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There is no disguise more perfect than love.
You discovered this when you were just a child, watching your father fool people into believing he was a loving, caring husband and father despite the bruises on your skin or the alcohol weaving thick as smoke through his breath. Your father, for all his blunt, brutish shortcomings was an artist in that way; painting pictures that didn’t exist in the form of perfectly timed hugs in a crowded grocery store, blinding smiles of pride at school gatherings, firm handshakes and eye contact when cops dropped by after his drunken shouts spilled oil-black onto the streets, loud enough to alert the neighbors.
It is the only lesson he taught you that you keep with you to this day.
People excuse all kinds of odd behaviors and warning signs if they believe you are capable of love. They brush aside those little nagging doubts and worries if you are the young boy who helps them mow their lawn or helps them carry their groceries. If you are the young boy who smiles brightly at them whenever you pass each other.
(you have perfected the art of smiling by the age of five. gleeful smiles full of teeth and crinkled eyes, shy smiles complete with a dimple and downcast stares, mischievous smiles quirked at the side in a smirk, sorrowful smiles shaded with sympathy in too-bright eyes. you smoothed out their edges, polished them to a bright, perfect shine, and kept them tucked away to pull out according to the occasion. a talent like your father’s, but you mastered it)
One neighbor caught you with your bloodied hands dragging a dead cat into the trees one night. You spun a tale of finding it crushed on the road (lying is an art you mastered long before smiling. you can thank your mother for that lesson) and watched the doubt drain from his face in inches because you were the sweet boy who walked his youngest son home from the bus every day.
He helped you bury the cat in the woods.
It didn’t matter that the wounds on the animal looked more like the slashes of a knife than the work of tires and pavement and metal. He believed you capable of love and kindness and that somehow made you incapable of violence and cruelty.
Though you can mimic the signs perfectly, you never truly felt it. Love. There was one time when you were young, that first time you killed, when you crushed the throat of your mother’s small dog with your bare hands and felt that rush (though that was nothing compared to when you first took a knife to a person. that was indescribable) and your childish mind foolishly believed that was love.
It wasn’t, of course. When you got older and wiser, you realized that what you felt taking another life was far more profound than something as mundane as love. Even what you eventually felt for your son, your daughter, exceeded the basic confines of love (love, at its core, requires a giving of oneself, making the other person just as important as you are. you are the center of your children’s worlds and yet you are still the center of your own. they adore you and you care for them as much as a potter cares for a particularly good piece of artwork)
But it does come in handy, and not just as a disguise. You are a master at making people love you, and isn’t that just another type of control? People are more willing to let their guard down, more willing to listen, to obey, if they believe you love them.
Love is foolish. Love is blind. Love is weakness.
But love is also, when used right, control. It’s tying puppet strings around their wrists and ankles and watching as they dance.
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But maybe we should start at the beginning.
Not your beginning. The one everyone wants to know about. The revolving door of therapists and psychiatrists and profilers poking around your early life, dissecting your mediocre family (did your parents not love you, Martin? did they make you feel small and powerless, Martin? did you feel in control when you killed them, Martin?) as if that will help their small minds puzzle out the complexity of who you are.
No. Not that beginning. But the beginning of you and him. Him and you. Father and son. That moment when you tied your life and his together irrevocably.
It’s important for you to remember why you are fond of him, in the face of all the wrongs he’s committed against you, all the rebellions stacking up higher and higher over the years. It’s important for you to remember why you should keep him alive.
You lose control when you get angry, you can admit that, right? Remember the feel of tiny bones snapping under your hand? you hadn’t meant to kill the dog it just wouldn’t stop whining no matter how many times you demanded it to be silent. Even with your impeccable control, anger still slips through the cracks, especially in that dark cell that has become your world for the past twenty years. When the walls press in, so close and so tight and so small, and the darkness seeps into your very pores, you lie in bed and you rage.
So, yes, it’s best to remember why he is yours. It’ll be a shame if you end up doing something you’ll later regret.
