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Another Dream. Another Long-distance Call On My Phantom Party Line. No Wonder I Had Steadfastly Refused To Have Dreams For Most Of My Life. So Stupid; Such Pointless, Obvious Symbols. Totally Uncontrollable Anxiety Soup, Hateful, Blatant Nonsense.

-Jeff Lindsay

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Another Dream. Another Long-distance

Jeff Lindsay

...

Another Dream. Another Long-distance Call On My Phantom Party Line. No Wonder I Had Steadfastly Refused To Have Dreams For Most Of My Life. So Stupid; Such Pointless, Obvious Symbols. Totally Uncontrollable Anxiety Soup, Hateful, Blatant Nonsense.

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...being Torn Apart By Far Too Many Loyalties That Could Not Possibly Live Together In The Same Brain.

I Was Good At Being Charming, One Of My Very Few Vanities.

Happily For Me, Ninety-nine Percent Of All Human Life Is Spent Simply Repeating The Same Old Actions, Speaking The Same Tired Clichés, Moving Like A Zombie Through The Same Steps Of The Dance We Plodded Through Yesterday And The Day Before And The Day Before. It Seems Horribly Dull And Pointless-but It Really Makes A Great Deal Of Sense. After All, If You Only Have To Follow The Same Path Every Day, You Don't Need To Think At All. Considering How Good Humans Are At Any Mental Process More Complicated Than Chewing, Isn't That The Best For Everybody?

It Revealed A Cruelty That Really Made One Wonder If The Universe Was Such A Good Idea After All.

There Is A Simple, Logical Explanation,' I Said To Myself. And Because You Never Know Who Else Is Listening, I Added, 'and There Is Nothing Under The Bed.'" --dexter

It's That Moon Again, Slung So Fat And Low In The Tropical Night, Calling Out Across A Curdled Sky And Into The Quivering Ears Of That Dear Old Voice In The Shadows, The Dark Passenger, Nestled Snug In The Backseat Of The Dodge K-car Of Dexter's Hypothetical Soul. That Rascal Moon, That Loudmouthed Leering Lucifer, Calling Down Across The Empty Sky To The Dark Hearts Of The Night Monsters Below, Calling Them Away To Their Joyful Playgrounds.

I Don't Know If You Have Noticed This, But It Is Quite Possible For Two Human Beings To Have A Conversation In Which One Or Both Parties Involved Has Absolutely No Idea What They're Talking About.

This Was Just No Fun. I Wanted My Brain Back.

They Like To Tell Us That It Is Important To Speak The Truth, But It Has Been My Experience That Real Happiness Lies In Having People Tell You What You Want To Believe, Usually Not The Same Thing At All, And If You Have To Stub Your Toe On The Truth Later, So Be It.

The Key To A Happy Life Is To Have Accomplishments To Be Proud Of And Purpose To Look Forward To, And At The Moment I Had Both. How Wonderful It Was To Be Me.

Why Bother Inflicting Enormous Pain On Yourself When Sooner Or Later Life Would Certainly Get Around To Doing It For You?

I Rose To My Knees, Mouth Dry And Heart Pounding, And Paused To Finger A Rip In My Beautiful Dacron Bowling Shirt. I Pushed My Fingertip Through The Hole And Wiggled It At Myself. Hello, Dexter, Where Are You Going? Hello, Mr. Finger. I Don't Know, But I'm Almost There. I Hear My Friends Calling.

That's Why I Liked Him, I Think. Another Guy Pretending To Be Human, Just Like Me.

Our Universe Is Ruled By Random Whim, Inhabited By People Who Laugh At Logic.

Perhaps Because I'll Never Be One, Humans Are Interesting To Me.

It Really Is Better To Be Lucky Than To Be Good.

I Really Am Guilty, Of Many Somethings, All Of Them Lethal And Very Enjoyable And Technically Not Quite Legal.

I Mean, Really: What Kind Of Person Could Possibly Dislike Me?

