The Second Coming (14 page)
Authors: J. Fritschi
STERLING KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!
A
FTER THE FINAL
prayer of Compline that same night, Father John retired to his room with a heavy heart. Both of his dreams of murder were true. Was he now a serial killer or at the very least an accessory to both murders? He didn’t do anything to stop the murders and there was a part of him that enjoyed them. It was too much for him to get his head around. Was he the Sterling Killer; a serial killer who raped and stabbed innocent young women and then disemboweled them while he was asleep? Why was he having the dreams? Was he there to save the victims and if so, why couldn’t he save them?
Something was happening to him and he didn’t know what it was or how to explain it. It was like the first time he realized he didn’t have a mother like the rest of his friends.
Growing up without a mother was difficult for Father John. When he was a child he always wondered what it would feel like to have the unconditional love of a mother. He watched with a heavy, longing heart while playing at the park when his friends got injured and ran crying to their mothers for the comfort and love of their embracing arms. He always wondered what the loving embrace of a mother’s arms would feel like. He imagined that they were soft and warm and smelled like a blooming flower.
When he was a young boy, he would often cry himself to sleep thinking about his mother. His only memories of her were from pictures and stories that his father shared with him, but he would lie awake at night and talk to the image he created in his head and tell her how much he missed and loved her. He always imagined her as a glowing angel with soft, snow white wings and in fact, that is how she appeared to him in his dreams. She would
come to him and hold him in her warm embrace, filling him with a gentle glow. She assured him that he was not the cause of her death and that God had bigger plans for him and that he must devote himself to the Lord. He loved those dreams. They gave him comfort and peace and were one of the reasons he turned to God to fill the emptiness in his heart and soul caused by her absence.
She was a beautiful, vibrant woman in her mid thirties with flowing blonde hair when she died due to complications while giving birth to him. His father always assured him that she didn’t actually die giving birth to him, but after he was born due to complications, but it did not matter what his father told him. Father John still blamed himself for her death. After all, he reasoned, she would not have died if she didn’t give birth to him. His father explained to him and he later came to accept, that only God has the power to grant life and to take it away. His mother would have eventually died, just like any other person on God’s green earth, but for some reason known only to God, she was taken after giving life to Father John. His father explained that God works in mysterious ways which they could not understand and that they must have faith that it was all part of God’s grand plan.
As Father John grew older, he wanted to know why God took his mother from him. What was God’s plan? That was the answer that Father John would spend his life searching for. He wanted to know why the world was the way it was and why God did the things he did. He wanted to know what it was like to be God. But the more he learned, the more questions he had.
Why now was he having these evil dreams of women being murdered and why was he unable to save them like in his other dreams of divine intervention? What did they mean? Was God testing his faith? Or was it Satan testing his resolve?
Once again, he had more questions than he did answers. His journey for enlightenment needed to continue and he knew that he must leave the abbey to discover the true meaning of his dreams. Regardless of what the dreams meant and why he was having them, there was one thing that he was certain of; he felt impure and not worthy of remaining there. It was time for him to go home and see his father in the hope he could help explain his dreams and figure out a way to stop the senseless murders.
B
Y THE TIME
Mike left The Precinct he was good and fired up on Gin and didn’t have any interest in going home to be alone with his thoughts and fears. He made his regular rounds to the bars that were his home away from home and partied with his degenerate brothers and sisters until he couldn’t think about the things that tormented him when he lay his sober head on the pillow.
When he woke up, he couldn’t remember how he got home although he vaguely remembered sitting on the couch with his dad’s gun in his hand. Or was that a memory from another night? He sat up on the edge of his bed in his boxers and wearily rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His mouth taste like wood chips and his head felt like it was full of sand. He stood unsteadily and slowly stumbled to the bathroom using the walls to keep his balance. Standing in front of the toilet, he blinked his eyes trying to gain focus as he started to take a thundering piss. There was a tremendous release of pressure as he let out a groan and smiled.
He shuffled to the walk-in closet and pulled a pair of sweat pants on, almost losing his balance as he pulled his second leg through. His eyes were half mast as he pulled a t-shirt over his head and made his way in the dawn’s morning light to the kitchen where he poured himself a large plastic cup of water and began to chug it down. The water overflowed and streamed down the sides of his chin, onto the front of his shirt. He let out a deep sigh as he wiped his swollen face with his arm and then set the cup down on the counter. He was getting too old for this shit.
Every morning he woke up feeling mentally and physically exhausted and would tell himself that tonight he was going to take a night off to let his
body rest and his mind rejuvenate, but by the end of the day, after showering, eating and rehydrating, he would feel like himself again; like he wanted to drink at least a couple of cocktails to cut the edge.
