“Tough it out,” Gary responded. “That’s what we did in the NFL when we took a bad hit or suffered a concussion or…”
“Help me!” she shouted back at him, and she broke down into sobs.
Gary experienced a smattering of dizzy spots blur his vision. He blinked them away. For several seconds, he felt a small tinge of empathy.
“All right, all right…” he muttered, and he leaned in, shut off the shower, and gradually helped Emma back to her feet. She clung to him, wobbly and scared, dampening his clothes.
Once she had regained her footing, he shook her loose and stood back. He assessed her appearance: the scared look in her eyes, wet hair matted down in messy clumps, her misshapen body displaying bruises and other discoloration.
“You’re grotesque,” he said.
She stared at him, trembling, clutching a towel bar, on the verge of more tears. She asked him, “Who are you?”
Gary proceeded to the sporting goods store the next morning with a single, obsessive pursuit.
Tonya.
The all-consuming determination that drove him to win games for his football team during his NFL career now fueled a goal of the personal conquest of a lone individual.
Emma was essentially finished, no longer able to compete. This was the game of life. Gary vividly remembered the day he was called into his coach’s office many years ago to receive the news he had been dropped from the team’s roster. He was being replaced with a younger player fresh out of college. Out with the old, in with the new. The bastards had no respect for loyalty or legacy. It infuriated him then. Now he understood. Those things were cheap emotional bonds. They had nothing to do about winning.
Swapping out Emma for Tonya just made good, common sense. Gary asked himself, If new and improved is available, why stick with old and broken? If a vacuum fell apart, you would replace it. You wouldn’t hang onto it for sentimental value. When appliances fail, you throw them away.
Gary opened the store and waited for Tonya’s arrival. When she showed up, she didn’t disappoint: long hair loose and thrown forward, tight shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt to accent her long, elegant limbs. He couldn’t remove his eyes. So tall, so much geography to travel.
He allowed her five minutes to get settled and then reminded her of the rain check.
“Rain what? It’s not supposed to rain,” she said, confused.
He had to remind her of the happy hour promise, getting together for drinks to talk about the swimsuit flyer.
“I’m flattered,” she told him, “but I don’t want to pose for the flyer. I’m actually a pretty private person. I don’t want to show up in everybody’s mailbox.”
He playfully argued with her and then said, “Okay, forget the modeling opportunity. I just wanted you to know you were my top choice. So we’ll just do drinks, no flyer talk.”
She hesitated. “I appreciate the gesture, but I might be coming down with a cold…”
“One drink never killed anyone with a cold,” he said. “In fact, it will probably help. You take NyQuil, that has alcohol in it, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m sorry, but…”
Gary wouldn’t take no for an answer. He pestered her, battering her lines of defense, dodging every attempt to change the subject.
“I have the store keys,” he said, smiling. “I can lock you in and not let you out until you say yes. C’mon, I just gave you a promotion and you won’t celebrate with the boss?”
Customers began entering the store, seeking help. Gary didn’t budge.
“Okay, sure, one drink,” said Tonya, and she left to go assist the customers.
That evening, he took Tonya to Geri’s Bar and Grill, even though she suggested Boomerang. Gary wanted to avoid running into any of his recent conquests at Boomerang. The bar had become something of a recruiting ground for sex partners. One had already thrown a drink in his face after he had pretended not to recognize her three days after a one-night stand.
At Geri’s, he brought her to a table in the back, dark and isolated, where they could hear one another over the music and loud chatter.
He ordered drinks. She began rattling off observations about the day at work, the success of some discounts to move older inventory, a wacky customer who made a scene, and the overall healthy foot traffic.
The drinks arrived and Gary finally said, “Let’s not talk shop. Pun intended.” He grinned at his little joke. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Let’s talk about you.”
She looked down at her drink. “Me?”
“Yes, you. You are my rising star. You have been such an inspiration to me, the way you’ve grown and developed since you first joined my little business operation. If I’m successful, much of it is due to you. And I want to show you my appreciation.”
Gary produced a small, rectangular box wrapped in shiny, silver paper. He slid it across the table at her.
“This is for you.”
“For me?”
“Think of it as a bonus. Not from the store, but from me, personally.”
She stared at it for a long moment before reaching down to delicately peel off the paper.
He watched her long, graceful fingers at work and imagined them elsewhere.
She opened the box and pulled out a beautiful chain bracelet. She let out a small gasp.
“That’s 18 karat white gold,” he told her. “I spent the whole afternoon looking for one that would go best with your hair and skin tone. Try it on.”
She looked around with a somewhat embarrassed look, then secured the chain around her wrist.
She laughed. “Doesn’t really go with what I’m wearing, does it?”
“You look beautiful.”
“I don’t think I should accept this.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too much. It’s an amazing gesture, but really, this isn’t necessary.”
“I want you to have it,” he said firmly.
