shift a little while ago. I was late getting to work today. If I had been here, I would have helped you. Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

  Dawn just stared at Nurse Monica for several minutes, huffing and puffing, while contemplating whether or not to blow her life away too. As Monica wept and pleaded for her life, Dawn could see in her eyes that she wasn’t playing mind games with her, but that she did actually care.

  “If I let you go,” Dawn began, “Do you give me your solemn word that you won’t speak a peep about this, or about me, to anyone?”

  “Yes,” Monica replied, as her rapid heart rate began to calm, suddenly seeing the look of compassion in Dawn’s eyes. “I swear, Dawn, I will never tell a soul.”

  “Okay,” Dawn reluctantly but sympathetically agreed. “You can leave. I won’t harm you. You’re free to go, Monica. Thanks for caring about Reuben and I. We appreciate your friendship.”

  “Oh…thank you, Dawn. Thank you. Thank you for my life,” Nurse Monica profusely expressed her gratitude. “Again, I’m sorry for everything that happened to both of you.”

  “Let me help you up, Monica.” Dawn reached out her arm, and though Monica was hesitant at first to take her hand, she trusted her in spite of the macabre circumstances.

  As Monica ran out of the communal restroom and bath area, she took off down the hall like a bat out of Hell. Dawn calmly stepped into the shower stall, treating it like a decontamination chamber, and washed the majority of the blood off of her young body, which was amazingly relaxed and not trembling. Getting out of the shower, she wiped the tears from her blue eyes, and in a way, said her reluctant goodbyes to the fond, but too few, memories she had shared with Reuben.

  Just when she thought she was alone in the ward, she saw Joshua running, but he wasn’t trying to make a zippy break for the exit. Joshua, instead, was witlessly running towards her. When he got close enough to do so, Joshua stopped dead in his tracks in front of her, and slapped her hard in the face, with his limp wrist. Dawn looked at him, and saw that he was smiling, as if anxiously anticipating his punishment for assaulting her. As if reading her mind, Joshua turned around, so that his back faced her.

  “God forgives,” Joshua told her, as if to relieve her from any guilt or fault, for what she was about to do to him.

  “I’m not God,” Dawn replied. “God kills indiscriminately, and now so do I.”

  Dawn grabbed him in a headlock, and quickly snapped his neck. Dawn felt Joshua deserved a better send off than this, but didn’t want to get any more blood on her, now that she had just bathed. She dragged him over to the nurse’s station, and picked him up to lay him back first on the counter, as if it were suddenly an altar. She then walked over to the record player, and found the album The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. She placed the record on the turntable, and played the song Fire, while she went to her room and retrieved her silver flask. Pouring the last of her Moonshine over Joshua’s body, she used a book of matches to ignite the saturated corpse, and then walked away, as if leaving a campfire.

  She searched the premises and eventually tracked down where the alarm was coming from. Breaking the security system, simply by ripping out the wires and utterly dismantling and disassembling the sheer mechanics of it, she managed to both overturn the alarm and unlock the hellish facility.

  “Let’s blow this taco stand,” she said, as if talking to Reuben’s immortal ghost.

  Coming down from her frantic condition, Dawn casually walked out of the ward, leaving the doors and gates wide open, making it easy for anyone else to duck out, if she had mistakenly left anyone there alive.

  By the time clinic security got around to barging in, from the main infirmary upstairs, everyone in the destroyed mental health facility was declared and pronounced dead. Little did the local smokeys know that one particular female RN had been stripped of her property. Monica had fled with Dawn’s permission and blessing, but in her rush to vacate the scene; Monica had dropped her identity badge and keys. Dawn had noticed this and picked the useful items off the floor, just a few feet from the communal shower room. Dawn had also paid a visit to the employee lounge, and taken Nurse Monica’s purse and casual threads from her locker. Because the annihilation was already in progress when Monica had reported late to work, she was immediately flustered with fear and temporarily forgot that she had just put her essentials in her locker. Because Dawn had petrified her with debilitating terror as she ran off, Monica never made it back to her locker to grab her belongings. The boob tube in the solarium is cranked up to the maximum volume, and the band Starbuck is performing their hit song Moonlight Feel Right on a televised recap from the previous week’s variety show, The Midnight Special.

  Meanwhile, Dawn had hastily retreated to the woods, like a fox on the run. She’s garbed in the stolen nurse’s pink and white Doors baseball jersey; brown suede Winlit shearling Boho ladies coat; faded blue, hip-hugger bellbottom jeans; and brand new clogs, and still has a bit of nearly-dried blood in her hair, that failed to come out in the shower. She finds a creek, and climbs down the rocky surface to get
closer to the water. Carefully kneeling down by the stream, she uses her hands to wash the rest of the blood out of her long, brown hair. The water is bitterly ice-cold, but she does it anyway. She knows that it’s only a matter of time before the fuzz put it together, when they learn that she is the only patient unaccounted for. As she’s rinsing the last of the blood out of her hair, she sees Reuben’s reflection in the ripples. His face is clear as crystal, but only for a brief, fleeting moment. As his short-lived image dissipates into nothingness, she hears his doting voice in her head as she continues to gaze into the water.

  “I will never truly die, unless you forget me,” the voice says.

  Dawn looks up, and sees a wolf standing across from her, on the other side of the creek. This wasn’t a mirage or a reflection, but what appeared to be an actual, physical timber wolf. It was beautiful, and magnificent, with fur that was various shades of grey, white, black, and rusty brown, with piercing yellow eyes. Wolves weren’t typically native to Virginia, so this was unexpected naturally, as well as supernaturally. The wolf was carrying a human baby between its teeth. The baby was alive and unharmed, but had red eyes, and a face that resembled her lost love. She had Native American relatives on her father’s side, but had never experienced a mystical vision or been on a spirit quest. She didn’t know if that was what she was seeing, or if what she was seeing was the real deal...or perhaps it was something somewhere in between. Either way, the wolf in front of her appeared non-threatening, and even affable. But, as she reached out her hand to entice it closer, the wolf and the infant, like Reuben’s reflection, vanished before her sorrowful eyes.