# Father's footsteps.



## Ian8777 (Aug 23, 2012)

“If I could feel any emotion I’d be so proud of you right now son” says Dad as he parks up at the entrance to ‘Hitchcock’s school of psychopathic excellence’. I step outside the car and shudder as a thick coat of humidity envelops me. I pop my head back through the window into the haven of air conditioning. Dad turns off the ignition and fixes me with his soulless eyes.

“I went to this college, your grandfather went to this college, we expect great things from you Charles” he says flashing me one of his false smiles that have been the ice breaker for many an unsuspecting murder victim.

“I won’t let you down sir” I assure him, hoping my anxiety is not showing on the frosty exterior Dad has instilled on me. He looks at his watch then taps the face a couple of times.

“Ah shoot, I gotta go son, Got an eleven o clock strangling with a hooker from Queens.”

Another fake smile and he starts the ignition and pulls away leaving a cloud of oily blue smoke behind. I wave goodbye and as soon as the car disappears onto First Avenue I close my eyes and allow the tension in my stomach to sweep through my entire body. My legs begin to mutiny against me. I breathe deeply, trying to regain my composure.

“You can do this Charles, you want to be a serial killer, this is what YOU want!’ Of course it’s not what I want but ever since I can remember Dad has been grooming me to follow him into the family trade. There has been a serial killer in the Van Buren family since the first Dutch settlers arrived in the sixteen hundreds. I can’t be the one who breaks that chain, I just can’t. I stare up at the wrought iron words that arch over the entrance gate — ‘Dignum ducens ad mortem’ — ‘bringing death to the deserving.’ Dad made me memorise those words before I could even count to ten. He may be an emotionless psychopath but I think it would break Dad’s heart if he knew I didn’t want to be a killer.

I take a deep breath and step through the entrance gates into the bustling courtyard where students huddle around in groups. The college looms above me with its imposing castle turrets and stained glass windows of historical serial killers. All the first year students are ushered inside through the main entrance and I end up in a busy corridor with students bumping into each other like vessels in an artery. We are led to a huge auditorium for a welcome and administration talk with the Principal, Professor Wolf. I met the Professor briefly on the college open day. I wanted to go alone but Dad being Dad wouldn’t have any of it. He was so embarrassing that day. He kept talking over the professor and telling stories about his time at the college.

‘Hey Charles, look, look, look, see those bushes, that’s where Freddy Titmuss and Corey Mcalister used to skin cats at break time.’ Or, ‘Hey Charles that’s where I cut Jimmy Woodell’s hand off with a blunt coping saw.’ While Professor Wolf was explaining about the first year curriculum in front of us and several other families Dad decides to stand behind a life size statue of John Wayne Gacy and do his ‘hilarious’ impression of the infamous child killer.

‘I’m a funny clown, I’m a funny clown, you wanna come to a party?’ I’ve never had the urge to kill but I swear if someone had handed me a hatchet I would have buried it so far into Dad’s skull I would have been immortalised into the serial killer hall of fame right there and then.

The auditorium is packed and hums with the chitter chatter of first year psychopaths eager to advance their studies. A kid in front of me is brandishing a commando knife while explaining to the pretty girl next to him the procedure of ‘stab, twist, kill.’ Everywhere I look I see faces who want to be here — faces of people who have dreamed all their lives of becoming mindless killing machines. Not me though. I knew from an early age I wasn’t cut out for killing. While the other kids would be out decapitating squirrels or setting fire to puppies, I’d be locked away in my bedroom writing stories or making up imaginary friends to play with. I don’t fit in with this crowd. I’m an outsider looking through the window at everyone else who are having the time of their lives. And because of my alienation, I hate them. If I had my way, this school would be burnt down tomorrow. Preferably with everyone still inside it.

Professor Wolf waddles out from behind his lectern. He is English, mid-fifties, bald and overweight. He wears round spectacles and has high curving eyebrows that make him look continually surprised. He stands centre stage and holds a few moments of silence before speaking.

