‘A Flash of White’ 
ANDREW VACHSS

CRIME: Stalker 
PLACE: New York 
YEAR: 1994

BRIEFING: The stalker has become the nightmare criminal of the ‘nineties, especially where Royalty are concerned-both Princess Anne and the Princess of Wales have been followed-and for people in showbusiness. The phenomenon is now referred to as ‘Erotomania’ to define what amounts to a bizarre and erotic fascination with celebrities that can lead to threats and even suggestions of murder. To take one example, ‘Moon Maniac’ DeWitt Cook stalked young female child stars in Los Angeles from 1939-40, sexually assaulted a number of society women, and was finally arrested and imprisoned for life following the murder of a student in 1940. To date, the most infamous stalker is Mark Chapman, the fan of the Beatles, who followed John Lennon around New York for three days in December 1980 before finally shooting him five times at point blank range with a .38 revolver.

AUTHOR: Andrew Vachss (b. 1953), a crime novelist and lawyer, has been called ‘one of the most terrifying writers around’, while US reviewer Nicholas Pileggi was even more emphatic recently when he said that, ‘Vachss writes about a criminal world where even wiseguys fear to tread.’ He has, in fact, come to the genre with excellent qualifications, having previously been a social worker in the ‘hell’s kitchens’ of New York, a field investigator for Save the Children in Biafra during the country’s savage civil war, and the director of a maximum security prison for young offenders. It was as a result of these experiences-and in particular the atrocities against children that he uncovered while conducting an investigation into sexually transmitted diseases for the US Public Health Service in Ohio and West Virginia-that Vachss started writing to give vent to his sense of moral outrage and produced stories that are notable for their terse and uncompromising prose. His debut novel, ‘Flood’ (1985), about a rapist and murderer, brought him to immediate attention, and subsequent works including ‘Hard Candy’ (1990) and ‘Down in the Zero’ (1995) have made him a cult favourite. Vachss has also created a special legal practice that has earned him international recognition as one of the very few lawyers who will represent only children and youths victimised by abuse, neglect, molestation or incest. Not surprisingly, he believes urgent changes in the law are required and was recently quoted as saying, ‘Monsters are made, not born.’ In ‘A Flash of White’ he brilliantly describes how one such monster has turned into a terrifying stalker. It is not a story for those of a nervous disposition.

THE STORY:

The bitch in 24-G is a whore. A real slut. She parades around in front of her bedroom window in her underwear, trying on different outfits. Sometimes she looks right out the window. She knows I’m here.
The highrise has a lot of windows. They all have different coverings: curtains, drapes, Levelor blinds. The bitch in 24-G has curtains, but she never draws them.
I have a diagram of the building that I made myself. I go in and out all the time. I make deliveries for a florist. They got me that job when they let me out.
I really don’t need the job. I have the money my mother left me. But the bitch from the Probation Department, she said I have to have employment.

The bitch in 19-E just came home. She’s a pig. When she gets home, she throws off all her clothes, right on the floor. When she comes back into the front room, she has a towel wrapped around her. She doesn’t even pick up her clothes until she has a drink. I’m sure it’s liquor, because she takes so long to put it together. 
I wouldn’t drink liquor.

There’s a blonde in 16-F that I really hate. She’s the biggest bitch of them all. She walks like there’s a poker stuck up her ass. I’d like to stick a poker up her ass. A red-hot poker.
A thought like that, I’m supposed to snap the rubber band. The one I have to wear around my wrist. I have to remind myself that those are bad thoughts.

They taught me that inside. Before they let me go.
I never would have gone inside at all except for that bitch. I got caught lots of times. My mother always got me a lawyer. Nothing ever happened. They sent me to counselling twice. The important thing was, I never hurt anybody. I just looked at them, mostly. When I went inside one of their houses, they were never home. I only took panties. That’s where bitches keep their secrets, in their panties. If you hold them, you know their secrets. They belong to you.
The last time they caught me was when the bitch got me sent away. The District Attorney. Not the real District Attorney, not the head man. A woman. While I was locked up, she got a search warrant for my room. My lawyer said she was able to get it in the middle of the night because I had my ninja outfit on when they caught me. And the piano-wire garrotte.
They almost gave my mother a heart attack, charging in there like that. They found my stuff. My stalker’s journal, my magazines, even the straight razor. The bitch DA told the judge I was dangerous. A ticking bomb, she said. They wouldn’t let me out on bail.

That’s when the bitch tricked me. She had me brought to this room to talk to me. My lawyer was there. He said I didn’t have to answer any questions. The bitch said she knew there was a reason why I went prowling. That’s what she called it, prowling. It sounded good when she said it. Strong. Not like I was a freak or anything.
She had a theory, she said. About why I did it. If she was right, maybe I wasn’t a criminal after all. Maybe I was a sick person. Maybe I needed help.
I started to say something, but my lawyer stopped me. We were just there to listen, he said. Just listen.
The bitch started talking about my mother. I saw what she was doing, so I explained the truth to her. It was all just normal discipline. Children need discipline. She never really hurt me. I love my mother.
My lawyer was shaking his head. Not to stop me, like he was sad or something.

