The Tattoo Collector, page 4
“How long have I been coming in here three or four nights a week?”
“What, you don’t know?”
“Humor me.”
The clerk shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve only worked here six months, but all of those.”
“Three times a week? And always at night, before eleven o’clock?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do I drive, or do I walk?”
“Fuck, I don’t know dude. You tell me.”
Donald put exact change down on the counter, took his Diet Mountain Dew, and walked back to his car, wondering what that was all about. The clerk had to have been mistaken. Even if Donald had been here once without remembering, there was no way he could have come in three times a week, much less three times total. Shaking his head, he got in the car, took a big drink from his Diet Mountain Dew, and drove back onto the freeway. He looked at the right shoulder of the road as he passed the Ridgmar Mall, but nothing seemed familiar at all. Once he got past the mall, he punched the home button on his maps app and followed the directions back to the house.
Jean was sitting on the sofa waiting for him. She was dressed, which meant that she expected to be going somewhere soon. Her expression was stern like that of the miniature statue of Athena on the end table next to her. Her grandmother had carved the statue in marble decades ago.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t feel like napping, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Did you see anything good at the bookstore?”
“Oh yeah. Lots and lots of stuff. But you’ll be happy to know that I didn’t buy anything.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“Sure it is.”
She sighed and stood up. Donald sensed trouble, so he tried to think of something to say to diffuse it.
“Do you want to go to Fort Worth to see the Concert in the Gardens fireworks show?” Jean asked before he could get anything out.
“I don’t know. It’s kind of far, and we have to work tomorrow.”
“OK. Are there any fireworks shows closer?”
“Sure. There’s Victory Plaza, but getting in and out of there is such a pain.”
“We could just go to dinner then.”
Donald shrugged. “OK. Is that why you’re dressed? You just have to get out of the house?”
“I got dressed two hours ago, Donald. I thought we would spend the day off together, but instead you disappeared.”
“I’m sorry.” Donald decided that he really didn’t have anything that he needed to be dishonest about, and maybe opening up to her would diffuse her apparent anger at him. “There was something I wanted to look at. A couple of things, actually.”
“And what were those?” When Donald hesitated, she said, “Dream stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Jean sighed. “Baby, you have to quit obsessing about that.” She walked across the room and sat down on the love seat.
Donald followed her and sat next to her. “I can’t help it.”
“I know you. You obsess about things all the time, but you have to make yourself step back and take a deep breath and not let this thing consume you.”
“I don’t obsess about things.”
“Do you remember the two weeks where we listened to nothing but the Les Miserables soundtrack? Or the money you poured into that DVD collection. How many people have copies of every Oscar Best Picture in chronological order on their shelf?”
“It is a cool collection,” Donald said when he couldn’t think of any other comeback. “I don’t know of anyone else who has one.”
“That’s beside the point. What I don’t want to see happen is you obsess over these dreams to the point that you have them more often. You already have so much trouble those nights when you do have one.”
“So why should I go see a therapist about them?” Donald asked. “If you want me to stop thinking about them?”
“I didn’t say don’t think about them. I said stop obsessing about them. You don’t need to go searching for clues in the real world about something that happens in that head of yours.” When Donald started to say something, Jean continued. “I know you have convinced yourself that those girls, those victims in the news, were from your dreams. But they are dreams. They are vague even while you’re in them. And they fade over time. At least they should.”
“I’ve told you many times, these dreams are different. They feel real while I’m in them, and after I wake up. I remember every detail. I know. I have regular dreams too on occasion, and these are nothing like that. It scares me to think that they may not just be dreams. They’re more like visions.” He thought about telling her about the convenience store clerk who thought he knew Donald, but he decided not to. He still didn’t know what to think of that himself.
“That’s why you need to see someone who specialized in this kind of thing. You are going tomorrow, right?”
Donald nodded. Jean had already made the appointment, and it couldn’t hurt to talk with someone with experience.
“Good,” she said. “Now lets get in the car and go see some fireworks.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care. You pick.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE FIFTH OF July was a Tuesday, but it felt more like a Monday. Once the working day ended, Donald drove straight to a small one story office building just a few miles away. A middle-aged woman was sitting in the waiting area of the building lobby reading a book. They gave each other a cursory smile in acknowledgement before she returned to her book. Donald walked past her and found the door for the office of LeeAnn McDonald on which was a sign saying, “In Session, do not disturb. Please wait in building lobby.” Donald turned around and sat in a chair across from the woman, wishing he had brought a book of his own to read. The building directory on the wall near the door listed the tenants and their suite numbers. Besides McDonald counseling, there was an attorney, a massage therapist, and a public relations firm. A massage sounded nice right about then. Donald had never had a professional massage. He walked down the hall to the massage therapist’s suite, but her door was closed. He stood close and listened, wondering if she might also be in a session or just not in the office. There was no music coming from inside that he could hear, so he assumed she was gone. Donald sat back down in the building lobby and surfed the web on his phone until a teenage boy walked out of the door of McDonald Counseling.
