The DeNNis

I have an idea of a killer called The DeNNis. He’s based on a real person. What marks him out as different is the fact that he’s not scary at all. He’s a bit of a dweeb, actually, a pencil-necked nerd, a geek who probably owns the complete Lord Of The Rings collection. No offence against LOTR fans. He’s not that tall, very skinny, and a boring council clerk. He wears plain shirts from the supermarket and pressed trousers with unexciting ties. He doesn’t sport hair gel, and has a sharp hooked conk like a bird of prey. His shoes are black brogue. Slip-on.

There’s not really that much more to say about him! He lives alone, doesn’t drive, no known family, cooks simple meals…and murders homosexuals!

His killing spree has been in full flow for several years, on and off. He pays for their services in the local red light district up Richmond Square, where they hang out beneath streetlamps, half-concealed in billowing clouds of smoke from blunts and vapes. They gather in twos or threes, linking arms in unison. Occasionally you’ll get a singleton in a fashionable wig, whom he picks on. They are all always slim and attractive.

He’s been gay since his first encounter in high school…

He tried and failed ‘giving’ penetration around Aaron Jenkins penthouse suite. Penthouse or Shithouse, it didn’t matter to The DeNNis. The suite belonged to Aaron’s older brother who was working away in Wales. He sold cleaning solution for factories from the boot of his car. (Blast-Away Hydropower could have come in useful for The DeNNis’s bloodbaths later in life.)

The DeNNis and Aaron had been flicking through a XXX magazine, it featured underage Chinese men in varieties of naked poses, having vigorous intercourse with black African studs. These exotic juxtapositions drove The DeNNis doolally. He had only had one mixed-race victim in all this time. The dude was a mixture of Irish and Jamaican, skin the colour of coffee mocha, hair matted rather than dreaded, legs lanky yet strong underneath his stylish jacket which accentuated his buttocks. He like drinking Guiness and listening to Ziggy Marley via portable cassette headphones. The DeNNis thought that Bob had changed his name by DePol.  

Aaron was still alive, to the best of The DeNNis’s knowledge. And why wouldn’t he be? They were both still relatively young. Only both just making way into middle age. He thought he might have bumped into him in a Co-op in Beddington last summer, buying a ham and pickle sandwich, but he couldn’t be entirely sure of the positive ID, not with the goatee and the Lakers cap.

To put it very bluntly, The DeNNis chops up his victims and flushes them down the toilet. No laser etched granite headstones for his casualties. And why would there be? Only poor Gregg Wilton from Ford Common has ever been reported missing. Where did they stick his mugshot? In a side column on page 13 of the Herald Gazette. Which is only good for wrapping chips.

The irate neighbours, met with slammed doors and vulgar gestures during every failed confrontation, have made several complaints about the stench emanating from the drains. The DeNNis insists that it must be dead rats. He uses a mini-chainsaw for the dismemberment business, a 40 quid jobbie online, playing booming classical music over the tinny, rattling friction from the cheap rotors.

He wears a ladies smock when busy in the bathroom, and wellington boots. Underneath he docks a special homemade suit he sewed together himself from bin bags designed to keep every single drop of blood from his skin.

MORE FROM THE DENNIS LATER