The judge sentenced me to this place. For treatment, he said. I didn’t know what it was going to be like.
But I bet the bitch knew.
I had to talk. All the time. Every day. Talk about what was inside my head, what I was feeling. They showed me pictures. Lots of pictures. Different kinds. Movies too. Videotapes. They would ask me, does this make me excited? Was I aroused?
After a few months, they put this cuff on me. Right around my... thing. They could tell when I got aroused. From the pictures. They had stories too. On tape. You sit in a chair and close your eyes and put on the earphones and the stories come.
I had to wear the cuff while I heard the stories.
They did something else to me too. Shock. They had this tape of a woman being tied up. And whipped. I watched it. They made me watch it. And when the cuff filled up, I got a shock.
After a while, I didn’t get shocked any more. I didn’t get hard when I saw women get hurt.
They made me masturbate. Alone in my room. Over and over again. First I had to masturbate every time I thought about a woman getting hurt. I was the one who got hurt. My... thing was all red and raw. I had to have medicine for it. But they made me keep doing it.
After a while, I didn’t have those thoughts any more.
Then they made me masturbate to sex images. Sex with women. Romantic sex, they called it. They had movies of that too. Kissing, holding. Slow moving.
I had to see therapists too. They made me talk about my mother. About the closet. About being tied up. About the time she caught me playing with my... thing. And what she made me do. With her panties.
I have to wear a rubber band on my wrist. If I ever get a thought about hurting women, I snap it. It reminds me of the place, and the shocks.

My mother was killed while I was inside. She was mugged. Somebody followed her up in the elevator and pushed in the door right behind her. She got hit over the head with something hard and she died. Whoever killed her took money from her pocketbook and other stuff from the apartment.
I went to the funeral. The therapists said I shouldn’t feel guilty because I hadn’t been home. It wasn’t my fault. I asked if the killer had sex with her after he hit her.
I live in the apartment now.
The woman in 16-F just came in. I could just barely see her in the living-room. She walked into the bedroom. She never raises the blinds in any room except the living-room. Even there, she only keeps them open a little bit. I can never see much. In the bedroom, the window is open. Just a slit. I saw a flash of white. Maybe her panties, just coming off. I cranked up the zoom on the telescope, aiming right at the slit. Nothing. I waited. Another flash of white. I couldn’t tell what it was. The lousy bitch. A tease is worse than anything.

I was only home about an hour when the buzzer rang. I knew who it was. My lousy bitch of a probation officer.
I have to let her in. My lawyer explained it to me. It’s part of my probation. Like the treatment centre was. If I don’t do what they say, they can violate me. That’s what my lawyer said: they can violate me.
If they do that, the judge could send me to prison. A real prison. For a long time.
I let her in. She sat down on the couch across from me. She crossed her legs. I could hear the nylon. I didn’t look-I know how the bitch watches me.
She asked me about the job. I told her I like flowers. They always smell good. I like bringing them to people.
She asked me about counselling. I told her I still go. Twice a week. And once to the group, too.
She asked me about if it bothered me to have a woman probation officer. I told her no-I like women now.
When I said that, she said she wanted to see my bedroom. I was scared. But she walked in there by herself. When she saw the telescope, she got angry. I was afraid she was going to do something to me for a minute. I told her it was for astronomy. She said she didn’t care what it was for, it better not be there the next time she came back.
The bitch. I wonder what’s inside her. I’d like to take a look inside her. With the telescope.

After she left, I was very stressed. I was shaking. I tried to be calm. She hadn’t found my other stuff. I do a lot of research. I have books. Lock-picking. Black Dragon Death Grip Techniques. Secrets of the Ninja.
There’s a woman I write to. I never met her, but she sent me pictures. I send her a money order with every letter and she sends me a letter back. She is my slave. She does whatever I tell her to do. She is a bitch too, but a tame bitch. She knows better than to disobey me. I got her name from one of the guys in group therapy. He said it’s an outlet, a release thing. So we don’t get worked up and maybe hurt somebody for real.
Every time I get a letter from her, I want to hurt some bitch even worse.

I looked out the window. The redhead in 18-H was home. She doesn’t go out much. She has a man who comes to visit her. I always know when the man is coming. She gets dressed in sexy clothes. When he comes there, she treats him like a king. Brings him drinks, lights his cigar, sits on his lap. He’s an old, fat man. Bitches always go for money. She was just lying on her couch, watching TV. I saw her hand go between her legs. She knows I’m watching.

I looked into 16-F. A long time. I couldn’t tell if the blonde was home. Then I saw it, the flash of white.

They are going to come for me soon. Coming to violate me, the bitches. All of them.
I have my list. I have my list of bitches. Everything about them. Some are from my delivery route. Only the ones where I actually got in the house. But I like the ones in the building across from me the best. I’m in their houses all the time, with my telescope.
I may only get one of them before they come for me. I’ll get one. I’ll have her. And then I’ll always have her. In my mind. No matter where they put me, I can always have her. Again and again.
So I have to make a choice.
24-G is a whore. She deserves whatever happens to her.
19-E is a pig, a dirty slob of a bitch.
18-H lets a fat old man do anything he wants to her.
16-F, she’s the worst bitch of all. The way she walks. The way she keeps me from seeing her. Just that flash of white.
That’s what decided me. I need to know what that white flash is.

I’m in the corridor now, right outside 16-F. It’s late in the afternoon-she won’t be home for another hour or so.
This is so easy.
The lock picks really work. I can hear the last tumbler fall. I’m going in now. The bitch isn’t home, so there won’t be a chain on the door.
I’m going to step inside and wait for her. Teach her a lesson.
The door opens. It’s dark in here. But I’ll find her secret.
From the back room... a flash of white...
Teeth.