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The moon is round and bright, almost unnaturally large in the cloudless sky. The gentle chirping of crickets an almost a calming background white noise. The evening temperature has finally lost the intensity of the day, but gained an unwelcome level of humidity, leaving Harry’s shirt sticking uncomfortably to him from all sides. It’s close to midnight, the outer suburban roads mostly empty on a random Thursday evening, the brief far off squealing tyres of a boy racer, the sharp blare of a siren from one of his late night working colleagues the only other noise, cut off abruptly as Harry enters the dark house, door snapping shut behind him. Debra is absent, tucked away at a friend’s house to set off early for a long weekend volleyball training camp, leaving the house otherwise still and empty. His keys clatter sharply through the relative silence as they drop onto the side table, in the same place they’ve been dropped everyday for the past twenty years. He can hear the clock ticking from the other room, the low hum of the fridge, the blinds gently slapping the window frames in the light breeze from the whirring ceiling fan.
It’s all in stark contrast to the sudden, sharp pinch of a blade pressing into the warm, soft part of his neck, directly over his jugular, catching the air in his lungs short. Harry schools his breathing, years of police force techniques behind him to not panic in a crisis situation as he becomes acutely aware of a figure now pressed up against his back. A sharp tug at the back of his collar, pulls it taut against his windpipe, drags an involuntarily gasp from him, hands instinctively reaching up to grab at it. The blade presses harder, demanding and impatient. Harry allows his arms to fall back to his sides, follows the directions he’s guided to by the hand at his back without resistance, shuffling through the house, left, forward, left a bit more, stop. His back collides painfully with the wall as the figure twists him round roughly in a flurry of movement, knife maintaining its heavy pressure at his neck, presence known. The intruder, still hidden by the shadows, repositions the knife to the hollow under his jaw and applies strikingly gentle pressure, slowly forcing him to bare his neck in a display of submission that causes the small hairs at the back of his neck to stand on end. There’s a muffled creak of leather, then ice cold fingers tentatively undo the top two buttons of his shirt, part the collar and touch the dimple between his collarbones. Harry swallows thickly against the light pressure. With more surety the fingers fan out and upwards until the whole hand of the intruder is circling the base of his neck, constricting suddenly with an iron grip, fingertips digging in painfully at the sides. The figure shuffles forward slightly and steps into the slither of moonlight that has managed to find its way between the gap in the missing slats of the window next to them.
Eyes, bright and too-wide, devoid of humanity, are entirely focused on Harry’s neck, at what must be a throbbing pulse if the rushing blood sounds in his ears are anything to go by. Harry manages to peer down at his captor, face clad in a woollen balaclava, and their eyes meet briefly. For a split second it is not Harry’s son who is looking back at him, but a monster peering out. How many will look upon Dexter in this way, and it be the last thing they see?
He wonders, not for the first time, if he made a mistake, all those years ago, in choosing this path, if he’s trained him a bit too well. Bit late for regrets now.
There’s no point struggling, Dexter’s long been able to overpower him, something Harry tries very resolutely to not think about.
‘Very… good.’ Harry manages to croak out when his vision starts to blur, hating how breathless and raspy he sounds. Dexter’s pose instantly relaxes as he takes a step back, balaclava pulled easily off in one fluid motion, arms falling to his side, plastic police training knife still firmly in his grip as Harry bends over, hands on knees, taking deep lungfuls of air, coughing on the exhale. His son is back, grinning widely, hair in disarray, full of manic glee. He forgoes the chastising of it, he’s long accepted this sort of thing enraptures Dexter like most things simply don’t, and bringing it up only serves to keep reminding him what he’s capable of.
‘I could have done it then, Dad, if it had been real.’ He says, the rush of the chase still present in the way he’s almost vibrating out his skin. He gives a little full body shiver. ‘That was good.’
It’s said without shame, in the brutally honest way that makes Harry think he’s seeing into the very core of his son’s psyche. Perhaps he’s one of the few people to peer into a monster’s mind and make it out the other side alive. Harry rubs at his neck tentatively, sure it's already bruising.
And yet.
‘If I’d had a hidden weapon, would have been real easy for me to use it when you flipped me against the wall, you didn’t check. And never take your gloves off, fingerprints Dexter, you know this.’
He can’t help but give advice, corrections, improvements, to an enraptured Dexter, because regardless…
…he’s Harry’s monster.