Dexter Dreams Darkly Dreams
The dreams won?t come to Dexter anymore. His hands shook with the desperation of a madman on the run. He knew a secret everyone around him couldn?t ever know. He was the messenger of doom and the bringer of hope. He knew the truth, yet everyone else refused to believe him. If you?re the only one to know a secret, is the secret real? Dexter turned his head wildly to shake off his dark thoughts. Work had to be done tonight, lives had to be taken and justice served.
?Weapons? he spoke to his two other conspirators standing beside him, forming with him a small circle of flesh and fear. They each pulled out their own tools of the trade. Arnold was the resident failure, a drunk and a father who abandoned his family to die. Guilt pushed him to the edge, and Dexter gave him a nudge to break him past it. He held the tire iron in his left hand, dried blood crusted over the end and pooled inside the hole. In his other hand he held an old, badly-maintained Walther PPK handgun already loaded with a full magazine. He slid the magazine out, pressed his finger inside and counted the bullets. Ten rounds weren?t nearly enough for the job at hand. To his opposite stood Adil, the hopeless immigrant with too much debt and too little time before some bad men start snapping his knees. He was tightening his grip on an aluminum baseball club, the best he could find for such an occasion. He was trembling with fear, sweat covering his face and staining his shirt. It wasn?t every day you were raiding a drug-lab in downtown Los-Angeles. Dexter lit up his shock-baton and heard the sizzle of electricity flow through his tool. It was a good day as any to die, and perhaps he could finally sleep at last.
The run-down warehouse was wedged between a dilapidated apartment-complex and a dirty movie theater, a short walk through an alley from the road. They edged past the dumpster on their left, the brick walls closing in around them as they approached a locked door. Dexter threw all of his weight forward, lifted his leg and cracked open the lock, tore it away from the door and busted it wide open. The noise must have alerted everyone inside, but he wasn?t in a mood for a stealthy approach.
They went past the first corridor, the peeling walls smelling of urine, and stood face to face with a young man going at the door to see where the noise came from. He was a short and thin fellow, a black skinned mook or a potential client, Dexter wasn?t going to ask. His left hand went up to meet a throat and shoved it with the rest of his body at the wall to his right. Dexter broke away from him, watching his hands go up at his throat in agony and prodded him quickly with the end of his baton. He was foaming at the mouth, his body shaking and emitting a smell of burnt flesh. The alterations to the baton he had were quite the unpleasant encounter.
The two others watched as the sagging body fell to the floor in a loud thud, the tortured flesh sprawled lifeless on the floor. Dexter was further away when they looked back at him, going past the opened door to the room nearby. The room was entirely empty except for a small table, an ashtray, a heap of newspapers and two folding chairs. Another guard was in the process of getting up when he spotted a stranger entering the room in a hurry. He was an older black man, bald and featuring a nasty scar from his left ear to his chin. He reached around his back to pull out the handgun wedged between his belt and his arse when Dexter was already upon him, having narrowed the distance down by dashing forward and leaping at him, his arms outstretched forward. Dexter landed on top of the guard, his right arm pushing against his windpipe. He struggled against the blow, wiggled to his right and sent his arm up under Dexter?s armpit, shoving him away from him and fumbling for his gun with the other hand. He found the discarded firearm and gripped it firmly before turning it around at Dexter, more than enough time for him to reach for a knife sheaved on the side of his shin, pull it out and put it through the guard?s body four times. The guard?s shock at this twist of fate gave Dexter the opportunity to tear the handgun away from him, get on top and continue his grime work on his face, one stab at a time.
Adil approached him warily from the side, his hands trembling as he placed them on his shoulders and meekly tried to pull him away from the corpse of the guard. Dexter couldn?t satiate his lust, no matter how much blood was spilled, and it took a gunshot to shake him out of his trance. The door to the next room beyond opened, a middle-aged white man dressed in designer clothes holding a chrome tinted Uzi appeared at the door, his face twisted at the sight at his feet. Arnold fumbled for a second or two, but held it together enough to aim his pistol and fired three shots at him before he had the time to discharge his own gun. ?Dex, get up!?, Adil pleaded the dark assassin, practically whining with fear. ?Aye, more work to be done?, he muttered to himself, held the discarded baton and rose up from the floor.
The next room was where all the fun was had. Eight victims were scattered about, torn away from their previous duties by the sound of gunshots four feet away. There was the proud leader, a tall black-skinned man in his thirties wearing loose baggy clothes, arguing with a client over some deal they will never complete. He snapped back at Dexter with surprise, but before he drew his own weapon Arnold was waving his around. ?Get the fuck back?, he yelled with rage mixed with a heavy dose of fear, his heart nearly tearing out of his chest as his eyes fell on the young girl sprawled across the sofa on the wall. Next to her was a low table, rows of dry white dust lined just right waiting to be snorted. ?Abigail?, his heart sank as he pleaded to his daughter, the one he came to save from this wretched place, ?I came to get you back?.
There were more in the room, and Adil was thankfully not too incompetent to ignore them. A gang-member turned his beer bottle in the air, smashed it against the floor and sprang up from his seat, holding the shredded glass in his hands. A whip of the baseball bat smashed at his face and brought him reeling back. Another strike from Adil at the top of his skull caved it in and sent him sprawling to the floor. Then all hell broke loose, and before he even tumbled to the floor two men were quite dead.