She removed it and placed it back in the box. “Thank you,” she said in a soft, uncertain voice. She took a long sip from her drink.
“Now I’m going to be a little more transparent with you,” he said. He left pauses between his sentences. He wanted her to hang on his every word.
“This gift is actually meant to commemorate two things. One is the outstanding job you’ve done managing my shop and your recent promotion. That’s the part that looks back. But there’s also a milestone that looks forward. I want today to be the first day in a very special relationship between us. A new beginning. Tonya, I know you feel it as much as I do. We are meant to be with one another. We have a special connection. We are two good people who could be fantastic together.”
Tonya struggled for a reply. “I’m appreciative, really I am, but this is coming on very…quickly. I didn’t really expect this. Aren’t you, um, married.”
Gary dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I’m done with Emma. As soon as Jennifer’s off at college, we’re splitting. That’s a done deal.”
“It’s not just that… We’re a generation apart in age…”
“Meaningless.”
“… and you’re my boss.”
“Who cares? Those things are arbitrary obstacles, they get in the way of nothing.”
“But…you don’t really know me. Outside of work, we really don’t know one another.”
“We’ll get to know one another. That’s why I called it a new beginning.”
“I’m sorry…” she said, and she proceeded with delicate precision. “But…I don’t really…feel the way you do. We get along great. I appreciate you. I like you. But you’re taking this somewhere…where I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” he said simply, and the conviction in his voice startled her.
“Why wouldn’t I be telling you t
he truth?”
“Because,” he said, “your eyes tell me differently. Your body language. The way you behave each and every day. Look how you dress…”
“I dressed this way for everybody.”
“… the way you talk to me…”
“I’m nice, yes, I’m nice to everybody. I’m not trying to send signals. I’m sorry if that’s…”
“Think of how fantastic we would be together. We’re both athletic, we’re fun, we make each other laugh, we look good, we look right together.”
“Gary, please…” she said.
“I deserve you.”
“Deserve me?”
“You wouldn’t want to lose your new manager job, would you? What you’re saying is very disrespectful.”
Tonya immediately removed several bills from her purse and put them on the table. “This is for the drinks.”
“No. It’s my treat.”
She pushed the bracelet at him. “Please take this back.” She stood up and left the table.
Gary jumped up and pursued her. “Tonya, wait.”
He followed her outside to the parking lot. He tried to grab her, but she stayed a pace ahead, pulling free every time he snagged her arm.
“Stop it!” she said.
He finally caught up with her as she stood for a moment fumbling for her car keys. He trapped her against the side of her car, pinning her with his broad body, grabbing the sides of her face and kissing her. He lifted one of his legs, pressing harder into her. She fought back, which excited him further: so intense, so powerful, channeled the right way it could become awesome sexual energy.
She continued struggling and pushed him back. He clutched her clothes, tearing her shirt. Finally, she struck him hard across the face with a loud wallop. He staggered back, holding his reddened cheek.
She climbed into her car and slammed the door shut, locking it. She started up the engine and then lowered her window halfway. She faced him, panting and furious.
“You crossed the line!” she shouted at him.
He approached the car, still holding his cheek. “Tonya, please…”
“I’m quitting the store,” she said. “I do not want to ever see you again. If you ever, ever, touch me again I will call the police and press charges and your business will be ruined. Any further endorsements with your name will be ruined, you will be finished. Do you hear me?”
Gary shut his eyes, feeling a wave of nausea. “I’m dizzy,” he said in a small voice. “What… What are we doing?”
Tonya drove away, roaring into the distance.
Gary stood for a long time on the pavement, confused. His mind looped through intermittent memories of the past hour, quick flashes like a messy montage, followed by a sudden rush of guilt and panic.
He looked back at Geri’s Bar and Grill and couldn’t remember what brought him to the location. He wanted to throw up, but couldn’t. He began searching for his van.
Gary couldn’t piece together all the events of the past hour but knew something bad had happened and that it involved Tonya, and she had sped away, angry.
Above him, the sky darkened with a strange swiftness, sucking away the light. The darkness deepened to a total black like a dense stain. The blackness filled his eyes and entered his blood. A fire raged inside his ribcage.
In an instant, Gary remembered where he had parked the van.
He drove to Tonya’s condominium building. He buzzed her from the lobby, crying.
“Please let me apologize,” he sobbed. “I don’t know what happened, I’m on some new meds, the person you saw tonight was not me. I feel terrible, horrible…”
“I think it would be best if we just stayed apart right now,” she said back to him through the intercom. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Please go home.”
But he persisted, crying, insisting he would not leave until he got to apologize to her in person.
“You know me,” he said. “You’ve known me for years. You know this isn’t really how I am. I can’t go home, I can’t sleep until I see you and apologize face-to-face.”
She muttered, “All right. God dammit. I don’t need you making a scene.”
She buzzed him in.
The next morning, Tonya did not report to work at Gary’s Game Day.
