“And you can’t do that. Look, I’ve known you a long time and know you’re one charming dude when you want to be and one serious asshole when you want to be too. Can we just have a little more charming and a little less asshole at the office?”
I put on my best fake smile. Outwardly, I was showing him he had gotten through and I’d be happy to do what I could to help. I knew he liked me, as most people did. I was the perfect friend, the perfect lover, the perfect boss. I became what they wanted to see and only once in a while would my mask slip and reveal the twisted wreckage underneath.
“For you, Roger, anything.”
“I appreciate it. Thank you. Now, when we going golfing?”
“This afternoon?”
“Can’t, client meetings. Tomorrow after lunch?”
“You’re on.”
I waited until he left before standing. My head and upper body caught in the projector’s light and it cast a black shadow on the wall. It was the perfect depiction of myself: nothing on the inside. People would comment to me all the time how charming I was, how witty, how full of life. My ex-girlfriend had told me that her parents loved me more than she did. I was just the right mixture of handsome and successful and mysterious to be appealing.
But I knew the truth. I had no delusions about it. I was the shadow. I was an outline with a dark center that I could never penetrate. And because of this center I couldn’t see the centers of anyone else. So I became what they showed me. When I met a person—and I’d met enough people to have a statistically valid sample of the population—I knew that no matter who they were or where they came from, they would like me.
I would become like them, sometimes unconsciously, but most of the time with an eye toward ensuring that I appeared sympathetic and agreeable. They would think of me as a friend and I wouldn’t know the first thing about how they related to the world, what their hopes were, their dreams, their relationships, their inner thoughts, their motivations … human beings were all a mystery to me.
Two years ago I watched as a woman’s husband drowned in a pool. He hit his head and sank to the bottom and none of the lifeguards had been paying attention. The woman was hysterical and weeping uncontrollably and I couldn’t figure out why. She was relatively decent looking, not ugly and not pretty. She would find another husband. What did it matter whether it was the corpse at the bottom of the pool or some other loser she found at the grocery store or gym?
It fascinated me the entire length of the day. I drove home, and as I went about my nighttime routine, tried to mimic the sounds she’d been making, the frantic cries for someone, anyone, to do something to save her husband. It wasn’t easy, but it was something that had to be perfected.
I walked out into the hall and past thirty or so cubicles and another dozen offices. Mine was the corner office with the frosted glass walls. I walked in and shut the door behind me. A remote control was on my desk and I pressed a button and the stereo mounted on the wall turned on. I opened iTunes on my computer, which was connected to the stereo, and played some Coltrane.
Just as I was relaxing in my chair with my feet up on the desk, someone knocked on the door and broke my concentration.
“What?” I said.
Char, one of our staff, poked her head in. “Mr. White is here to see you, sir.”
“Tell him I’m not in.”
“Um, I think he saw your car outside. He knows you’re here.”
“Where is he?”
“In the foyer.”
“Send him back in five minutes.”
She left and I sighed and turned the stereo off and exited the office. Another staff was near my office, Alexis something, and I went to her. “Phillip White is going to go into my office and see that no one is there. When he does, tell him I went for a client meeting with someone else and won’t be back until the afternoon. If he says my car is here, tell him the other person drove.”
“Sure, Mr. Fischer.”
I took the back door and went down the emergency exit, which was nothing more than a little winding staircase locked away next to the parking garage. It echoed loudly and with each step you grew more disoriented as you weren’t exactly certain where in the descent you were.
Getting down the stairs and opening the exit door, I glanced both ways before slinking out and crossing the street. Café Molisse was there and they had the best espresso in the city. I went inside and sat down.
2
My father summoned me later that afternoon. He never requested, it was always a summons. I received a text at around one P.M. saying, Get your ass over here.
I went home and changed into something more conservative first. A gray suit with a gold tie and pocket square. I drove my Cadillac, and though the ride was smooth, it annoyed me. It was associated now with greasy mobsters and old men and I didn’t want to be seen in it. But it was my father’s favorite type of car.
I parked outside city hall in handicap parking and went inside. The space was decorated with flags and paintings of veterans, a statue of Brigham Young up in the corner that was slated to be taken down next month, the residents feeling that, though he founded Utah, he was too much a religious symbol and had no place in a government building.
I found the mayor’s office and walked past his secretary. My father was at his desk with two city councilmen discussing something about monster homes and stopping their development in some area of Park City. He glanced to me and said, “We’ll talk more later.”
I waited until the men left and then stepped inside his office and sat down across from him.
“You wanted to see me?”
He leaned back in the chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Tell me you didn’t kill that girl.”
“I didn’t kill that girl.”
He looked at me, his eyes steely and gray. Since I could remember, he had the ability to see through me when so few other people could. “Thomas, tell me you didn’t kill that girl.”
“I did not kill any girl.”
He turned to a bottle of Vos water and took a sip. “When you were eight, your mother caught you cutting that neighbor girl … what was her name?”
“Teddy.”
