Roswell Fanatics

Title: Innocence (A short story in two or three postings, depending on how busy I get....)


Disclaimer: The characters of "Roswell" belong to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, WB, and UPN. They are not mine and no infringement is intended.

The Alien Abyss

Rating: ADULT due to strong sexual content/violence

Summary: A day in the life of a pedophile.........


She was older than he usually liked…….
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He really didn’t have an age cutoff, but she was older than most girls that he preyed upon because after a few years in school most were not foolish enough to be that trusting. But she was such a beautiful child and the desire in him was overpowering. And somehow, despite being seven or eight years old, there was an innocence about her, not just a sexual innocence, but a naivete about the world in general, as if she had been raised in a sheltered environment, protected from the experiences of the world. He could tell such things, he wasn’t sure just how. This one was just somehow…..younger than her years.

During a long ago peer group treatment session the clinical psychologist had been called away for a message, and the five incarcerated group members had actually talked freely about how they selected their prey. All had felt that they somehow could just sense the innocence of someone, and although they all kept computer files of kiddie porn to stimulate them, it was this innocence that was the true turn-on. After a while, this innocence would be lost, and they would lose interest. Some would just let the child go, others like himself could not afford to be identified…..too many strikes. The body must never be found, certainly not until the passage of time had rendered the DNA evidence unusable. It wasn’t really that he didn’t like the victim afterwards, it was simply that their innocence was ……used up. Like the children in the kiddie-porn whose eyes said they had seen way too much, had either walled off the reality of their world or had started to accept their lives as normal…had started to think that they too would do this when they were older, bigger, ….smarter.

No, those weren’t children who were ….desirable. Their innocence was gone, and it was the innocence he craved, the innocence that had led him to do this dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, he wasn't even himself sure how many times. It was the quest for that innocence that had lead him to continue, despite three strikes laws, despite years of court mandated counseling, treatment, even incarceration. And this one had that innocence in abundance, and he found himself drawn to her like a moth to a flame……..

He had waited patiently on the edge of the city park while the young girl had worked her way through each of the play structures, slowly getting farther and farther away from her mother who sat on the other edge of the park watching not just the girl but a number of other children she had brought in the van. Finally the time was right. A few bushes hid the last piece of playground equipment from the view of the woman, and he grabbed the dog leash and walked quickly toward the girl playing alone on the play structure.

“Excuse me,” he said. Have you seen my puppy? She’s about six weeks old, and ran off about a half hour ago. She really shouldn’t be away from her mother yet. She’ll die if we don’t find her.”

The beautiful little girl looked up at the man who appeared to be distraught, looking under the bushes and up and down the streets. She slowly shook her head.

“Could you help me find her? She’ll die if we don’t get her back to her mommy.”

The young girl looked up at the man. She loved puppies. “I’ll help you mister…..”

She had gone three blocks from the playground with the man, looking for the puppy. With each step she became more and more uneasy. She didn’t like it when she couldn’t see her mother. Most people didn’t understand how scared she was all the time, how little she knew. Most people thought she was like the other children in her play group, children who could remember years and years of life with their families, children who had lived in the same house for years, and knew their way home, children who had lots of experience to help them make their decisions. But she wasn’t.

Yes, she’d learned to speak quickly, learned to dress herself, learned to go potty, even learned to speak and write. But that all happened only in the last year or so. When it came to experience in life, she knew she had very little. And she was becoming frightened.

He smiled as he saw her unease as they came to the trailer. She was confused, uncertain……, it was always the same. The more frightened and confused, the more they trusted the adult, and he was the only adult around.

“Gee it’s hot in here,” he said, taking off his jacket. “If the puppy is in the trailer we need to find her quick, before she gets too hot because she'll get sick. We need to be careful that we don’t get too hot either, otherwise we could get sick too, and then we’d never be able to help the puppy.”

The girl’s fright grew as he sat her on the bed in the warm trailer and removed her sweater. Her mommy had told her something once about good and bad touching, but she couldn’t remember it now, because she was so scared. But she was uncomfortable at the way the man looked at her, the way his hands had lingered on her chest as he’d removed the sweatshirt. But maybe it was OK, because he was removing his shirt too, and now his undershirt.

“It’s sooo hot in here,” he said. He looked at the girl again, sweating not from the heat, but from the excitement, from the anticipation….. “We need to make sure you don’t get too hot too, then we can find the puppy and take her back to her mommy.”

“The girl was too frightened to respond as the hands came toward her again. She wanted her mother, but her mother wasn’t there. She wanted her daddy, but her daddy wasn’t there……even her brother wasn’t there. Silently inside her mind she screamed for help, please….., anyone help me…………..

He delighted in the terror in the eyes of the girl, the terror, the innocence and the fear, as he started to peel the undershirt from over her head. Her mother had sewn a label in the sweater with her name. That too would be helpful……

“So your name is Isabel…?” he asked, as he took off the shirt and started to reach to unfasten her belt. The eyes froze him. They were no longer the eyes of innocence. Just as he had known that the girl had been so innocent, he now knew that somehow the innocence had left, and the person looking out at him was anything but innocent.

“No,” said the young girl, the pupils of her eyes suddenly growing large and somewhat almond shaped, “It’s Vilandra….”

Diane Evans was shaking as she read the newspaper. First of all, Isabel had wandered off in the park yesterday, and she’d been frightened out of her mind looking for her for a half hour or so. She had apparently been attracted to the commotion of a fire in the abandoned old trailer on the vacant lot near the park. Now reading the paper, Dianne had discovered that in the ashes of that very fire they had found the badly charred body of a man, a man identified by his DNA and dental records as a pedophile. The paper indicated that the body had multiple fractures, and it appeared that the man had been tortured before he had been killed, with the fire lit to destroy the evidence.

“Isabel?”

“Yes mommy.”

“When we were at the park and there was the trailer on fire, did you see anybody come in or out of the trailer?”

“Just Vilandra, mommy. She came out of the trailer…”

Diane smiled. Isabel and her invisible playmate. The Social Services People had warned them that the two children had apparently been deprived of social interaction during their first 6 or 7 years, and that invisible playmates and the like were to be expected. Isabel had mentioned Vilandra quite a bit after she’d first learned to talk, but she hadn’t mentioned her in months now.

“From now on at the park, I’d like you to stay closer to mommy, OK Izzy?”

“Yes mommy.”