“So what makes you want to become a serial killer” he asks regally while pointing to a Chinese exchange student. The student stands up. 

“Umm I have no how you say ummmm empaffy” he says. ‘I very cold man, when I see marry couple I very jealous, must kill, make me feel good”. The student looks pleased with his answer. Professor Wolf arches one of his already over arched eyebrows. He seems unimpressed and walks across the stage.

“And you boy?” He says pointing directly at me. I feel my cheeks burning as a few hundred pairs of eyes bore into me.

‘Well mmm, I suppose I want to be a serial killer because of ummmm my Father.’ I say in a half whisper.

“Your Father…. I see” says the professor with one arm folded across his body while the other hand strokes his fat chin.

“Who else in this room thinks they should be a serial killer because of what their father thinks?” he asks sarcastically. The room is silent and I sink into my seat as they all judge me. They smell a fake — a serial killer fraud who is out of his depth. And they’re right. Hell I haven’t even committed my first murder yet.

“Your first time should be special son” Dad always tells me. “Get to know them first, it will mean so much more when it finally happens.’ Professor Wolf glares at me from the stage.

“Serial killing is a calling AND not a vehicle to please your Father” he says making sweeping gestures with his arms.‘Maybe you should think hard about your motivations young man.’ I sink as far as I can in to my seat. The Professor returns back to his lectern and starts droning on about college rules or something. Damn my father, damn serial killing and damn this college. Hell I bet Professor Wolf picked on me deliberately to get his own back for Dad’s behaviour during the open day. I hate this, I hate my life. I hate waking up everyday knowing that I’m not doing what I should be.

Ah screw it! And in a sudden act of compulsion I stand up and squeeze along the line of seats past several students. I run down the stairs and out of the double doors that lead to the corridor. The corridor is quiet, eerie even. I can’t help but feel it’s been lighted and laid out in such a way but to induce fear, or maybe I’m just paranoid. Either way I have to get out of here so I race down the hallway and out of the doors into the courtyard. The hot midday air cuts into my lungs and I struggle for a moment to breathe. I hear the clatter of footsteps coming from inside the building which I presume to be college security looking for me. Well there’s no way I’m going back in there. Not today, not ever. Right now, there’s only one place I want to be so I sprint across the courtyard and out of the entrance gates.

Central Park is breathtaking at this time of year — a real explosion on the senses. Everywhere I turn I feel stimulation. Sunrays sparkle on the boating lake like tiny sunlight fairies dancing from one spot to another. A young couple glide across the surface of the water in a rowing boat. He rows while she sits at the front facing him. She’s got long black hair and she’s wearing huge sunglasses that make her look like a forties movie star who has traded the showbiz lifestyle for a weekend of precious anonymity. A single cloud glides over the park with its shadow trailing obediently over gentle dips and rises. I breathe in a deep lungful of warm air that’s perfumed with flowers, cut grass and fresh ground coffee coming from the little café at the shore of the lake. From behind me I hear music coming from where the old Jewish guys play chess. The ambling jazz floats across the gentle slopes. It’s the perfect soundtrack for this glorious day.

My hide is far enough away from the general public so they don’t smell the hash I am smoking. It’s more of a tool than a pleasure really. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy it, but for me it’s more about the way it opens me up and changes how I see the world around me. Take people for instance. When I smoke weed I can really feel people, from just looking at them I know the kind of person they are and how they react with other people and what they bring to the world. I stare at a group of several people who are all in their mid-twenties. A young woman is throwing a Frisbee to a dog. She is slender and beautiful with bobbed auburn hair and a friendly face. I bet her name is Summer or something like that. She probably does voluntary work on weekends at a soup kitchen. Yeah Summer, I like Summer. She’s definitely a Summer. She’s really into spirituality and practices yoga and meditation most days. She has a boyfriend called Russ and they take long hikes, chatting to each other about everything and anything. She’ll say something funny about going to the doctors and he’ll laugh, which in turn will make her laugh and then they’ll have another private joke that will cause them to laugh at a friend’s dinner party when someone mentions a visit they took to see a doctor. People will ask ‘hey what’s so funny?’ They’ll try and explain and will end it with ‘I guess you had to be there.’ Secretly all their friends question their own relationships as none of them come close to what Summer and Russ have. She’s got a perfect life. It’s not fair that she is so happy. People like her suck up all the good things in life leaving nothing except pain for me and everyone else. Look at her playing games and laughing. Why does she not know my pain? I hate her. I want her to suffer as much as me. I’m going to take away her perfection and turn her into the embodiment of the misery that I call my life.

