Strange Boy

It normally took Clinton Bell around ten minutes to walk from his home on Shafston Rd. to the bakery on Watts St. This day, however, was different. He woke up in his usual sluggish, hungover state of mind and shuffled out to the kitchen, just like everyday. He flicked the switch of his kettle and fumbled around the pantry for some instant coffee, just like everyday. Realizing he was fresh out, Clinton turned his attention to the fridge hoping to find some ice coffee his girlfriend might have left him. She was obsessed with that stuff; he pictured her drinking it with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other. Her face was always pale and slightly smudged with makeup.

“You really outta exercise a bit more Clint, get some blood pumping in the veins. Don’t wanna end up fat do you?” She’d say with a subtle grin.

The irony of her saying that to him created a little smile on Clinton’s unshaven face. The smile soon faded when he opened the fridge to find an empty carton of Coffee Break staring at him.
Pig. He thought. She bought that yesterday and must have drunk the whole damn thing last night. He slammed the fridge shut and sighed at the thought of walking to the bakery in his dazed and blurry state. He soon concluded that this would be the only option in order to get his much needed caffeine hit, but assured himself to give Kathy a stern talking to about the sharing policy in his apartment. It was, after all, something she rarely did. Very rarely.

The thought of how selfish she was stuck in the mind of Clinton as he wriggled into some old jeans and slipped on his faded converse shoes. It wasn’t just the coffee issue of course, there many incidents where Kathy was a little self centered; there was the rent and electricity bills for starters, not to mention the endless expenses for the car, as well as all the food costs. Yes, there was many issues of selfishness displayed by Kathy, she even stole cigarettes from Clinton’s Marlboro packet, as if she wanted to piss him off just a little more.

“Dirty pig.” He said, louder than expected. In fact, he didn’t expect to say it at all, and he certainly didn’t expect the strange feeling of relief when he said it.
“Dirty thieving pig” he repeated, softer this time but in a more sinister tone of voice. The same feeling of relief washed over him, a feeling he had not experience in a while, but could sure get used to.

Dirty Thieving Pig were the three words repeating in the mind of Clinton Bell as he walked out the door, and he just couldn’t stop smiling.

The chilly autumn breeze rattled the agapanthus trees lining Shafston Rd creating unusual sounds. Otherwise, the street was as still as stone, quiet enough to hear a pin drop. A man’s scuffing feet soon broke the eerie silence; he was walking briskly like on a mission. Clinton Bell was searching his jean pockets for cigarettes. He found the two day old packet and eagley opened its flip top, relieving four half crushed Marlboros.

I had 12 yesterday, he thought bitterly. The thieving pig strikes again.
He chuckled softly as he lit his smoke and continued his stroll towards Watts St
As he walked, Clinton couldn’t help but notice the peculiar colour of the overcast sky.

The colour was off. It was impossible to explain, yet he stood still and stared in space for at least 5 minutes, marveling with his jaw hanging open and the saliva in his mouth turning dry. Surely it had been the same as any other overcast day, but he had never really noticed it.
Suddenly, as if a strike of lightning crashed through his head, an image of Kathy’s make up smudged face appeared in his mind, clear as day. The tone of her face was similar to the sick colours of the sky. The thought made Clinton feel uncomfortable and slightly ill, so he proceeded with the walk, yet the image stayed in his brain. He tried to clear his mind by breathing in through his nose very slowly, a technique his mother taught him when he was younger.


"People get them selves fired up for no good reason Clinton, and when people get fired up they act in ways that might get them in all sorts of troubles she would say.
If I find myself in one of these situations, I breathe in and out of my nose real slow...”
The thought of his mother and the breathing method combined calmed Clinton for a little while, yet the dull expression of Kathy’s face remained as if it were set in cement.

His pace increased slowly without him noticing.
The image was like poison to him, an infection he couldn’t recover from, yet he didn’t know why. Sure, their relationship had its downside, but didn’t all? They had been together for almost 12 months now and were seen by some as “a match made in heaven,” even though Clinton never quite understood that term. He loved her, but lately for a reason that only God knew, he had slowly become aware of the dents in her personality. Being so damn self centered was an obvious one. Giving him crap about his slightly protruding stomach was another, not to mention his “insatiable consumption of alcohol.”


