Desiderium: longing for something that has been lost

chapter 1

the past is never dead. it's not even dead. -- william faulkner 

O.o.O.o.O.O.o

Las Vegas, Nevada.  

November 12, 1988. 

2:47 a.m. 

If you drove along I-15, you run smack into Las Vegas. If you're not careful, you can get overwhelmed by the lights, the noise, the color, the people. If you continue on I-15, you can pass that city by, shake your head and wonder if it was just a mirage in otherwise dry and arid landscape. 

If you do happen to stay, poking and prodding at the gold layer that covers the city, you'll discover the cracks that lay beneath the veneer of the city of the lights. 

The poverty, the drug abuse, the homelessness, the high crime rates. 

All covered up by a façade of gaudiness and wealth and pure distain for their fellow brethren. 

Stray off the well-beaten paths assigned to hordes of tourists, and you'll discover that families also live here, take their kids to school here, go to work here. Families that are just trying to survive, here. 

If you happened by the lovely city of Las Vegas, with its many layers and complexities during the mid 1980's, you would be amazed to discover that among the many tourist attractions, Vegas now had a family annihilator to add to its impressive repertoire.

Rumor had it, that he (she?) hit the lower economically based families. The families that were on the "other side of town". Which of course is code for the "bad side of town." 

No one survived the bloodbaths. Ever. 

The first to go was the Martinez family. A concerned citizen called in a house check when they noticed the front door wide open. The whole family was discovered, dead, in their own pools of blood. 

The police wrote it off as a hit gone bad. 

Needless to say, that was it for the Martinez family. They had the unfortunate problem of being Hispanic and from the other side of the tracks, so maybe the case was dropped faster than it should have been.  

And then the Nelsons were dead.  Slaughtered in their house, the police were hesitant but nervous. Still this was the bad side of town, things like this happened. And so the case was shuffled off and filed away under unfortunate happenings. 

A break of about six months. The police breathed a sigh of relief. Then, a newly wed couple were found dead in their home. 

And another family. 

And another. 

When a year went by without any families meeting any untimely deaths, the police pushed the cases into a dusty room and decided that it would be cold cases. 

Until. 

November 12, 1988. 

2:47 in the morning. 

Not really a cold night, Nevada really didn't allow for cold nights, but if you stood still long enough, you could almost feel a slight chill tap-dancing up your spine.  

A quiet night too.  No sounds except for a faint jingle of a far-off strip club and a the thrum of a passing car. 

All-in-all it was a nice night. 

Most would recall that night being uneventful, putting kids to bed, cleaning up dinner, getting ready for bed, really nothing out of the normal.  A normal night, nothing more, nothing less. 

The world could be coming apart at its seams, falling into to impossibly small pieces all around you, and to every one else their night could normal. It's almost scary, how people are almost oblivious to another person's catastrophe. 

To one family, their night was nothing close to normal, to all right. In fact it was bordering close on nightmarish, straight into hellish. 

In a small, unkept house, a mother begged on her knees for the life of her son. 

In a less then desirable neighborhood, a father felt an overwhelming fear and anger at not being able to protect his little family. 

In a city that was ravaged by hypocrisy, a young boy watched his parents die savagely.  

With a regularity that was becoming sickening, the police were alerted to the unfortunate household. 

With an almost jaded expectancy they walked into the house that used to home a family, looking for the massacre. 

They found a bloodbath, that was normal, far too normal. The one irregularity was a still-barely breathing boy, lying in his own personal puddle of warm blood and vomit. With a delicacy that was rarely seen in his line of work, the detective kneeled down in the filth, whispering soft words to the barely conscious boy. He found the limp hand among the pools of blood and grasped it, desperate to give him warmth. 

A survivor. 

The boy had survived. 

They put him in protective detail as they processed his case, as they attempted to find out why he was different from all the rest. 

But time passed, and people's interest waned,  and the case was pushed aside and gradually marked as a cold case, and joined the others in the dust-filled room. 

Time passes, and the boy, the survivor, soon slipped from the memories of the police force, from the memories of the people. 

Time passes and people begin to talk about the Vegas family annihilator, reaching back in their memories, shaking their head and wondering what the hell happened.

If you do decide to stay in Vegas for a little while, make sure to swing by and visit a little run down cemetery near the edge of the city. The victims of the family annihilator are buried here, grey crumbling headstones, the names worn and faded, victims to passing time, and fading memories. 

Maybe while you're in for a visit, take a moment of your time and pray for the poor souls who were cruelly killed. No justice was ever had for them, not while they were alive nor while they were laid to rest. 

The Martinez family lies here. 

The Nelson family lies here. 

The Taylor family lies here. 

The Harris family lies here. 

The Martin family lies here. 

The last one is slightly different, however. There's two headstones here, instead of one family plot. Two crumbling headstones, a little ways from the other victims, looking a little lost, a little forlorn, slightly incomplete.

One reads Diana Reid, the other, William Reid.