It’s An Odd Term, 'girlfriend,' Particularly For Grown Persons. And In Practice It Provides An Even Odder Concept. Generally Speaking, In Adults It Described A Woman, Not A Girl, Who Was Willing To Provide Sex, Not Friendship. In Fact, From What I Had Observed It Was Quite Possible For One To Actively Dislike One’s Girlfriend, Although Of Course True Hatred Is Reserved For Marriage.

Anybody Can Be Charming If They Don't Mind Faking It, Saying All The Stupid, Obvious, Nauseating Things That A Conscience Keeps Most People From Saying. Happily, I Don't Have A Conscience. I Say Them.

What Do You Want A Clock For?” “to Find Out What Time It Is,” I Said. “i Think That’s The Usual Purpose.

I Looked Around The Store And What I Saw Was Not Very Encouraging. There Were Rows And Rows Of Violent Toys...aisle After Aisle Of Training Devices For Recreational Slaughter. No Wonder Our World Was Such A Mean And Violent Place...if We Teach Children That Killing Is Fun, Can We Really Be Surprised If Now And Then Someone Is Smart Enough To Learn?

Life's Only Obligation, Afterall, Was To Be Interesting.

The Faster It Ran Away From Me. And I Found Myself Reasoning That Perhaps One More Beer Would Unlock The Doors Of Perception.

I Was Never More Alive Than When The Dark Passenger Was Driving.

Saturday Morning Was Their Unrestricted Television Time, And They Usually Took Advantage Of It To Watch A Series Of Cartoon Shows That Would Certainly Have Been Impossible Before The Discovery Of Lsd.

I Am Unlovable...i Have Tried To Involve Myself In Other People, In Relationships, And Even - In My Sillier Moments - In Love. But It Doesn't Work. Something In Me Is Broken Or Missing And Sooner Or Later The Other Person Catches Me Acting Or One Of Those Nights Comes Along.

I Nodded With Genuine Synthetic Sympathy.

Nothing In Life Is Fair. Fair Is A Dirty Word And I'll Thank You Not To Use That Language Around Me.

And As Always Seems To Happen When I Have Reached The Point Where I Am Ready To Take Decisive Action, Everything Began To Happen At Once.

Was Insanity Really Easier To Accept Than Unconsciousness?

...my Conscience Has The Same Hard Reality As A Unicorn.

A Man Can Take Only So Much. Even A Phony Man Like Me.

...she Opened The Door Very Slowly And Carefully, Half Hiding Behind It, As If Badly Frightened Of What Might Be Waiting For Her On The Other Side. And Considering That It Was Me Waiting, This Showed Rare Common Sense.

It's Terrible To Have To Depend On Someone Else.

What To Wear? I Could Think Of No Guidelines On What We Were Wearing This Season To A Party Forced On You To Celebrate An Unwanted Engagement That Might Turn Into A Violent Confrontation With A Vengeful Maniac. Clearly Brown Shoes Were Out, But Beyond That Nothing Really Seemed De Rigueur.

I Stood Up. It Was All Too Much. I Could Not Even Meet My Own Expectations, And To Be Asked To Deal With All Theirs Too Was Suffocating.

And Then More Quiet, Silence So Deep It Almost Drowned Out The Roar Of The Night Music That Pounded Away In My Secret Self.

Money To Me Had Always Been Merely Something The Sheep Used To Show Each Other How Wonderful They Were.

Could This Be The Apocalypse ?

Feeling - What Authentic Human Fun!

It Happens; Incompetence Is Rewarded More Often Than Not.

It Was Clear To Me That It Wouldn't Matter What I Did - They Would Never Truly Appreciate Me Or Learn What I Had To Offer. They Were Far Beyond Fickle - They Were Insensible, Like Kittens,predatory Little Things, Distracted By The First Bit Of String Or Shiny Bauble That Rolled Across The Floor, And Nothing I Could Ever Say Or Do Could Possibly Make Any Kind Of Dent In Their Willful Ignorance.

