The Universe's Mixer

He hadn't done a whole lot since he'd been overcome by the zombies. They'd caught up to him, and he'd done everything he could to keep their attention on him, and away from Sweeney, for as long as he could manage. They'd overtaken him and started biting. Emotion might have been foreign to him, but physical pain was not. It was possibly the only time in his life that he wished he was less human.

Of course, it wasn't long before he got his wish.

The infection ran it's course in a matter of hours. He'd hidden himself in hopes that he could avoid further bites. He felt he'd given enough flesh to the zombies. There hadn't been a whole lot he could do to make himself comfortable. The idea of blowing his own head off crossed through his mind more than once. Of course, he didn't have a gun, and by that point, didn't have the energy to get up and find one.

So Dexter Morgan died.

When he rose, he wasn't all the way absent like he'd seen the other zombies be. Mindless flesh eaters massing on one victim at a time. Thousands of teeth gnashing and gnawing. He had more. Perhaps it was the Dark Passenger that made it possible, but he was still thinking on a very limited basis. He knew that he was fundamentally different. He couldn't reach the higher brain function that he'd had before - that he knew he'd been capable of (that memory was fading quickly anyway), but he could still think. He knew there was food out there. And he knew he could hunt it better than the others. He knew that a group wasn't the best way to go about it. Solitary feeding would produce more food for him.

He was wandering the street, still slow, still incapable of reflexive movement in any sort of timely manner - the bird flying into his face and his painfully slow reaction to it attested to that - the only thing he had was determination. A will to feed himself. To find his own way.

When Sweeney fell asleep outside his apartment door, he had been a dog. Outside it because he lacked the dexterity and thumbs, not to mention overall height, required to turn a door knob and let himself in. When he woke up, curled up on the floor of the hallway, he was a man again.

Oh when he got his hands on that Djinn, she was in for it. She was really in for it.

( He was Mad Sweeney. Suibhne Geilt. )

Dexter hadn't at all gotten over how disturbing it was that he was so good at the inane sport of bowling. There was no reason for it. It wasn't like he had done much in the way of practice. Just one day he'd been looking for a way to hide himself in plain sight, joined the bowling team, picked up a ball, and the rest is history.

With nothing else much to do in the City, taking up bowling again seemed like the best way to kill time. There were great long periods of time where nobody was murdered, and there was no blood spatter for him to analyze. After that came the time when he'd finished catching up on reports, and had absolutely no reason to go into work.

And then, of course, was the idea that he'd just died himself and needed some time off anyway to sort through the feelings that had come along with that. So he didn't particularly mind the lack of anything when it came down to it. But there were still the nights that he felt restless. Amazingly, he'd looked into his closet and found the Bowl Till You Bleed shirt he'd worn back in Miami. That was what had given him the idea in the first place.

So here he was now, bowling. It wasn't as much fun by himself, but it was better than nothing.

One second he was talking to George and trying to comfort her about his own death, and the next he's in his own apartment, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, as alive as he'd ever remembered being.

He could actually feel his own heart beating hard enough that it might have broken out of his chest at any moment.

Through the strangeness of it all, he couldn't help but feel concern for how George might be taking this. She had been worried that he was going to move on, and his sudden disappearance must have looked like just that.

Dexter fumbled on his bedside table without looking at it, finding his phone and dialing George.

He listened to it ring.

Oh this was just too good. A better situation could be planned like this. After one but got another in bonus. It was too perfect. From body language as I watched one couldn't mistake he thought she did it and she probably thought the same of him. Wouldn't it be a surprise to them both that they were wrong?

One good shot would have been nice but complicated. The moment had to be right.

He left and the moment was right. She stood in the room alone now. It was time.

Ready
Aim.


Fire.

The shot was good and the scope moved down.

Waiting.
Planning.

He exited out onto the sidewalk and footsteps barely started when the action was repeated.

Ready.
Aim.


Fire.

Quick.
Hide.
Run.
Escape.