“Mom?” the boy said, and the lady with the book got up and disappeared into LeeAnn McDonald’s office.
Donald remained in the waiting area and couldn’t help wondering what issues the kid was having. Could it be dreams? But this LeeAnn McDonald specialized in more than just dream therapy. Maybe the kid was having problems coping in school. Or maybe he was into drugs. Donald shook his head and told himself to stop thinking about the kid. Whatever issues he had were none of his business.
The teenager and the mom came out of the office a moment later, the mom thanking LeeAnn for everything she was doing, and walked out into the hot July sunshine. LeeAnn had an athletic build with shoulder length dirty blonde hair. Her arms, visible because of the yellow sleeveless blouse, were heavily freckled, and he thought those freckles might also cover her face if not for the coat of makeup she wore.
“Mr. White?” she said when she saw him sitting outside her office.
“Yes.” He stood.
“I’m LeeAnn.” She spoke with a southern drawl, not uncommon in Texas. “Do you go by Don or Donnie?”
“The only people who call me Don are at the office. Family all call me Donald.”
“OK, Donald. Come on in. Feel free to call me LeeAnn.”
Donald walked into a cozy office with two framed certificates on the wall, a desk in the corner, a small swivel chair on wheels like a medical doctor might have in an examining room, and a Lazy-Boy recliner. On the wall opposite the two certificates was a framed photograph of a scenic mountain landscape.
“Please have a seat,” LeeAnn said, motioning to the recliner.
They both sat, and LeeAnn clicked through a few screens on the laptop on her desk. “Good, you’ve filled everything out online.”
“That would have been my wife.”
She turned and looked at him. “Does that mean you weren’t exactly on board with coming here?”
Donald shrugged. “I don’t know. I just—I don’t know how you can help me with my problem.”
“Well, why don’t you explain what that is, and we’ll see what kind of help I can offer.”
“It’s kind of unusual.”
LeeAnn nodded. “Don’t worry about that. There are no judgments here. Just tell me what the issues are, and then we’ll try to deal with them.”
Donald took a deep breath and started. “Every few weeks, I have a nightmare. Different nightmares. They are very vivid and very violent. In them, I see myself take a young girl and do things to her. Things that—“ He stopped, not knowing how to verbalize what he saw himself do in these dreams. Donald had never told Jean the details. Since Jean was his only confidant, that meant that he had never told anyone, which also meant that he had never verbalized any of those details. He wasn’t sure he could.
“What things?” LeeAnn said. She had her laptop in her lap and was typing just a few notes but kept most of her attention on Donald.
He didn’t see any way out of just stating it matter of factly, so he said, “I rape them and kill them.”
“In the same way?”
“It generally follows a pattern, yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t think I should go into that.”
“I think you should,” LeeAnn said. “You can’t confront your issue if you don’t acknowledge it.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand what?”
“How..” He trailed off searching for the right word. “Evil. How evil they are.”
LeeAnn sat in silence for a moment, her eyes on Donald. “Try telling me what happens in third person if that helps,” she finally said. “Take yourself out of it. I need to know what you’re experiencing if I’m going to help you.”
Donald took a deep breath. “OK. They are all a little different, of course, but it usually starts with the girl already tied up. Sometimes she’s in the back of the car. Other times, she’s already at the place.”
“The place?”
“Yeah. The place where she’s raped and killed.”
“What is this place like?”
“They’re all different. Different places.”
LeeAnn typed a few more things onto her laptop. “Are there any shared characteristics between these places.”
Donald nodded. “Yeah. They’re all outside. In the woods. Or shrubs around if it’s in a desert.”
“So the locales change?”
“Yeah.”
She looked up at him. “Anything else?”
“No. Like I said, they’re all different.”
LeeAnn took a deep breath. Donald thought it might have been a sigh. He looked at the door of her office, wondering if she’d charge him if he just got up and walked out.
“So what happens at these places?”
“The girl is raped and killed.”
“By you?”
“I thought I was supposed to tell you in third person.”
A smirk appeared on LeeAnn’s face. “You’re right. Sorry. How is that done, exactly?”
“I don’t think you want to hear the details.”
“I probably don’t, but I need to if I’m to help you. And you probably need to tell me. I suppose you haven’t told your wife these details.”
“No.”
LeeAnn typed more on her laptop. “Go ahead.”
“He takes a knife and cuts the clothes off her. The girl usually tries to scream, but there’s always some kind of gag in her mouth, sometimes just a rag tied down with a rope around her head, but with the last couple, I’ve— there’s been an actual ball gag, like in a BDSM store. Once she’s naked, he runs the knife around, the tip nipping her in a few places, bad enough to draw little droplets of blood.”
