Geoffrey Dahmer’s Almost Close Encounter

Geoffrey Dahmer did not notice the alien artifact in his kitchen at 6AM that Tuesday morning because he was laying in bed thinking about his life. Geoffrey Dahmer’s life had been mostly fine for the first 12 years, then suddenly it was not. No one cared that he spelled his name differently than the most famous cannibal necrophiliac serial killer in the world. No one cared and consequently Geoffrey was lonely and lived alone. He did almost everything alone.

At 6 AM on a Tuesday morning Geoffrey did not notice the alien artifact in his kitchen, he was too busy procrastinating, laying in bed thinking about the meeting he had had the night before with his online support group for people with terrible names. They all, of course, had their calculated, sensible reasons they couldn’t change their names, but of course it had come up again.

Justin Bieber owned a chain of successful car dealerships in Australia with his name emblazoned all over the suburbs of Canberra for decades. He had even made money off of it, he admitted, but it was obvious he’d never remarry. Kasey Anthony had a structured settlement from a lawsuit in the 80’s that had been worded in an unfortunately specific way. It wasn’t much but she’d had to close the doors to her daycare years ago, obviously.

Geoffrey Dahmer’s problem was that he was actually named “Geoffrey Dahmer IV” and he thanked a god he clearly could no longer believe in every day that Geoffrey Dahmer III had died exactly one year, one week, and one day before that mess in Milwaukee had inexorably complicated everything.

It was further complicated by the fact that just as his father had done before him, Geoffrey Dahmer III had summoned his son to his side as he lay dying and said the following words: “You are but a rung on a ladder of Geoffrey Dahmers stretching into infinity, my son. It is your duty to continue our climb. Goodbye.”

This onus has cost Geoffrey dearly. He was, naturally, a hugless virgin, but he had once kissed a girl. It was one year and one week before that mess in Milwaukee and he had somehow finagled his grief, so he thought, into time alone on the tire swing by the pond with a girl. Years later he would realize that with all his stammering and hormones and tears on his glasses and the fact that she was three years older and smoked and had a mother with a tattoo and a drinking problem and no dad that he had likely been the finagled party.

In any event he got a kiss. With tongue. A kiss with tongue that tasted like Juicy Fruit and stolen Marlboro Reds. Maybe 30 seconds of his life that had emboldened him so that if it had gone on another 30 he might have found the courage to raise his hands from his sides and squeeze some part of her, but alas it did not. He was squeezing the tire when she pulled away and laughed in a cackle that along with the way the light caught her hair in the early summer sunset caused him to think of a witch. As an adult he had a full blown aversion to scary movies, being scared in general, and witches specifically. He had never kissed another girl.

All of this, and more, was on his mind the Tuesday morning that Geoffrey Dahmer IV did not notice the alien artifact in his kitchen, a silvery gray cube hanging in the air by the sink. All of this was on his mind as well as the nagging anxiety that his mother might call. The fact that he was awake was inconsequential. The problem was that his mother’s house was under daily attack at dawn by a bird called a yellow-bellied sapsucker or seersucker or some such silliness.

The amorous avian was drawn to the loudest thing around against which he could smash his head in his search for a mate. Geoffrey admired his bravery. Then again Mr. Yellowbelly probably didn’t have the bird-name equivalent of some notorious bird serial killer then, did he? Probably not. Then again, maybe he did and Geoffrey was just a loser. A loser like his mom sometimes said.

In this bird’s case the loudest resonating chamber he could find was Geoffrey’s mother’s house’s metal gutters. If the bird wasn’t sleeping in some yellowbellied slut’s nest he’d be ringing out his mating call on mom’s house about now to the utter chagrin of everyone in the house. Fortunately for everyone Geoffrey’s mom lived alone. They both did.

Any moment the phone could ring. She wouldn’t even say hello. This had been going on for weeks. “That fucking bird is back Geoffrey. I swear to Christ I’m gonna throw poisoned birdseed on the goddamn roof! Don’t think I won’t!” His mother’s life had become a war with a creature whose brain was the size of a ball bearing.