When Faced With People Who Have Very Limited Conversational Skills And No Apparent Desire To Cultivate Any It's Always Easier To Simply Go Along.

As I've Said, Freedom Is Really An Illusion. Anytime We Think We Have A Real Choice, It Just Means We Haven't Seen The Shotgun Aimed At Our Navel.

Nothing Else Loves Me, Or Ever Will. Not Even - Especially - Me. I Know What I Am And That Is Not A Thing To Love.

You Can’t Use Logic On Human Behavior.

But What Could I Do? Be Stupid For A While? I Wasn't Sure I Knew How, Even After So Many Years Of Careful Observation.

A Man Who Discovers His Pants Are On Fire Tends To Have Very Little Time To Worry About Somebody Else's Box Of Matches

Really Now: If You Can't Get Me My Newspaper On Time, How Can You Expect Me To Refrain From Killing People?

Since I Am Not Actually A Real Human Being, My Emotional Responses Are Generally Limited To What I Have Learned To Fake.

And I Was Having Too Much Fun To Stop Now.

…a Cheerful Black Shadow Reared Up Behind Him As He Spoke, Thundering A Happy Challenge To My Dark Passenger, Which Slid Forward And Bellowed Back.

I Thought About The Nice Clothes That I Always Wore. Well Of Course I Did. I Took Pride In Being The Best Dressed Monster In Dade County.

I Enjoyed Watching Good-looking Idiots Looking At Each Other. A Great Spectator Sport.

First Things First Has Always Been My Motto, Mostly Because It Makes Absolutely No Sense - After All, If First Things Were Second Or Third, They Wouldn't Be First Things, Would They? Still, Cliches Exist To Comfort The Feeble Minded, Not To Provide Any Actual Meaning.

Been There Done That, Bought The T-shirt" Chapter 2

Dying Makes Everyone Weaker, Subject To Painful Insight, And Not Always Insight Into Any Kind Of Special Truth - It's Just The Approaching End That Makes People Want To Believe They Are Seeing Something In The Line Of A Great Revelation.

I Often Find Myself In Situations Where It Seems To Me Like Everyone Else Has Read The Instruction Book

I Was Filled With Dread At The Thought My Mind Had Skipped Town And Left Me Behind To Pay The Rent." --dexter

Weren't We All Crazy In Our Sleep? What Was Sleep, After All, But The Process By Which We Dumped Our Insanity Into A Dark Subconscious Pit And Came Out On The Other Side Ready To Eat Cereal Instead Of Our Neighbor's Children?

In Its Own Way The Kiss Had Been An Act Of Murder.

And As We Should All Know By Now, Anytime You Predict Failure You Have An Excellent Chance Of Being Right.

I'm Quite Sure More People Fake An Awful Lot Of Everyday Human Contact. I Just Fake All Of It." --dexter

I Did Not Like This Feeling Of Having Feelings.

Another Dream. Another Long-distance Call On My Phantom Party Line. No Wonder I Had Steadfastly Refused To Have Dreams For Most Of My Life. So Stupid; Such Pointless, Obvious Symbols. Totally Uncontrollable Anxiety Soup, Hateful, Blatant Nonsense.

I Don't Do My Job To Catch The Bad Guys. Why Would I Want To Do That? No, I Do My Job To Make Order Out Of Chaos.

No Big Deal. We All Have Blood In Us, The Trick Is Keeping It Inside.

We Can't Always Do What We Think We Have To Do. So When There's Nothing Else You Can Do, You Wait... No Matter What... Pressure... You Might Feel.

Of Course It Was A Terrible Thing, And The World Would Be A Much Better Place Without Someone In It Who Could Do That, But Did That Mean We Had To Miss Lunch?

Because I Am An Inhuman Monster, I Tend To Be Logical.

You're Driving Me Normal!

