Fretting Under Flagrancy

 Suddenly, upon finally waking to my surroundings, I was a serial murderer.

I could only tell this by two things—of course, it’s not detrimentally obvious at first; it took a few moments, a few breaths, a few blinks, and then I noticed the incessant dripping sound. Vexing me. Drowning me. Calling me. The space I’m in, wherever it was, was dim and cramped and horrible.

I blink, blinded with static-y swarms, and identify the dripping; it sprouted, red and copper, from the length of my arms and pooled around my fingertips before drooping into a large metal puddle. The smell was disgustingly delightful; like the smell of coins and death. It was certainly not from myself. I felt desperately at my own skin in the half-dark, the dripping carrying on with merry and boiling my nerves. There were no incisions, slashes, gouges, lacerations, bites. No amputations of any kind, no oozing blisters, nothing I could find or feel. I felt wonderful, in fact, and that itself was a horrifying discovery.

The second piece of evidence that condemned me was the location and mangled body at my feet; while this should’ve been the first, I supposed, it was not nearly as damning as the dripping was, which still persisted. I wiped excess blood away, flung it ladenly off my arms, and still it stayed in a steady tune. I turn my attention to the body, to the room.

The box room was tight and suffocating as it was, and there was only a door on one wall, a tiny nightstand, and a ratty bed. There were no windows which was a relief. I was certainly looking unattractive covered in blood, I thought.

The corpse, if it can even be called that, was torn open, and gore spattered over the floor and walls and me. It was unidentifiable. Certain parts, such as the index, middle, and ring fingers were missing; so was the left ankle and foot and most of the facial structure. The stomach was cut open and the organs seemed unnatural in their places, almost as if they’d been stirred about in the skeletal cavity. Veins, mostly major arteries, had been stripped delicately from the flesh and laid out in a fragile pattern around my feet; it looked like a cluster of branches dripping blood as rain, and then splayed around the body like murderous wings. The hair was also gone, the skin sliced loose, and the limbs looked posed into that of a final prayer. There were no clothes, but still the heap of flesh seemed to be wearing them. I couldn’t comprehend it. With great caution, I inched over to the nightstand and fumbled with the lamp’s switch to be further enlightened.

The sight, now bathed in sickly yellow light, was even more ghastly than I had previously seen; blood seemed to seep forever into the floorboards, and the dripping still did not cease, in fact—drip, drip, drip—the dripping clung onto my mind like a vice. I felt queasy. I don’t remember what happened. How I got here, who this was. I could barely remember who I was, actually, what with this maddening sound.

My eyes traced back and forth over the pattern of veins. They were so thin, and so very purposely intact. This was a practiced sort of thing. Serial murderer.

At least it was artful.

I neutralized my face and thought. I don’t really know what’s behind this door, where I should go, what I should do. I couldn’t be in charge of this body. Panic quickly arose—what would I tell people? The only way to clean myself would be with the bedsheets, and any wash basins would be sternly outside. I glared at the body. Clearly, as this had been planned, there was no true afterthought on getting away innocently.

With mild irritation, I began stripping the bed, roughly scrubbing my arms and face and shirt with the threadbare sheets. I eyed the door, the corpse, almost expecting it to rise, clean itself off, and then jaunt back outside. When it didn’t move, and there was hardly anything but stains on my skin, I threw the bloodied sheets over it in horrid aggression. I stomped over to the door, careful to avoid the stream of blood and arteries, and gently twisted the bronze knob. It opened with ease, and with an air of satisfaction, I exited the room.

I was on the second floor and met with a balcony overlooking the lame parking lot of a motel. At the entrance of the parking lot there was a sign that read, “The Stainsbury Motel” and a very subtle for sale sign. Charming. I glanced at the door—Room 23. The rest of the rooms, also at a quick look, seemed to be the exact same and count up to thirty. I made my way to the stairwell, thinking near fondly about the crime I just commit. It burned, red and iridescently, into my mind and pleased me with a certain degree of shame.

I wonder if I have a public name, I think. It would have to be a good one. Something that marked my artistry. I was not responsible for the bodies, no, just the canvases they were made into. I wonder, I do, if I have a high body count, and the thoughts of each murdered piece excited me.

I watched my footsteps down the stairs, hoping to not see bloody tracks, and played a game of just being silent. Crickets chirped, cicadas lowly hummed; wind rustled the deep dark wilderness. It was extremely far into the night, and the only light around was that of the slim, pale moon and dim orange lights. It was a starless night, with pale red lines clawing at the skyline, and my steps down the metal platforms seemed loud and cantankerous.

Drip, drip.

At the bottom of the stairs, I glared back up at the room. I could still hear the terrible dripping of the corpse through the floorboards and drywall and peeling door. It dragged on, endless, infrequent, darkly irking me. I ran a hand through my hair, my palm still sticky with crimson, and tried to locate the reception office.

