Nice and Blue.

It was like an opiate –

the thought of death creeping up on him through the worn down hallways of his delusional mind where every footstep echoed louder than an explosion of a canon ball. The relief it was bringing to him last night was so terrifyingly beautiful that his fingers trembled ever so softly as he had crossed out the last day, gripping onto the only sharpened object in his small confinements. The sound of pen against cheap paper hurt his ears in the solemn silence around him, inside him.

Tonight, only hours before a priest would walk into his padded cell, Shirley Jameson shuffled wildly on his lumpy, heavily-scented mattress, fat and lazy sweat drops rolled over his rigid face, drenching the flecked linen he was resting on. His blood pumped through his body vigorously, almost urgently, running to his limbs, as if he were running away from something in his sleep, straining that decrepit muscle in his chest, over-working his lungs, blackened from years of smoking. He hadn’t experienced such straining in years – terror unleashed the adrenaline into his blood and he ground his teeth, preventing a horrified scream.

Moments later, the man, in his mid-thirties, with only a couple of grays here and there threading his dark brown hair, woke up in a cold sweat, shivering and wrinkling his nose at the putrid stench of fear filling his cell. He had felt it so many times before, smelled it, and it would only make him more furious, more eager to attack, to rip, to torture, to kill… Fear, he loathed it.

But tonight, he was afraid, deathly afraid, not of Death, but of what was yet to come. Tonight, the stench of fear came from him, making them eager to rip, to torture, to attack, to kill…

Shirley Allan Jameson, whose big, terror-stricken, blue eyes wandered over the shadow-painted, disturbingly white walls, with hot, yellow fluid running down the insides of his built thighs, with teeth chattering and pallid skin still sweating, he was dreaming of dead boys.

Not dreaming, having flashbacks, Shirley Allan Jameson… He, he was a cold-blooded, well-calculated, twisted sadist whose ears tolerated only one sort of music – the one of suffering, agonized, horrified, tormented, helpless, begging, pleading, crying, weeping, dying screams. Nothing else was good enough, not from the time he had killed his first cat by catching it on fire at the age of twelve.

He had told the goddamned cat to sit still, hadn’t he?

He told them not to be afraid.

I would never, ever hurt you.

He told them not to make a sound.

Just sleep, hush, just sleep it will be over soon, I promise.

But they disobeyed.

You reek of it, you… You pathetic little shits! Reek!

So nice and blue, yes, yes they are, the madman crouching in his mind laughed and his laughter cut through Shirley’s petrified figure, quaking at his mind with unforgiving force. There always had been two sides of Shirley’s silver coin – the sick, perverted and twisted side which always molested the poor, weak Shirley, hiding somewhere behind his own shadow, behind his title, behind the smiles of the children, of the young boys he had helped. (dead boys, yes, yes, so nice and blue, Shirley, so nice and blue!) It craved to see those smiles melt into petrified and rigid faces of terror and panic, to hear those sweet, pucker lips utter earth-shattering screams only for him, for his pleasure while he ripped, tore, attacked and killed, such a perfect music to his ears.

His shivering mass of flesh fell back against the stained mattress, completely ignorant to its disgusting, moist state and smell. His medicated mind slipped in and out of consciousness, feeble and tired, seduced by self-produced images of past situations and faces, torn in between imagined smiles and pained shrieks he knew were real, just as real as he was, at least.

Shirley’s hands rested on his flat stomach, clasped in one another, trembling slightly.

Dead boys. (So nice and blue, Shirley, so nice and blue!)

It wasn’t Death, oh, no, not Death, it was his Past, his Past finally catching up on him. A dozen bloated, half-decomposed, innocent and time-eaten, young bodies charging after him, gurgling his name in a horrendous surge of accusing shrieks – his heart beat faster, stronger, pumping blood to his sadly hung limbs, eager to run away.

Wait for us, Shirley! You’re not afraid, are you?

He remembered every single feature of every single face and body, every maul, every scar, every bruise inflicted on the playground, every paper cut mommy didn’t have the chance to kiss away, he remembered it, and the stench, the fear – it was protruding its way out of Shirley’s every pore now.

They were so pretty, too, his little boys. Blonde, black-haired, redheaded, tall or short, he had them all. They played. And then they started to reek of that goddamned fear he hated so much.

His father was always telling him he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “And what happened to that dumbstruck animal, sonny, is that he got run over.”

