WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SHY LITTLE DANIEL?

Daniel seemed to start out like any other red-blooded Irish boy growing up in Upstate New York. There was never an inclination of what would later become one of the biggest upsets in our sleepy little town in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. He walked and talked at the right times. He was weaned and potty trained at the right times, too. I always told him that his father died in Desert Storm to save him the humiliation of knowing his father left before he was ever born. His main concern was me. I was his whole life or so I thought, until I started to find the dead creatures around the garden. I just put that off to Tabby our cat leaving me little gifts, as cats will sometimes do. We appeared to have a normal family to whoever would happen to get close enough to make any assumption of any sort for that matter. Daniel never talked about having any friends; I just surmised that was just his shyness.

I want to sit here and beat the living daylights out of myself for not noticing something, some look, or some act of weirdness. However, I could not put my finger on just one occasion or happening it all runs together after something of this nature happens. There were not any warning signs as to what would happen on that fateful day. If I could have just noticed some factor that would have pointed towards doom. I would surely have done something to change our lives.

I came home and as usual Daniel was playing with his one and only friend Edgar, who I must say, did give me the heebie-jeebies. I should have been saying that about my son and not Edgar. They were in the yard playing with the magnifying glass and burning things with it, which I thought all boys did. I did not have a lot of knowledge in this area because I had no brothers and my father was always away on business. He would on occasion pull the wings off flies and legs off bugs and I thought slugs, snails, and puppy dog tails. Boys will be boys. I had no idea what my tour of duty would entail. I caught Daniel watching a horror flick one weekend and on the parts where I was jumping and screeching, he is clapping and laughing while people are being brutalized. You think maybe just a little bit of a misfire might have been going on in that brain somewhere.

The next time I came home and started to get it, per se, I heard an awful mewling coming from the yard and thought maybe poor Tabby got hurt because I had never heard her cry out like that before. I went out back to find Daniel with Tabby in a large garbage bag, she was clawing and hissing and yowling. This did not sound like my little after work pick-me-upper. I screamed and asked him what in God’s name are you doing? He replied, “I’m sorry Mommy I just wanted to take Tabby over to Edgar’s house and I couldn’t figure out how to carry her there”. I let the proverbial cat out of the bag literally; she was shaking and shivering, crying, her eyes were almost pleading with me. I wish I knew what those beautiful green eyes were trying to say that day. Life went on in what, if you could possibly call it, a normal pace for a few uneventful weeks.

Then the first incident that affected our lives and started a roller coaster that will never stop, happened. It was the day I came home and yet again heard the yowling and mewling but with more terror in it this time, I think it had been prolonged now. I came around the back of the house and there was no one to be found I could hear Tabby’s screams, oh Lord where do they have my innocent little Tabby. I am frantic at this point trying to pinpoint the sound and realize after many minutes that they are not in our backyard but in the yard next door where new construction is going on. I have to get out of our back gate go through the front and do the same next door all the while listening for Tabby and yelling for Daniel to please stop whatever he is doing. Telling him it is hurting Tabby, to no avail. Suddenly the cries are weakening and I do not hear the yowls and not a word from my son. I finally get through the back gate of the adjoining property and there is Daniel holding one of those three-ply contractors’ bags with Tabby’s lifeless head lolling around just outside the top of it. Her once little massager of a pink tongue protruding from her mouth and her once beautiful green eyes so full of love and mischief now glazed and lifeless, bulging from her little head that used to rest on my lap to take away my hard days at work. Oh my Lord what shall I do! I scream and he says once again I’m sorry mommy, I reach out to grab him but I do not because I know if I start I might not stop.

