In the Cold Light of Day

Today

"Art is not defined by the capturing of acrylics in the right scheme, or the right words in ways that flow like honey--

"It's more about capturing a feeling, a fleeting warmth that comes and goes in the briefest of moments…

"Capturing those feelings and cementing them, just to see if they stand the test of time.

"Wouldn't you agree, officers?"

The letters on the note seared and bled like wet ink into my psyche. With a shaking weakness formerly unbeknownst to me I lowered the note and basked in the horrors of what this man had done, silently placing the note in its plastic bag for evidence.

He'd removed the limbs of the poor girl, sawed off the lips, torn the eyelids and plucked the eyes. The tongue was somewhere on the floor, the man had seen no use for it, for his craft had evolved beyond tongues.

The pieces were rearranged into a sculpture that, all pretensions of artistry aside, could only truly symbolize what a warped fetishizing of violence paired with an empty void in place of empathy can lead to. The hands were sewn together to resemble that of a praying girl. The legs next, bent at the knees, knees which bore the sewn-in eyeballs. And finally the torso and remaining pieces slapped together and sewn and glued in the most occult-like fashion the killer could muster.

Most of my peers gagged and retched, whilst I just stood there in a disgusted awe; while my nausea toward these depictions had thoroughly declined these past four months, the sheer grotesque spectacle of the killings had not declined in the slightest. It was a mockery of life, a satire beyond redemption… But I’d be damned if it didn’t garner the attention it craved.

17 Years Prior

And so I had graduated; now concretely on the other side of the blue curtain. When I first entered the academy I had numerous qualms regarding the secretive nature of the curtain, and my initial goal was undoubtedly to set fire to its fabrics, lessen the divide between officer and pedestrian. My parents, the sole couple who knew of such aspirations, waved and smiled giddily from the crowd. I waved back, already disappointed that I was yet to make strides in the career that was officialized just today. Perhaps I’m too hard on myself that way.

Although I knew myself to be more interested in detective work, I was willing to play the game of navy-colored uniforms and busting teenagers for weed for the time being. And prophetically enough that’s where I found myself the following morning on seemingly aimless patrol hoping in that rookie-cop way to see some action or to do something reckless for the sheer vanity of a Wayne or Eastwood character.

But alas, nine hours deep into a twelve-hour shift to no avail. I drove around the suburban hell I’d been assigned to at a snail’s pace, mentally scanning the police radio for even the slightest dramatic frequency. I turned a corner and started to approach a four-way intersection that led to where I hoped to get breakfast…

It unfolded before me in such a way that I’d have to play the mental-tape again and again in my mind before I could remotely assign fault; both the vehicles moved just over the speed limit so casually and comfortably, you could tell that neither knew what was to come, and why would they? They’d lived partially-full lives up until that morning, characterized by jobs and friends and lovers none of which could predict one of them committing a left-hand turn with no right-of-way. Nevertheless, the Honda smacked the mid-section of the Corolla with a strength and volume that broke the sound barrier of 6am suburbia.

Initial shock melted from my consciousness just quickly enough, and I darted from my cruiser and sprinted to the Corolla. By this time the old man had found the youthful vigor, fueled by the wreckage, to escape the totalled vehicle. But still he looked at me with eyes glimmering with fear and guilt and shame, knowing full-well that it was his accidental misdeed that caused the enduring pain of the morning. And the final thing I saw in the old man’s pupils was a silent plea for me to tend to the wife he had in the passenger side, desperate for her to be okay but too scared to look for himself.

A small curling fire arose from the Corolla’s engine and the Honda driver began to yell, having emerged from his own vehicle. He was shouting questions about the couples’ condition and screaming in ways near-hysterical; it was likely he saw the accident as his own fault. Over the white noise of adrenaline I heard him begging me to stop my pursuits toward the Corolla’s passenger side.

Regardless I approached the smashed and dented passenger seat to see an older woman, presumably the man’s wife, unconscious, so I, grabbing the handle and putting my foot against the car’s back-door for leverage, yanked the door open and pulled the elder woman from the seat, her frail body extremely light. I walked her away from the accident and laid her upon the soft grass that may as well have been a world away. Gently I put my fingers to her neck and, affirming a pulse, even surrounded by the chaos of the now-blazing Corolla I could not help but smile, having thus been reminded of my true motive for legal work, as a public service to the people in need.

