Further Confessions Of A Full Moon

Katharine sat on a park bench reading her newspaper by moonlight in the desolate city park. Relatively quiet, the city rustled out of its reverie only for short outbursts of car horns or the shouting of vagrants. The front page headline read; “HAIL MARY KILLER STILL AT LARGE”. The killer hadn’t struck in over a week, but the papers needed to keep his story hot to continue the handsome flow of revenue a character of his sort brings. Like any other business, Katharine mused, you built momentum in the productive seasons and tried your best to stay consistent the rest of the time. Perhaps that was the real cause for the city’s taciturn behavior. Fear had likely sent the timid scurrying to their homes well before dark, leaving Katharine alone to bask in the shimmering moonlight.

“A real sicko, eh?”

Katharine casually lowered her paper to spot the man in the blue jeans and sweatshirt that had stealthy approached.

“The Hail Mary Killer I mean...” He said, motioning to the headline. “Makes you wonder about the world we live in... with sickos like him running around...”

Katharine offered what might have been a dim smile and returned to her paper. “Maybe he’s just misunderstood...”

The stranger chuckled. “Maybe... maybe at that...”

Taking a seat next to her, the stranger licked his bottom lip and appeared to ponder his next words.

“Say... you... well... you sure are out late... and being alone and all... with... well... with you know...”

Deciding the man would not be thwarted by the body language of her social rejections, Katharine sighed and folded the paper in her lap, leaning back on the bench. “You mean with a guy running around killing women of approximately my build and age?”

Nervously laughing at her bluntness, he nodded his head. “I mean... there’s a church on this corner, right on the end of this street... considering he kills women in churches...”

“The paper only says they find the bodies at the churches, he could kill them beforehand and leave them there... we don’t know...”

“No... no... he kills them there...” The strangers eyes took on a glassy sheen and a small twitch developed at the corner of his mouth. “He leads them there by gunpoint, and... after explaining why they have to die, he kills them in the church... always... always in the church.”

Katharine crossed her arms and studied her new acquaintance closely. “You speak about it like you knew first hand.”

The stranger looked up at her sheepishly, then back down at his shoes. “My parents... my parents were both very religious... in fact, and I’m being completely honest, my father was a priest...” He looked back up to Katharine to see how she might respond. She only stared back at him with the same bored look of indifference. “Well... priests... they can’t get married you know... or have kids...”

Sensing he needed desperate acknowledgment of this fact, Katherine nodded her head and motioned for him to continue.

“Well...” He went on. “In the end, he couldn’t deny himself love when it found him... he met my mother and...” Placing his palms up, he shook his head. “Oh... but, here’s the kicker... my mother, and again I’m being completely honest, my mother was a nun.”

Katharine decided to offer her support this time, in order to keep the flow of dialogue. “And nuns are also forbidden to marry or have children...”

“Right! Exactly!” He bit his lip for raising his voice. Dropping to a more reasonable tone, he continued. “So... when my mother became pregnant, needless to say they were both excommunicated from the church. We moved to Connecticut, where my father took menial jobs, janitorial work mostly... we barely got by most of the time... I mean... he was born to be a priest... but he fell in love...” His lips tightened and he shook his head. “They... always blamed me... or at least they took it out on me... I know... I know they loved me... but... I mean... I don’t understand the ignorance! Why? Why take away a priest’s right to love a woman? Where did Jesus say the priests had to be celibate? Even the blessed mother was married!”

Katharine watched him calmly, letting him take a few breaths and regain his composure before she responded. “Well, I never understood religion myself... I suppose you’re asking the wrong person...”

The stranger ran a hand over his face and blinked. “I’d... I’d like to show you something...” Standing, he looked down on her, his shadow casting over her form. “Please... come with me... I need to show you...”

“I don’t think I’m interested...”

Nodding, the stranger reached under the waistband of his jeans. “I thought you might say that...” He pulled out a .38 revolver and raised it to her eye level. “I’m afraid I must insist that you come with me... you need to know... I need to show you...”

“Well... if you’re going to put it that way...”

As Katharine began to rise to her feet, a swift motion caught the corner of her eye. From the shadows came a figure from behind the gun wielding stranger. In the next moment, a huge blunt hammer, the kind used to tenderize meat, came swinging down hard and connected with the stranger’s temple. A brief guttural choking sound ensued as he dropped his gun and fell to his knees. From behind a man caught him under his arms before he hit the ground.

“Are you OK?” Asked the second stranger to make her acquaintance tonight.

“Oh, I’m fine...” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Thanks to you... my hero...”

The man frowned curiously at her response. He was on the larger side, with a full beard and thick eyebrows. “Well... follow me... my shop is just across the street, we need to call the police...”

Spreading her arms in a gesture of surrender, she offered what might have been a frustrated smile. “Lead the way...”

As he dragged the man backwards she followed. He took notice of her slender frame and figured her age to be early thirties, though she could have passed for younger. It struck him odd that she was alone in the park in the first place.

“Do you know this man?” He asked.

“Not from Adam...” She said.

“Was he trying to mug you?”

“Actually I think he was trying to take me to the church and kill me...”

He paused and blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

“That’s right... in all likelihood, you just took out the Hail Mary Killer.”

Unsure how to respond, he continued to drag the man backwards towards a small deli on the north end of the block. A sign above the door read; Pagliari’s Deli and Meats Since 1932. Katharine went ahead of him and opened the door as he dragged the serial killer inside, then into the back where he set him in the meat locker and locked the door in place.