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The day your son is born, you feel no different. Just a minor annoyance at being taken from your true work for so long. A prickling irritation burrowing deep in the back of your neck from your home being invaded. Jessica’s parents descended on the manor a few days before the birth-apparently their first grandson is not something they can miss, even if it means bridging the gap her marriage to you created- and her mother has watched you like a hawk since, beady little eyes following your every move. Despite your accomplishments, despite your distinctions and awards in the field of cardiothoracic surgery, she still looks at you like your past is a permanent stain on your skin.
(you fantasize taking a knife to those eyes. peeling them out of her skull while she’s stuck, frozen and immobile and helpless. eyes are such fascinating, delicate organs)
Everyone at work has taken it upon themselves to tell you how life-changing this moment is going to be. The joy. The pride. The wonder and love. Your world will shift and the child will become the center, become your everything. But there is no cliched moment for you. When you hold your newborn son in that hospital room, you don’t feel your heart grow. You don’t feel that swell of overwhelming warmth people often describe as love.
You hold the squirming bundle in your arms, and you slide on one of your best smiles, decorated with a softened edge, shaded with eyes that are just on the verge of joyful tears. Jessica smiles up at you from the bed, pale and sweaty and tired, and you think you will take out someone’s heart next. See how long they can survive after you carve it from their chest.
The child shifts, face crumpling, and you pass him off to Jessica’s father before he can start crying. Life is a miracle, yes, but in truth, it is only interesting to you in the ways in which you can end it. And this particular life is going to bring about too many changes to your own, too many disruptions to the life you truly live.
You allow this, though, even with all its inconveniences and annoyances, because it adds another layer to your disguise. A loving, doting father. The child you held is nothing more than an added coat of paint to the mask you’ve been constructing since childhood.
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You don’t see the potential in him until a few months after his birth.
You just finished cutting a man’s heart from his chest and watching as he slowly died, and you feel that odd combination of satisfaction and the nail-against-chalkboard-screech of needing something more.
The hunger inside of you is insatiable. A tension coiled low and tight and angry in your chest and it sends irritation skittering across your skin. You’re halfway up the steps, the house dark and silent and empty around you, Jessica having long gone to bed, when the silence is shattered by the piercing wail only accomplished by newly formed humans.
The child’s cries echo down the hallway. You glance down the darkened carpet to the bedroom you share with Jessica. The door stays resolutely closed and your jaw clenches. But you turn to the nursery to quiet the child, like a good, loving husband.
But with each step, you feel that hunger, that tension, that anger tightening, a rubber band pulling and pulling and pulling until it’s strained white and on the brink of snapping (and he sounds like a whining dog doesn’t he crying crying crying when you just need silence)
Pushing the nursery door open, you glare at the crib situated in the middle. You can just see flashes of kicking legs and flailing arms through the spaces between the bars. The mobile, a fanciful thing of dangling stars and planets, spins gently over the child and the nightlight turns their shadows into sharp-edged monsters on the far wall, a smooth slide of black over paint.
Your feet sink into plush carpet as you move to stand over the crib. The child is a small bundle in the middle of the bed, legs kicking, face twisted and red and wet, and the want inside of you drags claws against your chest.
Usually, between the murders and the surgeries, you are fine. You’re able to tide yourself over between dragging someone to death by dragging someone back to life. But not lately. You feel restless and unsatisfied and in need of something else. You are great at your job as a surgeon, great at your job as a killer, but now you need to be great at something more.
It’s all starting to feel mundane.
You know what this is, and that in part feeds the rage in your chest. You know that this dissatisfaction, this burning urge for something bigger, something more, is what leads people like you to make mistakes and end up behind bars.
But you are adaptable. You are more. You will not get caught.
The child keeps crying, high and piercing and grating, and that rush is draining from your veins too soon always too soon and you snarl, “Quiet.”
The child silences. Blinks up at you.
And maybe its because you’ve been thinking about your victim, replaying the moments leading up to his death again and again in your mind, keeping the details vivid, desperate to keep hold of that feeling. Maybe that’s why it strikes you as you stare down at the child, just a few months old, tiny and soft and still growing, still developing, just how helpless he is. Just like the man whose heart you carved out.
Slowly, in the blissful silence that swells around you, you reach a hand into the crib, tap a finger lightly against the tip of his nose (and it looks like your nose, doesn’t it? standing over him in that darkened crib you start to notice, for the first time, all the ways he resembles you) and watch as his face squishes into a smile.