I want to hurt him as he has hurt my poor little baby. At this point, he is no longer my son he is some sort of monster in my eyes, how could anyone do anything like this to any other creature especially when it is supposed to be your own pet. It disgusts me to the very core of my being and goes against my every fiber. The authorities are called. I cannot honestly say for sure if I would have been able to call them of my own accord but I was secretly glad that a neighbor also had heard Tabby’s screams and called them before I could even think my way out of doing it. My son was twelve at the time and now that I think back, most boys by this age were thinking about girls and going to the mall to think more about girls or going fishing or school sports or what have you. Not Daniel, no he just wanted to torture poor innocent, defenseless creatures.

This is one of the many reasons; I have decided to revisit some of the old traumatic events. I need to write about some of the new heinous things that my shy little Daniel has done in the past nineteen years since that day. Who could not try to find some kind of rhyme or reason to all of this madness and try to defend themselves as parents to research, where yes some children are built with a rare recessive gene from way back to who knows how far and has nothing to do with upbringing. I have set out to prove that my only child is a sociopath that he should have never been considered for any kind of work release or work among the public, they should have taken a better look at what, not who they were placing out there.

I cannot stress this enough to the book learned psych doctors of whom I do have the utmost respect for but they did not see him as I saw him and have seen him. For instance, when the trial ensued about what he did to Tabby. Was it a mere misjudgment or pure premeditated malice and disregard for another living creature? No thought or feeling for another life, no thought of consequences or anyone else’s feelings of pain he might have caused. This is what I am trying to make known to the authorities or whoever will take notice. This is one person, if that is what we can classify him as, if you are a parent you must know how much it pains me to say that, but it is the truth, which needs to stay away from any other living creatures for the rest of his life. I do not believe that someone of his makeup can be rehabilitated. You do not change the nature of the beast. It is ingrained in it.

Like most predators, they like to toy with their prey before they do whatever they do with it. Most of the ones I am speaking of are in the animal kingdom and they have a natural reason for doing what they are doing not just getting sheer pleasure out of watching something suffer for naught. I digress, before this trial after our poor cat’s death, I still tried to hold onto a shred of hope that my Daniel made a mistake and was truly sorry for what had happened. I did this with my head held high trying to give him the love and support a boy needs from his only parent in a time of duress.

As the trial progressed I started to see my son in a different light, darker more sinister. He was becoming a man not a child right before my eyes not in stature but in demeanor it was a disturbing, threatening type. I would have been afraid to be alone with him and I never thought I would say that about my own son, ever. When they got to the part of the reenactment, I got a glimpse of hope because he honestly looked sad for Tabby. However, after the outcome, it was just sadness that the feeling of glee and power that letting her last bit of life eke out of her was to be had no more.

At the retelling of it at first, there were tears in his eyes. I thought that’s my son, he is truly remorseful for what he’s done and then when I heard him get to the part of the mewling and shrieking and her crying and clawing his voice reaching a crescendo with delight at reliving it and having an audience also. I was sickened by it; I have never been more filled with hate and disgust for a child, let alone my own ever before or after.

I did not think it was possible to have those kinds of feelings for a child but as I said, he was a man by all intents and purposes in my eyes. One hundred years ago or so you were considered a man at that age. He was an unfavorable one at that. I cannot tell you an exact time in his life when these insidious acts began or the heartless things I caught him doing. I was going to end that part of my life, my motherhood, and all, that very day. They sentenced him to an institution for the criminally insane until he was of legal age. At that point, they would determine if he was rehabilitated and fit to live amongst society. I for one, if it were up to me, would ensure that he would have never gotten out of an institution. He will never be fit to live amongst even animals he has already proven that.

I do not care what programs or how many arts and crafts classes were offered and attended, this person will never be fit for anything other than barbed wire and concrete. I tried to walk away the day of his sentencing and not look back but the images would not stay away no matter how far away I moved three thousand miles was not far enough of a distance. I changed my name to get away from the press vultures. I had an unlisted phone and somehow they can still find that out, so I went to only a cell phone and I was very apprehensive of whom I gave that number out to. No matter how hard I try to kill these memories and my memories of my son, God forgive me, because to kill the bad ones I in turn have to kill the good ones also. I do not know how I brought forth a creature like that from my own flesh and blood. How Lord?