The phone didn’t ring that Tuesday morning. If it had Geoffrey would have paced around the apartment as he always did when he was on the phone with his mother. “What? You practicing for the fucking Olympics up there, Geoff? I got news for you, buddy.” his landlord had said to him one time. The landlord lived one floor below him. The landlord liked pornography and frequently tried to get Geoffrey to join him for some “beers and some porn and whatever.” Geoffrey was admittedly lonely, but not lonely enough to risk the “whatever” that hung in the air like a snake that was maybe a razor the way things are in dreams whenever the offer arose.

If Geoffrey had paced that Tuesday morning he would have noticed the alien artifact in his kitchen that hummed with a deep throb that spoke of power and had been displaying characters in an alien language since the summer sun had first skimmed its silky grey metal surface. But Geoffrey was in bed so he did not feel its pull. He began to feel another pull.

The only good news about the sapsucker, whom Geoffrey Dahmer IV had assuredly come to hate even more than his mother was that he was spared the usual harangue, the one that had started shortly before that mess in Milwaukee. She’d allowed him a year to grieve his father’s death. It was, as far as he could tell, the last kindness she had done him or anybody. That year had started tasting of grief and Juicy Fruit and cigarettes and ended tasting of grief and not much else, but Geoffrey Dahmer’s mom didn’t care. “A year is long enough, Geoffrey. It’s enough for me and it’s enough for you” was the litany that had changed every year since then only to mark the time gone by. Is it still a litany, then?

It was not lost on Geoffrey that it was actually before that mess in Milwaukee that his mom had started getting on his case about spending less time on the computer, “What is the fucking internet, anyway, Geoffrey? It’s a fad! It’s not healthy to spend that much time alone, Geoffrey. You’ll never meet a girl on that computer. It’s all the time with that thing, Geoffrey. It’s not healthy.” That one was definitely a litany.

He’d hid the fact that he had no friends in real life (IRL he still called it) for decades, but that was easy. You can’t hide a girl unless you’re a man with a mistress or a secret family or whatever and that was all much too advanced for Geoffrey whose mother had called him drunk the night before his 30th birthday and offered to get him an escort. “Geoffrey, use the birthday money I gave you. That way I’m the one paying for it. It’s not healthy, Geoffrey, have you even ever kissed a girl?”

Geoffrey Dahmer IV’s mother didn’t know about the slow turn of a tire swing in the fading summer sunlight and how if you’re really seriously engaged you can ignore the mosquitoes biting your bare arms because you had foolishly chosen to wear a short-sleeved blue button down to your father’s funeral. She didn’t know about any of that.

In any event the phone call might only include an admonishment at the end about being a loser thanks to the sudden appearance of a horny bird. “People meet women on their phones now, Geoffrey. You’re always on your phone. How hard is that? It’s unhealthy, Geoffrey” had been replaced by various bird murder fantasies imagined by a woman who watched at least six hours of Law & Order every day of her life. Geoffrey’s mom had sat on the jury for thousands of fictional criminals. Some of their crimes were considered especially heinous. As a result she was more imaginative when it came to homicide than anyone who had ever been named Geoffrey Dahmer, no matter how they spelled it.

“I went up in the attic, Geoffrey.” She was not supposed to go up in the attic. “I was looking for grandma’s Christmas angel. Remember? The one you knocked off the tree the year you cried because you didn’t get some Nintendo game or something? Remember how her wing broke off? Remember when you did that? Your father used to put that up, but I needed to stand on the chair every year after that while you were up in the room on your computer all the time. Remember that?” had started yesterday’s call. Of course he remembered. She’s the one who didn’t remember. It was a Sega game, not a Nintendo game.

“Anyway, I couldn’t find the angel, but I found your old BB gun. Christ I thought that was a bad idea but you were so broken up about your father I didn’t know what else to do. It was expensive, too, Geoffrey. Christ you were happy to have us spend that insurance money, weren’t you? Happy to spend the money, but never happy. You’re a real piece of work, Geoffrey. Anyway I figured I’d shoot that little fucker right in the beak but it doesn’t work. What’s wrong with it? The least you could do is come over here and shoot it yourself. It’s your gun.”

