The Danforth Account
Written By Andrew Wolter
Today, I stepped into the mind of a serial killer.
I learned what drives such a rational human to commit heinous bloodshed before the eyes of society. I am witness to those determined eyes and observe the rush of the kill that permeates them. Perhaps his horrid motives stem from his childhood. Or, perhaps, this is his calling in life. Perhaps.
The inhuman monster had already been waiting in my messy loft when I arrived from the law offices of Laine & Sons. Of course, it was just another day for me, like any day, lost to the slavery of society. I knew he was coming however. For days, I hesitated turning the key to my front door. I waited and knew without the avail of a sixth sense. Common sense brought me into the truth of the matter. The alert came in the form of the top stories on the nine o’clock news and observing the headlines on the front of the Phoenix Daily. There were moments I anticipated his arrival. After all, it was inevitable. This entire account was unavoidable.
The one unexpected thing I didn’t factor into the bloody equation was that Trace was due over for a visit. If I had paid more attention to his words rather than the local news that evening before, I might have warned him.
I glimpse to Trace, my unfortunate, frail, and helpless boyfriend. Trace looks up at me with widening eyes of sapphires turned pale. His chest heaves in anticipating breaths and I can only imagine the horrific feeling of the butterflies trying to tear way through his smooth, porcelain stomach. A white handkerchief that has been crudely stuffed into his mouth, to silence his screams, partially hangs over the voluptuous lips I have kissed on many occasions. In the corner of the murderer’s cotton gag, the monogram “D” is embroidered in gold thread. “D” can stand for “Deadly” or “Dangerous” or maybe even “Deranged.” Hell, all of these adjectives can easily describe such a man.
The Danforth slayer is what the media deems him. To the police, however, he is known as Charles Bruckman: male, Caucasian, twenty-nine years old, seventy-three inches tall, one hundred ninety pounds, and considered armed and very dangerous. Car salesman by day and slasher by night.
His first victim was Elizabeth Danforth. Elizabeth was a weak, aging woman who lived on the farthest reaches of Brown Road out in East Mesa. She resided in an area once thought to have been a safe suburb from the harsh Phoenix city streets. Her throat had been slashed from the nape of her neck all the way around to the other side. It seemed that she had used all of her strength to call 911 before death consumed her. When the officers arrived, they found the telephone cord wrapped tightly around her wrinkled, lacerated neck.
Next, there was Steven Danforth, who was no relation to Elizabeth. In fact, none of the “Danforth’s” had been related in any way. Steven was a young, gay man in his early twenties who lived on Mill Avenue in Tempe. His apartment overlooked the street in which the college city’s contemporaries roamed. Hustlers, vampires, modern punk-rock deviants with false hair all traipsed Mill Avenue in ceremony every night. When the Tempe Sheriff’s Department discovered Steven’s corpse, he had been gutted from abdomen to sternum. A good portion of his viscera had been on the outside of his body, decaying in the atmosphere of air and pollution and creating the odoriferous aroma that alerted a neighboring college student to contact the police.
Within a week and a half of the two murders, and only a few blocks from the last victim’s apartment, Charles Bruckman took Naomi Danforth as his third quarry. Naomi attended Arizona State University as a junior and had apparently just arrived home from a skiing trip in Flagstaff. She had been stabbed thirty-two times about her face, chest, and stomach. It was said that her precious body was such a bloody gore that her family could not even absolutely identify her. She had a closed casket funeral three days later.
I knew Charles Bruckman would come for me eventually. After all, I share the common thread that has linked all his victims into a woven masterpiece of violent carnage. I was born Nicholas Zachary Danforth.
So here I stand with my lovely Trace detained beside me and the Danforth Slayer before the two of us. His resolute gaze attempts to intimidate me and, at the same time, his eyes are welling with tears. They are not tears of emotional pain, however. No, never from that monster. Rather, they are tears of physical damage to the flesh, pained waters of a possible defeat.
My heart jumpstarts, thrusting adrenaline throughout my body and boiling the blood in my veins. Charles does not speak; he only gasps. He gasps for the breath he so much longs for and takes for granted in his life. He has stolen that same breath from his victims. Blood trickles down his sunburned arm.