The City is appeased.

OOC: Did you die in the MM plot? Feel free to join in.

This was out of her league. Not only had her work load doubled during the reign of the mass murderer but none of the souls were moving on. She was pretty sure they were just being stubborn, but dirty looks weren't working. Ignoring them wasn't enough either; dead people were near impossible to ditch. Something about being able to walk through walls.

Eventually the reaper hunkered down in her apartment, sitting on a love-seat she'd salvaged dumpster diving, and hoped someone would just catch the serial killer already. She was half tempted to ask the recently deceased so she could pass on the information to Dexter, but if she did that she realized it would only encourage them to stay that much longer.

After the first week George finally posted a sign on her wall that read: YOU ARE DEAD. GET OVER IT.

Dexter had two people on his list.

Two people who he knew it could be. Three, if he included himself, and he couldn't really take himself off that list yet, because of the recent dealings with that fucking knife. There was no way he could be absolutely sure that he wasn't blacking out and doing these things, except for the fact that this wasn't really his style, and according to his timecard, he'd been at work for at least one of the killings.

That, and he'd never harm an animal.

One of the dead was a cat.

One of the people was in the hospital, impossible to get to. Dexter wouldn't be able to get his hands on Hannibal Lecter until the kid walked outside. In the mean time, he was going to have a conversation with the other.

He'd met her only once. But he'd known then what she was. Mostly because she'd told him. These murders needed to stop, one way or the other.

Dexter stalked her through the streets, half sure that she knew he was there. It didn't matter though, if she did or not. She would slip up eventually, and that's when he'd be there, ready.

Of course, it took her quite a while to slip. To become too comfortable with her surroundings. To let her guard down. It happened inside of an apartment. She stopped being Super Spy Girl and started acting like she belonged where she was. Which meant this was likely her home. Or the home of somebody she knew very well. He climbed in through a back window and moved through the space with absolutely no sound. He was hunting.

She passed by and it was perfection. She was in his arms, a twitch and pressure would stop her ability to breathe and blood flow to her brain. He had his own arm caught with his hand, and was limber enough to have a needle just barely breaking the skin at the same time.

"What are you doing?" His voice was low, close to her ear. After he said it, he realized he might not have been entirely clear in his meaning.

There was a pile of new work on his desk when he went in to work. He didn't really want to go in to work. He wanted to be out there, in the world, catching whoever it was. He had some ideas. Some of them didn't make sense, others did. Suspects in mind.

First he thought that it might be Lecter, but when he got the details of the case, it didn't feel right. It didn't dial him out entirely, it just put him at the back of the pile.

"Any word?" He asked the guy who had the desk next to his.

"Nothing since this morning."

"That could be a good thing."

"We recovered the bullet from Coffey. They're testing it now."

"Maybe it's the same person. Whoever did Coffey is doing these new murders."

"The last murder was done by a knife, Dexter."

And? Dexter wanted to ask. But, of course, the more that the police and forensics team kept to the idea that killers always used the same instruments, the safer he'd be.

"Yeah. You're right." He said instead and went to his desk. Jack Napier, he thought as he looked at the new file. How do I know that name?

George was missing. Deb had been here, and now she wasn't anymore. The strange girl at the shop where he'd gotten the knife was even gone. He couldn't find Selina, but at least her apartment was still around, so that told Dex that she was still somewhere.

Everybody he'd met since being here seemed to have vanished.

Oddly, it didn't sit well with Dexter. He wanted very much to have that nest. That surrounding of people who thought that he was normal. That thought that he was just a blood spatter analyst. He felt the need to blend in.

After everything that had happened with the knife, he'd learned just how important it was to him to appear like everybody else. He'd had his chance at being what his Dark Passenger wanted him to be, and while it had been fun, it wasn't ultimately what he wanted from life.

Sulking a little, he sat in the park.

The newspaper had said that the man, John Coffey had been found dead. That somebody had shot him. There was, of course, an idea in his head brewing. That this 'somebody' needed to be found. John Coffey should never have been killed. He was an innocent.