It wasn’t like when he was young, in his prime physical condition playing football, when he could go out and party night after night and rebound with no problem the next morning. Back in the day, he felt as good the next morning or better than he did if he didn’t go out and that was part of the problem. He never used to get hangovers. He never got headaches or threw up. Mike just kept on partying and the more he drank the more tolerance he gained and the longer he could party, which was how he earned the nick name “The Terminator”. He just couldn’t be stopped.
But now it was different. All of the years of excessive drinking and staying out late were taking their toll on him. The problem was there was nobody to stop him; nothing to go home to except an empty house and bad memories. All he needed was a reason to stop; something or someone to inspire him. In the back of his mind he knew he couldn’t keep going like this and that eventually it would catch up with him, but he just kept putting it off, telling himself that he would stop eventually and allow his body to recover.
Besides, he knew people that drank as much, if not more than he did and they lived into their 80’s. He didn’t want to live to be much older than that anyway. If God came down from the heavens today and told Mike that he could live 80 healthy years living his current lifestyle or he could live 90 healthy years if he gave up drinking and lived a normal, mundane life style, Mike would take the 80 year deal without a second thought. At least that is what he told himself. Besides, he had a healthy family history. All of his relatives lived long, healthy lives…all except his dad, but he didn’t die due to health reasons; unless you count suicide as a mental health issue.
Mike shook his head with disbelief. What the hell was he thinking? He opened the front door and saw the newspaper lying in the driveway behind his Mustang. He hurried out into the brisk morning air, his feet feeling the chill of the cement driveway and retrieved the wrapped newspaper and then darted back through the front door. His eyes were still blurry and his head groggy as he unfolded the paper and opened it up to the front page. He stared at one of the headlines in disbelief.
STERLING KILLER STRIKES AGAIN.
Mike’s heart sank and he felt as though someone kicked him in the stomach. The killer now had a name. He thought he was going to be sick. Mike began to read the article in earnest and was relieved to discover that the journalist didn’t know about the symbol smeared in the victim’s blood. The Police Department withheld that information to eliminate false confessions and because they knew it was an integral part of the killer’s plan. They were hoping he would be angry and contact the newspaper or the police and demand that they print the symbol. Maybe then he would make a mistake.
Mike threw the paper on the counter and finished making his cup of coffee. It wasn’t often that he drank coffee because it made him feel like he had been doing cocaine, but he was going to need help getting going today. With feelings of guilt and remorse welling in his belly, Mike begrudgingly shuffled down the hall past the framed pictures of smiling, laughing faces and beautiful places that comprised his life and walked into his bedroom to take a shower and get ready for a dreaded day of work.
After he showered, Mike was getting dressed in his closet and his lean body was gripped with anxiety brought on by alcohol and posttraumatic stress disorder. The two of them together were a paralyzing combination. He lost his balance as he pulled on a pair of faded designer jeans and his hands trembled as he struggled to slip the buttons of his pressed shirt into their slots. He let out a deep breath and tried again as if he was relearning how to perform motor skills that should have been simple, but were frustratingly tedious. Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip and brow of his moist face as his heart pounded irregularly and the fish of malcontent swam in his stomach.
Wiping the sweat from his pasty face and sunken eyes, he held his vibrating hand out horrified how unsteady it was. If it was someone else’s hand, he would not have believed it was possible to be that shaky. He opened the top drawer of his vanity and searched frantically for his bottle of Xanax. He fumbled with the child proof lid until he uncontrollably flipped it into the sink, sending the bottle and pills scouring. “Holy shit!” he said under his breath as he panicked to pick the pills out of the sink before they dissolved. Finally he got them back into the bottle and much to his relief, one into his mouth. It was only a matter of time before the surge of tranquility eased his angst.
Mike knew he had a problem and there were many mornings that he thought about checking himself into rehab, but that would mean admitting
his problem to everyone in his small world and he didn’t want anyone to know how bad his problem was. It was his problem and it wasn’t anyone else’s business. He could only imagine the hypocritical rumor mongers casting judgment at him. Fuck them. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
He thought about taking a couple of weeks off for vacation and not telling anyone where he was going so he could anonymously check himself into a rehab center in Napa. No one would be the wiser, but he thought that would be a sign of weakness and he despised weak men. He would work through this on his own when the time came. At least that is what he told himself. Tonight he would not drink. It was a pact he made and broke with himself too many times to count.
As he gathered his things and prepared to head out the door for work, he felt as though everything in his world was crashing down upon him, but things were about to get worse.