Geoffrey told his mom he didn’t know, that it was a 30 year old toy and what did she want? He didn’t tell her that about two years after his dad died he had been out in the woods shooting trees with it. Shooting trees was unfulfilling, but he didn’t ever have the heart to aim at a living creature. He didn’t like it or being outside in general, but once in a while it really was nice to get away from his computer. His mother. Whatever. Anyway, he hadn’t been paying attention when he had tripped over a root and fallen down a dirty, leafy hill and bent his glasses.

Sitting there with skinned knees and half-rotted leaves in his hair and his glasses askew on his face it all just came crashing over him like a tsunami appearing in the woods. His dad, his mom, the things he had seen on the screen at night after his mom had gone to bed and he could use the modem without hogging the phone and how the last time he’d seen the girl from the tire swing it was after she got back from behavioral school. She had rolled slowly by in some sleek car with a long hood being driven by some sleek bad boy with a long nose. She had looked at him with not a hint of recognition in her mascara smeared eyes and she wasn’t laughing now. She looked like she hadn’t laughed in a long time.

He thought about all that and in a fit of he still-didn’t-know-what had picked up the pellet gun from where it had come to rest beside him and put the barrel in his mouth. This did not taste of Juicy Fruit and smoke, no. This, however many years and weeks and days after his dad and after that mess in Milwaukee and after those slow turns with the sounds of peeping frogs nearby tasted like forest decay.

He was shaking and staring at the blue sky through the green leaves above and squeezing the trigger, his mind full of every terrible and wonderful thing and utterly empty at the same time. He was squeezing the trigger, his tongue pressed against the barrel, motionless now tasting dirty organic richness and the tang of the metal all at once. He was squeezing the trigger.

Suddenly he screamed and in one motion pulled the gun out of his mouth, pressed it into his thigh, and pulled the trigger with all his might. It broke the skin, of course, and buried a metal ball so deep into his leg that he had to pry it out an hour later with the same tiny screwdriver he used to repair his glasses. His mom didn’t need to know about any of this and had fortunately been out when he had limped home bleeding and dirty that day. She didn’t need to know that later that night he had taken the BB gun that his mother had reluctantly gotten him in the hopes of staving off yet another meltdown and smashed it hard against his bedpost. The stock cracked a little and something broke deep inside it. It never worked again.

So that’s why he couldn’t use it to murder an obnoxious presence that seemed to care only about its own needs and didn’t care who had to suffer through its daily cacophony. No one could. It was broken, mom. Just like the angel.

Geoffey Dahmer IV was laying in bed thinking about this when the alien artifact in his kitchen started changing its shape. While it may have once been a cube it certainly now had more than six sides, didn’t it? Geoffrey Dahmer IV would have wondered about all of this as he watched the alien glyphs on the surface of the alien artifact begin to resolve themselves into words in English. But he didn’t. He was thinking about another gun, a gun not from his past, but sitting in a drawer right beside his bed. That gun tasted like the oily cloth it was wrapped in.

His landlord had given it to him with words that would have been subtly racist were they not explicitly racist and reminded him that ”We’re all in this together” and ”We’ve gotta watch each other’s backs” but those are just words, thought Geoffrey as he suddenly realized his mouth tasted of oil again.

By the time Geoffrey didn’t scream the alien artifact was spinning wildly and shining in a million colors as lucid, coherent, relevant, helpful messages streamed across its surface in iambic pentameter. There was a verse meant to help every sentient being on earth in that epic, every dolphin, every elephant, every person, Geoffrey Dahmer IV included, but when his poem scrolled by he was still in bed, but he wasn’t thinking about anything anymore, no longer a rung on a ladder to anywhere.

By the time the landlord let himself in to check on his tenant three days later with a DVD in his hand and whatever in his mind, the alien artifact was gone.