The apartment is silent save for his gasps, my labored breathing, and Trace’s muffled words. Trace looks up to me, eyes watered over with terror and mind in awesome confusion. Why is Nicholas just standing there? his mind must be deliberating. Why isn’t he releasing the electrical tape that bounds my hands?
The rush, that’s what it is. It’s that awesome rush that I’ve missed throughout my twenty-three years of life. The feeling of one’s heart as it bursts in a drugged rhythm and the power, surely that must be it! To know that a life is so fragile, so brittle, it reminds us of how we can easily attain the status of a god.
I walk toward the Danforth Slayer with no fear. Instead, I approach him with the gloating knowledge that he did not get me. I had gotten him! I grip the rubber handle of the knife, the same knife that had maimed the flesh of three others. Charles’ knife—a shiny blade with a dull point and jagged edges. I plunge it into his back. I stand face to face with him and can smell his fetid breath. I do not back away while he glares at me, wanting the one thing I have taken from him...life.
Extracting the dagger from his back, Charles grunts in agony. No words, for monsters can’t speak, they can only think. Before he has time to consider confessing his horrid sins, I force the knife into his back again. This time, I do it with such force that the sound of the flesh ripping upon penetration is like the rounded plastic blade of a child’s toy shovel digging into the sands of a beach. The bursting feeling in my chest feels virgin and gives me rebirth. And then I repeat the sequence, pulling the knife from his back again and sticking it into his belly, feeling the warmth of fresh blood as it spatters my hand. I observe his dying body and follow his eyes as he drops to the floor. Yes, I look Charles Bruckman, the Danforth Slayer, directly into his calculating eyes. In these moments, when our irises lock like age-old adversaries, he pours all the knowledge of a serial killer he has into me. I know his style; I’ve learned his strengths and I recognize his feeble mistakes.
Trace, my love. I turn to him and pull the wet handkerchief from his mouth.
“Nicholas,” he praises me. “Thank God. Is he dead? Help me get untied.”
My mind thinks deeply. In brisk flashes, I see all the unimportant pieces of my life. I reminisce how I failed high school and dropped out. I see how I had let down my family and got ejected from my childhood home. I think of how I work at a law office as a simple clerk, always the same routine. I watch as my whole life proves nothing but constant failure.
My eyes make their way to Trace and his beautiful Roman features. I will fail him as well, I believe. But, then again, I haven’t yet. I saved his life. And what a great life he has. Perfect job. Commendable education. The face of a model. The best clothes. A luxury car. Perfect, all perfect. Perfect son-of-a-bitch!
“Nicholas, help,” Trace calls to me.
“I am helping you,” I tell him. I hear my own voice as it drops to a more serious note; it is the sonata of the overture, the classical muse of heartache or death. “I have finally found something I cannot fail at.”
“Why aren’t you untying me?” he asks as his eyes jump around the room in panic.
I lunge for Trace, thrusting Charles’ knife…my knife. Trace screams in in horrific tones I’ve never heard a man scream. It’s the type of scream that you wouldn’t expect to hear from a man—high pitched, yet retaining that masculine hoarseness that cuts the treble of the voice, breaking the shriek. I revel in the gust of natural fluids that flood my body, like an addict who bathes in the glory of a chamber filled with heroin before him. Trace is screeching and wailing, flopping left and right like a defenseless fish becoming prey to the Earth air.
I bring the knife high above his trapped body and plummet it downward. I drive the blood-smeared blade into Trace’s stomach so that those butterflies can escape. Removing it, I stab into his perfectly carved chest of muscle that will now live up to the aesthetic metaphor. Slowly and violently, with each thrust of the knife, Trace becomes nothing perfect. He is nothing now that I may fail in the future. He becomes a freak sideshow of torn flesh and strewn gore.
This is my calling in life. And this will be my beginning.
I pick up the handkerchief next to Trace’s soulless body. The white cotton is crimson with Trace’s blood and the monogram “D” stands out in a way it never has before. “D.” It can stand for “Deceptive.” or “Denial.” However, I simply prefer “Danforth.”
Copyright © May 2008 by Andrew Wolter