Fancy That

“Fancy, what is wrong with you?”

My earliest recollection of consciousness was the memory of my mother’s hands on my shoulders shaking me violently. I’m not sure what happened. One moment I was playing in the sandbox, filling a pail with sand, when Joey White reached over to my side of the sandbox and took a big shovelful of my sand, dumping it into the bucket.

How dare he cross that imaginary line? Rage forced me to pick up the pail and swung it wildly, hitting Joey in the face. There was a big gash above his right eye and blood poured from the cut. I did not feel bad hurting Joey, merely fascinated with the red ooze that rolled down his forehead into his eye and the feeling of disconnection hearing Joey scream. At that moment, I realized I was not like other people.

I learned quickly to adapt the way I reacted to situations, mimicking what others expected of me. At the age of six, I was diagnosed with a personality disorder. Imagine that, at six years old, people knew I was not quite right in the head.

When Sandy, our little dog, was hit by a car, I watched him becoming a shapeless blob. The essence of life is an amazing thing. Once the body is deprived of it, there is no structure like a balloon that lost its air. We should not fear death.

I managed to control this part of me until a life-changing event occurred while walking home from Paisano’s Pizza as a senior in college. A small-statured man in a mask accosted me.

At first surprised, my mind quickly formed a plan. The robber pushed me up against the front of the building with a knife to my face, telling me to give him my money. Flush with tips that night, I begged for my life because it was expected of me. I pretended to be meek while he mocked my fear.

My knee rammed into his groin, and then I followed through with another kick to his hand. The knife flew, landing on the sidewalk where we both scrambled for it; I was faster.

With the knife in hand, the sound of my guttural roar made the creep run down the street, with me close behind him swinging wildly. I struck out when the man grabbed the lamppost to take a sharp corner, cutting his fingertips off at the first knuckle. I smiled when I heard him scream in agony. He kept running.

I was fascinated with the fingertips he’d left behind on the sidewalk. Licking my lips, tracing the trail of blood running down the lamppost with my finger, I hadn’t felt that kind of power since swinging the bucket at Joey White’s head in the sandbox.

They never did find my attacker because I never reported it. Every time I saw a man with four missing fingertips on his left hand, I imagined he might be the one and longed to finish the job.

The knife was my trophy, a reward for bravery. I always carried it with me. The metal in my hand made me feel safe and the power in its blade, strong.

I left Paisano’s when I got my nursing degree. You’d think that a nurse would have to have empathy for her patients, but that’s not true. Being a psychopath meant I could make quick decisions without any emotional doubts.

I was hired by an assisted living home called the Wright House, responsible for 16 patients during the night shift.

“Good evening,” I said to the woman leaving as I was punching in on my first night. After receiving instructions from the day nurse, I set out medications to dispense to our wards with the help of an aid, Rita.

“Fancy, this is Jerry,” Rita introduced us and answered a call light.

“Hello, Jerry,” he offered his hand. As a rule, I don’t like shaking hands, but when confronted like this, I have no choice. I did notice that Jerry’s left hand was missing four fingertips and he was shorter than me.

My eyes riveted on those fingers, that voice; I knew it was him, the man who’d accosted me over a year ago. Jerry didn’t recognize me; that alone incensed me more than the fact that he’d attacked me in the first place.

Jerry, you are a prick, I thought to myself, convinced that my attacker was an orderly at the Wright House, and I watched him closely.

Jerry’s shift overlapped two shifts: the last half of the day and the first half of my night shift. The more I observed him, the more convinced I was, of his guilt.

There were only the two of us sitting in the break room when I reached into my pocket and placed the knife on the lunch table. Jerry’s face flinched, almost imperceptibly.

“What’s that?” Jerry stared at the knife red-faced.

“You know what it is, Jerry. You used it on me a year ago. It’s how you lost those fingertips.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said defensively, but I knew he did.

“Fancy, Mr. Melman isn’t feeling well,” Rita called on the monitor. Picking up the knife, I walked out of the breakroom, enjoying Jerry’s discomfort. I had him right where I wanted him.

Rushing down to Mr. Melman’s room, we determined he had the flu when he vomited all over me.

“Oh goodness,” Rita told me to go and take a shower. Leaving the room, I saw Jerry checking out for the evening and ran to the back door, disabling the alarm with my key. Propping the door open, I waited for Jerry to come around to the back parking lot, where employees were instructed to park

I pulled Jerry’s knife, using it to slit his throat as he came around the corner of the building. Down he went, clutching his neck, giving me the universal sign for choking.

Poor Jerry; at the rate he was bleeding, he’d be out of blood soon. Eight percent of your body is blood; about ten pints. He didn’t have much left. Racing back to the building, I jumped in the shower, wearing my vomited-on, bloody scrubs. The hot water washed Mr. Melman’s vomit and Jerry’s blood down the drain. Rita came into the shower room.

