I AM NO T A S E RI AL KI L L E R

by Dan Wells

  Mom and I ate dinner quietly, letting the shared pizza and the noise of the TV substitute for the companionship and conversation of a real relationship. The Simpsons was on, but I wasn't really watching—I wanted that body. If the police kept it much longer, we wouldn't be able to embalm it at all, just seal it in a bag and hold a closed-casket funeral. Mom and I always disagreed on what kind of pizza to get, so we had the pizza place split it in half for us: my side had sausage and mushrooms, and her side had pepperoni. Even The Simpsons was a compromise—it came on after the news, and since changing the channel meant risking a fight, we just left it on. During the first commercial break Mom put her hand on the remote, which usually meant she was going to mute the TV and talk about something, which usually meant we would get into an argument. She rested her finger on the mute button and waited, not pressing down. If she hesitated this long, whatever she wanted to talk about was probably pretty bad. After a moment she pulled back her hand, grabbed another piece of pizza, and took a bite. We sat tensely through the next segment of the show, knowing what was coming and planning our moves. I thought about getting up and leaving, escaping before the next commercial break, but that would just antagonize her. I chewed slowly, watching numbly as Homer jumped and screamed and raced around on the screen. Another commercial came on, and Mom's hand hovered over the remote again—just briefly this time—before punching the mute button. She chewed, swallowed, and spoke. “I talked to Dr. Neblin today,” she said. I thought that might have something to do with this. “He said that. .. well, .he said some very interesting things, John.” She kept her eyes on the TV, and the wall, and the ceiling. Anywhere but me. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” “Thank you for sending me to a therapist, and I'm sorry that I actually need a therapist?” “Don't start snippy, John. We have a long way to go and I'd like to get through as much of it as we can before we get snippy.” I took a deep breath, watching the TV. The Simpsons was back on, no less manic with the sound turned off. “What did he say?” ”He told me that you ...“ She looked at me. She was about forty years old, which she claimed was actually quite young, but on a night like this, arguing in the sickly light of the TV, her if black hair pulled back, green eyes lined with worry, she looked beaten and weathered. ”He told me that you think you're going to kill somebody." She shouldn't have looked at me. She couldn't say something like that and look at me at the same time without a flood of emotion rushing to the surface. I

  watched it redden her face and sour her eyes. “That's interesting,” I said, “since that's not what I told him. Are you sure those were the words he used?” “The words aren't the issue here,” she said. “This isn't a joke, John, this is serious stuff. The . . . I don't know. Is this how it's all going to end for us? You're all I have left, John.” “The actual words I used,” I said, “were that I followed strict rules to make sure I didn't do anything wrong. It'seems like you'd be pretty happy about that, but instead you're yelling at me. This is why I need therapy.” “ 'Happy' is not a son who has to follow rules to keep himself from killing people,” she shot back. “ 'Happy' is not a psychologist telling me that my son is a sociopath. 'Happy' is—” “He said I was a sociopath?” That was kind of cool. I'd always suspected, but it was nice to have an official diagnosis. “Antisocial personality disorder,” she said, her voice rising. “I looked it up. It's a psychosis.” She turned away. “My son's a psychotic.” “APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy,” I said. I'd looked it up, too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sound; without it you become emotionally deaf. “It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one.” “How do you even know that?” she said. “You're fifteen years old, for goodness' sake, you should be ... I don't know, chasing girls or playing video games.” “You're telling a sociopath to chase girls?” “I'm telling you not to be a sociopath,” she said. “Just because you mope around all the time doesn't mean you've got a mental disorder—it means you're a teenager, maybe, but not a psycho. The thing is, John, you can't just have a doctor's note to get you out of life. You live in the same world as the rest of us, and you've got to deal with it the same way the rest of us do.” She was right, I could see a lot of benefit in being officially sociopathic. No more annoying group projects at school, for one thing. “I think this is all my fault,” she said. “I dragged you into that mortuary when you were just a kid, and it messed you up for life. What was I thinking?” “It's not the mortuary,” I said. I bristled at the mention of it—she couldn't take that away from me. “You and Margaret have worked there for how long? And you haven't killed anybody yet.” “We're not psychotic, either.” “Then you're changing your story,” I said. “You just said the mortuary messed me up, and now you say it messed me up because I was already messed up? If you're going to be like that, then I can't win no matter what I do, can I?” "There's plenty you could do, John, and you know it. Stop writing homework assignments about serial killers, for one