The reason I am writing this is the ten year anniversary of when they deemed him fit for society, oh yes they did that. I could not believe it either. The nightmares will not quit because he will not quit. I thought if I could write about it, it might alleviate some of the guilt, pain, shame, and remorse that I carry because he apparently is not capable or just does not choose to have any of these feelings. I cannot live with myself for what has happened and what is happening and I did not do it, yet life just goes on for Daniel. I am the one who has sleepless nights. I say weeks for that matter. He does whatever to whomever and I pay for it with my conscience, what is wrong with this picture.

As always I just went off on a tangent, he was released at the age of twenty-one and of course I was instantly notified by the authorities and I was filled with absolute foreboding. I hit the end button and I know there are a select few who have my cell number so at least I do not have to be concerned about Daniel contacting me, I would truly lose it. I think I would do something so they could institutionalize me and he could be on the outside. I would be safe on the inside because I know nothing good can come from this. This is horrific, it is almost indescribable. I can feel it in my soul.

Part of my spirit died the day I found Daniel with Tabby’s lifeless body and his memories have been whittling away a piece at a time for nineteen years now. He has almost succeeded in killing my spirit completely and when he does, I will finally find peace and be free of the bane of my existence. When a person's spirit dies they actually are not of the living anymore, they have now become one of what I would call an empty shell, eyes that you look into and you see an abyss of pain and anguish instead of life and hope. There is nothing there anymore and that is what you would see were you to look into my once lively eyes. They have now become the windows to a sadists freak show, it just so happens that sadist is my son.

I do not think any FBI profiler would call him your run of the mill profile. He seemed to deviate at every turn. I am avoiding the meat of the matter you might say but you would too if you were walking into a similar level of garish images I am about to attempt to portray for all to see. Misery loves company, and yes, someone needs to warn people as to the evil that was unleashed on the world that day ten years ago.

His first conquest was a pretty, young, intelligent, Asian girl. She went to school during the day and worked nights at a place called the Pizza Palace to help pay her tuition. He frequented there, so this particular night was not unlike others where he would just hang around and sip his soft drink, as he would call it. Ling worked the four to close shift, school until three then get to work by four. It seemed to work for her at least until Daniel appeared. Ling never noticed what time Daniel left, he was just one of those unnoticeable types. He did not have any remarkable characteristics to interest anyone really. He went unnoticed often, this was to his benefit, and he liked it.

Ling got out about twelve fifteen and was waiting for the last bus to come through sometimes it came and sometimes it did not, it was not the greatest of neighborhoods to begin with. She at first noticed a man standing just outside the light of the streetlamp and started to get nervous when she realized it was Daniel, this automatically put her at ease. Essentially, he was harmless, wasn’t he? Oh, if she only knew Lord. He walked over to her and asked if she had a light as he pulled out one of his off brand cigarettes. She proceeded to get her lighter from her purse and as she was retrieving it, he pulled a stun gun from his opposite side and jolted poor Ling with 30,000 volts. She went down like honeymoon pajamas; he caught her before she hit the pavement and had her in the back of his van in seconds flat.

He always parked his “work van” next to the restaurant so he had easy access. Ling was conscious but dazed of course. She could not even think could not quite remember what exactly had just transpired, she just knew something was terribly wrong. When she got her wits about her, he had her fastened with some sort of bailing twine and there was a gag in her mouth. She could not see where they were going because it was not a window van and the two small windows in the back doors had cardboard over them, they looked like signs from the outside.

The walls of the van had all kinds of different instruments that brought all kinds of grim thoughts to mind, hatchets, hacksaws, razor knives, scalpels, carpet knives, meat cleavers, pliers of all shapes and sizes, vices. What she did not know is he had a gym bag full of twine, rope, gags, garrotes, blindfolds, handcuffs. This is all the kind of stuff that nightmares make especially when you are this person's hostage, who possesses these items. She cannot breathe, she feels like the earth has fallen from beneath her feet. The thoughts of what he is going to do to her are going to kill her she thinks in her mind, she almost wishes they would because the thought of what he is going to do with them she cannot endure.