Killing children has never been to your taste. There’s no challenge to it. Children have never truly experienced control and therefore it’s not satisfying to be the one to take it from them. Not as much as with an adult, who views their life as theirs to shape. With children, the control always lies with the parents, who mold them and shape them, or scar them and break them.
A parent’s influence often has a lasting effect on who a child becomes. You know this. Your father’s smiles and your mother’s lies are your own after all.
You follow that line of thought in a slowly unwinding trail of awe, of realization, and the hunger inside of you settles just a little. There is no challenge or wresting of control found in killing a baby. But maybe there is something else. Something much more lasting.
The child, your child, your son, giggles, and your lips twitch in response. A knee-jerk reaction but one tinged with a genuineness most of your smiles lack.
There will be no satisfaction in killing him, but molding him, influencing him, now that has promise. You have had control over death and control over life, but this? This is creation in its purest form. This is control over an entire person, from beginning to end. You can shape him into whatever image you want, and what better image than your own?
(you are not a fanciful person. you do not let yourself get carried away on the whimsy of daydreams but in that moment, you can envision how your life will be. how he, ever loving, ever eager, will emulate your every move. a mirror image of yourself to carry on after you die)
A flicker of movement in the corner of your vision. Jessica, finally awake, stands in the doorway, smiling as she watches you and your son. A happy, father-son bonding time. The first of many, many more. You meet her smile with one of your own before looking back down at your son.
(this smile of fatherly pride is a new one, but it fits better than any of your other disguises, snapping into place with a sense of rightness)
He is a blank slate to be filled with nothing but your own intentions. He will become whatever you want him to be.
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Like all things, you excel at being a father. What’s actually surprising is that you enjoy it more than you thought you would. It’s exhilarating having someone be so completely and totally dependent on you. You relish the delight in his eyes, the way he gravitates to you, eager to spend time with you, hanging on to your every word. You adore the absolute shame he feels whenever he does something that disappoints you, watching with delight as he desperately scrambles to make it right.
But he does not show signs of being like you. You know what they are, from your own actions, from your own studies, from working with people like John, and your son is lacking in certain qualities.
Your son is quiet. He is sweet. He is not aggressive. He cries at the thought of causing anything pain.
(part of you wonders if your son has mastered the same artistry you did as a child. if he hides who he is behind a soft voice and gentle disposition. you leave a mouse in a trap, twitching, and squealing, where you know he will see it, as a test. he releases it, much to Jessica’s disgust, and begs her not to hire someone to kill it, much to your disgust)
But he has your intelligence, your curiosity and eagerness to learn, and every now and then, you catch flickers of your own rage in him. It’s rare, the moments when your little boy gets truly, properly angry. It’s a fleeting, quick flare; the blink and you miss it moment a small spark turns into a wildfire. Still stunted by childlike tantrums but you cannot wait to see what it evolves into when he’s older.
It’s delicate work, one that requires a surgeon’s careful, methodical ability, but you are well versed in patience. You know how fragile a child’s mind can be, so you steadily guide him instead of pulling him fully into your world; shaping him while simultaneously hiding what you are truly doing from the outside world. You cultivate in him a curiosity of the human body, showing him your sketches, your work, and watching as his eyes light up in wonder.
(you daydream too, of what it will be like when you two start killing together. how he will follow your lead. it’s become a problem recently, these daydreams, bleeding into your every waking moment and those hazy spots between wakefulness and sleep but you don’t want to stop)
Then he finds the girl in the box and everything starts to unravel at the seams.
You know it’s too soon. His childlike mind won’t be able to line up what he’s seen with what the world has already told him is wrong. You needed more time to ease him into things, to delicately plant your own ideas and urges into his head to fight what he learns when he’s away from you. The chloroform works at the beginning and you start to think that things will settle back onto track, but, because he is your son and he is made of stronger stock, he starts to remember.
He keeps asking about the girl, not out of fascination, not out of curiosity, but out of concern. You catch him one night, trying to sneak back into your hobby room, softly whispering through the locked door, asking if anyone can hear him and you think of that mouse, of his pleading for the vermin, and know it’s only a matter of time before he seeks Jessica’s help. You resign yourself to what must be done. You have grown fond of the boy but it’s either him or a life in prison, so it has to be him.