I feel the heat of anger welling in my stomach. The familiar urge is coursing through my body, being pumped through my veins by the innate desire that controls me and every action I am about to take. I lunge forward unable to control myself anymore and with frenzied hands I pick up my sketchpad and pen and start hitting the paper with long aggressive strokes. My senses are heightened, adrenaline oozes from every pore. I’m alive! She is mine to do with as I please. I laugh, softly at first, a chuckle, and then more until I am a giggling maniac with spit on my chin and staring eyes that bulge like ping pong balls. I thrust at the paper with my pen and really attack the page. I slash at her face with a red pen and gouge at her eyes. I sever her arms and legs. Oh happy little Summer, not so happy now are you? Look what I’ve done to you you happy little bitch! After several minutes I feel the usual rush coming from my groin. Ripples of pleasure turn into waves of delight followed by a tsunami of gut wrenching ecstacy.

‘Oh God yes, yes, yes.’ As I lay on the warm ground, breathless and spent I feel a surge of happiness wash over me. A small bird pops down from its branch and bobs around by my feet.

‘Hello Charles’ it says, ‘what ya doin?’

‘Oh hey there, I um, well I’m um, just relaxing.’

‘Relaxing, hmmm, you think you have time for relaxing Charles, when there’s other things to be getting on with?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like killing, cold as ice murder, triple homicides and torture that’s what you should be doing Charles.’ The little bird shakes its head in disgust and jumps back onto a higher branch before flying away.

‘Your ancestors would be so ashamed of you Charles’ says the bird as it flutters away. Suddenly I hear a branch cracking behind me which snaps me out of my conversation with the bird. I panic and jump to my feet, fumbling to pull my trousers back up. I turn to face whoever it is and am greeted by the sight of Dad with a snapped twig in his hands. Professor Wolf must have contacted him and told him I had run off.

‘Dad, How, um how did you……’

‘Find you’ he says coldly. ‘Son, I’ve been stalking people all over this city for thirty years, you think I don’t know where my son goes when he runs off?’ Damn, he knows about this place. He knows what I do here in the bushes. Oh shit, I bet he’s been here before watching me.

‘Professor Wolf called me, said you’d run out of college.’ I hang my head and stare at the floor. There’s no sense in denying it.

‘He also told me you only wanted to be a serial killer because of me, is that true?’

‘Well, yeah, kind of, I guess.’ Dad takes out a packet of cigarettes and lights one. He draws hard and exhales a long plume of smoke that lingers like a spectre. He moves closer into the hide until he is standing right next to me. I don’t look him in the eye but I feel his gaze boring into me.

‘You don’t sound too convinced about it to me son’ he says. What can I say? My whole life has been leading up to the moment when I join him in the family trade. He’s dreamed about the pair of us being the most notorious killers since that English couple, Fred and Rose west who killed their kids and buried them in the garden.

‘So you’ve know about me, and what I do here?’ I say, changing the subject.

‘Yeah, and who you do it with’ he says knowingly. ‘I guess I just thought it was a phase you were going through.’

‘It’s not a phase Dad, this is who I am.’ Dad sits down on the ground. He picks up a stick and starts raking at the earth with it. He says nothing for a few moments and seems lost in his own thoughts. After a moment of silence he asks to see my drawings.

‘I’ve watched you over the years and always wondered what your drawings were like.’ I show Dad my sketchpad and he thumbs through it, making approving noises whenever he sees one that takes his fancy.

