The Killer Awoke Before Dawn. He Put His Panties On.

The killer awoke before dawn. He put his panties on. His eyeliner was made perfect, his bra adjusted for leering effect. The miniskirt squeezed on and the pumps' straps firmly buckled. He stared into the makeup mirror dressed to kill. The house dark save for this one lone light.

Seventeen years ago he met The Girl. Drawn from his innermost fantasies she came to life, sending him into a tailspin of reeling desire and head-over-heels love. She was a girly girl, feminine and fine in every way, driving him helplessly out of control. For her he would do anything - she was everything perfect.

High heels clomping on the wood floor he felt his erection at maximum hardness - an erection he knew he could never again share but feel only in hidden moments like these. The Girl's softness gone with the wind, only a time traveler's hope remained. Moments of feeling rode side by side with the aching pain of emptiness, of reaching out to what once was but finding nothing. To feel life was to also know exactly what he was missing.

For a few special months the dream was his. But always in the back of his mind a nagging voice, a fatal error looming in his path. The more he ignored the voice the louder it got. Having tasted paradise how could he ever go back to the world of mere mortals? How to go from life in the clouds back to face the hell of earth? No, never, never! No price too high to keep this dream alive.

In the living room gloom he sank into the same easy chair that knew her memory all those years ago. Someone should break in the door and catch him ethereally trapped by her, he contemplated in pounding silence. The sweats started anew, first the back of his neck fevered and wet. The fire poured down from his neck to his entire body, engulfed in a burning lake. Whenever he closed his eyes, never did this fail to happen in the nighttime bloodbath, his bed a soaked monument in the morn.

The tipping point finally arrived, the voice no longer to be denied. He could not sustain her happiness; he dare not come clean. Unable to move forward he knew he would lose her, her vast feminine charms cut off from him to be given to one more worthy. The mere thought of it burned like coals on his forehead, blinding him with rage that even he did not believe in. Cowered and afraid to move into the light, imprisoned in a darkness she must share with him to stay together, he did the unthinkable.

He stared out the window of his upscale home in his upscale neighborhood littered with upscale cars that hid so many upscale sins. He imagined himself walking the street in open ridicule, coming clean at last. Just thinking of it made him harder. See me as I really am, not the person I pretend to be at the office or who politely greets you in public. Many times after work, he immediately stripped off the suffocating suit and slipped into the escape of panty hose and her tiara. But he never left his house dressed like her, he had nowhere to go.

[Life in the daylight was a surreal nightmare of repression. Esteemed at his workplace, he interviewed an applicant, feigning interest as his mind exploded begging him to explain about The Girl, his hands involuntarily clenching into fists under the table. Michelle, the cute new girl from accounting, passed him in the hallway on the way back to his office. That night he dreamt she caught him masturbating nude behind his desk.]

He fantasized Michelle found out about him and made him pay

The killer was ready to confess, to throw himself on the mercy of the court even if the court had no mercy - he would understand. But his lawyer told him not to give up, the prosecutor had no firm evidence. "Give up?" he retorted. "I already gave up when I killed her." But the killer allowed himself to be convinced he still had a future and could walk free on the streets pretending nothing had happened. What could anyone say after his acquittal? Who would know for sure?

His was a house built on lies. His image rehabbed over the years though his soul remained sinking in hell. His lawyer was quite proud of her victory over the D.A. who had wrongly convicted a previous client. Now she had her revenge. But for the killer, he was sentenced for life, never to tell his tale. She told him a guilty plea would be his doom but how clear to see on this fresh spring morning that was his last chance for freedom, he'd never have near that strength again.

The Girl's mother screamed in fury at the verdict. She knew but she could not prove. Unable to let go, seething anger aged her before her time, wrongly making vindication the purpose of her life. The killer welcomed her fury, calling him out for what he was. She became his sole companion in the journey he faced, two souls unable to let go, unable to forgive, sharing the same hell. The mother would avenge her daughter but in heaven her daughter prayed only she'd forgive. Then the killer would truly be alone in the world.

The killer remained frozen as the light dawned on his window pane. Newborn dew glistened in the hope of eternal life. Young lovers parted in secret excited amour. An old man cursed the wind and sky. A bored garbage truck made its way monotonously down the lane. The façade of manicured lawns made whole the deception of contracted matrimony. Miles away the leader of the nation checked off a kill list of who was to die that day. On the other side the world, drugged child soldiers were forced into mine fields to clear the way. Billions toiled in living death as enemies of their dreams.

The killers awoke before dawn, faces in a cage, looking for a way out.