Whatever Made Me The Way I Am Left Me Hollow, Empty Inside, Unable To Feel. It Doesn't Seem Like A Big Deal. I'm Quite Sure Most People Fake An Awful Lot Of Everyday Human Contact. I Just Fake It All. I Fake It Very Well, And The Feelings Are Never There.

And What Did You Do Last Night, Dexter? Oh, I Played With My Dolls While A Friend Chopped Up My Sister.

I'm A Very Neat Monster.

And So As Much As I Can, I Care About Her, Dear Deborah. It's Probably Not Love, But I Would Rather She Were Happy.

Or Was He Saying, "hi! Wanna Play?" And I Did. Of Course I Did.

Of Course, Having Information To Use Is One Thing. Knowing What It Means And How To Use It Is A Different Story.

Me, Feeling. What A Concept.

I Had Become A Perfect Fake Human, Saying The Stupid And Pointless Things That Humans Say To Each Other All Day Long.

It’s Like, Everything Really Is Two Ways, The Way We All Pretend It Is And The Way It Really Is

But Of Course, There's No Rest For The Wicked, Which I Certainly Am; As I Said, No Rest For The Wicked.

Now I Know What It Is Like To Feel Like A Total Idiot.

Rectory Always Sounded To Me Like A Place Where You Would Find A Proctologist.

Detective, I Don't Know Where The Boyfriend Is, Really," I Said. And It Was True, Considering Tide, Current, And The Habits Of Marine Scavengers. -dexter

And Here I Always Thought Morality Was Useless.

I Let It Ring. I Wanted To Breathe For A Few Minutes, And I Could Think Of Nothing That Couldn't Wait. Besides, I Had Paid Almost $50 For An Answering Machine. Let It Earn Its Keep.

It Was Such An Unexpected And Genuine Smile That If I Only Had A Soul I'm Sure I Would Have Felt Quite Guilty.

A Reasonable Being Might Think That He And I Could Find Some Common Ground; Have A Cup Of Coffee And Compare Our Passengers, Exchange Trade Talk And Chitchat About Dismemberment Techniques. But No: Doakes Wanted Me Dead. And I Found It Difficult To Share His Point Of View.

I Know Family Comes First, But Shouldn't That Mean After Breakfast?

I Think That's Nice, And If I Could Have Feelings At All I Would Have Them For Deb.

What A Terrible Thing Life Can Be.

Terrible Things

She Really Did Like Me, The Idiot.

The Whole Point Of Wearing A Disguise Was To Be Seen Wearing Her.

And Once Again I Found Myself Wondering, As I Drifted Off To Stunned And Unbelieving Sleep:how Do These Terrible Things Always Happen To Me?

In That Tremendous Flash Of Freedom, On My Way To Do The Thing For The First Time, Sanctioned By Almighty Harry, I Receded, Faded Back Into The Scenery Of My Own Dark Self, Whole The Other Me Crouched And Growled. I Would Do It At Last, Do What I Had Been Created To Do. And I Did.

I Sighed; As Comforting As It May Be To Some Of Us, Sarcasm, Like Youth, Is Wasted On The Young.

I Think People Understand Things Different When They Get Older. It’s Not A Question Of Getting Soft, Or Seeing Things In The Gray Areas Instead Of Black And White. I Really Believe I’m Just Understanding Things Different. Better.

Black And White

I Waved To Everybody. Some Of Them Even Waved Back. They Knew Me, Had Seen Me Go By Before, Always Cheerful, A Big Hello For Everybody. He Was Such A Nice Man. Very Friendly. I Can’t Believe He Did Those Horrible Things . . .

I Am Not Shy About Admitting My Modest Talents. For Example, I Am Happy To Admit That I Am Better Than Average At Clever Remarks, And I Also Have A Flair For Getting People To Like Me. But To Be Perfectly Fair To Myself, I Am Ever-ready To Confess My Shortcomings, Too, And A Quick Round Of Soul-searching Forced Me To Admit That I Had Never Been Any Good At All At Breathing Water. As I Hung There From The Seat Belt, Dazed And Watching The Water Pour In And Swirl Around My Head, This Began To Seem Like A Very Large Character Flaw.