“Fancy? I have an extra set of scrubs here,” she put them on the towel rack.

“Thanks! I’ll remember to bring an extra set incase this happens again. How is he doing?” I didn’t care about George Melman, but it was expected of me to ask.

Turning off the faucet, I pulled off the wet clothes, tossing them on the floor and grabbing a towel.

“I’ll throw your clothes in the washing machine,” Rita said, taking the wet clothes with her. I scrubbed my shoes. When we met again, I was dressed and back on rounds wearing Rita’s scrubs.

“Your clothes are clean; they’re sitting in the dryer,” Rita told me, popping her head into a resident’s room. I thanked her.

The evening orderly, Ralph, came screaming in from a smoke break. “It’s Jerry. He’s been attacked.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Behind the building; there’s blood everywhere.” I ran outside, going in the wrong direction.

“No, this way.” Ralph prompted me.

Jerry was a dead fish, but I checked his pulse, throwing my top over his neck, and started CPR. Yes, I was a model nurse, and when the cops arrived, no one wanted to assume CPR from me. The officer stopped me.

“Miss, it’s too late.” I turned on the waterworks as the ambulance carted Jerry away. Ralph said he unlocked the back door to go out for a smoke when he found the man. We were all interrogated. Rita told the cop how Mr. Melman vomited on me, and she brought a change of scrubs to me in the shower as Jerry checked out for the evening. I was safe. Still in “shock,” the officer was sympathetic toward me after seeing my heroic effort on to save the victim.

“I just met him tonight. I barely knew him,” I testified.

Leaving when my shift was over, I walked by the tape around the crime scene, circling congealed blood that looked more like brown pudding. The officer escorted me to my car.

“Nice car.” I knew the cop was making small talk. I obliged him.

“Thank you, it was my mother’s car,” I patted the 1966 Nightmist blue convertible Mustang, a thing of beauty.

The euphoria I felt driving away that morning was incredible. I’d found the man who attacked me and dealt with him.

I’d been at the Wright House for several months, daily fighting the urge to seek a new victim. Something happened to me that night of Jerry’s death, an awakening of sorts. Killing him had been easy, and once that feeling took hold of me, I thought of little else.

Working nights prevented me from changing my sleep habits on my days off. I had no friends and was bored one evening, finding myself sitting in a parking lot waiting for a bad person to come along. It wasn’t that I had scruples, but cops don’t look as hard if you kill a slob. No one fit my parameters. I was filled with an aching need, afraid of what I’d become. I left empty-handed and frustrated, telling myself I wouldn’t do this again. Deep down, I knew I’d be back.

Pulling the shades on the daylight that trickled into my bedroom, sleep escaped me. That damn dog. Bark, bark, bark, all morning. I grabbed Jerry’s knife and headed to the back door.

My neighbor Tammy has a fenced yard, where her dog Mojo could run in and out of a doggy door at will. Most days, he was quiet, but today he frayed my last nerve. I called him over. He was nervous and ran in circles far enough from the fence that I couldn’t reach him. Running back inside, I grabbed some lunch meat and coaxed him closer with my “atta boy” voice.

“Mojo, here, boy.” He cocked his head cautiously, coming to the fence. I have never been nice to him, yet he accepted a piece of meat. I wasn’t fast enough to grab him. “Dammit!” I held out another piece, jiggling it, talking in my good buddy voice. Saliva dripped from his jowls. Hunger reaction took over his stranger danger alarm.

Mojo slunk low to the ground crawling toward me. When he reached up to take the summer sausage from my hand, I jerked it up like a fish line. The dog came up with it and I grabbed his neck. Mojo panicked, struggling to get out of my grasp. He was stronger than I thought. The knife came out of my pocket. I was poised when I heard a car door slam. Tammy was home.

I gave Mojo the meat and pushed him away from the fence, dropping down, pulling some weeds along the fence line to make it look like I’d been there for a while.

“Mojo! Here boy,” Tammy slapped her thighs. The dog took off across the yard. “Hi, Fancy!” Tammy called and waved.

Disappointed, I’d come this close to doing it. What would I have done with the carcass?  The most important thing about this experience was realizing that the thrill of the chase didn’t have to be human.

I tried to get some sleep, already deciding to go somewhere tonight to find a victim. Not here in my hometown, but farther away. Watching the evening news, there was a report of a woman and her dog killed while jogging in the park.

Now I had a place, and a crime had already been committed. It would appear as if the park stabber struck again.

I dressed in black, leaving my car a mile from the park in a used car parking lot. Park Place Auto had a few rusty wrecks and no security cameras. No one wants to steal a wreck.