When she didn’t show up for a second day, Gary called the police, concerned.
Finally, after friends and relatives could not make contact with Tonya either, the police arranged with the condominium association to check inside her unit.
They discovered Tonya on the floor, clothes torn apart as if by a wild animal, dead. She had been sexually assaulted and choked to death. Upon hearing the news, Gary closed his store for a day of mourning. In an outpouring of sympathy, “Good Guy Gary” received dozens of visitors to console him and pay their condolences for the loss of his most beloved employee.
“A part of her will always be with me,” he said, stopping short of explaining that he possessed the panties she was wearing the night she died.
Chapter Eighteen
“Welcome, students.”
Sam Green stood before his 13 hand-picked disciples, ten men and three women, intense young adults gathered for the first meeting of the Church of Nameless Disorder.
Sam wore a long black robe, head freshly shaven, invigorated by his new identity and purpose in life. To create a space for ceremonies and rituals, he had painted his basement black, covered the windows with black curtains and filled the room with candles. Scott, the juvenile delinquent from his religious education class, had helped Sam in identifying the area’s most troubled lost souls to start a following. Sam interviewed each candidate individually—in bars, fast food restaurants, coffee houses, even the public library—to assess their potential.
The chosen 13 represented the best of the best; a collection of disillusioned young people who could be trusted and influenced, owners of vulnerable minds who did not have better options in life.
Sam began his inaugural sermon with a receptive audience seated in two rows of folding chairs, ready to believe. “The world is an ugly place,” he said, standing before them. “You know it, I know it. We live it. When the world pounds down on us, day after day, it is easy to turn to fantasy for escape. We get so desperate we’ll believe anything. We fantasize about going to paradise after we die. If we withstand all the pain and all the idiots and all the unfairness of life, if we are kind to our enemies and tormentors, if we live a life of ‘good’ and we do it with big, happy grins on our faces, then we will be rewarded. That reward is a golden ticket to a place called heaven. Isn’t it ironic that to earn life after death you must deaden yourselves while alive? To be accepted into God’s kingdom, we must become obedient zombies, crushing our individual spirit to conform to a single, unthinking mass. We must be servants of organized religion and sacrifice our free will. Instead of living life, we surrender it. That is wrong. The Church of Nameless Disorder gives back your individual freedoms. Demonstrate your liberation in ways that are provocative, shocking and disruptive. Shake the world loose from this passive belief of predestined fate. We will not serve someone else’s definition of good. We will define what is good. And good is evil, the only truth going back to the beginning of time. We are returning to our roots. Answer to your id. Embrace the chaos. Create new chaos. Demonstrate your power to take, to hurt, to destroy.”
He moved to an area of the floor covered with small white rocks in the shape of a five-pointed star surrounded by larger stones forming a circle around it. “Today I am asking for your commitment. Once you commit, there is no turning back. You will become a lifelong member. You will no longer be oppressed. You will elevate out of the shit where you currently dwell.”
Sam walked to a far side of the room and knelt down at a small cage with a handle, the kind used to transport small pets. “Let me introduce you to Pixie.” He opened the
cage door and brought out a small, tense white cat.
Sam carried the cat with one hand to the stone formation. With his free hand, he set a medium-sized silver bowl in the center of the five-pointed star. Then he pulled a dagger from a pocket of his robe.
“Tonight,” he told his gathered followers, “is your baptism. We will now prepare the holy water.”
Sam opened the cat with a long slit and dangled it over the bowl, draining its lifeblood as the followers watched in silence in the flickering candlelight.
When the bleeding reached its final drops, Sam discarded the dead cat into a plastic bag. He picked up the bowl of blood. He held it high into the air and praised Satan. Spontaneously, several of the wayward youth joined in. Sam commanded his followers to pledge their lives to the Prince of Darkness. Their voices became loud and passionate in response.
He carried the bowl of blood into his audience. Dipping two fingers into the bowl, he drew stripes across the cheeks of each follower, announcing their entry into the new church.
When he was done, he returned to stand at the pentagram on the floor.
“You will go forward from this day on as representatives of true evil. Who can tell me the difference between true evil and being a mere sociopath?”
When no one responded, Sam answered his own question. “The act you witnessed, the killing of the cat, that was an act of cold indifference to its existence, the behavior of a sociopath. A sociopath doesn’t care. Evil cares.”
Sam walked over to the plastic bag and picked it up so all could see the small lump weighing down the bottom.
“This creature feels no pain. Evil is about pain. The owner of this cat is a lonely old woman who lives down the street in a small, run-down house. This cat is her only friend. Tonight, I will toss this bag on her doorstep so that she may discover its contents and experience a crushing blow of horror and despair that will haunt her for her remaining days. That, my friends, is evil.”
Sam tossed the bag aside. He reached to the floor and raised one more item, a sheet of paper showing a map of the general vicinity, several square miles of city streets and neighborhoods.
Anatomy of Evil Page 12