Bad Choice
ernard's ex-girlfriend was strange, different, unique. Jackie was
or had been at one time, a hooker, a drug addict, a drug dealer, a
thief, a convicted felon, and a Patient Care Assistant at Drowsy Cedars
Assisted Living Center. Plus, she outweighed Bernard by 175lbs.
Together they made a rather bizarre couple. Bernard weighed-in at about
160, standing 6-4, a human telephone pole. Jackie was 5-2.
Now Jackie's weight was no problem for Bernard. Remember that old adage about "fatty and skinny were lying in bed, fatty rolled over and skinny was dead"? Well, it didn't faze Bernard. In fact, he often wondered what it would be like to wallow in that swamp of flesh. But, as it turned out, he never even got to test the temperature of the water.
You see, though Jackie was a "strange duck," Bernard was an even stranger one. To be truthful, he was out of his friggin' skull. So far out of his skull that Jackie got "the hell out of Dodge" in the third week of their non-relationship relationship. Watching Bernard burn live rats was one thing, but when he asked for her help in finding stray cats_whoa! Asta la vista, baby.
Two years had passed since Jackie left, and ten months since the last cat had howled its guts out while being blowtorched into a greasy blob. Bernard didn't miss the clawed forearms and scratches on his face_some of the toms could be damn dangerous. Besides, he had graduated to equally loud, but less dangerous and elusive prey: children.
Altogether now, Bernard had fried, microwaved, baked, boiled, or in some other manner cooked twenty-eight children. He gathered his victims' names from the newspapers and entered them into his diary, which he fondly called "The List of Sorrows." He daily read through his journal with the sincerity of a devout catholic kneeling at the Stations of the Cross: Rebecca Wilbert, April Reiber, Larry Miller, Toni Romano, Jimmy Browning, Todd Hinkle, Melissa Reagan, Bobby Crumly, Jo Marie Guerrea, Patrick Tyler, Cynthia Calbert, Mary Ann Buener, Cathy Atteleton, Mark Drayson, just to name a few. Victim twenty-nine would be the boy, around 18-months-old, that he snatched the day before.
Bernard was making quite a reputation for himself, yessiree. The other twenty-eight children had ranged in age from one month to about two years. . . . Oh, and don't get the wrong idea. He didn't eat them or sexually molest them, he just enjoyed hurting them. And though he enjoyed the older children more_their laughable gestures for help and the fact that their terror was so pure_Bernard found the infants had their own appeal. For instance, it was so easy to put an infant into a microwave and set it for one minute on "high," then gradually increase the time until the baby was shrieking its lungs out, with its lips beginning to bubble and its eyes turning blood red. One little girl screamed for so long that Bernard had to decapitate her to shut her up. Drove him crazy! He also liked infants because they fit easily into a deep frying pan and couldn't get out. Likewise, it was easy to swipe them because they didn't scream-out like older children might. Speaking of screaming, his first victim, a fourteen-month-old girl abducted from a shopping mall, screamed "mama" like she was already on the grill. All the way to his car, Bernard had to pretend he was the scolding father: "Wait until I get you home, little girl," "We'll never take you shopping again." His budding career as a child killer almost died in its infancy. But nevertheless, he'd choose an older kid over an infant most every time. Those innocent, spontaneous expressions of horror made them the better choice by far.
Anyway, Bernard walked over to the stove, slurped from a half-filled cup of tepid coffee, paused to look at the front page of the newspaper, then glanced at the boy. The toddler was sitting quietly across the room on the filthy bed, looking back at him, smiling. The kid smiles a lot_trying to fuck with my head?, Bernard wondered, and that hair is so goddamn thick and black, and those friggin' blue eyes. Fuck you!, he thought, I'm not waiting any longer. He turned the electric burner to it's highest setting, stepped back, watching it until it glowed orange. "You won't be smiling in a few minutes, you little bastard. Promise you!" The boy smiled wider.
The boy had been smiling since Bernard seized him from the frontyard of a farmhouse. Never before had Bernard chosen a child near its home, but the child's isolation made the choice easy, met all the criteria_the parents were nowhere in sight! And it was a cakewalk. Children are so trusting of strangers. Funny how he's not scared, Bernard mused, paging through the newspaper for anything on him and the kid. No doubt he figured, the cops were looking for them, but the kid would be mostly ashes and lard and he would be long gone before they ever got close.
"Cocky little prick, aren't you?" Bernard said as he watched the boy jump off of the bed, waddle, almost swagger toward him. "Not scared, huh? We'll see. You'll be cry'in for momma real quick now." The kid giggled and headed back to the bed.
"Arrogant little shit."
Moving quickly, Bernard came-up behind the youngster and pushed him savagely, headfirst at the bed's footboard. "Oops! Don't trip," he laughed. But instead of helplessly falling, the little boy deftly regained his balance, halted, and turned to face Bernard. "You mean man."
"What?" sneered Bernard. "You little sonofabitch. Show you what mean is. Com'er. . . . Let's see how you smile at this."
Bernard grabbed the boy and hauled him to the stove, one arm around his waist, the other grasping the boy's thick hair. The heat from the orange bulls-eye was ominous even at several inches, and Bernard retreated from the shimmering waves rolling from the coils. "Yeow!" he yelped, way too close when the hair on his arm crackled and smoked. He had put one other child's face into the inferno, an infant girl, and burned his fingers, so he had to be careful. The stupid bastard singed his fingertips because the little girl's head was so small his fingers wrapped around the sides of her skull and were exposed to the heat. . . . Stupid.
Be that as it may, Bernard stared for a few seconds into what he thought hell must look like, his teeth grinding together, the blood jack-hammering through his temples. Drops of sweat trickled from his face, falling into the torment below, vaporizing before they even touched the scorched metal. He made a yearning, moaning sound deep in his throat, thinking of that little girl. He remembered how she howled, not screamed but howled, like the voice of the world at the end of time, and the panic of her tiny, kicking legs and the twisting and thrashing of her body while he held her face against the branding iron of hell, and how her struggling ceased as her last howl turned into a hissing dirge, then a slow sizzle_and how it excited him.
"Okay, you little prick!" he shouted, pushing the boy's head toward the inferno.
"AHHHHHHH!" Bernard screamed, eyes bulging, face like a gargoyle mask. Somehow, the little boy had twisted free and was holding Bernard's hand firmly on the burner. Instant Bar-b-que, and Bernard couldn't get his hand free--little bastard was strong as hell! Bernard's fingers blackened and split open, exposing white, steamy, cooking bone, and agony razored through his brain. "Oh Go----d!" he cried, violently freeing his hand, strings of melting flesh clinging to the hot coils.
Staring at the over-cooked tendrils of flesh and the charred bone, Bernard vomited a mind-shattering scream that abruptly ended in a wet cough when a powerful blow to his chest sent him reeling against the wall and onto his butt. As he tried to clear his vision, he saw a small form bound quickly across the room and land heavily on his stomach. "You mean man," was all he heard, aside from a wet tearing sound when his left arm, the one with the good hand, was ripped from his body and tossed into the air. Kind of funny, but that pain paled beside the atomic bomb that had exploded in his other hand. However, before the dismembered arm even hit the floor, his right leg was ripped free at the hip, also removing his entire groin section. Now that really got Bernard's attention. Wow! After that, Bernard drifted rapidly and mercifully into oblivion. The last thing he saw was those incredibly blue eyes burning into him_actually burning him, and the little boy's lips soundlessly mouthing, "You mean man."
Two days later, this headline dominated the front page of the newspaper:
Missing Child Found Alive
Serial Killer Found Dead
Toddler Clark Kent Recovered Safely
