The Night Crew

of his bed. His father took it out every once in a while, to look at it, hold it, aim it at the TV, dry-fire it. Then he’d go into the bedroom, reload it and hide it.
    In the sixth grade, two-face dreamed of killing his parents with the .45. The dream had become part of his daily reality, the inner face pleading with the outer. The outer face prevailed, with logic: if he killed his parents, they’d lock him in a room somewhere, and that would be all for him. Even the inner face recognized the unacceptability of that outcome.
    Still, the power of the killing mood was so strong that he took the shells out of the .45 and threw them down a sewer. Not because he didn’t want to kill them; but because neither face wanted to go to jail.
    But he would kill them, sooner or later; that was inevitable. He’d build an elaborate alibi—building the mechanisms of the alibi was one of his favorite fantasies—and then he’d do it. He’d kill his father outright. He thought about a shotgun, aiming it at the old man’s chest, pulling the trigger. He’d do his mother with a knife. Very slowly . . .
    He got a hard-on thinking about it. Life with his parents turned him, twisted him. He knew too much from the very start, and the girls sensed it. They shied away from him. And when the hormones hit, everything got worse: he had the fire inside, but no outlet.
    And with adolescence, the inner face grew stronger, to dominate the outer, although the outer continued to shield his real nature. And the inner face needed to be fed.
    For years, the inner face was content with cruelties to animals and smaller children.
    In eighth grade, he’d killed a cat he found crossing their back yard, beat it to death with a dowel rod. The first blow broke the cat’s back, and a dozen more killed it. He buried it along their back fence line, carefully shoveling dirt over the body, smoothing the spot, even transplanting a chunk of sod to conceal the fresh dirt.
    Nobody even suspected him: and in the next week, a halfdozen cardboard signs were nailed to phone poles, asking for help finding a red-black-gray tabby named Jimbo.
    A small thrill; which the inner face contemplated, patiently, turning it over and over.
    The next time he killed a cat, he killed it only after a protracted hunt. He had to know where it came from: so when he killed it, he could carry it up to the neighbor’s porch, ring a doorbell, and with a real tear in his eye, say, ‘‘A car hit your cat.’’
    The neighbor lady had broken down in tears; her daughter had been distraught, and the outer face had cried with them, real agony. So much so, that the neighbor lady walked him home, to thank his parents for his concern.
    In the eleventh grade, he took a major step, when the inner face noticed that Mrs. Garner was never without her coffee.
    Mrs. Garner was thirty, a dark-haired, almost-pretty young science teacher, with long, slender legs. He was drawn to her from the start; a week into class, he’d stopped at the front of the room, and the outer face had ventured an awkward pleasantry.
    Mrs. Garner had frozen him, had said, ‘‘Go to your chair, please.’’ Two or three of the girls in the class had exchanged quick, knowing glances, smirking, at the snub.
    As quickly as that—snap—he hated the woman.
    And noticed that she carried the coffee cup with her during chemistry class, and would, from time to time, duck into the teacher’s work space at the back of the room to freshen the cup.
    The inner face considered that for a time: that Mrs. Garner never seemed to wash the cup after she started using it, but simply filled and refilled it. He got to class very early one day, while Mrs. Garner was in the teachers’ lounge for her hourly smoke, and tipped a small dose of chlordane into the cup.
    Mrs. Garner never noticed when she drank it: but a half hour later, she suddenly declared herself to be ill, and on the way to the door, collapsed in convulsions. Two-face was a hero: he took charge, ran to the principal’s office, got an ambulance on the way. Ran back, knelt by Mrs. Garner as her convulsions nearly pulled her apart.
    She was sprawled on her back, her dress hiked up her legs; from two-face’s perspective, kneeling next to her, he could see far up her legs to the squared-off juncture, and a few random dark hairs outside her white cotton underpants.
    He was ferociously aroused; and for years afterward, he pictured himself kneeling next to Mrs. Garner’s body. He