Random Acts

by Franklin Horton

  The man was staring at Victor like he never seen such a sight in his life before. Victor understood that due to his size, hair, and coloration, he did not exactly blend in.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked.

  “Victor.”

  “Victor, you look like what comes out when a grizzly bear fucks a My Little Pony," the man said loudly, hoping for a reaction from the other inmates. He got it. There was a chorus of laughter.

  Victor stared the man in the face, his gaze not a challenge but questioning the man as to whether they needed to go down this road or not. The look he received back informed him they were indeed going down this road. The man did not care how Victor ended up here, but now that he was, these were the kinds of things that happened. Victor couldn’t change it. His antagonist couldn’t change it. Some things were inevitable.

  “Just what the fuck are you anyway?" the man asked. "Got that long hair sticking out all over the fucking place, all them colors in it. You look like some kind of creepy-ass clown without the makeup."

  Victor looked away from the man and looked around the room. All eyes were on him. This was it. He was the entertainment. He was now the mouse in an entire room of cats.

  The man sat down on the bed beside Victor. Victor was aware there were security cameras in the room but the man hadn’t done anything that would prompt the guards to return. Victor thought of screaming out for help but didn’t think any would come. No, that would only make things worse.

  “Victor, I’m Joe.”

  Victor extended a hand. Joe looked at it, then looked back at Victor.

  “I ain’t shaking your fucking hand,” Joe said. “Who the hell knows where that thing has been?”

  Victor withdrew his hand awkwardly. He looked back down at the floor.

  The man leaned close to Victor but still spoke loudly enough for the others to hear. "You know, when I see pussies like you out in public this rage comes over me. I want to jump on you and start beating the holy hell out of you. I don't even know why. There's just something about the way you look."

  Victor shrugged. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice a croaking whisper.

  "You're sorry for being a goofy-looking pussy?"

  Victor nodded. “I guess.”

  “Either you are or you aren’t,” Joe said. “Are you sorry for being a goofy-looking pussy or not?”

  “I am.”

  “Then let’s make sure everybody knows it,” Joe said.

  “How?”

  “By telling them,” Joe said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Victor looked at the expectant faces around the room. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Joe shook his head. “That was a piss-poor job right there. We’ll come back to it. There’s something I’ve always wondered and I’m hoping you can straighten this out for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you not get enough attention as a child? What’s with all this weird color in your hair and beard? What’s with the hair poking out in all directions?”

  Victor shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you like attention?”

  “Not really,” Victor said.

  “Are you liking all the attention now?”

  Victor shook his head.

  “Then why do you go out of the house like that?” Joe asked. “Why are you walking around with all this stuff that just screams look at me?”

  Victor didn’t respond. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Look, motherfucker, this is a conversation we’re having. It means me talking and you talking. You quit talking and I’m likely to get offended. Do you want to offend me?”

  Victor did not. “I’m sorry.”

  “Damn right you’re sorry,” Joe said. “That’s written all over you.”

  Victor had heard that exact line before, both from his mother and Stanley. Maybe it was written all over him.

  “Why don’t you just stand and address everybody in the room so we’re clear about this. I know there are people out there like me. People who just want to beat the ever-loving shit out of you because we have to look at you out in public.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Victor asked.

  “I want you to announce you’re sorry you’re a goofy-looking pussy who looks like a My Little Pony doll that got fucked up at the factory. I want you to say that you’re sorry we have to look at you. Then I don’t want you to say shit the rest of the day.”

  Victor had no problem with that. If he didn’t have to say anything the rest of the day then they would hopefully leave him alone. Seeing no way out of this and wishing to delay any possible violence directed toward him, Victor stood.

  "Go ahead, man. Do it,” Joe encouraged.

  Victor cleared his throat. "I'm sorry for being a goofy looking pussy."

  Joe frowned. "I hate to be critical but that wasn't nearly loud enough and I don’t feel like you meant it."

  Victor looked around at the amused faces of the other men in the room. They did not even feel like people to him anymore. Maybe that was because he did not have any normal interpersonal relationships in his life. People had stopped being people to him. Instead they were obstacles, challenges, and impediments to him being able to do what he wanted to do. He was devoid of empathy and devoid of compassion. In some ways, everything was just about surviving. It was about the basics of being an animal and the world was his jungle.

  "I'm sorry for being a goofy-looking pussy," Victor announced, louder this time. “I’m sorry I look like a My Little Pony.” He sat back down on the bed.

  Joe waved a hand at him. "Nah. I don't think were done yet. Get back up."

  Victor did as he was told. He looked down at the man on the bed, awaiting further instructions.

  "I want you to tell everybody you're sorry that we even have to look at you. I want you tell everybody that when you get out of this jail you’re gonna do your best to try look like a normal fucking human being. You are going to get a real human haircut and you’re gonna wash them goofy colors out of your beard. Can you remember all that?"

  Victor returned his gaze to his audience. "I'm sorry you all have to look at me. When I get out of here I'll try to do better. I’ll get me a new haircut and wash these colors out of my beard." He turned and faced Joe. "That good?"