Donald stopped, waiting for LeeAnn to make more notes, but she just sat and looked at him.
“And then?”
“It gets sexual.”
“How so?”
Donald cleared his throat. “You don’t want to hear that.”
“But I need to hear it.”
“Okay. I enter her. I mean, he enters her. Intercourse, you know.”
LeeAnn nodded.
“Most of them struggle against it, but some of them just lie there with their eyes closed, hoping it will be over soon, I guess. When he comes— You know. Just before, I guess, he sticks the knife in between two ribs and into her heart. It’s like, the blood needs to spurt out of her when I — you know.”
LeeAnn typed a few notes in her laptop and was silent for a few moments. “And you said this isn’t the same recurring dream?”
“No. The girls are different. The places are different. Sometimes different things happen. I hear things that make me stop sometimes.”
“And when you climax in the dream, do you actually climax?”
Donald’s first impulse is to say no, of course not. Because that would be weird and awful. But the fact is that he did find evidence on his sheets the next morning.
“It’s all right if you do,” LeeAnn prompted.
“Not every time,” he finally said, more to save face than anything else.
“I don’t suppose you’re wearing a condom in these dreams?”
“No.”
She typed a few more notes and said, “Tell me about these girls. You said they were different every time. But is there some trait they have in common?”
“They all seem to be Hispanic. Young, black hair, dark skin, brown eyes.”
“Young Latino women. Every time?”
“Yes,” Donald said, nodding.
“You said you have one of these dreams every few weeks?”
“Yes.”
“How many weeks?”
“Sometimes two; sometimes nine or ten.”
“Irregular intervals then.” She typed another note. “You said the victims are all Hispanic. Do they share any other characteristics.”
Donald took a moment to think and slowly shook his head. “No.”
“Hmmm.” LeeAnn typed another note on her laptop. “Why do you think they’re all Latina?”
Donald shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Is your wife Latina?” she asked as she continued to type.
Donald shook his head. “No, she’s of a very white Irish descent.”
“No ex-girlfriends?”
“Nope, none that I can recall.”
LeeAnn seemed to finish typing and looked up at Donald. “When you have one of these dreams, what happens?”
“I already told you what happens.”
“I don’t mean in the dream; I mean in the real world. Do you wake up screaming or in a sweat, or do you go on sleeping?”
“Oh, I wake up. Jean, my wife, she usually gets woken up too. So yeah, I guess I wake up screaming or making some kind of sound.”
“Do you go back to sleep afterwards?”
“Oh no. I’m done sleeping after I have one of those. But like I said, they only happen once every few weeks. So it’s not like I never get any sleep.”
“When was the last time you had one of these dreams?”
Donald sighed. “Just a couple of nights ago, but Jean woke me up before it got really bad. Thank God. We weren’t at home, so maybe she wasn’t sleeping well.”
“Where were you?”
“In our trailer out at Bluebonnet.”
“What’s Bluebonnet?”
Donald gave a short little laugh. He wasn’t used to telling people about his and Jean’s summer weekends. “It’s a nudist resort out near Decatur.”
“Oh really! Wow, that’s interesting. You have a trailer there, you said?”
“Yes.”
LeeAnn sat studying Donald until he began to wonder if she wasn’t trying to picture him without his clothes. “How long have you been going there?” she finally asked.
“This is our first year as full members. We went out a couple of times last year.”
“Whose idea was it to visit the first time? Yours or your wife’s?”
“Mine, but Jean wound up enjoying it as much as I did, if not more.”
“How did you bring it up? It seems rather unusual, going to a nudist resort.”
“It only seems unusual to people who’ve never considered it.”
“Do you think going to such a place contributes to the erotic nature of your dreams?”
Donald shook his head. “It’s the other way around. I had thought that some of the porn I used to watch on the Internet might have had something to do with the dreams, and that made me want to quit watching it. But quitting that porn was not easy when it’s just right there all the time.”
“In my experience, overcoming pornography addiction is one of the most difficult things a person can try to do.”
Donald thought of the kid who had been here before him and wondered if that was one of his problems. “I wanted to try a nudist resort because I thought that if I could somehow demystify the body, desexualize it if you will, that the allure of pornography would go away. So I sought out a venue where that could be done.”
“Interesting. What gave you that idea?”
“A Christian website called MyChainsAreGone.org.”
“A Christian website?” LeeAnn asked as she typed something else onto her laptop. “And did it work? Were you able to stay away from the porn sites?”
“Yeah, it did work, surprisingly enough. I never even have the urge to look at any porn sites anymore. But, of course, the dreams continued.”
“Was the pornography you used to watch violent?”
Donald shook his head. “No, it was pretty much typical sex.”
LeeAnn typed a few more notes before looking back up at Donald.
“A lot of people have dreams about a monster or a boogie man, but it’s very unusual for someone to see themselves as that monster.”
Donald shrugged.