  thing—Margaret told me you did it again.“ Margaret, you dirty snitch. ”I got full points on that paper,“ I said. ”The teacher loved it.“ ”Being really good at something you shouldn't be doing doesn't make it any better,“ Mom said. ”It's a history class,“ I said, ”and serial killers are a part of history. So are wars and racism and genocide. I guess I forgot to sign up for the 'happy stuff only' history class, sorry about that.“ ”I just wish I knew why,“ she said. ”Why what?“ ”Why you're so obsessed with serial killers.“ ”Everybody's got to have a hobby,“ I said. ”John, don't even joke about this.“ ”Do you know who John Wayne Gacy is?“ I asked. ”I do now,“ she said, throwing up her hands, ”thanks to Dr. Neblin. I wish to God I'd named you something different.“ ”John Wayne Gacy was the first serial killer I ever learned about,“ I said. ”When I was eight years old, I saw my name in a magazine next to a picture of a clown.“ ”I just asked you ten seconds ago to stop obsessing about serial killers,“ she said. ”Why are we talking about this?“ ”Because you wanted to know why,“ I said, ”and I'm trying to tell you. I saw that picture and I thought maybe it was a clown movie with the actor John Wayne—Dad used to show me his cowboy movies all the time. -It turns out John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer who dressed up as a clown for neighborhood parties.“ ”I don't understand where you're going with this,“ said Mom. I didn't know how to explain what I meant; sociopathy wasn't just being emotionally deaf, it was being emotionally mute, too. I felt like the characters on our muted TV, waving their hands and screaming and never saying a word out loud. It was like Mom and I spoke completely different languages, and communication was impossible. ”Think about a cowboy movie,“ I said, grasping at straws. ”They're all the same—a cowboy in a white hat rides around shooting cowboys with black hats. You know who's good, you know who's bad, and you know exactly what's going to happen.“ “So?” ”So when a cowboy kills somebody you don't even blink, because it happens every day. But when a clown kills somebody, that's new—that's something you've never seen before. Here's someone you thought was good, and he's doing something so terrible that normal human emotion can't even deal with it—and then he turns around and does something good again. That's fascinating, Mom. It's not weird to be obsessed with that, it's weird not to be.“ Mom stared at me for a moment. ”So serial killers are some kind of movie hero?“ she said. ”That's not what I'm saying at all,“ I said. ”They're sick and twisted, and they do terrible things. I just don't think it's automatically sick and twisted to want to learn more about them."

  “There's a big difference between wanting to learn about them and thinking you're going to turn into one,” said Mom. “Now, I'm not blaming you—I'm not the best mother, and goodness knows your father was even worse. Dr. Neblin said you make rules for yourself, to keep you away from bad influences.” “Yes,” I said. Finally she was starting to listen—to see the good things instead of the bad. “I want to help,” she said, “so here's a ne
w rule: no more helping out in the mortuary.” “What!” “It's not a good place for kids,” she said, “and I should never have let you help in the back room in the first place.” “But I—” But what? What could I say that wouldn't shock her even more? I need the mortuary because it connects me to death in a safe way? I need the mortuary because I need to see the bodies open up like flowers and talk to me and tell me what they know? She'd kick me out of the house altogether. Before I could say anything else, Mom's cell phone rang its tinny, electronic rendition of the William Tell overture that Mom had designated as the special ring tone for the coroner's office—a call to duty. There was only one thing the coroner would be calling about at ten-thirty on a Saturday night, and we both knew it. She sighed and dug through her purse for the phone. “Hi Ron,” she said. Pause. “No, that's okay, we were just finishing up anyway.” Pause. “Yes, we know. We've been expecting it.” Pause. “I'll be down in a minute, so whenever you can come by is fine. Seriously, don't worry about it—we both knew the hours when we signed up.” Pause. “You, too, I'll talk to you later.” She hung up the phone with a sigh. “I suppose you know what that was about,” she said. “The police are done with Jeb's remains.” “They're delivering him in fifteen minutes,” she said. “I need to get downstairs. I ... we need to finish this discussion later. I'm sorry, John, about everything. This could have been a nice family dinner.” I glanced back at the TV. Homer was strangling Bart. “I want to help you,” I said. “It's after ten—you'll be up all night if you try to do it alone.” “Margaret will help,” she said. “So it will take you five hours instead of eight—it's still too long. If I help we can be done in three.” I kept my voice calm and even; I couldn't let her take it all away, but I didn't dare let her know how important it was. “The body is in very poor condition, John. He was torn apart. It's going to take a long time to put him back together, and it's going to be very disturbing, and you're a clinical psychopath.” “Ouch, Mom.” She gathered up her purse. “Either it bothers you, in which case you shouldn't go, or it doesn't bother you, in which case you should have stopped going a long time ago.” “Do you really want to leave me here alone?”