It’s not your fault. Children are a mix of both parents. This one has too much Jessica. Maybe your daughter will be better. This is merely trial and error, after all; it is merely a mirror of your first murder. Messy and quick and lacking compared to when you really started to refine your craft. You will make note of all the ways this can be improved and will perfect your method with your daughter. Or even another child.
It’s not until you’ve already set up the camping trip that an idea forms in your head. People like you are not born from normal, happy beginnings. There is some kind of trauma, a breaking point, that makes them. People show who they are in moments of stress, fear, or danger.
Maybe everything isn’t lost just yet.
So, you buy him a knife and you take him camping and you leave him in a cabin with a man who thinks the goal is to kill him. You stand just outside and wait. Either this will be the moment your son reveals that he is truly like you or this will be the moment you start focusing on your daughter.
When he stabs that blade deep into John’s side, when you track him down and find him, covered in blood and breathing hard and trembling all over, that’s when you feel it. That swell of warmth and pride you should have felt the day he was born. That’s when you know he is yours, truly and completely.
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And then he calls the cops.
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Your world doesn’t end, so much as shift.
That world, the marriage to Jessica, your work at the hospital, all of it isn’t really your true world. Just a smokescreen. Just a hobby. Death is your world. Molding your children is your world.
But that gets taken from you as well.
There is a lack of control in what follows that reminds you too much of then. It chips away at the composure you’ve built around yourself, presses against the still-raw wounds of a childhood you thought you buried. The strings you’ve tied around your family, around your coworkers, people who thought of you as a friend, get snipped neatly and efficiently with the words serial killer.
You are abandoned (unloved), locked away in a cell (unloved), left with no control on the outside world (unloved)
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He, your wonderful, loyal, perfect son, visits you. It’s enough of a relief, enough of a return of control, that you don’t feel like you’re in a cell anymore. That you don’t feel like anything has truly changed, even when he talks about how the world outside views you as a monster. He is here, in your grasp, coming back again and again, and that is all that matters.
(monster is a nonsense word. people will tack that word onto anything, a desperate attempt to put space between you and them. to pretend that you are other, that they aren’t just as capable of the same atrocities)
He brings the world with him when he visits. It hovers in the hesitant stories you pull from hi, alluring even in the careful vagueness he walls around them. It’s in the fibers of his clothes, scents of the outside mingling together in a way that makes you yearn. Even from where he stands, far away and separated by the cell’s bars, you can smell the detergent on his clothes, the faint scent of food, and Jessica’s perfume, thick and flowery.
You realize, with some satisfaction, that it’s the same kind you used to buy her. it’s nice to know that she hasn’t fully moved on. that the strings you tied around her after that first meeting are not fully sliced.
It takes a while, but you manage to coax his visits closer. Inside your cell or at a table, just inches apart, closer and closer, ever closer, and there are moments when he seems to forget. Moments when you tell a joke and he laughs or he asks for your advice and it almost, almost, feels like it did before when you were the center of his world.
(when was the last time he told you he loved you? you can’t remember, can you? he was always so free with his affection, always carelessly tossing out those words, and you never thought to treasure them. to memorize them and now you can’t remember because you never thought they would catch you and they didn’t. he did. your smart, foolish son. but you need to hear those words like you need to hear that last, shuddering breath before someone dies. that final concession to your control)
Eventually, as he grows older, the conversations shift. Your son shows an utter fascination with murder that speaks to your own. You hash out the details of old cases, hold the methodology, the motives, the victims, up to the light and examine them from every angle. You nudge him carefully with those conversations, challenging him to think like the killers, to consider things from their perspective. To mull over how he would kill if he were in their shoes.
He shows promise. His intelligence is sharp, and it is so very easy for him to slip into the mindset of a killer and you cannot help but feel satisfied (a shadow of the satisfaction you feel after killing, but close) after every meeting. Even with the chains around your wrists and the walls keeping you trapped, you still have a hold over him. You will still make him like you.
It’s only a matter of time.
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He leaves. He leaves and he takes everything you taught him and uses it to become the very thing you hate.
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He leaves you.
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You wait because he will come back.