It ran in the family, the sociopath-blood infected his own and although he despised the mere thought – he was his father’s son after all.

He would dump them into the river and watch how icy water engulfed their lifeless, emaciated forms and then pace along the littered shores, escorting them all the way to the sewers where they all await eagerly.

Consciousness showed its welcomed face again. Shirley’s blue eyes snapped open and he rose from his previous horizontal position.

Three hours ‘till sunrise, he thought absentmindedly, with no obvious reason. The darkness around him was creeping him out. Had the medication worn off already? He bit his fingernails, listening to the clock’s soft ticking stemming from the hallway outside his cell. He just wanted it over with. Death seemed to be the more pleasant outcome than the alternative. They were coming for him, he felt their slimy, rotten fingers hovering over his skin and their eyes, craving revenge, fixed on his back.

Another one of his father’s wise sayings had just come true.
“Past always has a way of coming back and biting you in the ass, boy.”

He fell back asleep again – so the medication didn’t wear off after all; Shirley flashed a bitter, fretful smile. He was slipping back into that hole again, while his fingernails carved desperate tries to stay on surface, cutting deep into the bleeding flesh of his sanity.

High-pitched screams gnawed at his ears without an ounce of mercy.

He could hear the river sighing and moaning against the battered walls of the sewers drain he tapped his way around in. Bodies washed against them with sickening thuds.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

One after another, they all floated around him, staring up, glassy eyed and unaware. Or maybe he was the one unaware.

All the monsters that I’ve been.

He was the monster hiding in their closet, under the bed and under the staircase. He was the reason for their early curfew and he was the reason why so many mothers wept for days and days, months and years. He wondered if she cried after him, his own mother. Shirley never had a curfew.

Cold water rose up to his knees, drenching his orange overalls. Shirley cried softly, whimpering into the echoing silence around him, disturbed by their sympathetic whispers only. “I was never afraid, Sir, so why was I punished?”

I was never afraid, Sir, so why was I punished?The gurgling voices mocked.

“Shut up!”

Shut up!

More flashbacks flared up in his feverish mind. How he tore and tortured, cut and bit, battered and bruised, forced himself on the frailty beneath him. He just couldn’t stand it – every single day of his adulthood he watched them cry and hide behind their momma’s skirts, while he had to grin and bear it in his time. It wasn’t fair. Fear had to be punished.

Something emerged from the murky waters beneath and Shirley’s hate-filled eyes filled with the same emotion he’d always feel around that particular person in his life.

Irrational, nerve-wrecking, gut-ripping fear.

“D-Dad, I—I mean S—Sir?”

The figure inched towards him, just as solemn and crude as always, with crooked teeth and decomposed lips painting a twisted grin on the long dead old man’s face. Strands of cobwebby, white hair hung loose of their usual place in the pony-tail on the low back of his head. The dead man’s features distorted at the scent filling his missing nostrils. His son reeked.

“S-Sir?”

He told him not to be afraid.

Shirley’s mind screamed in twisted pain while his body contorted in severe spasms of futile tries to escape the inevitable. His fingers gripped onto his flecked comforter as he trashed in the invisible restraints of his mind.

“Daddy?”

“You are afraid, Sherl.” Shirley whimpered as the figure of his father raised its hand. “You reek like a goddamned deer caught in the headlights, Sherl.”

Shirley’s body was slowly slipping into the state of shock. The trashing stopped and the fatal ticks of that clock measured his last minutes on Earth.

“And what happened to that dumbstruck animal, sonny, is that it got un over.”

“Daddy! I AM NOT AFRAID! They were! I showed them all, for you, I did it for you! I—“

Shirley’s voice died and the silver screen in his mind flickered while the features of his sweaty face twisted into his last ever soundless shriek of utter, petrifying horror.

“Sonny, you all reek.”

At five fifty-two a.m. whatever it was beyond Death had taken Shirley Allan Jameson into its sadistic hands. Death seemed like a distant and unwilling savior to the murderer of a dozen little boys as his dispirited body remained locked down forever, while his memories swirled around the horrific image in his mind, shaken by turmoil and quakes of fear, frustration and realization.

Irrational, nerve-wrecking, gut-ripping fear.

This time it really was for good.

He was catatonic.

Forever trapped in his worst nightmare, forever afraid, forever stuck down there, where they were all so very nice and blue, where his lips quivered and tears trickled in streams.

Forever and Death was so far away.

“Past always has a way of coming back and biting you in the ass, boy.”