  “You'll find something constructive to do,” she said. “We're going to go put a body together,” I said, “what's more constructive than that?” I winced immediately—dark humor wouldn't help my case at all. It had been a reflex, cutting the tension with a joke the way Dr. Neblin did. “And I don't like the way you joke about death,” she said. “Morticians are surrounded by death—we breath it every minute of every day. That much contact can make you lose your reverence for it. I've seen it iri myself, and it bothers me. If death weren't so familiar to you, you might be a little better off.” “I'm fine, Mom,” I said. What could I do to convince her? “You know you need the help, and you know you don't want to leave me alone.” Even if I didn't have any empathy, Mom did, and that meant I could use it against her. Where logic failed, guilt might save the day. She sighed and closed her eyes, squeezing them shut against some mental image I could only guess at. “Fine. But let's finish the pizza first.” My sister Lauren left home six years ago, two years after Dad did. She was only seventeen at the time, and goodness knows what she'd gotten into while she was gone. The house had a lot less screaming now, which was nice, but what screaming remained was usually focused on me. About six months ago, Lauren came back to Clayton, hitchhiking in from who knows where, and contritely asked my mom for a job. They still barely spoke to each other, and she never visited us or invited us to visit her apartment, but she worked as the mortuary receptionist and got along well enough with Margaret. We all got along well enough with Margaret. She was the rubber insulation that kept our family from sparking and shorting out. Mom called Margaret while we finished our pizza, and apparently Margaret called Lauren because they were both there when we finally went downstairs to the mortuary—Margaret in her sweats and Lauren tarted up for a Saturday night on the town. I wondered if we'd interrupted anything in particular. “Hey, John,” said Lauren, looking wildly out of place behind the classy desk in the front office. She wore a shiny black-vinyl jacket over a bright red tank top, and her hair was up in an eighties-style fountain on top of her head. Maybe there was a theme night at the club. “Hey Lauren,” I said. “Is that the paperwork?” Mom asked, looking over my shoulder at her. “I'm almost done,” said Lauren, and Mom went into the back. “Is it here already?” I asked. “They just dropped him off,” she said, scanning the sheaf of papers one last time. “Margaret has him in the back.” I turned to go.