Mutilated Corpses With A Chance Of Afternoon Showers. I Got Dressed And Went To Work.

But As I Have Noticed On More Than One Occaision, Life Itself Is Unfair, And There Is No Complaint Department, So We Might As Well Accept Things The Way They Happen, Clean Up The Mess, And Move On.

For My Part, My Interest In Paris Had Faded Away Completely Long Ago When I Learned That It Was In France.

I Had Killed Our Careful Relationship By Driving My Tongue Through Its Heart And Pushing It Off A Cliff.

Killing Makes Me Feel Good.

Have You Noticed How Difficult It Is Just To Get Along In The World? If You're No Good At All In Your Job, People Treat You Badly And Eventually You Will Be Unemployed. And If You're A Little Better Than Competent, Everyone Expects Miracles From You, Every Single Time. Like Most Of Life, It's A No-win Situation. And If You Dare To Mention It, No Matter How Creatively You Phrase Your Complaints, You Are Shunned As A Whiner.

Life Teaches Us That Human Thought Almost Never Walks Hand In Hand With Logic, And It Is Usually Counterproductive To Raise The Point.

After A Long Moment I Closed The Freezer Door. I Wanted To Lie Down And Press My Cheek Against The Cool Linoleum. Instead I Reached Out With My Little Finger And Flipped The Barbie's Head. It Went Thack Thack Against The Door. I Flipped It Again. Thack Thack. Whee. I Had A New Hobby.

For The First Time I Could Remember, I Felt Weak, Woozy And Stupid— Like A Human-being. Like A Very Small And Helpless Human-being.

It's Always Me, Isn't It? I'm Not Really A Very Nice Person, But For Some Reason It's Always Me That They Come To With Their Problems.

It Took Me A Moment. I Blinked, And Suddenly It Swam Into Focus And I Had To Frown Very Hard To Keep Myself From Giggling Out Loud Like The Schoolgirl Deb Had Accused Me Of Being. Because He Had Arranged The Arms And Legs In Letters, And The Letters Spelled Out A Single Small Word: Boo. The Three Torsos Were Carefully Arranged Below The Boo In A Quarter-circle, Making A Cute Little Halloween Smile. What A Scamp.

The Students We Saw Were All Bright, Attractive, And Polite, And The Teachers All Seemed To Be Smart And Dedicated, And I Began To Appreciate The Benefits Of A Private School Education. If Only I'd Had The Opportunity To Attend A Place Like This, Who Knows What I Might Have Become? Perhaps Instead Of A Mere Blood-spatter Analyst Who Slunk Away At Night To Kill Without Conscience, I Could Have Become A Doctor, Or A Physicist, Or Even A Senator Who Slunk Away At Night To Kill Without Conscience. It Was Terribly Sad To Think Of All My Wasted Potential.

The Mind Picks Some Very Bad Times To Take A Walk Doesn't It?

Getting Yelled At By A Furious Woman Should Be Treated As A Semiformal Occasion.

It Was Always Hard Work To Push Through A Crowed Of Reporters With The Scent Of Blood In Their Nostrils. You Might Not Think So, Since On Camera They Appear To Be Brain-damaged Wimps With Severe Eating Disorders. But Put Them At A Police Barricade And A Miraculous Thing Happens...the Strength Comes From Some Mysterious Place-and Somehow, When There Is Gore On The Ground, These Anorexic Creatures Can Push Their Way Through Anything. Without Mussing Their Hair, Too.

It Was Almost Enough To Make Me Feel Emotion.

Stop The Nurse Like The Monkey.

In My Lifelong Study Of Human Beings, I Have Found That No Matter How Hard They Might Try, They Have Found No Way Yet To Prevent The Arrival Of Monday Morning. And They Do Try, Of Course, But Monday Always Comes, And All The Drones Have To Scuttle Back To Their Dreary Workaday Lives Of Meaningless Toil And Suffering.

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