Yet who was she to tell him, a 22 year old man, how to live his life? Who was she to parade around his apartment with smudged make up, smoking his cigarettes, wearing his old Cure t-shirt and saying “get off your ass and do something?”
Who was she?
That was the question that Clinton Bell had found impossible to answer over the past few weeks, the very question that stayed in his mind like an infection.
By the time the cigarette had been smoked to its filter, he realized he had walked straight past Watts St and was heading towards the outskirts of the suburb.
The wind continued to howl gently through the agapanthus, making sounds that made him feel alienated and uncomfortable.
Screw this, I’m not thinking straight. I need to rest, to clear my mind, he assured himself, staring at the pale sky. I need to get home, get out of this weather.
The only sounds that interrupted the bland silence on Watt’s street that morning was the gentle whisper of the breeze, and a man’s quick scuffing feet.


An English teacher at Wade State High School once said to Clinton that the world is just a place for God and the devil to play tricks on eachother. He never fully understood the statement, believing it was just another weak cliché used by teachers to instill fear of the so called “real world” into students, yet this quote did apply to him this day he thought as he yanked open the door of his musty smelling apartment. The heavens decided to open up on his disturbed stroll home, leaving him saturated with icy cold rainwater head to toe.
After locking the door (a practice he rarely did) he thought about showering and getting into something more dry, to avoid a cold or flu. This is something Kathy would have ordered to do.
"Just screw it" he said, surprising himself. This phrase was new to him, but he liked it all the same. It was careless and lazy, yet straight to the point. It somewhat represented his current state of mind.
"Just.Screw.It! That will be my attitude from now on."
But isn’t that your attitude already? Hasn’t that been your attitude for the past 22 years of your life? A voice whispered from within, in a tone similar to Kathy's.
Such a sloth, such a slow witted sloth you are.
“Shut up, witch.” He croaked, and suddenly became aware that he was talking to no one but himself, a thought that made him smile awkwardly as he lay down on the sofa.
“Just screw it.” He repeated again as if for safe keeping, and closed his eyes.


The dream that Clinton sunk into left him both frightened and disturbed when he rose to consciousness some hours later. He was standing in the middle of his apartment bed room wearing his Cure shirt. The room was soaked in a yellow fluorescent light and empty except for some paintings on the wall, but something was not quite right about the scenario. It was the room’s angles. The angles were slightly tilted. He wasn’t sure if this was possible, yet his eyes were fixed on it as if he was in a confused daze.
That’s not real. He thought and shut his eyes tight. When he opened them, all the paintings pinned on the wall were upside down and the door remained tilted, this time to the left. There was something else thought, there were three small words printed next to the door knob. Clinton walked slowly towards to the door, feeling like he was walking underwater. When he reached the wooden door, the words had expanded and seemed they were printed in a red substance.
The words read
HERE LIES DOOM.
Clinton had to move his head to the side a fraction to read them because they had turned upside down. The air in the room had a thick electricity smell to it which reminded of him of the time his train set had broken down when he was about seven years old.

The room he was in just seemed so wrong for reasons unbeknown to him; the dull yellow light illuminating the room, the strange upside down paintings that he had never seen before, and that smell that he couldn’t quite put his finger on but was so strong he could almost taste it.
Get out get out get out get the fuck out get out get out get out get out repeated in his mind as he turned the knob and forced the door open, despite the words that warned him not to.

What did lie before him was indeed a type of doom, in the form of his recently passed mother, Diane Bell, a sight that almost caused a premature heart attack.
She was standing no more than 5 feet away, with red lip stick smothered all over her upper lip and chin, as well as black eye shadow covering her eyes and cheek bone in a clown like fashion. Her normally clean blonde hair looked like it had been washed with oil and dirt, and tangled down over her shoulders. The most disturbing factor of Diane (Clinton thought after he had awoken) was the smile she had. It was wide and enthusiastic, like some one who just found a hundred dollar bill in an old pair of pants, but all of her teeth had been filed down to sharp fangs. The smile soon turned into a soft chuckle, and then she was laughing hysterically, trying to catch her breath to talk.

She was drunk again. He could tell by her eyes. They always went bloodshot and had a glassy shine to them after she polished off a bottle or two of cheap red wine.
Such a waste she was saying, in a voice that sounded like she was gargling fluid, perhaps her own saliva.