They are finally slowing and he comes to a stop she thinks a slight glimmer of hope since she does know him from work maybe he will release her if she promises not to say anything to anyone and let him be on his way. When he opens the door any hope she had is shattered, he has such a fierce look of malice mixed with childish mischief and gaiety. What kind of creature is this, he undeniably cannot be entirely human. His eyes have a menacing look that does not alarm her as much as there appears to be a dark pool that is glistening and there is something moving beneath that glistening surface. Okay now her fight or flight survival mode is starting to kick in and there is nowhere to run, yet.

When he opens the door to begin whatever deviant torture he has already devised in his mind’s eye, Ling jumps out of the van into an empty lot surrounding an old dumpy grain silo with a few milking stations nearby, a large dilapidated barn and a rundown farmhouse. There were some woods not far from the grain silo and that is where she was going if she ever got farther than ten feet. It was almost as he knew what she was going to do before she did it. Could this freak of nature or whatever he was read her mind, too? He grabbed her and yanked  her head back just enough to expose her jugular and stuck a carpet knife under her chin and told her ever so politely to step towards the barn. It was as if they were having their regular nightly rapport, talking and razzing one another. His tone was not menacing at all, his manner seemingly benevolent.

What kind of hallucination had she just stepped into? She does not respond immediately to his demands and led back to the tormenting situation. He grabs her by her wrists, which bound by twine, and yanks her towards the dilapidated building. The inside of the barn is a larger scale workshop of his van but with added worktables or butcher blocks, some might call them. She has now begun to accept her fate to a degree because something in her mind is screaming for her to get out and she knows there is no way out of this one. He has a half smirk on his face and it enrages her to think all the nights they sat and talked about her plans for her future all the while this sick SOB was planning his gruesome agenda of his.

He took her over to the butchering table and made her lay down so her head was near the drain; she was fine until this moment when everything started flashing through her mind. Thoughts that she could not explain but she knew what they meant and to whom they were happening. It was like looking into the viewing window at the zoo or the aquarium and seeing yourself. I am going insane, that has to be the answer to all of this madness. I have just snapped and finally have begun to come to terms with the situation at hand. It has to be, because the other options are too horrific to think.

If I’m not insane now I will be if I have to endure anymore of these monstrous imaginings, I can’t fathom these visions that are going through my mind, he must be sending these images telepathically. He starts out by cutting off my fingers, then goes to my toes, and does it as if he is going by some kind of diagram. He still has not laid a finger on me yet. He does not have to. I have already soiled myself and thrown up my dinner. I cannot speak for the gag and I can barely breathe from fear. He is pacing around the table with a look of elation like a child on Christmas morning. He is sending images to me so quickly. I cannot keep my thoughts straight, but with each, one brings a new wave of pain and terror. He is down to the main joints of my elbows and knees now. The next will be my shoulders and hips. I do not know when the actual torture will commence but when it does, I can only hope for a swift ending to this onslaught of torment.

I awaken from a much-needed sleep and envision a young Asian girl thrown into a van, which I will not even mention whose name it belongs, I am sure by now you can surmise that. She is terrified and he has not started his little picture show yet with her, which is his form of sadistic foreplay. This is what I was petrified of, when they released him on our unsuspecting sleepy little town. I try to tune him out as always when he tries to contact me, as always to no avail. He has been busy strengthening his skills behind the walls of the asylum. I would not be surprised if the Psych doctors did not help him in this endeavor. They thought this was a gift when it was really a curse. This is the end in more ways than you can ever imagine.