Dexter set the paper aside and looked at the children playing.

He knew in his heart that he shouldn't have put off calling Deb for so long. Dexter couldn't say why he'd done it, but he had. He supposed a part of him was hoping that she'd adjust to this place just a little before he had any contact with her so she'd be just a little bit calmer.

It wasn't likely, though.

Especially since he'd not returned her call quickly. She was going to be pissed off.

Dexter hit callback on his phone and listened to it ring. The side of himself that was really ashamed at what he'd done hoped that he'd just get an answering machine. So she could call him back later and yell at him. He knew though, really knew, that he needed her to answer so he could talk to her and let her know that he was here too. That she wasn't alone.

He sighed and sat on the couch, listening to the phone ring.
Christ, didn't she even have voicemail? How long had she set this thing to keep ringing?

Baseball was one of those things that normal people did, right?

Dexter had this intense need to feel normal. Even if it was just for one afternoon. Just a few hours. Away from life. Away from the police station. Away from knowing that he was some special cog in the universe of Death. Away from George, though she was his best friend. He could be himself around her, but around her, he wasn't a human being. He was Dexter. The killer. And she knew. And he knew about her. It was really really hard to feel normal when you were chatting with a reaper, no matter how cute she might be.

He'd wandered around thinking normal to himself, and what the City had provided him with was a baseball game.

He supposed he was enjoying it. As much as one could enjoy things when they were sitting outside under a hot Spring sun, watching a game that went slower than a dead snail and had no physical contact or confrontation to break up the monotony while eating six days expired hot dogs in stale buns. The hot dogs were the only things keeping him there. He'd already gotten up to get three. Now he was up to get more. And soda. He should have been drinking water, he knew. But if he was going to digest the disgusting food, he needed something sweet.

Thank whoever he'd been born and raised in Miami.

When he reached the counter, there was a little polite smile to the guy standing in the line next to his.

He'd left the meeting with Willow and the ghost with an odd feeling resting on his shoulders. What he'd been told, that secret that the wolf girl had bent down to whisper into his ear hadn't been something he'd expected to hear, and he wasn't sure how to take it.

Dexter wasn't sure that George would understand any more than he did, but he felt like she needed to know.

Returning to his apartment was logical because that's where he'd left her. She wasn't there, of course. Or wasn't there and responding to him. Maybe she already knew and she was pissed off about it. But he felt like she was gone. He felt like he couldn't feel her there and had before.

"George?" He did call her name while roaming the rooms just to be sure. Got no answer just like he'd expected.

The only thing to do, and probably the best thing to do considering the fact that he couldn't see her, was just to sit and wait. To stare at the flour and hope that she made some kind of mark showing him that she was there. Soon.

Dexter remembered very clearly that she'd said to not come back. But he'd told her that if he ever figured out how to fix himself, he'd bring the knife back for safe keeping. Clearly she'd thought that would never happen.

Wasn't she ever going to be surprised.

He'd wrapped the thing up inside of it's sheath in a towel. He hadn't wanted to touch it ever again, lest he be tempted by it. The book was with him as well. If he didn't have the knife, he didn't need the book. And he needed no reminders of either.

Very carefully, Dexter walked into the store, trying to be as nonthreatening as possible.

"Hello?"

The only place that Dexter could think to look for George was Der Wafflehouse. But he didn't go inside to wait for her. She'd either go in or come out sooner or later. He didn't want anybody in there to see him like he was and he didn't think they'd appreciate the topic of conversation, either.

Everything Willow had said to him resonated in his mind.

He wasn't sure how he was going to ask this of his friend. It wasn't something that he would have even thought asking her except that he knew she'd be okay. It wouldn't kill her, since she was already dead.

The book was heavy in his hand, despite the fact that it wasn't very big. It certainly didn't weight a hundred pounds in reality, though his arm claimed differently.