Wandering in the dim and damp parking lot did nothing to ease my mind, but it was fairly simple to find the reception; it was, objectively, the nicer piece of property on the lot, with pleasant yellow lights and wallpapered walls, wrapped with a shining veneer and a polished but worn wooden flooring. Upon entering, there was a mellowly colored rug in the middle of the room, a few old lounge couches, a payphone, and the aroma of deep caramel and forest rain. There was a decent L-shaped desk with a bored receptionist, and behind her a wall of keys that had a few missing here-or-there. I approached her and she looked up with a gleam in her eyes.

“Hello, welcome to the Stainsbury Motel.” She greeted, nearly dry; but her interest, fleeting as it was, was piqued at a middle-of-the-night customer. I wondered how visible the blood stains were.

“Hi.” I said lamely. “Where am I?”

She gave me a look, incredulous, and started to say something, but—drip drip, drip drip—the dripping, horrible and squeamish, started again, and irritation fizzed like carbonation down my spine. It burst bright and wonderful through my skull, locked my fingers and toes into a stiffness, clamped down into my bones with its teeth. The dripping was awful. The receptionist mouthed words at me, and for a moment I allowed myself to imagine her as a canvas, too, cut open and bloodied. Another drip prowled in my ear and I felt more than sated and nauseous.

“I just killed a man,” I confessed to her, abandoning my prior question. “I’ve made him so beautiful, and he haunts me now. How is that fair?”

A distinct terror fell upon her. “Completely fair. How many have you killed?”

I ran my tongue along my teeth in consideration. “I don’t know. It must be a lot, though; I’ve clearly had practice. You should come and see. It truly is beautiful.”

“You’re a monster, a serial killer,” she cried, and she started to reach for the phone on her desk. I grabbed her hand and tugged it away, hysterical.

“A serial murderer,” I corrected, “don’t call anyone, they’ll ruin it, I’m sure! I thought you might appreciate it. Find it wonderful. Find it inexorably gorgeous and intriguing. And wouldn’t you? Don’t call someone.”

She paused, looked me over; with caution, she pulled her hand away and scratched vehemently at her throat. I thought, now, that she would come with me, that I’ve convinced her to look at the painting I’ve laid to completion upstairs. A part of her looked interested. A part of her looked horrified. I sympathized with her contrasted convictions.

There was a silence that screeched between us. The stutter in dripping was certain to resume soon, and I found myself aching to have anything but it. I’d prefer screams, even, over the dripping. The receptionist’s eyes met mine. I prepared myself for another vexing drip.

And there it was—drip, drip, drip, drip…

Suddenly, with the fury of a wraith, the receptionist lunged across the desk and tackled me down onto the ground. Terror swirled with hues of resentment in her eyes, in her face; she quickly pinned me by my throat, resourcing from a well of strength I was oblivious to, and reared back to punch me. I, with hatred and betrayal, clawed at her hands in turn, and the grip she had heightened. I could not breathe; her eyes turned almost black and she salivated venom. She reminded me of a spider, almost, and dots began to dance cheerily in my line of sight. The receptionist screamed, bringing her other hand down to aid in choking me tighter. The dripping increased and my figure shook with the sound of it.

“I’ll kill you,” she roared, an expletive on the tip of her tongue but never quite making it out, “I will kill you.”

I fought. Drip.

“I will! I will, I will! You horrid creature!”

My sight started to wane, and still I fought. How she could act such a way when I offered her the nicety of such art would torment me forever. Drip drip drip. Ah, as would that.

She leaned down, her voice poison in my ears. “Wake up, or I will kill you.”

I sputtered for breath, watched the world start to crumble, listened only to the dripping, which went in a drip, drip, drip drip drip, drip…

...

I awake with a gurgling yell, heart in my throat. My room is dark and cramped and hot.

Shaking, I feel at my neck—my earbuds, a pair of white wired ones, had wrapped and tangled themselves around my throat while I was asleep. I remember feeling like I had been dying, the air squeezed out of me. Now I know why.

The dream, fleeting as it is, horrified me to my core and I feel absolutely awful. I feel as though I’d been hit but a bus, actually. My mouth is dry and my fingers twitch incessantly and my spine spasms as if it is on fire. With great care I sit up and simply stare at the wall, trying to relax and reorient myself.

Drip.

My head turns, and on the floor of my tiny, tiny home—with only a peeling door, a nightstand, my ratty old bed, and a wardrobe—water spilled out into a large, gooey puddle as it seeped into the wooden floor.

Drip, drip.

As the dream starts to fizz away into nothing and I begin to shake off my drowsiness, I think to myself that I will most certainly go mad from the sound of the dripping.