There are only two convenient stores in our little town one is a Fast lane, one is a StopNGet, and Maritza worked the three to twelve shift so when she got off at twelve she could not wait to get out of there. She is out the door in seconds; her car is parked around back. She is almost to her beat up old Ford Grenada when she gets this overwhelming feeling that someone or something is watching her. Maritza scrambles in the dim light of the emergency light to find her car keys.

Just as she is putting the key in the lock a rag, filled hand is over mouth and her lungs were filled with some chemical, she struggles without getting anywhere, her attacker is too strong for her. She is brought to some sort of work van. It is parked in the shadows and she is dragged easily into the back of it. She is really messed up and the person who grabbed her is tying her hands she is still trying to fend him off but it does not work. 

There are all types of tools; she assumes are from his trade. Little does she know that is just what they are. It is not any trade ever heard of. It is his trade per se, a dark one at that, the trade of taking, terrorizing, and mutilating women. Well back to poor Maritza and what he is about to begin with his mind play, he stops the van suddenly. He steps to the back of the van and opens the door and Maritza delivers a kick to his midsection, which completely catches him off guard. It knocks the wind out of him but does not knock him off his feet as she had hoped. So back to square one, how was she to get away from this sick unit. Maritza is dragged from the van kicking and clawing like a wild beast not like timid little Ling. This might be a little more than he had bargained for. You can never plan for everything. You must just take it in stride and move to the next item at hand and that is his mental foreplay or should I say torture. He moves her to the barn. He lays her on the butchering table.

Maritza starts getting flashes of images of him pulling out her fingernails one by one and the pain is insufferable. Then he moves to her toenails and pulls them out with tormenting leisureliness, however he is not even near me. How is he doing this it is slaying me, I do not know how much longer I can hold on. Just as I think there is going to be a lapse in my cruelty it commences again. What would make another human being if that is what you could call him do this to another? Just as her next bout of agony initiates she passes out from the suffering. Daniel thinks what a dud this one turned out to be I did not even get to the good part. Oh well I will have to make up for it on the next one.

Shawna works at a car dealership she gets off at eleven. Therefore, he waits to see her get into her car and prays she stops off somewhere to get something before she goes home. To his delight, she does just that and stops at the same convenient store that Maritza used to work at. Ironic as it is, he does not even care if his van is noticed shortly after Maritza’s disappearance. In his eyes, he thinks he is invincible. Little does he know we all have a weak spot somewhere?

He waits until Shawna gets out of the store and asks if she can help him with his van, he needs a jump, she obliges while she is getting the cables out of her trunk he sinks a needle into the fleshy part of her thigh, and she immediately is filled with terror. He quickly drags her to the van and gets her in, he does not bother with binding her, or a gag there is no time for it. He speeds out of the parking lot and heads to his house of horrors.

They reach their destination and Shawna is finally coming around from whatever nasty drug he used on her. She starts to yell and shriek and ask what are you doing and why are you doing this to me, I would say the normal questions a person would ask given the situation.

He starts quickly with the foreplay because he was not satiated from Maritza’s little dance. It is all a dance to him. He starts shooting the images as soon as he gets her tied down which does not take much she is still very groggy.

At first, it is seeing her stomach being cut precisely open as if by a surgeon. She knows she is not dreaming because she can feel the steel table beneath her and see the sadistic son of a bitch who has just taken her. How is he doing this? Oh, my Lord the pain is unbearable I am glad he shot me up with whatever, it seems to be dulling the pain, but how is he doing this without touching me I can feel it.

I wake up in my hotel room in a sheen of sweat he’s has taken another one and so close together this time the last one did not do it for him. Now it is time for me to come clean. I told Daniel his father was in Desert Storm and did not make it home because I am not just his mother but also his sister and my father was a telepath and had a sadistic deviant sexual appetite.

I thought if I could get away from him and let Daniel have a regular home life and no sick innuendoes at every turn shoved down his throat about women and me not wanting to be raped by my own father constantly. I thought that maybe Daniel would have a chance at a normal life. What happened to my shy little Daniel? 

Written by: Cyndi LaPoint Callahan