"Life on the wrong end Clinton? No surprise there excuse my rudeness. Didn’t I always say that you were on a one way street? Oh and it shows!" She was pointing to his stomach with her long arthritis infected fingers; her red nails were chipped and broken.
"It sure does SHOW! Don’t think I’m surprised though, they always called you the strange one, the strange boy who lived in loopy land all day long, and don’t think I wouldn’t agree!" And with that she threw her head back reviling her cannibal teeth and screamed laughter


Clinton was paralyzed with fear. He could only stand and stare at this haggard monster that was his mother. He tried to speak, to tell her how he hated her, always on his case about every little thing in his life, his jobs, his education, his sexuality, but his words came out all jumbled, back to front and upside down. Furthermore she was now approaching him, stumbling slowly forward as she did so many times in his early to mid teen years. She was lunging at his terror frozen body, slapping and scratching his face with her frail hands, puncturing his face and neck in many places. Shielding himself from the oncoming blows was his only option, yet as he was doing this he caught a one second glimpse of his mother’s face which had changed into the face of his girlfriend. She wore the same expression that had flooded his mind when he was fixed on the pale green sky.
An unfamiliar feeling of vicious rage immediately filled Clinton, and for the first time in many years he felt powerful; intoxicated with raw hatred.

"Pig!" He screamed. "WORTHLESS UNGRATEFUL WHORE!" He was spitting out the words faster than his brain could process them, yelling at the top of his lungs while blocking the attacks.
"You will NEVER talk to me like that again, because you’re dead! You’re – "

“Fucking dead!” He cried as he sat up on the couch. Rain was pelting down his roof, a sound he would normally find comforting, yet this day he was far from comfortable, far from any emotion he had felt in a long time.
Far from sanity some might say, yet it felt so right. It was as if all the questions about his troubled life had been summed up and packed in a nice little box in the form of a nightmare.

“Women.” A single word crept out. “Silly, egotistical women with a little too much to say.” He was aware he was talking to himself again, in a tone that he hardly recognized as his own, but he really didn’t care. When he slowly sat up and collected his thoughts, he reminisced about all the girls/women in his life. There was his mother, the first and foremost fuck up, beating and torturing (sometimes sexually when she was drunk) in his pre- teens. There was his first girlfriend of 14 that said that he was to “frigid” to be in a relationship with and let all the other girls and boys know about it. There was his little sister who always seemed to get all the attention in the family, thanks to the high school grading system. Then, of course, there was Kathy, his self centered, egotistical and some how always broke excuse for a girlfriend.

When he really thought about it, the only happy times in his life were spent with his under the mat boyfriend he had in senior high, which came to an abrupt end when his body was found floating down the Wade Creek with both hands and feet missing.
His father was later charged with first degree murder yet let off due to lack of concrete evidence and a good lawyer.
This particular relationship, along with most of Clinton’s uneventful existence, had been kept silent to avoid public ridicule as well as further beatings from his mother.
However this day, for no good explanation, seemed to have unlocked the cage kept in the darker regions of his mind, giving him relief that he just craved for.

A sound that seemed to be coming from another universe distracted Clinton’s thought for a while. When focused in on reality, he made it out to be someone banging on the front door, and a voice, a voice that yet again released that intoxicating rage that he had experienced in the nightmare. It was his girlfriend as if on que, wanting to come in because it was wet outside and the door was locked. The sound was so distant, it was there though, faint but still audible.
Clinton sat for a while listening, then slowly mustered the strength to stand up and walk towards the door with a vacant yet slightly amused expression.



Katherine Walker, or Kathy as she was known as by familiar faces, backed out slowly from the car park at Jackson’s Café at about 12:35pm. Fellow colleagues of the café would later tell the court that she normally finished at 5:00pm but was let off early because she was feeling “a little ill.”
There was an element of truth in that statement, she was feeling a little ill due to her one and a bit bottles of red wine the previous night, yet that wasn’t the reason she left work early. In fact she was worried about her boyfriend of 12 months. Something had been wrong over the past few weeks or so with their relationship, one which she hoped would eventuate into marriage. Normally she was great with articulating problems she thought were affecting each other’s lives, but this one she couldn’t quite get a handle on.
For example, Clinton had been mumbling and groaning in his sleep a lot lately, and on one occasion even shouted what sounded to be her name, waking her up in a cold sweat.
There was a history of mental illness in his family; his mother suffered a strange case of schizophrenia on the closing years of her life, and it appeared that within the last month or so he had seemed confused and easily agitated, which can be symptoms of such a sickness according to her friend who worked as a nurse, who also suggested that she book him into a shrink for a psyche examination.

I’ll take it from her, she thought as she turned left into Watts Street, windscreen wipers fighting off the almost blinding rain It’s time to take Clint to a doctor or shrink or something. He won’t tell me jack shit about his life.
As she pulled into little car shed next to the brick apartment, Kathy had convinced herself that everything would be OK. She didn’t know why or how, it was what her mother would call “An Internal Prediction.” A prediction, unfortunately for her, that could not be further from the truth.







