Almost Home

Eyes that spoke of innocence were arousing; they were both titillating in their naivety and surprising given the world that possessed the owner. These eyes were so different from the typically jaded ones that looked up at Brian and reflected him in their last moment. These beautiful dark portals were not tainted by a torturous life of prostitution or the immoral drug dealings so beloved of his own mother. As far past as could be recalled by humanity, the eyes were considered the door to the soul and Debra’s were gilded.


But if Brian could see the guilelessness of Debra’s soul there was no doubt that she could look back into his own corrupt spirit with impunity. He was as unshielded as he would ever be in this moment; in this twisted act he was more intimate with her than he would ever have been when he fucked her on their wedding bed. He had never really loved fucking her, no matter how sickly good it had felt. It had all been like tedious foreplay; a build-up to this climax. All of those tender touches and all of those whispers of affection. This. This was what he loved.

She could see that. Her shaking sob when she gasped for breath told him that she could see into the hollowness hidden inside of his shell. Tied at the wrists with silver duct tape and bound like a sacrifice in her formal detective uniform, she was a sight to behold and he could feel arousal eating at him. It was going to be torture to wait for Dexter to figure out where they were before he started on her.

“Rudy…” She cried pathetically and he smiled his safe doctor smile at her, brushing his hand across her hot damp cheek and making hushing noises to calm her. They were noises that had been made at him all his life by the caretakers when he cried and they felt like mockery when they escaped from him. She had every right to cry at her eminent demise but it wouldn’t help her any because he was going to have his brother all to himself when she was gone.

Soft tender lips were moving and forming pleas, cheap lipstick that she had applied so hastily before meeting him was smeared onto her face from their last kiss and he focused on that. The words were coming out of his mother’s mouth in his mind but they were in the voice of his lover. It had always been his mother’s voice before; when it came to this state they stopped speaking. They prayed to a merciful God but they didn’t speak and it could be her because of that.

“I…I love you, Rudy.” She said and it hurt to hear that said now. He had heard those words, those first three words in his blood filled nightmares. He shook his head to dissuade her continued exclamation of her feelings and then he knelt down before her again, putting his fingers into her warm silky hair. “My name is Brian.” He told her, letting that difference remind him that she had never loved what he really was. He had created Rudy, not really for her, but he had created the idea none the less. He had put more of himself into it than he should have and this was a lesson for him.

She spoke again and he watched her lips move so temptingly, trying to enjoy the tremble of fear in them like he had before. “You don’t have to do this, Brian!” She declared and she swallowed the sob he had sought to hear moments before, though her features still offered him fear like the night offered them cold. How precious, he thought as he settled beside her to watch the stars scattered above them, that she thought she was different from all the others just because he loved her.

He tried to ignore that she was when the water of the harbor waves crashed around them.

Those mornings when he woke up beside her, he had rarely felt as adored as when she pulled him back into her arms. The way that she had cradled him against her breast in the morning light had been so familiar and so good that he had almost been frightened. The soft warmth of her form against him and the way she had joined him in the shower with teasing glances and fingertips stroking the inked design of his tattoo. She had washed his hair; rubbing the white suds through his black locks and humming with that similarity to the past that made him shake with nerves.

He was supposed to be strong.

But why did she have to be so right? She was so good, so sweet. Above all, she was what he had missed for so many years. Debra was his dearest hippie mommy, singing songs of love and peace and holding his hands when she laughed at their records. She was a freelove slut in her tight denim pants when she was stretching on the foot of the bed to paint her toenails ‘Red Ocean Coral’ with a little black brush. From her endless smooth legs to her fit pale arms and silken hair, she was what he had longed for all those nights in the orphanage.

“I do. I think that I really do have to.” He disagreed finally, with himself just as much as with her. He couldn’t let those feelings of ‘love’ catch up with him because he didn’t have those feelings. They had been destroyed inside of a giant metal coffin. He was a killer now, not a man. Serial killers weren’t supposed to love and he already had broken that rule for Dexter. He was a monster and monsters couldn’t have friends, they couldn’t be anything but alone. He wasn’t ready to risk that comfort and that familiarity of knowing himself so well for her, soon for Dexter but not for a woman who meant nothing.

“Brian.” Debra called to him and he looked into her eyes again, past the innocence and straight into the sincerity of her beliefs that shown through so easily. He should spare no one; show her no mercy like a vengeful God smiting His own children. He knew what he was risking if he went to her now. He should show her no compassion, just like he had never been shown compassion by anyone in his life…anyone but her. He snarled with uncontrolled frustration and she shook with tears like a frightened child but she spoke still, not letting his demons win so easily.

She had to pontificate like a preacher winning over the Devil to the Lord but she did it well. “We can make it, Brian.” She said simply, swallowing and wiping her nose against her shoulder. Her words weren’t great but the emotion in them; that promised that this was true. She wasn’t lying. “You can let me go.” She encouraged and he found himself moving closer to her again, twitching at his wrists and moving onto his knees. He laid his head against her thighs and she shuddered at the attention, stroking his hair with her bound hands despite her fear. She couldn’t have guessed if he was playing out his ritual now or if he was still listening but she continued to speak.

“You can fight this.” She told him and he was crying now along with her, bitter tears of one who had always been forsaken. He was angry, she could tell by the rigorous and jerking shake of his shoulders and the arching of his form, the physical signs of discomfort that could have foretold the next act as deadly. This was a struggle for him but she prayed to a god she didn’t believe in that he would win against whatever memories were holding him so tightly.

While his hands undid the tape around her wrists, Brian cursed himself. He had just created his first witness because of her pretty words and because of how much it would have hurt to have lost Her one more time. When he held her in his arms, she rocked him and he screamed deeply and wildly in his lust for death. She was right about him; he was more than the monster that hid under children’s beds. He was a broken child hiding in the shadow of that monster; a broken child that the very same monster wanted to kill.