‘I like this one’ he says pointing to a picture I did of a tramp on Lexington Avenue. The tramp had hit me for some change so I said I would pay him five bucks if he posed while I drew him. He agreed but I think he was a bit shocked when I asked him to pose naked and pretend to be wide eyed and dead. I don’t know if Dad really likes my drawings or is pretending to like them. At this point, either way is good. Dad leafs through the book and finds the picture I have just done of Summer.

‘This is ok, not very accurate though.’

‘Not accurate? What you talking about Pop?’

‘Well son the blood coming from her neck is oozing’ he says.

‘Believe me, when you cut off a person’s head the blood don’t ooze it bursts out like oil that’s just been struck.’ I squat next to him on the floor. Pop lights another cigarette. I snatch one from his packet and pop it into my mouth.

‘Jesus, you smoke as well, Goddamn it, I don’t even know my own kid these days.’ Pop lights his smoke then reluctantly gives me a light.

‘I’d love to paint you Dad’ I tell him. ‘You know, while you’re working.’

‘Really? You’d like that?’

‘Oh yeah Pop, and you know what, there’s a huge market out there for murder paintings.’

‘No kidding’ Dad and I finish our smokes then leave the hide and walk back to his car across the park. On the way he points out several places he has committed murders. He tells me that during the seventies the Park was the place to be seen.

‘All the big names used to come here’ he said. ‘But then it became too popular and it turned into a bit of a cliché.’ I can see that Pop is just filling air with his talking. He stops me just before we reach the car.

‘What is it Pop?’

‘Look son, I know I haven’t been the best father, I ain’t always been there’ I grab Dad by the arm and pull him in closer.

‘It’s ok Pop, you were busy I understand that’

‘It’s hard for me son. I’m an unfeeling psychopath with no emotional attachments to anything’ Dad’s voice begins to tremble.

‘I know pop I know its ok’

‘But even though I don’t feel any love towards you I’ve always tried to do what I thought was the best for you.’

‘Which I why I want you to know that whatever you do, I will support you ok son.’ I’m speechless. Pop and I embrace and for the first time in my life I feel really connected to him. Sure I know he don’t feel the same, but I don’t care. He’s not capable of love that’s just the way he is. It’s not his fault. He was just born with faulty wiring. We both get in the car and Dad takes us home. It’s been a long day and I’m beat.

Since that day in the park my life has changed dramatically. I have quit college and started my own online serial killer merchandise wholesale company. We sell your average run of the mill merchandise like T-shirts, baseball caps, posters, duvet sets, badges and calendars. You name it we stock it! We’ve even got our own name and slogan – ‘The merchant of death — our prices will slay you!’ We also sell my paintings of Dad at work which are causing quite a stir in the serial killer community. I recently sold one on EBAY for over three hundred dollars. The other evening I did a beautiful watercolour as he went to work on a victim with a set of steak knives. He was a perfect model and allowed me to really get into the mind of a psychopath as he carries out his primal desires.

Dad has converted his torture chamber in the cellar into a swanky office space. We have a small staff of three working for us. We did have four but Dad decapitated Janice one morning for no apparent reason. I caught him sponging blood off the photocopier and when I confronted him he told me he had a paper cut which had got out of hand. It was only later when I discovered Janice’s severed head in the recycling bin that he admitted the truth. That really annoyed me. I hate being lied to and besides, it’s really hard to come by good workers like Janice. She was a real pro who had transformed our filing system and her lattes were to die for. Anyway I just smiled and said nothing about it. I’m big on work place harmony and the last thing I needed was a situation that would make people feel uncomfortable. Besides, Dad and I have been getting on so well lately I didn’t want to rock the boat. We spend more time together now and despite his complete lack of human emotion I really feel our new found relationship is stirring something up inside him. Like the other night we watched a documentary about Ted Bundy and at the end when Bundy gets executed I swear I could see a welling of tears in Dad’s eyes. Of course he denied it and left the house in a real stink only to return a few hours later, happy and charming as if nothing had been said earlier. But that’s just Dad. One minute he’s down the next he’s over the moon. 