  I AM NO T A S E RI AL KI L L E R

  “You surviving?” she asked. I was anxious to see the body, but turned back to her. “Well enough. You?” “I'm not the one who lives with Mom,” she said. We stood in silence a moment longer. “You heard from Dad?” “Not since May,” I said. “You?” “Not since Christmas.” Silence. “The first two years he sent me valentines in February.” “He knew where you were?” “I asked him for money sometimes.” She put down her pen and stood up. Her skirt matched her jacket, shiny black vinyl. Mom would hate it, which was probably why Lauren bought it. She gathered the papers into a uniform stack and we walked into the back room. Mom and Margaret were already there, chatting idly with Ron, the coroner. A pale-blue body bag filled the embalming table, and it was all I could do not to run over and zip it open. Lauren handed the papers to Mom, who glanced at them briefly before signing a few sheets and handing the whole stack to Ron. “Thanks, Ron. Have a good night.” “I'm sorry to drop this on you this time of night,” he said, talking to Mom but looking at Lauren. He was tall, with slicked-back black hair. “It's no problem,” said Mom. Ron took the papers and left out the back. “That's all you need me for,” said Lauren, smiling at Margaret and me and nodding politely to Mom. “Have fun.” She walked back to the front office, and a moment later I heard the front door swing shut and lock. The suspense was killing me, but I didn't dare say anything. Mom was barely tolerating my presence here as it was, and to appear overeager now would probably get me kicked out. Mom looked at Margaret. Given time to prepare themselves, they looked fairly different from each other, but on the spur of the moment like this—in drab housework clothes with their makeup left undone—you could barely tell them apart. “Let's do it.” Margaret switched on the ventilator. “I hope this fan doesn't give out on us tonight.” We put on our aprons and scrubbed up, and Mom unzipped the bag. Whereas Mrs. Anderson had barely been handled, Jeb Jolley had been scrubbed and washed and picked over so many times by Ron and by the state forensic agents that he smelled almost entirely of disinfectant. The stench of rot seeped out more slowly as we rolled the body out of the bag and arranged it on the table. He had an enormous “Y” incision cutting from shoulder to shoulder and down the center of his chest; in most autopsies this line would continue down to the groin, but here it degenerated just below the ribs into a jagged web of rips and tears over most of his midsection. The edges were puckered and partially stitched, though many sections of skin were missing. The corners of a plastic bag peeked out through the holes in his abdomen.

  I immediately thought about Jack the Ripper, one of the earliest recorded serial killers. He tore his victims apart so viciously that most of them were barely recognizable. Had Jeb Jolley been attacked by a serial killer? It was certainly possible, but which kind? The FBI split serial killers into two categories: organized and disorganized. An organized killer was like Ted Bundy—suave, charming, and intelligent, who planned his crimes and covered them up as well as he could afterward. A disorganized killer was like the Son of Sam, who struggled to control his inner demons and then killed suddenly and brutally each time those demons broke free. He called himself Mr. Monster. Which kind had killed Jeb, the sophisticate or the monster? I sighed and forced myself to discard the thought. This wasn't the first time I'd been eager to find a serial killer in my home town. I needed to get my mind back onto the body itself, and appreciate it for what it was rather than what I wanted it to be. Margaret o
pened the body's abdomen, revealing a large plastic bag containing most of its internal organs. These were normally removed during the course of an autopsy anyway, though of course in Jeb's case they were removed at or slightly before the time of death. Even if they'd been removed, though, we still had to embalm them—we couldn't just throw part of your loved one away because we didn't want to deal with it, and we weren't equipped with a crematorium. Margaret set the bag on a cart and wheeled it over to the wall to work on the organs; they would be full of bile and other junk, stuff that the embalming fluid couldn't deal with, so it all had to be sucked out. In a normal embalming this is done after the formaldehyde gets pumped in, but the nice thing about an autopsy body was that you could do the embalming and the organ work at the same time. Mom and Margaret had been doing this together for so many years that they moved smoothly, without need to talk. “You help me, John,” said Mom, reaching for the disinfectant— she was too much of a perfectionist not to wash a body before she embalmed it, even one as clean as this. The body cavity was wide and empty, though the heart and lungs were mostly intact, and Jeb's midsection looked like a deflated, bloody balloon. Mom washed it first and covered it with a sheet. A thought came unbidden to my mind—the organs had been piled up at the scene of the crime. Very few killers remained with the bodies after the fact, but serial killers did. Sometimes they posed it, or defaced it, or simply played with it like a doll. It was called ritualizing the kill, and it was a lot like what had happened to Jeb's organs. Maybe it had been a serial killer. I shook my head to clear the thought away, and held the body while mom sprayed it with Dis-Spray. Jeb had not been a small man, and his limbs were even plumper now that they were filled with stagnant fluid. I pressed my finger against his foot and the impression held for a few seconds