Dexter sat down on the curb outside the eatery and sighed, determined to not move until she arrived.

Willow watched The City streets nervously from the other side of The Magic Box's store windows. She'd had a few customers come in looking for answers. Why did The City disappear? Was it her fault? Was there something she could do?

Willow had almost no answers and one of the customers had gotten angry enough to knock over the display of cheap porcelain unicorns, which had shattered all over the floor in front of the door. So the witch made a sign on the door in neat handwriting which read BEWARE OF GLASS followed by a smiley face.

Dustpan and broom out, she had most of the tiny glass shards swept up. At least the stranger hadn't caused any more damage. He certainly could have done worse. Willow wondered if Buffy and Spike made it through The City's transition. It felt emptier now. At least, the witch thought, she still had the shop. It made it easier to find her.


*OOC: Feel free to have one or both enter!

The girl...

She had been just a girl. No older than sixteen. Dexter had only seen it after he'd killed her. Never in his life would he have hurt a kid of his own volition. This was wrong. It was outside of his norm, even when taking his norm to the extreme as he had been doing. She was innocent. She hadn't hurt anybody. And she was a kid.

It didn't help matters at all that she was also monstrous. Literally. She exhibited on the outside how he felt on the inside. Though, upon passing a window while in this sulking, self doubting mood, Dexter noticed that he too was not a normal human on the outside.

What had he become?

He had become his dark passenger.

This was not what he wanted. He didn't want freedom to do as he desired if this is what it came to. The changes. The killing of innocent little girls.

The knife in his hand felt differently now. Like a curse rather than a gift.

He needed to find that store again. He needed to talk to the shop girl. He needed to make this all go away.

Brigitte remembered the stunningly beautiful face of the blonde vampire girl. The werewolf remembered her strange scent without the ability to make sense of it. It had been a long stand off and then there had been nothing.

Brigitte couldn't remember the last time she saw the light of the sun or stars or how long she'd been out. Just that she'd opened her eyes, sitting on the same park bench, surrounded by an island of grass. Outside that island had been nothingness and she'd been afraid to move, able to make out tiny islands of the shattered city displaced in black space.

Eventually The City slowly began to piece itself together, albeit with noticeably black holes where a shop had once been or where someone's house was built. Brigitte didn't move from her bench. She shivered. She was scared and hungry. Brigitte was scared of her hunger.

And so she didn't move.

The big man had told him he wasn't a good person anymore, which hadn't phased him like it should have, and then the City had upheaved itself, which phased him quite a bit. Despite living here so long, despite all he'd seen and everybody he'd met (Spock came to mind quite quickly), he'd never expected anything like this.

Everything vanishing, and then rebuilding itself in almost exactly the same way?

Made no sense.

Dexter had no issues finding what he wanted to find, no more than usual anyway, but it wasn't always complete when he found it.

There was, of course, curiosity about why it was going on. But the lust for death and killing overwhelmed any desire he had to find out the details of anything else.

He'd called in sick days and vacation days, saying he just needed some time off. People at work wouldn't worry about him so much now. They wouldn't wonder where he was. What he was doing. And as long as he was careful, well. None of it would matter anyway.

i_spatterblood
With Selina feeling better, and back at her own home, things had gone back to normal for Dexter. Well, as normal as they could be, considering a few key things. But he had his space back. And he had his freedom back. No more worrying about Selina following him. Or finding out. He really didn't need anybody finding out about things.

Which reminded him to find out what the Lone Gunmen knew.

He got to work the next morning, feeling better than he had in a long time. A spring in his step, a whistle on his lips. If Dokes had been around, he might have even been pleasant to the guy. Patted him on the back, even. Done what he could have to annoy the crap out of him, just for the fun of it. That's how good he felt.

On his desk was a single folder. Something that hadn't been there before. Dexter looked around the office, then back at the folder, and picked it up. It only had one name on it 'Jody'. He flipped it open and took a look inside. It was like the folders he collected and then destroyed. This one read worse than a lot of the previous kills he'd had all rolled up into one. Dexter looked around again. Nobody was looking. It didn't seem that anybody had put this here.