The paths in the park were low lit, casting shadows that spilled over a blacktopped walking surface, sitting back from the trail watching, when a woman and her small dog trotted by. It was the M.O. from the night before. I was thrilled at the thought, but realized she wasn’t a bad person until I heard the dog yelp.

“Cap don’t run in front of me, dammit.” She kicked the dog off the path. Oh, so she wasn’t a good person. I stepped out of the brush, trotting after the woman and her little dog, feeling blood coursing through my veins, my heart pounding in my chest. I could barely breathe from the excitement. My mind was firing off a million thoughts per second when the woman screamed ahead of me. I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Give me your bag, or I kill the dog.” Curious, I crept up, staring through the brush. A punk kid; by his stance and dance, he was a tweaker who needed a fix. The woman pulled her belly bag, wisely throwing it far away from her. The kid let go of the pup, and she ran off with her little dog.

The tweaker scrambled on his knees to get what she’d tossed in the bushes, taking out a money clip, fondling the bills.

Coming up behind him, he never noticed me until Jerry’s knife slashed out of the shadows plunging into his stomach. Exhaling with a grunt, the tweaker fell sideways. I took his knife with his hand and placed it into the hole I’d made, thanking whoever watched over me, I’d killed a bad person tonight, and not the dog kicker.

Breathless, I arrived at my car parked at Park Place, sneaking into the driver’s seat. I watched several squad cars race toward the park. Slowly, I pulled out of the parking lot, heading back to town, anxious to see the news.

I watched the reporter interview the woman I’d seen in the park. Red lights flashed around the somber reporter as they loaded up a dead body in a bag behind her.

“Earlier this evening, Margaret Weims, running in Kennedy Park with her little dog Cap, was attacked by an unidentified young man at knifepoint who demanded her purse. The quick-thinking Miss Weim’s threw her purse into the bushes, forcing her attacker to let her dog go to retrieve the thrown object. When officers arrived, they found the attacker had stabbed himself. The police feel he may have fallen on his knife when he reached for the woman’s purse…” Again, I was safe.

I felt hollow walking into the Wright House. The thrill of killing is an instant high, but not very long lasting.

“Hi, Fancy!” Rita greeted me. She was the closest thing I had to a friend.

“Hi, Rita, how’s it going?” not waiting for her response, I went to the nursing office to get the information from the day nurse.

“Mr. Melman is pretty shaky today; I think it best he is confined to a wheelchair unless we have a safety belt and someone to walk him. Mrs. Albright has a slight fever. I gave her some ibuprofen about an hour ago.” As the day nurse went down the list, I pretended to show interest but couldn’t get beyond Melman being shaky. All I could think about was my first night, dripping in his vomit.

Out on the floor, Mr. Melman was sitting in the television room, sound asleep in his wheelchair.

Is anyone ready to go to their rooms?” Several people responded. Rita and I took them down one at a time, leaving Mr. Melman for last.

A partially eaten birthday cake with a sharp knife sat next to the paper plates caught my eye. I wheeled the sleeping Mr. Melman to the counter, brushing the knife into his lap. Rita poked her head out.

“Whose birthday?” I asked.

“Elaine’s, try the cake. It’s delicious, and I could use your help.”

“Alright, Mr. Melman, let’s get you to bed.” I wheeled him down the hall outside the door, locking his chair, placing the knife in his hand. Mr. Melman sat with his face pointed to the ceiling, softly snoring.

“Don’t move, Mr. Melman.” I said leaving him out there. While helping Rita, we heard the cry.

“Oh my God, it’s Mr. Melman!”

I lost my job at the Wright House, and discovered that having someone cut themselves is not nearly as satisfying as doing the job yourself.

The same officer escorted me out the door at the insistence of management. A few days later, he was at my home knocking. Was he coming onto me? There was another cop standing behind him.

“You are under arrest for the murder, blah blah, Miranda rights blah.”

It turns out Park Place Auto did have a camera. They caught my jaunt to the park the day of the stabbing. The officer who had escorted me to my car the night of Jerry’s stabbing saw that video identifying my car and made the connection with Jerry and Melman.

Prison isn’t so bad: three meals a day, a place to sleep. I delicately carve the bar of soap with a butter knife stolen from the cafeteria. I love arts and crafts; it is my favorite thing to do here.

Rounding out the hole, I shove the sharpened toothbrush into the carved soap which has become a handle. Thinking about the last few days that brought me to this feverish state, I feel the weapon’s power over me again. The homemade knife in my hand, feels like an old friend. I touch the sharp tip, satisfied it will do the trick.

That bitch Angela is getting it tonight. I don’t know why I thought being incarcerated would stand in the way of meeting my needs. I am in prison, a place filled with bad people. Fancy that.