You wait and he doesn’t come back.
You write and he doesn’t reply.
You write and he doesn’t reply.
You write and you wait and you write and you wait and you write until the letters become nothing but threats until you tear them into shreds with outraged screams and the guard takes even that away from you.
And he doesn’t come back.
He doesn’t come back.
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(here’s the truth about being locked up. there is no place for the rage to go. no outlet for you to pour it all into. you cannot scream. you cannot peel back a person to view their inner workings, to translate your anger into their pain. there is no place for it to go so the rage just sits on your chest and grows, as permanent and there as every beat of your heart)
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The thought festers in the back of your mind. An open, infected wound.
It is his fault that you are here.
And he left you.
He left you.
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Three years after he left, you lie in bed and you rage. You rage, and rage, and rage, and then you start to plan.
You will bring him back.
Your hold on him is complete and there is no place in the world he can run to where you cannot reach. You will bring him back.
And you will break him.
You will break every single bone in his body if it means keeping him still, keeping him with you, until you can finally skin the influence all those years spent out of your reach have left on him.
You will bend him and break him until he is yours.
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(you can feel it now, can’t you? the rage boiling inside of you again. you need to remember that he is the same as you. that you will make him the same as you. you need to remember that it will be far more satisfying watching him become the very thing he hates, the very thing he’s meant to be, than watching him take his final breath)
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Six years after he left, you have created a new web of puppet strings. Patients whose lives are indebted to you. Guards and medics and the prisoners you see every day.
But it’s not the same. They are not the one you chose so many years ago. They are not the one who slipped out of your control.
They are not him.
You don’t like it when victims get away. You don’t like it when your control has been clipped. (one victim slipped out of your grasp years ago but you found him again, tracked him down, and killed him oh so very slowly). You thought you had your son and he called the police.
(you thought you had the policeman too. the lieutenant now, and you burn burn burn with the urge to finish him. to finish that parasite sucking on the marrow of your old life. to right the world as you see fit. he was marked for death and he will die)
But this is about him.
Your boy. The son you thought you lost that night only for him to return months later, young and curious and eager to learn.
Only to leave years later.
You hadn’t realized how much you relied on his visits until they stopped. Now the world is once again cut off from you, narrowed down to the four walls of your cell. Life continues moving on beyond the hospital without a single ounce of your influence.
(and isn’t that the true center of your rage? he has somehow left you dependent on him. he has made you that much weaker)
You will repay the favor, though. When he finally returns to you, you will put your relationship back on track. You will become the center of his world once again and he will love you.
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And then, because your will is iron, you bring him back.
But he is different.
It’s been years since you’ve stood outside and felt the air before a thunderstorm, but this reminds you of that. A manic energy crackles along his edges like jagged streaks of lightning, bright and branching and sharp. A staticky sensation, brittle chaos poised on the verge of destruction, and you wonder, with a shiver of anticipation, how many people your son will take out when he finally shatters.
(you hadn’t meant for him to solve the case so quickly. you wanted to squeeze out at least a few hours from him trying to figure out which one of your patients was the culprit. but watching him narrow the pile down to two people in the span of seconds is worth it. he still has your intelligence)
It’s not like when he used to visit you. He is hostile and short-tempered where he used to be eager to learn. He tries to distance himself with formalities, tries to keep the visits short. He ignores your phone calls, your offers to help. He pretends the two of you aren’t the same.
But still, he keeps coming back.
This is one of those nights. When every word from his mouth drips acid, sharp and caustic, eyes the biting cold of a frozen lake. He’s stuck on some newfound memory, some new way to place blame on you, to put space between you two, to say he doesn’t need you, and you feel your irritation growing.
“They’re right,” he bites out with frustration. “I really should stop visiting you. It’s not like you actually give me any answers.”
There’s the prickle of fear in your gut that he’s going to leave again (and doesn’t that make you angry? knowing that he still has this hold over you? that he can dangle his visits over your head whenever he feels like it. can you feel your patience snapping? you’re walking on thin ice, better calm down).
“Or maybe I do give you answers, and you just don’t want to listen to them.”
He glares at you. “This is pointless.”
“Then why do you keep coming back, my boy?” You prowl closer, movements slow enough to not startle him. Is it because that deep down you know that I am still your father and you still love me?"