Today

Contextualizing the crime scene, the victim, and the environment brought about the uncanny (and frankly unwelcome) realization that I had so little understanding of this serial murderer’s patterns or motives, other than that of an artistic depravity. I felt my ego collapse through multiple layers of reality, a reality which alluded to my complete lack of qualification for being assigned to this case. It inspired anger toward my superior officers, anger to the man who’s committing these atrocities, even disdain for the victims who allowed themselves to fall into this predator’s hands; but above all my loathing mostly poured into my own esteem and faith for my own abilities.

I undid my coat and sat at my household desk, sprawled with Chandleresque case-files, papers, an open computer screen, the sole light of the room against the sunset out the window, the image on the monitor of articles speaking of the horrendous acts. All seven of the known murders had been committed within four months, and all within our esteemed city, almost as if the killer is mocking myself and my peers, taking upon a vengeance that was by no means pre-ordained on any account.

Running fingers through greasy and weathered hair, I lit a cigarette and contemplated my own hypocrisy toward the oath that had transpired in the near-twenty years I had been a lawman. A slippery slope was how they’d described it and I felt as though I were still plowing face first down that icy abyss.

It began when I had pardoned my brother. He was twenty, old enough to know better but young enough to still be ringing out the last drops of adolescent idiocy. He’d been caught with several ounces of marijuana in his vehicle after accidentally going through a stop-sign. The officer in question, a colleague from my precinct, radioed me upon learning it. Two years into the force, I was still fresh-faced and naive enough to still be walking the straight-and-narrow, but through familial exploitation and reluctant pleas through a walkie-talkie, I managed to see to it that the speeding ticket was all my brother acquired that day.

You don’t go straight from incidents like that one to what I’d done by now though. It was small like increments of compromise turning to the mental-gymnastics of obscure justification that eventually led to a sheer case of turning the other cheek in a way that was far from Christlike. But from there I would only make more of those compromises; whether it be letting some crimes happen so as to prevent more crimes from taking place, or allowing other cops to make the same transgressions I made, or even allowing a murder of a known gang member to transpire with no intervention, just because I thought the world may be better without them, I was psychologically devolving into the archetype that the wide-eyed patriots entering the academy swore they’d never become.

It felt strangely natural, however, my descent into this hellish mental state… Not without its moments of reflection and wide-awake nights of guilt, of course, but even those nights withered away. If I didn’t sleep, I told myself, even more misdeeds may go unchecked the next day.

Nevertheless, my corruption felt to be purely evolutionary, time predetermined and running its course the way it always has. As inevitably as an infant awakens in its mother’s arms, the child will grow up, just as I coming out of the police academy would one day be the noir cliche that hunched over his desk and blew smoke in a darkening room.

But then, as my head arose, as if tired of my sulking, I saw something new in the crime scene photo, in a close-up of the top of the depraved sculpture. And with another adrenaline shot to my chest, brought on entirely by epiphany, I shot up and grabbed my coat, putting it on as I charged out the door.

25 Years Prior

I thought I might join my friends; they’d been plotting to walk off-campus during lunch and smoke weed. I enjoyed weed, just not enough to walk off-campus to smoke it. I held no resentment toward my friends nor their plans, but nevertheless, I saw no point in indulging.

Thus I was left to my own devices as I walked in the vacant between-period halls of my high school. I’d a single year left after this one, and while I certainly found myself pondering the prospective next path that I would take, I felt no true panic over such matters.

While parents and teachers insisted I would always need to “have a plan,” I have always been capable of keeping such large-scale and existential panic at bay in favor of the qualms of the singular present day. If someone were to ask me of an overarching long-term plan, the kind that counselors scare students into having, I would always shrug, smirk, and tell them “We’ll see what happens.”

And while my heart rate remained steady and breath never quickened, in my hallway stroll I could not help but begin to weigh serious options. I’d been told I was intelligent, so much so as to get accepted to nearby universities, but I saw no true prospects in academics unless someone was at the level of say a Harvard or Yale student. Same with athletics, as much as I enjoyed my lacrosse and soccer games every season, I saw no purpose in applying for scholarships to get into any “better” schools because I inherently knew I would not become a professional in either sport.

But even if I had the capacity for greatness either in college laboratories or sports fields, I had no aching passion for either of them; and it was acknowledging that lack of enthusiasm that depressed me the most, to know that I was yet to be one my school’s “unstoppable forces,” a term readily applied in our news editions to students of particular prowess in either athletics or scholarly disciplines. Working as an editor on those publications, I would see pictures and blurbs of basketball prophets and debate-team champions, and while the writing definitely complimented them the thing that truly sparked desire for a “path” within me was seeing the pure ecstatic joy on their faces. They knew who they were and what they wanted out of life, all before the age of twenty. I envied them.