  Joe hesitated but decided to let it pass. To Victor’s relief, the man stood.

  "That was pretty damn sorry but you’re probably not capable of much better. I also don’t want to look at you anymore so why don’t you stay here on your bed and not move around. That okay?"

  Victor sat down. "Sure."

  Victor laid down on his cot and thought about his situation. Joe wandered off and eventually conversation in the room returned to normal. There was a lot of laughing and joking. He assumed a good bit of it was about him but he didn't care. While being the butt of ridicule was nothing new, it still hurt. However, he was used to it. Where there was once a blister, there was now a callous.

  Two hours later, Victor was led to a small office. Over a video conferencing system, he faced a county magistrate who read the charges he was accused of and set his bond. When the proceeding was over, the jailer asked Victor if he had anyone he could call to bond him out. If not, the jailer could provide him with the card for a bail bondsman. Victor didn't want to call his mother but he sure didn’t want to get involved with a bail bondsman either.

  He must have spent too much time mulling it over because the jailer got impatient with him. "You better make up your mind. I ain’t got all damn day.”

  Victor bit the bullet and called his mother on her cell phone.

  "Hello?" his mother answered.

  "Hey, how’s your trip?" Victor asked, trying to sound conversational.

  "Get to the point," the jailer growled. “You’ve got three minutes.”

  "Who was that?" Clara asked.

  "It was the jailer," Victor said with resignation. “I’m in jail.”

 
"Jail!" Clara roared.

  Victor didn’t know exactly where she was but he could hear a lot of noise and bustle around her. She must also be drawing a lot of attention by her reaction to his call. “Where are you?”

  “The buffet at the casino. I was getting ready to eat some crab legs. Now I won’t be able to digest a thing."

  "You don’t have to leave," Victor said. "I guess I'm not in any hurry."

  "What did you do? You didn't expose yourself did you?" His mother whispered the last part, apparently not wanting the eavesdroppers to hear that accusation.

  "No, I didn't expose myself," Victor said, cutting a quick glance at the jailer. The man was now staring at him as if he were indeed a flasher or some even lower degree of miscreant then he'd previously been thought to be.

  "Times almost up. Get to the point," the jailer said with a newfound disgust. "You’ve got one minute."

  "Mom, I'm running out of time. I need $2500 or I have to stay in here until my court date. It's a bad, bad place. I'd rather come home."

  "I bet you would rather come home, you stupid peckerwood. I'm not sure if I’m going to bail you out or not. I need to talk to Stanley about it. Right now my dinner is getting cold so I need to go. You enjoy the hoosegow, jailbird, and I'll let you know."

  24

  Mohammed slapped his palm on the table so hard his computer monitor rocked. He was frustrated nearly to the point of screaming. He shoved his rolling chair back and stood up. He paced the room, his breath coming fast, his anxiety skyrocketing.

  Having heard the noise, Khebat came to the door. “What is it?”

  “DeathMerchan6o6o6 absolutely lives online. Nearly every time I log on, he’s already logged on. Depending on the site, there are always icons indicating he’s active. I’ve never seen him go more than a few hours without being active. He’s logged off nearly all of them now and he hasn’t been active for over twenty-four hours. I’m worried he’s done something stupid.”

  Khebat looked concerned. “If he drew the attention of the police then we might have lost our only asset. He would be known to them. He would be entangled in the American legal system, which might make him more apprehensive about being a willing participant in our plan.”

  The way in which Mohammed looked at his colleague confirmed that this was exactly what he was afraid of. “I’ve sent a few messages but I don’t want to seem desperate. Right now I’m just trying to monitor him and see where he’s active. As of a few minutes ago, he’s not been active anywhere.”

  “That’s concerning.”

  “I agree,” Mohammed said. “It’s as we’ve said before, if you deal with the vulnerable and weak-minded, those very traits which make them useful to us also make them a liability.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Mohammed shrugged. “What can I do? I’m going to watch and wait.”

  “This makes me nervous. I cannot forget the look on Machmud’s face as the boiling oil ran into his ear.”

  Mohammed did not reply but it was clear from his sense of urgency he had not forgotten that image either. How could anyone forget it?

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Khebat said.

  Mohammed thought. “How many American social media accounts do you have now?”

  “Over a hundred,” Khebat said. “I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Do you have six young women who live in the mid-Atlantic or southern U.S.?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Pick out six. When the mouse re-emerges from his hole, he may need encouragement. If we have to, we’ll let those six form a relationship with DeathMerchant6o6o6. We’ll have them begin to comment on his video and request to be part of his network. We’ll have those girls tell him they are real-life friends of CamaroChick19. He’ll want to be part of the group. It may make him more compliant.”

  Khebat nodded. “Excellent. More peer pressure.”

  “Also, if he’s as inexperienced and isolated as I suspect, he will be more eager to please young ladies. Especially a group of them.”

  “I will prepare the accounts.”