And if you thought the glares he’s thrown in your direction were filled with anger before, they are nothing compared to the pure loathing in his gaze now. Even though it’s directed at you, narrowed eyes and lips peeled back in anger, it still pleases you. It still makes you think of that angry little boy who showed so much promise.
“Love you? Love you? You murdered people. You made all our lives a living hell. You’ve drugged me, tried to kill me, lied to me every single time I talk to you-“ he cuts off and jerks his head towards the far wall, muscles in his jaw clenching, trembling hand curled into a tight fist. When he finally speaks again, his voice is thin, strained to the point of breaking. “What makes you think I could ever love you?”
It’s all baseless, you know this. It’s all just an act. You are still the loving father in his eyes, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it; he cannot untangle himself from all those childhood memories. But his words still strike a chord, still brush against the whisper of an old childhood memory, and your patience evaporates.
You forget to be careful.
“For an emotion people put so much importance on, love is very . . .fluid. It relies too much on circumstance.” Your voice is light, casual, but there is the barest note of anger, the barest hint of a promised threat underlining the words, enough so that he freezes, wary gaze snapping back to you. “A person you hate can so easily become someone you love; you just have to change the scenery a little bit.”
He scoffs. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t truly understand it.” He gestures to the cell with a short, agitated hand. “Is this your change in scenery? You locked away in prison for murdering people. Is this supposed to make me love you?”
A muscle in your jaw feathers. “Surely, you’ve studied Stockholm Syndrome in the FBI. Dependence and connection are strong motivators when it comes to love. Take everything and everyone else away, and a person will learn to love the one that they hate. Let’s say, for example, that I take you very far away, lock you up, keep you hidden, and I’m the only one who visits you. Gives you food, talks to you, keeps you connected to the outside world. I am the only one between you and complete and total isolation. Over time, you will start to love me again.”
You should stop talking but you see that first flicker of fear in his eyes and it’s like a sip of cool water after days of dehydration, sweet and soothing. It is the snap of small bones under your hand, the first break of knife tip through flesh, and you want more. It’s been too long.
“Will you still be this stubborn if our roles were reversed? If you knew that at any moment, I could get bored and stop visiting you and your connection to the world would be cut off in an instant? You’d be left to waste away in some forgotten place with nothing but your thoughts for company.”
You pace closer, as close as the restraints allow, and he, your stubborn, foolish, defiant son, doesn’t flinch back, frozen in place like you’ve already paralyzed him.
“Will you be so self-righteous then, so defiant? Or will you finally listen to me, just to make sure I don’t leave you?” You drop your voice to a whisper of a hiss, and for once he doesn’t look away. “I wonder just how quickly you will crumble.”
A heavy silence ropes you both. He looks like he might choke on it, but you, oh, for the first time in years, you can breathe again.
“Hypothetically speaking, of course.” And you smile. It’s not one of the ones you keep tucked away, the perfected pieces of art you pull out for other people. This one is all peeling paint and scuffed polish; this one has too much you sharpening the edges.
The sound of a door slamming shut in the distance echoes into the cell and he snaps into motion with a small gasp. He backs out and leaves with a flare of his coat. No goodbye, Dr. Whitly, no final, scathing remark. Just him, shoulders hunched, hand trembling, moving quickly down the hallway.
(it will please you to know that that you have stitched this fear so deeply into his skin that it will trail him out into the night and he will shrink from every shifting shadow as if it is you. your voice will be echoing in his head every day until you make your threat reality)
You watch him go until you can’t see him anymore. But no matter. Plans are already set into motion. A case will soon rise and he will need your help and he will come back, alone, like so many other times, and things will finally click into place.
Settling back onto your chair, you replay the last moments again and again in your head. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that much, shouldn’t have spooked him so, but still, it will be pleasing to see the terrified realization in his eyes when he remembers what you told him. When he remembers what’s in store. Maybe that in itself will make him more malleable.
You will make him love you, like before. You will tie those strings back around his wrists and ankles, tight enough to dig into flesh and he will not be able to cut them this time. He will become what you want him to be, he will have no other choice.
Love, after all, is just another form of control, and you are a master of it.