The decision to tell him I am not a serial killer has been the most liberating experience of my life. I can’t tell you it’s been easy and I can’t tell you that Dad has come to terms with it completely but it was definitely the right thing to do. I’m free to be whoever I want to be, no more lying no more masks to wear. I am me, Charles Van Buren – Artist, entrepreneur and proud son of one of New York’s greatest serial killers. John Wayne Gacy once said ‘clowns can get away with murder.’ It would seem they’re not the only ones.

The end.


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## Tigerbunny (Sep 6, 2012)

“If I could feel any emotion I’d be so proud of you right now son” ----- _priceless_.


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## Krzyh (Sep 6, 2012)

I enjoy the quick shift from the humor of Charles attending a school for professional serial killers to the tension of him telling his father that he doesn't want to be part of the family trade then right back to the humor. I personally couldn't help but smile while reading this piece just because of how farce it was.


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## Nemesis (Sep 6, 2012)

I loved this piece, it made me laugh. Good job =)


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## Geri (Sep 27, 2012)

Hey! I enjoyed this dark humour piece!  Do you watch 'Dexter' by any chance? This reminds me of his story! Anyway, there were a few bits that need a small bit of a re-write, if you don't mind me saying...examples include ...Sure I know he don’t feel the same, but I don’t care...Which I why I want you to know that whatever you do...admittedly these are not huge issues, they just put me 'off' as I read through it!  I also don't think there is a need to keep telling the reader the father has no feelings for his son, we got that from the very first paragraph, I found it a tad annoying that you kept repeating that fact.  Other than these points, I can't fault it ! It was a refreshing read, with great descriptive language... perhaps you could do a little more 'telling' and less 'showing'...In other words don't tell us what the father feels, let us come to that conclusion, your writing is strong enough to do that, I think. I enjoyed this, there is scope for a few chapters of the son at school, you could get a novel out of this, if that is something you would like...but be careful 'Dexter' is very like this story!  Great Job!!!!


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## Ian8777 (Sep 27, 2012)

Geri said:


> Hey! I enjoyed this dark humour piece!  Do you watch 'Dexter' by any chance? This reminds me of his story! Anyway, there were a few bits that need a small bit of a re-write, if you don't mind me saying...examples include ...Sure I know he don’t feel the same, but I don’t care...Which I why I want you to know that whatever you do...admittedly these are not huge issues, they just put me 'off' as I read through it!  I also don't think there is a need to keep telling the reader the father has no feelings for his son, we got that from the very first paragraph, I found it a tad annoying that you kept repeating that fact.  Other than these points, I can't fault it ! It was a refreshing read, with great descriptive language... perhaps you could do a little more 'telling' and less 'showing'...In other words don't tell us what the father feels, let us come to that conclusion, your writing is strong enough to do that, I think. I enjoyed this, there is scope for a few chapters of the son at school, you could get a novel out of this, if that is something you would like...but be careful 'Dexter' is very like this story!  Great Job!!!!




Hey there..thanks for the detailed reply. You make a good point about showing and telling. I never know how to strike a good balance of each. Thanks for picking up on that. Yes I have seen Dexter, But was not thinking of that show when I wrote this. I am a big fan of Woody Allen's short stories. I like how he takes the absurd and somehow makes you believe it. This was my intention with this piece. I am really glad you enjoyed it and will take on board your critique!! All the best....Ian


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## Donthebat (Nov 30, 2012)

Reminds me of a drug-induced nightmare I had after a big op' in St Thomas's hospital. I went to a dark place in my mind and you seem to be describing it.


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## Plasticweld (Mar 17, 2014)

I liked your story it flowed well for me  until the end when it seemed to go into much detail. I think a little left to the imagination would add to it and a certain reality for the reader. This is one piece that the shadows of the characters can be much more frightening than the character shown with to much light. I realize you tried to balance the humor with the shock effect, tough to do.


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