“This will hold him until the police arrive... if he lives that is... I’m Ed by the way... I saw you at the park over half an hour ago. I was closing up for the night when I saw him approach you... I figured I’d keep an eye on the situation... good thing I did, looks like.”

Katherine leaned up against one of the glass display counters and barely hid her look of annoyance. “Yeah... good thing...” She traced her finger across the red number dispenser mounted on the counter. “So... you’re a butcher... that explains the meat tenderizer... how’s the veal tonight?”

“Well... I wouldn’t know actually... I’m a vegetarian...”

Coking a brow, Katharine was taken aback for the first time all night. This struck her as far more interesting than the psycho with a church fetish. “You’re a vegetarian butcher?”

“I know... bit of a contradiction.”

“I’ll say... how does that work?”

Ed shrugged. “It was my families business. My father left it to me, his only child... my great grandfather founded it all the way back in-“

“1932"

Ed looked shocked. “That’s right... how...”

“The sign on the door...”

He smiled, closed his eyes and nodded. “Right, right... well anyway, I’m the third generation Pagliari to own the place.”

“Why didn’t you sell the business and move on?”

Ed shrugged. “You know how it goes... you get complacent... this is all I’ve ever known... I dropped out of highschool to work here full time... I couldn’t get much for the place, and even if I did, what would I do then?”

A moment of silence passed between them before Ed spoke. “So you want to tell me why you were sitting alone in the park so late?”

Katharine smiled. As odd as his own story was, she knew nothing would prepare him for hers.

“Well, Ed, I was trying to get myself mugged... or killed... or... well... whatever... I figured the city was ripe, what with the Hail Mary Killer stalking about... and just my luck, I found him... till you had to come save the day with your mighty hammer of justice, like Thor...”

Ed studied her like she was from another planet.

“Don’t worry about it, Ed. If it wasn’t you it would have been someone else... or he would have had a heart attack, or a meteor would have fallen out of the sky and flattened him... trust me... he would have never succeeded in killing me... this much I know...”

“And how is it you can be so sure?”

“Because, Ed... I live a charmed life... and then some...” Katharine shifted her weight and let out a long bitter laugh. When she was through, she wiped her eyes, which had begun to water, and continued. “It all started about six years ago... I was newly married, working in a cozy little fashion boutique on 5th avenue... I even had a cute little Chihuahua... a really swell set up...”

Ed leaned against the opposite side of the counter, listening intently.

“Everything was just about picturesque.... until I began to think about things... things like... well... like just how perfect my life was. I started to recall my childhood. I made it through without ever breaking any bones or having any illness... I don’t think I ever so much as skinned a knee... maybe they shouldn’t have, but these facts began to trouble me a great deal...”

“You wanted to be sick?”

“I... wanted to be normal... everyone I knew had suffered some hardship in their lives at some point... they got sick, they lost their job... I never faced any opposition, no matter what I did... it didn’t seem right somehow... you might think that I should have been grateful for this... but it made me feel strange... alien... like I wasn’t part of the human race somehow... I know, I know... irrational thoughts... but wait there’s more...” Katharine ran her fingers through her long dark hair and recalled her past. “I began to seek out danger... take risks... one time I withdrew our entire life savings and drove to Vegas... my husband was furious when he found out... until I told him that I only managed to triple our nest egg... he didn’t take it so kindly, however, when I wanted to take up skydiving...”

“You skydive?”

“I have... I’ve done everything extreme or dangerous you can imagine... I was even a rodeo clown for a while.” Katharine chuckled. “I pursued every dangerous experience you can pursue that was legal and you didn’t need a degree for... it drove my husband to the edge... the final straw was when he started waking in the middle of the night to find me gone... I’ve been visiting parks at night for some time now...”

“If you’re so bent on suicide, why not just jump off a bridge?”

“You don’t understand... I’m not suicidal...” Katharine shook her head. “You don’t understand... you can’t understand...”

Ed stared at her for a long while, noting her features, her delicate bone structure. He tried to imagine the kind of neurosis that would send a person spiraling down in her direction. Human psychology was fascinating to him, and this woman was by far his most intriguing find.

“I think...” He began. “There is a flow of life... of things and circumstance... you have good people, bad people... and the ones in the middle that get hurt or benefit from either... maybe... sometimes a person falls on an odd note... you know... like they jog the needle and the record skips... and it seems like they aren’t getting their share of bad... but they really just need to fall back in the groove somehow...”

Katharine propped her head up with one hand and regarded the philosophical vegetarian butcher with tired eyes. “Well... that’s an interesting way of seeing things... so tell me, what is going to jog my needle?”

Ed smiled. “Maybe... it takes something like a meat tenderizer to put you back on track...”

Returning the smile, Katharine narrowed her eyes. “So, aside from saving my life, you also restored balance to my universe? Is that it?

“I suppose I wasn’t entirely honest with you...”

“About?”

“Well... it’s true I’m a vegetarian... however... I have to admit, I enjoy my work here...”

“How can that be?”

“You don’t have to eat meat to enjoy working with blood...”

“Then why not just eat the meat? You obviously have no qualms about killing live things...”

“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re saying...”

“No? Enlighten me...”

Before she saw what was coming, Ed had lifted the cleaver above his head, bringing it down into her skull in the same motion. Her eyes remained frozen in a split second state of shock, and her mouth stood agape as she realized the needle had indeed been jogged, and that she had indeed falen into the groove that had evaded her for so very long.

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