It was while I was lost in this envy that I walked past the restroom where I heard what I thought to be a faint cough. I looked through the open doorway, and from around the two corners of privacy I heard the coughing grow louder, louder and more frantic in a near-relentless storm of phlegm and saliva.

In an attempt to know my place as a bystander (minding my own business) but unable to conceal my concern (and curiosity) I, casually feigning a restroom break, inconspicuously turned the two corners.

What I saw upon the final turn was what propelled me into a shock that for days I would not quite recover from. Before me, on his knees was a boy a year behind me, fingers curled around his neck, facial skin reddening to a purple hue, choking.

In an instinctive and nearly automatic response, I stepped back and retraced my steps back out into the hallway; loudly calling in both directions: “Nurse?! Can someone get a nurse?! Somebody’s choking here?!” before once again going back to the sinks as if I’d done this before…

He was on the floor now. I knew him so vaguely, he was a face-without-a-name, one of my many peers amongst the dozens of classes I’d taken thus far. I did not know his name at all, but in an effort to console him in his barely-conscious state, I knelt down and told him: “It’s okay; you’re going to be okay.”

In a series of movements that felt preordained, as though I knew what should be done, I heaved his heavyset body upright, and nearly lying on the muck of the tile-floor myself, folded my hands in knuckles in the best form of a Heimlich Maneuver that I could possibly remember.

My knuckles dove into the boy’s stomach as I leaned against his back. Upon the first thrust, the coughing resumed, and with the second, color started to rejoin his skin instantaneously, brightening more with each wheeze.

And the third one inspired a mysterious object to come shooting out of his mouth and up against the sink’s pipes. Having been feeling a mostly foreign sense of urgency and panic these preceding couple of minutes, after hearing the boy begin to breathe slowly and easily, I followed his lead and breathed as carefully as I could, my hands numb from the altercation.

I let go of the dumb kid and laid on the floor, no longer caring how many boys had pissed on it that morning. I could hear a bizarre mix of deep breaths and light sobs from the vicinity of the boy. Staring at the fluorescent ceiling I uttered: “What’s your name?”

“Lionel. What’s yours?”

“Vincent.” I said, with a smile stretching across my face as I heard the school nurse enter the bathroom. I gazed at the object… A bone from a rib. I could not help but chuckle.

I would not see Lionel again, for shortly after this incident, he confessed that he had gone to that bathroom to attempt suicide. Hopefully he would receive the mental health assistance he so desperately needed.

A truly American origin, so I had thought, for someone who always had relished in the notion of saving others.

Today

I yanked and shoved my way past the police, the coroners, and the pedestrians who had somehow managed to slide in the chaos. I threw up the police tape with disregard to the authorial primary, flashing my badge in response to every passive glance.

Approaching the sculpture both slowly and hurriedly simultaneously, I stepped in front of the coroners and developed a wholly separate awe from the initial shock of the morning.

Planted atop the sculpture, dug into the flesh and bone of the victim, stood another bone, that of an animal, one who'd been dead for over two decades.

It was the bone of the rib that Lionel had shot from his throat, the one from my final Heimlich thrust.

I knew by recognition of the three dotted indents in its upper section, and from the visibly aged quality of it. It was just as remembered.

Looking closer, I saw an "L.I." carved just under the indents. Waves of confusion, followed by shame and heart-wrenching guilt followed this notice.

5 Years Prior

“We’re sorry, Lionel,” the officious cunt said, “We just don’t have space for you this year.”

And so it goes, and so it goes. Year in and year out it’s the same phrasing, same inflection, same goddamned look of pity on that bitch’s face. No space. Too many wonderful candidates. Try again next year.

Having become increasingly agile and reluctant to hide my anger in the preceding five rejections, I threw the door to the university open, sculpture in hand. Trotting down the stairs I took to the urban streets of the accursed city I’d grown up in. I saw the first available trashcan and, noting that the woman could possibly still see, threw the sculpture away with a thrust that held all my contempt for the so-called “higher education” of the art world.

Please. They’re just a bunch of bored trust-fund-kids who grew old and decided to make some money by attaching obscure meaning and nonexistent symbolism on painfully pedestrian images on canvases and pedestals. Fuck them.

Entering my shitty apartment, I laid down on my couch and cracked open a beer, a daily ritual that has only gotten angrier these preceding years. Taking generous sips from the can I looked around at the place. It was trashy enough for student-level inspiration, but I know I’ll be forty soon, and therefore the level of leeway given to student pretentiousness present in so much work is long gone, and a mid-career slump would certainly not be excused in just a few short months. The clock was ticking on my career, so I thought, but it was becoming apparent that there was not much career to begin with.