The one who was a few moments ago fondling Arnold?s girl took a step forward, hoping his muscle and experience in a fight would give him the edge to overcome the raging father at his doorstep. Alas, the well-built athlete wasn?t built fast enough to move past bullets, and four shots peppered him across the body before he struggled backwards and fell against the girl behind him. By then Dexter was already upon the client, his knife striking like a snake at the back of his skull, spearing the stem of his brain and cutting his life away in an instant. He stopped breathing before he even realized what had happened, and his heart refused to go another beat when he was thrown aside by the gang-leader.
A smile flashed across Dexter?s face, and he came at the next victim in his path. Three more mooks, the seemingly incompetent escort of the esteemed client, have already moved from the far side of the room right into the heat of the battle. Adil came up to them, hands gripping the bloody club and swinging it indiscriminately at them. He closed his distance and was standing right next to a butter-fly knife wielding white man in his early twenties, a wannabe bodyguard who didn?t expect to see his death today. His nose crunched against the cold surface of the baseball bat, and to his left Dexter pushed the baton deep in his victim?s throat, cooking it well-done in a matter of a few agonizing seconds. The knife went in and out without much protest from Adil?s flesh, then another cut at his side, but before a third injury was inflicted the bat came from above and sent the bastard staggering to his knees. His knee crashed against his face, the impact sending him down to the floor, crying out desperately in pain.
Arnold shot the last of his rounds, emptying his magazine and filling a second bodyguard with holes. He ran up to his daughter, grabbed a hold over the body on top of her and shoved it aside. In another scenario, he would have already been on top of her without the help of her father. ?Abigail, are you alright??, he closed the distance between the two, ?We can help you get better?, he whispered.
Dexter was completely unaware of the family drama taking place behind him. He was concentrated in the third bodyguard, an older man with spiked brass knuckles adorning his fists. Dexter wasn?t in the mood to get hit with a nasty fist like that, and so he resigned to use the colt 1911 in the hands of the gang-leader, wasting the entire magazine on the last victim. After all, he wouldn?t need more bullets where he was going to.
Adil was wheezing, trying his damndest to catch his breath. He flopped on the couch behind him and held his hand over the gaping wounds in his stomach. On the other side of the room was Arnold, trying to wake his daughter up from her shock.
Dexter flew forward to the next door and opened it to find the warehouse. At the back were stacks of plastic bags filled to the brim with the good stuff, delivered from accomplices in the south. Closer to him was the make-shift laboratory they were using to cut it and dilute the content, making an extra buck on the way. He swaggered forward, twirling the combat knife in one hand and pushing the electric baton back in its place, remembering to shut it off beforehand. The knife went flying at the bag on top, and Dexter was anxious to cut at the contents. He slized the nylon, piled some on the blade and raised it up.
?Bottoms up!?, he roared and lowered his head, snorting the concentrated stuff in one hit. Today was a good die to kill, he reckoned, and kill he would. He dragged a sack of the drug behind him as he made his way outside. Adil was going through the pockets of the dead and Arnold had lifted his daughter in his hands, saying soothing words in her ears. Today wasn?t a good day for paying debts or saving family.
The gun went out before he blinked and the shot tore through his gut, spilling the slimy contents in a heap on the floor. The second shot was aimed at Arnold, taking his lights out before he could even begin to understand what was happening. The blood drizzled from his forehead and all of his strength went from under him. He holstered his colt python even faster than he retrieved it, hiding it away under his jacket. The young girl fell down, and Dexter was already upon her. Today was a good day to die, but it was also a good day for relieving tension. Dexter was hoping to ease his stress, and this was just what he was looking for. She stared back at him, glazed sheep?s eyes looking for compassion and a quick fix. He could give her one of those things alright.
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?Break, damn it, break?, he screamed at the wall in front of him. Another fist went crashing in the dry wall, bits of plaster flying all across the room. Dexter was deep in his trance of addiction, his mind clouded with rage and hatred. There was another strike at the wall, then another, and so on until infinity, or until he got bored.
His eyes were concentrating solely on his bleeding knuckles, but his mind was wandering to events throughout his life, to all of those sleepless nights and missed opportunities. Had he not been such a freak, he could have led a good life. He could have slept every night, and dreamed his fantasies in the night.
The television blared in the background, and a few key words caught his attention entirely by chance. ?The masked vigilante, dubbed ?The Sandman?, is a new figure in the meta-human scene in Los Angeles. He had been reported stopping robberies and stopping gang violence, putting to sleep the perpetrators until authorities arrived and arrested them. The unknown Sandman appeared a week ago, and since then a campaign for his support led by Martin Sand had made him known throughout the city. We have Martin here for an interview, and he claims to be closely connected with this masked hero??.
The news continued on, but Dexter stood petrified. Slowly the realization crept inside his head. All of his hopes and desires ? all of his dreams, could come true. He doesn?t need the bureau, or a psyche ward. All he needs is a little dust from the Sandman. An impossible smile stretched on his face, an unholy apparition of insanity. He stumbled to the cabinet by his bed, held his pills and took a handful of them down his throat. Tonight he could sleep for an hour, maybe two. Tonight will be the last of these nights, he was sure of it. He finally found a way out.
?Sweet Dreams, Dexter, Sweet Dreams?.