  “Do nothing with them yet,” Mohammed said. “Just have them ready.”

  Khebat paused in the door. “There’s another option.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have more pictures from the account you used to create CamaroChick19?”

  Mohammed nodded. “I have more pictures and access to more. This person is still active on social media and posting new pictures every time I revisit her account. I have links bookmarked to all of the accounts I take pictures from.”

  “If you can get a new picture, something that might raise his interest, I have a compiler that will embed a keystroke logger and malware into the image. The malware will give me a backdoor into his computer. It won’t help us now, but once he views the image we can monitor what he’s doing.”

  “Excellent,” Mohammed said. “I’ll prepare an image immediately.”

  “Put it on a USB stick and bring it to my machine.”

  Mohammed returned to the account from which he had been taking the pictures. Though he rarely paid any attention to the details of the account, other than to check the country of origin, he did notice this one belonged to an American teenager by the name of Amanda Castle. He found a picture of Amanda on a homebuilding site and copied it to his own hard drive, then to a USB memory stick.

  He shoved his rolling desk chair back from the computer table, pulled the USB stick from his laptop, and took it into Khebat’s room. It was a stark, carbon copy of Mohammed’s own bare quarters. No one in the west could understand how much of an improvement it was over the caves and hovels of his real home. He would take this empty apartment any day.

  Khebat extended a hand and Mohammed placed the memory stick in it. Khebat plugged the drive into his machine and brought the picture up on his desktop.

  “Pretty girl,” Khebat commented.

  Mohammed shrugged. “If you like infidels.”

  Khebat opened a piece of software and entered data into several blank fields. When he was done, he clicked a button with his mouse. The software ran for several seconds and then Khebat closed the program.

  “Done!” he said, pulling the drive from his laptop. “Send this to DeathMerchant6o6o6. Ask him some stupid question, what he thinks of the picture or something. As long as he opens it, the programs will embed in his machine. Then we’ll be able to see what he’s doing.”

  “If he comes back online,” Mohammed added.

  “He will. The kids have an addiction. They can’t stay off forever.”

  25

  Victor awoke in the jail to an unholy chorus. At first he wasn’t certain what was going on. The noises in the cell penetrated his dreams. Reality became mixed with imagination. Then the sounds that reached his ears encountered the smells that reached his nose. His stomach lurched and his eyes shot open. Lights in the communal cell were still faint, at nighttime levels, but at one stainless steel toilet he could see a man hunched over throwing up the previous night’s alcohol.

  At the other end of the cell, on another stainless steel toilet, a man was groaning and dumping the liquefied contents of his gut out the other end of his body. The smell permeated every inch of the cell. Other inmates were starting to wake up, gagging at the combination of scents. Some were yelling and starting to throw things at the offensive men.

  "I can’t help it," the man with his pants around his ankle growled.

  "You better be helping it." It was Joe, the man who'd intimidated Victor in the cell yesterday, making him apologize.

  When the man predictably didn't pause his diarrhea mid-stream, Joe slung back his blanket and sprung from the bed. He flew across the cell and stood in front of the terrified man, screaming and cursing at him. The man shuddered, groaned, and emitted another vile torrent into the toilet, making his attacker gag and back up.

  Victor rubbed his eyes and sat up. The disturbance brought jailers who tapped on the
bars told everyone to simmer down.

  One of the jailers called Victor’s name and pointed at him. "You're being released," he said. "You’ve been bonded out."

  "Thank God," Victor groaned.

  The jailer smiled and chuckled. "If you say so."

  Victor caught a hint of some inside joke, that the man knew something Victor didn’t. He looked at the jailer for explanation but found none. "Oh, I guess you met my mom. I would be better off staying in here."

  Victor meant it as a joke but the jailer just shook his head.

  "Dude, you got no fucking idea what’s waiting on you,” he said.

  It took a little while to process Victor out. There were a lot of papers to sign. They gave him his belongings and he had him sign for them too. He was given a court date and a reminder to keep his nose clean. He was pleased to see the court date was two months off.

  Victor was ushered through a series of electronically locking doors. Each was opened by a pushbutton at some remote location. When he finally reached the lobby, he felt he’d reached freedom at last but he didn’t see anyone waiting on him. In fact, the lobby was empty. Maybe his mother was waiting outside, smoking on the sidewalk since he’d no doubt stressed her out. He was certain he was going to hear about it for the entire drive to the shopping center, where he hoped his car was still parked.

  He started to go outside and look for her when he heard the muffled roar of a toilet flushing in the public restroom. Stanley’s smiling face came into view. Victor's eyes flicked in the direction of the electronic door he’d just come through. Through the wired glass he could see the smiling face of the deputy. Apparently, Stanley had informed the deputy of just how pleased Victor would be to see him.

  Stanley was so filled with glee he could not wipe the smile off his face. He stood there grinning, his hands shoved in the pockets of a khaki jumpsuit. Victor was paralyzed with indecision. This was not what he expected, but was going back into jail really an option?