More City weirdness?

"Tell the cheif I've got to go deal with something." Dexter said to one of his work mates as he passed by. "I'll be back later."

With the folder tucked under his arm, he jogged out to his car.


i_liveforgod
Jody was sick of dealing with this. When he found Little Jesse, he was going to beat the everliving shit out of him. And then make sure he spent a good, good long while in the coffin. More than a month this time. Jesse needed to stop running away, they always found him eventually.

There were a few places left that Jody hadn't checked. One of them being the docks. He didn't really expect Jesse to be at the docks, but he thought he might as well check anyway. If he didn't, and Marie found out, she'd send him right back out to check.

She wanted every corner searched. Every stone turned over.

He hadn't seen Miss Marie in such a murderous state since her daughter had run off.


i_spatterblood
With everything that had been going on, everything building up inside of him, Dexter was in no mood to make absolutely sure that this was the guy he wanted. There was a photo in the file, the man he'd found matched the photo.

Dexter did follow him until the sun went down, right to the docks.

Convenient.

The guy looked huge to Dexter. Not as big as John Coffey, but huge. And bad. The Dark Passanger reared up as soon as Dexter got close. This guy was bad. Bad bad news.

That's it, he decided. No more second guessing. He was going to do this, and he was going to do it quickly.

With gloves on his hand, using the shadows to keep him from prying eyes, Dexter moved up behind Jody and caught him around the shoulders. The needle containing the M-99 slid into the big guy's neck and Dexter depressed the needle.


i_liveforgod
Jody didn't have any idea somebody was following him. He went about his business, not paying much attention to anything.

When he finally was aware of somebody being there, it was too late. There was a sharp prick in his neck and his body lost strength. The guy - it had to be a guy by the size and strength - was strong. Maybe could have even bested Jody in a real fight.

But this wasn't a real fight.

This was something else.

He tried to struggle, but it was no use.

He went down.


i_spatterblood
Just like everybody else he'd ever played with, Dexter readied Jody's body in a special way. This time the clean room was in his own boat, and the boat was taken out far on the water. But everything else was the same. Jody was restrained to the table with plastic wrap and duct tape.

Duct tape was the perfect thing to work with.

He waited for Jody to wake up before really getting started.

"Hello." Dexter said to Jody's now opened eyes. "You've been a bad, bad boy."

The scalpel cut into Jody's cheek, and a single line of blood trailed down the flesh. Dexter caught part of that drip and put it onto a slide.


i_liveforgod
"Fuck you." Jody said. There wasn't any fear in him.

Sure, it was odd. Being tied down like this. And tied down really well. He couldn't even struggle. It was all so tight.

He looked up into the face of the man.

Not somebody Jody would consider to be an equil, but he certainly was, being able to best him like this.

And here he'd always thought it would be Jesse to end it.


i_spatterblood
Dexter just smiled as he put the slide away.

"It's about time I get to have some fun." He said. "And I'm so very glad that you get to be my first."

This time, he wanted to use the meat clever. He hadn't used it in a good long while.

Dexter started on Jody's hands, chopping them off. Then his feet. Then up along his legs and arms. And then last, the torso and the head. Seperation of the two.

It took him a good long while to do. Mostly because Dexter was savoring it. Loving it. The Dark Passanger slithering around in his mind, happy. Satisfied.

Clean up was more simple than usual.

Since he was already on the boat, he just had to bag it all up, throw it over the side. And when he was done, the boat was just as spotless and blood free as it had been when he'd boarded with the body. His tools were wrapped up, ready to be hidden away again.

It would be quiet for a while, now. Peaceful.

And so, the Harry code hadn't exactly been adhered to, but that could be forgiven, in the face of the singularly named Jody and what his file read like.

Dexter turned the boat back toward shore, with a smile on his face.