“That’s right. Teddy. You cut her up so bad she needed plastic surgery. Your mother said you were sick. That you needed to be put away somewhere so you couldn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t see it. I just saw my boy. I had a streak of cruelty too and I thought I had rubbed off on you. I thought it would help you in the business world, in politics … I didn’t recognize what you were.”
“And what’s that?” I said, my eyes locked to his, my voice even.
“You’re an animal. And I’m through bailing you out. If you did anything to that girl you’re on your own. I’m not helping you, not with the police, not with anybody.”
“Someone dies and I’m the first person you look at? That seems hardly fair.”
“You know when the last time we had a murder up here was? Then you move out and three months later we’ve got not one but two. And then an FBI agent.”
“I moved out because you asked me to run the company.”
“Yeah, and somehow you can actually keep it together long enough to do a decent job. How is that? How do you have that thing inside you and still function?” He chuckled. “You know what the VP said about you? Nate? He said you were one of the funniest, most charming people he’s ever met. How is that, Thomas? Can you just put on that mask whenever you want?”
“Is there any real reason you called me here?”
“Yes, you’re leaving.”
“Where am I going?”
“I don’t give a shit. You’re just not staying here. Not anymore. And you’re resigning from the company.”
“I like it here.”
“You like it here ‘cause these small-town folk worship you. You drive up in a Ferrari and fly these girls out to the Caribbean and get blow jobs and you think that makes you a man? Well guess what, tough guy, this is mine. I
earned this. You didn’t do shit for this.”
“If that’s all,” I said as calmly as possible, “I’d like to leave now.”
He exhaled. “Sure, go. Go do whatever you want. But I want your resignation by Friday and you on the next plane outta here by Monday. If you’re not on that plane, I’m calling the FBI and telling them to look into you.”
“Bullshit. You can see through me but I can see through you too. It would end your career if I was found to be the one that killed that girl, which I didn’t. But you would be the father of that murderer. Forget mayor, you couldn’t run a lemonade stand with the reputation you’d have. Helix’s stock would plummet too. You’d lose everything.”
We sat and stared at each other a long while, neither of us saying anything.
I rose and unbuttoned the top button on my suit coat. “Always a pleasure, Father.” Walking out of city hall, I stopped and looked to the mountains east of us and their snow-covered peaks, which looked like white foam pouring down over them and rolling to the bottom. I wasn’t going anywhere. I liked it here. I liked running the company. I wasn’t scared of my father or anyone else. The only things I cared about were amusement and curiosity, and so few things amused me or piqued my curiosity that when I found one, I had to use it for all it was worth. This town, and the degenerate fools that wasted their lives away in it, amused me.
At some point, my father would have to be dealt with. But not today. Today, I was in a good mood. Because I had decided on my next adventure.
JON STANTON
It was Thursday evening when I decided to call Emma. I hoped she had cooled down and was ready to discuss things with me, but somehow I knew she wouldn’t be. She would be distant and cold. On an unconscious level she knew the best way to hurt me was not to grow angry or break things or insult me, but to quietly withdraw her love. And she was a master at it.
She didn’t answer and I left a message, something ridiculous about the altitude causing me to get dumber, and then I thought that I should take a little break.
I took out the scriptures app on my phone. I felt like reading the New Testament and I turned to Luke and began reading at a random location. The scriptures were familiar to me and comforting in a strange place.
I remember when I was baptized into the Mormon Church. Christians told me it was a cult and not to do it. Non-Christians told me you become a slave to any religion you joined. But I never saw it that way. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, an extensive study conducted on the needs of human beings, placed a sense of belonging as one of the most fundamental of all needs. Even above food and sex. Religion gave that sense of belonging. That was something atheists never understood when they questioned how an intelligent person could believe in talking bushes and an ark filled with two of every animal. In the end, it didn’t matter whether it was true or not. The effect was nearly the same.
I was anxious and jittery so I could only read a few passages. Some condominiums not far from where I was had a pool. I’d seen them as we’d driven past the day before. I dressed in shorts and a t-shirt with sandals and walked the block and a half down there. The gate was open and at least thirty people were at the pool, most of them sitting on the deck.
I put my keys and phone and shirt on a deck chair and walked to the edge of the pool. I slipped my legs in and then my waist and torso. Quickly dunking my head under, I came up and spit out the water that was cascading down my lips into my mouth. The air was warm and there wasn’t a breeze. I breast-stroked out to the other side, turned around with my back to the wall, and then put my arms against the edge and held myself afloat with my legs in front of me, letting the sun warm my face.
Right behind my eyelids images were flying past. I couldn’t stop them and I couldn’t slow them down. I saw a dark forest with twisted, black trees, their leaves dead and brown. A woman was screaming as she ran in the darkness, the branches and rocks and shrubs scraping her legs and arms and face. Her breathing was heavy and strenuous and her legs hurt. She didn’t know how long she could keep running. She had never been an athlete and had never needed to work out to maintain her slim figure. Exertion was unfamiliar.
