The House that Jack Built

by Malcolm James

  All the while, raising our son as his. I hated him. If possible, I hated him more each day, when I awake in a tiny cell with four walls that are covered with my own insane scrawls. Unfortunately, I’m in here with his memories and his thoughts, so it isn’t often easy for me to separate Jack from Malcolm, and vice-versa. That makes every day a unique adventure of strange and mysterious thoughts and imaginings.

  I’ll give him this: he had managed to perform a miracle whose net result was just like the art he collected. It made him an object for posterity. Jack had found immortality.

  I knew that when I saw the statue restored to its original form. As long as no-one else touches it, he can begin all over again. And keep going as long as there are heads to cut off, art to collect and someone as stupid as me to be captured in his perverted spell.

  While his immortality was gained at my overwhelming expense, years of psychotherapy and antipsychotic medication have allowed me to cope with what he did. But I’ll never get over it, and I’ll never forgive him.

  I miss drinking and fine dining, and I really miss sex. But I find a certain sense of comfort in the new life that I’ve been dealt. I have solitude, and time to be alone with my thoughts. Hell, being here has probably added ten years to my life.

  The only human interaction I have now is with psychologists, criminologists and lawyers. The Police come around less and less, but psychologists from all over the world pay me frequent visits. Renowned criminologists constantly want to interview me for papers or books they’re writing. I’ve gained a great deal of international notoriety, and the Jack in me loves it.

  During the trial, the media labeled me as a ‘monster’ and the psychologists didn’t refute it. It drives them nuts, too. They love to be able to fit every psychological disorder into a neatly-designed box. To simply write me off as a monster is an uncomfortable prospect for them. For it’s an admission that they don’t fully comprehend the criminally-insane mind.

  If they only knew.

  They struggle to diagnose me with checklists and pre-packaged tests, and I think they come to see me more to prove themselves right, instead of trying to gain understanding of what I really am. I enjoy these talks and love the fact that these well-educated people believe that they can actually dissect my mind.

  The Jack in me toys with them. I fabricate things to throw them off track, like telling them that I secretly wanted to have sex with my father, and that I collect my own ejaculate in a large jar. I laugh my ass off at them while they write furiously. I know it sounds cruel, but you have to understand. I don’t get a lot of entertainment. They don’t let me partake in Penitentiary Talent Night. So like Jack, I have to make my own fun.

  The treatment which I receive is ongoing, but it’s moved into maintenance mode. I even get the privilege of going outside once a week for thirty minutes, where I bask in the sunlight and stroll around a ten-foot by ten-foot cage under armed guard.

  While I do, he walks with me and we think about our lives. We remember the times and events we experienced. And I, at least, feel a little sadness that those days are over forever. I even miss him sometimes, but I only miss the good things that I knew about Jack. Sometimes I even imagine that somewhere in his psyche – in his new body – he regrets that I had to suffer for his desire. But then I remember who we’re talking about.

  I have access to a wide variety of books, and when I’m not writing, drawing or undergoing therapy, I read a great deal. Recently, I stumbled over Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which I thoroughly enjoyed. One passage however, from the Eighteenth Sonnet reminded me of him.

  So I neatly wrote it on a crisp white piece of paper and placed it on the wall beside my bed. I read it every night before I go to sleep, and every morning when I awake. There is wisdom in his words that reminds me of our coveted artwork.

  Thy eternal summer shall not fade,

  Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

  Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

  When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

  I’ve inscribed this story in the hopes that someday, someone will pick it up and recognize the truth in my words. And even if they don’t, this story assures me immortality.

  For art is the creation of immortality. And if art is the head and the heart that contain thought and inspiration, then immortality is the body and legs which frame it, maintain it and carry it from this life to the next.

  This book took me three years to write, and in that time I’ve tried to forgive him, for I’ve had ample opportunity to think about it. Do I still hate him? That’s a difficult question to answer, for to hate him would be to hate myself. And were our situations reversed, I’d have done to him exactly what he did to me.

  Then again, that could be Jack talking.

  THE END

  What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It will kill her.

  Distortions

  by Malcolm James

  A message scrawled in human bile on a murderer’s floor. It seems to beckon Doctor Quinn Masterson: come and watch me kill. Quinn is the FBI’s newest monster hunter and when evasive Homeland Security Agent Philip Glass turns to her for help on the mystery of Flight 74, she senses a set-up. Is she even ready for this? Fighting the clock and well-aware that lives are on the line, Quinn and Philip must determine the killer’s true intent. Who – or what – is behind the cryptic message? What is the connection to the killer known only as The Big Bad Wolf? Why does the evidence point to Quinn’s troubled past?

  Panic threatens to destroy her as the mystery unravels and her blood turns to ice with each new clue. Hints of a secret organization, unsettling rumors about Quinn’s placement with the FBI, and new facts surrounding her terrifying abduction fourteen years ago. As her world caves in, she doesn’t know which will get her first: the demons she tracks or the ones inside her. It’s exactly what an abuse victim would expect.

  Available in Paperback and e-Book formats

  Icarus Press Publishing www.icaruspress.com

  Malcolm James is the author of The House That Jack Built, Whispers in The Mist, One Night in Eerie Cove, and Distortions: A Quinn Masterson Mystery. A former publisher and entrepreneur, he’s also enjoyed careers in technology, government, and education. He lives in Atlantic Canada.