It was a mad dash from the carport to the front door, the rain was icy cold and she had just bought a brand new pair of leather Nike shoes that would surely be ruined by the mud she trampled on.

“Ah, Jesus Christ!” she cried when she reached the door, looking down at the dirt smothered joggers. She grabbed the doorknob desperately and throttled it a few times before realizing it was locked from the inside, and of course, she had forgotten her set of keys.
Lucky day she thought, and resorted to banging on the door with the butt of her fists, trying to be louder than the belting rain.

“Clinton! Clint! It’s me babe, open up will you? It’s fucking freezing out here and my damn shoes are getting ruined...Clinton?” She tried banging her fists harder. No reply.
“Hey! Are you in there?” Still no reply
“Get off your ass and open this -“
The lock clicked a few times and the door opened slowly, reviling a pail unshaven face.

“Sorry. Didn’t hear you, I was asleep.” Clinton croaked. He opened the door fully and stood aside as she ran in without wiping her shoes.

“Well shit me sensless, since when do you lock the door anyway? This street is tame and lame my friend, besides, what would a robber find here? And what are you smiling at?”

“You.”

“Me? Well I would think that was sweet if I wasn’t in such a pissed off mood. My shoes are ruined.” She said as she turned around to head into the bathroom.


My shoes are ruined were the last words to leave Kathy Walker’s mouth before slumping into a dead heap on the floor of Clinton Bell’s apartment. Given the choice she would have probably wanted to say something more inspiring, something that would leave an impression on the world, but naturally no such choice was allowed.
Before opening the door allowing his spouse inside, Clinton had made a slight detour to his room to collect an old Miller axe that was in relative good condition, seeing as it was only used once to rid them of a dead tree that (according to Kathy) made the garden look terrible. When he picked it up he thought of that tree, and how much he liked it. How it was so alone, completely separated from the other trees and plants and created its own beauty. That tree was the only image on his mind as he placed the weapon on the wall next to the door.

Beauty of the beast. He thought as he slammed the sharp end of the axe into the back of Kathy’s skull, creating a piecing THACK sound that was a bit like a stick hitting the top of a wooden table. She uttered a brief scream, more shock than pain, then collapsed face first onto the mud stained carpet. Blood was literally pouring out of her ears and nose as if someone had turned a tap on inside her brain. After her feet and arms stopped drumming the floor and he was completely satisfied that she was indeed dead, he reached into his left pocket and pulled out his cell phone, completely un- phased by the fact that his entire shirt was soaked with blood and brain matter, and punched 0 three times into it’s number pad, pressed the earpiece to his face and waited for a ring tone.






There were many sounds interrupting the silence that blanketed Watts Street that afternoon, other than the rain. Sirens mainly, that of police and ambulances, then there was the screams of the relatives of Katherine Walker, the curses and obscenities being hurled at him as he walked down the drive way of his apartment with a vacant expression on his face.
The rain didn’t seem to wash any of the blood that had now dried on his face and shirt, giving the public a good view of just what he had done, adding more terror to the already distraught family of the victim.

Senior Constable Pat Garner never expected such a horrific situation when he intercepted a 304 (Forced Entry) at such a quiet town. Upon arrival of the address, he certainly did not expect a man covered in what appeared to be blood standing in the front yard with both hands placed on head and a dazed look as if in a trance.

Police instincts soon kicked in and he called for back up double quick, with a possible 201 homicide on his hands.
Certainly the last thing Pat Garner expected on this day (which was meant to be his day off) was finding a young women’s naked and seemingly violated corpse lying in the bath tub with both hands and feet sawed off in a less than careful manner. By this time the back up he requested had arrived and the suspect was handcuffed and questioned, without complying.

“Holy Jesus.” He whispered. On the 5 years on the force this was by the far the most gruesome sight he had ever encountered. Most gruesome by far.
“Holy Jesus. Holy Jesus. Holy Jesus.” He said it about ten, fifteen, maybe twenty times before giving way to his weak stomach and vomiting in the bathroom sink, spilling some on the tiles.
Something Kathy would surely not approved of.


Weeks passed. Most days Clinton Bell’s face and his now infamous brick apartment had been slapped on the front page of the National Newspaper. The media had dubbed him “The Saw Man” after the tools he used to remove some of his victim’s limbs.
He sat in his cell with a fixed gaze outside the bared window, offering only a feeble grunt or silence to the lawyer and doctors who attempted to interact. At one particular conference, a psychologist who was finishing notes on Clinton’s mental assessment vaguely heard the soft mumble.

“Such a waste.” He whispered to the air. “Such a waste.”
He then returned his stare towards the window.
It was overcast.