And behind her was Death.
It moved on two legs but wasn’t human. Her screams only excited him and her cries may as well have been given to the rocks or the trees. Death was just as aloof.
The running was growing more difficult though adrenaline burned in her veins. He had adrenaline too, and he had prepared for this. He knew this moment would arrive. For her, this was lightning striking.
I saw her begin to slow and looked for satisfaction in Death but there is none. He doesn’t care. This was all inevitable for him. Everything she had done in her life, all of her actions, led up to this. She didn’t have a choice. And somehow, I knew Death didn’t either.
He sliced her brutally on the first strike. A warning and a tactic to induce shock. Great white sharks use the same tactic on seals. They don’t kill on the first blow but simply attack once so viciously that the seal loses their will to live and freezes from the inducement of shock.
He rips off her clothing, letting her know she can only wear what he tells her she can wear. He spends more time than necessary on the panties and makes sure she sees that he’s cutting them off. He pulls down his own pants and tries to enter her, but can’t. Something’s wrong. Something he didn’t plan for. Something he couldn’t plan for.
The scene is too chaotic. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind, he thought she would, on some level, succumb and become a slave, if only for a few moments.
But she cried uncontrollably and the blood caked her skin in the night. Black blood that was difficult to separate visually from the ground and it appeared like the earth was swallowing her.
He gets up and rips a tree branch off and returns to her. He’ll be damned if she doesn’t feel this. She will feel—
“Excuse me.”
My eyes dart open and my heart is racing. I feel the water against my skin and blink several times as if I’d just woken up. A young boy is there next to me and he’s holding on to the side because he can’t swim and he doesn’t trust the two inflatable orange tubes wrapped tightly around his biceps. I move away from the wall and he slides past me.
THOMAS FISCHER
Furburbia was the nearest pet store. I was in a strip mall that was called an outlet mall so they could charge whatever they wanted and people still thought they were getting a deal. As I pulled up I saw several older mothers dressed like teenagers, showing legs and cleavage, attempting to feel relevant. To feel desired. And if you showed them even a little desire, they would do whatever you wanted.
No one else was in the store and the girl behind the counter smiled at me and I smiled back. I walked among the cats and tapped on the glass of a little white one, who stuck his nose out. I rubbed it and it was wet and grainy.
I passed the cats and went to the dogs. Several puppies were out, as were about a dozen adult dogs.
“Can I help you?” said the girl, from behind me.
“Yes, I’ll take these three puppies and then those two full-grown ones.”
“Um, you wanna adopt five dogs?”
“I have a ranch and I need some guard dogs. They’ll have plenty of space.” I walked back to the counter and took out my credit card and laid it down. “All five please, and I’ll take five crates as well.”
I went home and got the Escalade and drove up to Snake Creek and parked away from everyone else. I took out the crates and laid them in front of the car at the lip of the forest. I took out a bag of sausage and then opened the crates. Bending down, letting the dogs smell the sausage, I then threw them as far into the forest as I could. Most of them ran after it, all except one of the puppies who stayed behind looking up at me. He came over and laid his head down on my foot and I petted it and then rose and went to the back of the Escalade.
I took out my Barnett Ghost 400, the best crossbow I’d been able to find. It used a noise dampening technolog
y I wasn’t totally familiar with but had tested several times and found that the arrow hardly made a whisper.
The puppy was still sitting there and I aimed for its head. But it still just sat there. I walked up to it and kicked it as hard as I could in the ribs and it shrieked and ran away from me. I took aim and fired and the arrow went through its hindquarters and came out of its mouth. It upset me that it had happened so fast and I kicked it again as I went past him.
The other dogs were nearby. I aimed at one of the smaller ones, fired, and the recoil was almost non-existent. The arrow flew through the forest like a bird and struck the dog in the front left leg. It yelped and the others jolted in surprise and took off when they saw me. Now it was a hunt.
I found the one that was injured and left him. He wasn’t worth killing. He would slowly bleed to death or die from infection. One of the dogs, a small puppy, was trying to get up a hill and kept falling down. I put an arrow through its midsection and it was pinned to the hill. I leapt over it and saw the two adult dogs sprinting through the trees.
Running as fast as I could, branches hitting my face, the breeze going down my shirt and cooling my warm body, I felt alive. I felt like I could do this forever; I didn’t want it to end. But it always ended.
One dog was cornered in a thicket of bushes and it turned to me and started barking. I shot an arrow into its open mouth and it went down the gullet, the tip sticking out of its back. I bent down and waited as it ran in a circle and kept falling to the ground. It stopped shortly after.
I found the other adult in front of a stream, whining. The stupid bastard wouldn’t cross water, even knowing I was coming up behind him. It wasn’t worthy of dying by my arrow. I ran up behind it and stomped on its head, crushing it against the rocks. I stomped again and again until there was nothing left and I stood out of breath by the stream, blood dripping down from the dog and mixing with the water.
Sociopath Page 6