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The Apple Man a dream by Paul Garner's subconscious I was at a party... having a good time, keeping one eye open, looking for love in all the wrong places. I ran into this girl, I don't think I found out her name. She was Belgian. She read me straight away, not just my intentions, but my nature; my needs, wants, desires... weaknesses. At least she thought she did, who's to say really? She looked me right in the eye, pressed up close and kissed me... because I needed it, asking nothing in return. The party carried on around us as we slipped into our own world... we sank out of our chairs, under the tablecloth, under the table... under the party, somewhere distant above us. She slid down my body removing clothing, mine and perhaps hers too, as she went. I thought I was in for a treat but, of course, at the last moment something interrupted us, perhaps just a thought, or a change of direction in the flow. Emerging fully-clothed I ran into a friend, who was also on the look out for action. "Man, you should find yourself a Belgian girl," I advised him. Just then I spotted a familiar face at the bar and my blood turned cold. I recognised him straightaway, his picture had been all over the media for weeks - he had been the prime suspect in a run of serial killings of young women. The bodies had never been found and in the end he had been turned loose because there wasn't enough evidence to convict him. No one else seemed to recognise him, in fact he was engaged in lively conversation with several people at the bar. I approached the bar to get another drink and he spotted me. "What do you think, my friend?" he asked, attempting to involve me in whatever it was they were discussing as if I were an old pal. "I don't know," I replied, excusing myself. He had sandy coloured hair, neither blonde nor grey but somewhere inbetween, bland features, somewhere (anywhere...) between twenty-five and fourty years old, with an analytical glint in the eyes which I associated with some kind of stereotyped Germanic personality type - cold, dry and calculating. I returned to my guy friend. "Hey, do you recognise that bloke at the bar?" I asked, eager to be sure I wasn't mistaken. I pointed him out. "I'm not sure, who is he?" asked my friend. "Isn't he the guy who was supposed to be a serial killer but they had to let him go?" "Oh... yeah, I think you're right!" We both sat down and sipped our drinks, watching the suspect out of the corners of our eyes. He went to the men's room and returned shortly after, munching an apple. Although I'd been watching him I couldn't really be sure he hadn't gone in with the apple in the first place and, slightly odd and unhygeinic as it might be, what of it? I soon had to relieve myself too, and headed off to the bathroom. As I was finishing up at the urinal I noticed that the suspect had gone into a cubicle beside me. I dilly-dallied around hoping to catch him leaving, on the tenuous possibility of learning something more... anything - I knew not what. He came out of the booth munching another apple. "Would you like one?" he asked, waving the apple in his hand. "Uh, no thanks," I replied. There was something strange about the apple... it looked a bit funny but I couldn't say quite how. Unprompted, he offered an explanation. "I like them like this," he said, "I freeze them just as they start to rot. Sweet, cold... very refreshing." 'How bizarre,' I thought. Somehow I got the impression that the source of his apples was in the men's room. Perhaps one of the cubicles backed on to the bar kitchen's walk-in freezer and therefore had a cold wall or something. I didn't think too much more about how utterly strange this was because at that moment he handed me a couple of small squirt bottles, like we'd used in high school chemistry class. They contained a murky red liquid and were labeled something like 'Magnesium Sulphate'. "Could you give me a hand with these," he asked, having already given them to me and indicated the apple in his hand as if to show he didn't have enough limbs to carry everything. Looking at the red liquid in the bottles then back at him I noticed that the inside of his half-eaten apple was stained red near the core. All of a sudden I had a flash of understanding - this was all part of an elaborate and gruesome scheme to dispose of the bodies of his victims. He was perhaps growing, or soaking, rotten apples in the corpses... he had to freeze them to kill the smell of decay (and perhaps the taste)... maybe there was too much blood to get rid of in this manner, so he had taken to disguising it in chemistry bottles. I was scared, but also excited. After all, I now had vital evidence in my hands and if I could just inform the police and detain this vile man somehow they might finally be able to stop him. "My car's just outside," he said, as I dawdled around trying to think of a way to call the police from my cellphone without alerting him to what I was doing. I dawdled as much as I could as we walked back through the bar. My friend had gone, or was nowhere to be seen, which was unfortunate as I'd been hoping to catch his eye and communicate some message to him. The suspect stopped to talk to some people, giving me a little more time, but to no avail as I couldn't see anyone I knew. As we continued out of the bar I took to hissing the name of a girl I thought was there, under my breath, on the chance she might hear me. As we walked out the front door I grew desperate and decided to try and make the phone call whilst disguising who I was calling. I think in the end he may have got away however... Back Copyright © 2002 - Paul Garner.

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