I gazed up at the ceiling-fan, writhing in loathing disappointment.

I could not help but think back to my formative years, and what the counselor had said to me, both the day before and the day after the Tragedy.

The Tragedy had transpired in the midst of a sophomore year of high school; I had gone quietly into the boy’s bathroom to end things in the plainest and simplest way I could perceive. I’d already been considered a threat to both small animals as well as myself so the only way I could deem possible for suicide was to choke on the gruelling meats that our school’s cafeteria served.

But lo and behold, like an act of God, the rib-bone flung from my gullet. I remember saving it that day, claiming I had tried to use the wadded up paper towels on the floor instead, so as to preserve the memory in the macabre form of a bone, one free of flesh.

The counselor told me the day before the Tragedy how nobody I’d ever come across would be tolerant of the things I liked to do; that not one person would see what I’d done up until that point with unfrightened eyes, and that no one would look at me with respect, certainly not love, if I proceeded with the morbid experiments I dabbled in.

And the day after the Tragedy she sat me down again with tears in her eyes that were bordering on streaking down her face but still not apologetic to what she’d said two days before. She decided to recontextualize what she said, to make herself sound “sweeter.”

She told me I’d have to find coping mechanisms, a hobby or craft to pursue when I felt these malicious urges towards man and animals; that through that and that alone I could find a peaceful life, that there was still hope for me to live fully and happily, but only if I found that eternal distraction.

The ceiling fan remained indifferent to these thoughts; I call that day’s events the Tragedy for one of two reasons, interchangeably:

The monster, as everyone called him, survived that day.

A great artist was nearly denied that day of his chance to show his talents to the world.

And on my best days, I always choose to believe the latter reason, although the former is something I’ve felt surface on numerous occasions, when I become angry and frustrated or go too long without a solid few hours of my work.

But I am yet to act on those urges, a fact which pleases me.

However, in knowing that the world may deny my artistry as well as my will, my wants, and my sense of being, I felt a darker tint shade itself over my view of the ceiling fan, as a plan darker and more macabre loomed over me, one that had more grandiosity than that of any small animal I may come across.

Today

“Vincent? Vincent…?”

I snapped out of my daze.

“You alright? You look sick,” said one of the more familiar coroners.

“Um,” I muttered, “Sorry for interrupting… I, uh, I have to go.” I turned and left before the coroner could respond.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After web scrolling and perusing through numerous case files, I found the concise name of the boy I had saved.

His name was Lionel Iannis. Just a year my junior, fellow student of the same high school, lifelong citizen of the city we called home. He has no priors, yet, but his address was on an online social-media profile. He was just waiting to be caught.

But even then I was hesitant, even though I was staring at the address on the screen I could not bring myself to turn around and dart out of my apartment. My thoughts began to delve into the philosophical and the abstract, pondering the sheer trajectory of our lives, mine and his in a sadistic parallel.

Had I not gone into that bathroom, had I simply walked down a different hallway, I would not have become the man I am. Therefore, would those seven souls continue to walk the Earth? Had I not saved him, by choice or by sheer accident, would the world be simply better off without people like Lionel? And would it be somehow a safer place if I were not an officer, another of the thousand whose codes were soiled by hereditary corruption?

The largest question, however, was the one that lingered the most– Why would this serial killer put his address out into the public? Why did he leave his means of suicide at a crime scene? I thought of every time Vincent Xenakis’ name was featured on the news, it had to be connected. Why else put such a random and obscure item upon your grotesque work?

Then, a new idea formed. Lionel seemed to think of himself as an artist, I remembered. And so it occurred to me that these seven killings, all whose corpses were strewn about in different styles and aesthetics by the time the police or pedestrians arrived, were nothing more than a series of “artistic works” no different from operatic cycles or painting series that reserve entire galleries for several nights on end.

And this was the final piece of the series. Therefore, knowing who I am, he wants to be caught, so people will immediately associate his name and face with the works when we apprehend him…

Upon this final epiphany I developed a renewed sense of nausea, almost not wanting to go out and arrest Lionel, to deny him the attention he craved and further repress the inadvertent harm I had done by saving his life.

I stood there, blankly perspiring, as if waiting for a cosmic answer, as if the cosmos and acts of fate have been kind to me thus far.

Deciding against my gut, I felt for my gun and, assured that it was in its holster, I went out my apartment door, and made way to Lionel’s, all in the name of a forgotten code.