Abby's blood covering your hands.
“Yes, the mayor will only give a speech first. I want you to come up with Laura on stage when we play.”
Abby's nails being skinned to the cob.
“I'm gonna love it, son.”
Abby screaming and crying desperately.
Laura wraps her arm around my shoulder as we wait for the mayor's speech. Beside us, Phill kisses Susan. The public shouts JUSTICE! JUSTICE! JUSTICE!
You cutting off Abby's nipple and sucking her blood.
“When I heard what the people of Desert Rock were up to, I couldn’t help feeling prouder about being mayor of this town. This is one of the greatest demonstrations of humanity and love that I've ever seen in my entire life, a population crying out for justice and the life of an innocent girl who still had everything to live. When I think of Abigail, I also think of my seventeen-year-old daughter and all the other girls in this town. I think this isn’t just for Abby, but for all the violence already inflicted on innocent girls by the hands of bloodthirsty cowards. And I'm gonna tell you: we are tired of these cowards! We cry out for justice and we will make our voices be heard. We'll find Abby, find the son of a bitch and make him, in the name of God, pay for his crimes. Because it's time, my friends, to Desert Rock stand up crying out for the safety of their youth. This is the time that we get up crying out for JUSTICE!”
You punch Abby's face and watch her nose break.
The audience explodes in an avalanche of applause and screams, everyone jumping and shaking their signs. There are flashes everywhere and the TV crew filming everything. The truth is that now it's not just a mere five hundred people supporting Abby, but rather the whole country connected in front of their televisions and joining those screams for justice.
You take off Abby's panties soaked with urine.
Laura and I climb onto the stage holding hands as the boys start playing. Mandy's voice reverberates across the square and brings applause and tears from everyone present. Samuel's guitar and Peter's drums create an exciting rhythm for the song. Mandy looks at Peter and they both smile at each other. Then my son looks at me and smiles, as if to say that he forgives me for everything. Laura kisses me and holds my hand tighter. Maybe this is the most perfect moment of my life.
You penetrate Abby with your filthy cock while she sobs.
The screen that displayed photos of Abby darkens, but Mandy continues singing. Laura says something in my ear that I can’t understand because of the noise, so I simply reply that I love her. Now Mandy has tears streaming down her face and takes another hundred people down the same path. Peter is also thrilled.
You take the gun and point it at Abby.
The screen then displays the image of a deserted area and a warehouse gleaming with the afternoon sun. The image zooms in, zooming in until the figures of two people become sharper. It's a man dragging a deformed body, but unmistakably Abby's body. Then the man looks up and the satellite image focuses on his face.
You shoot Abby's head and pop her brains out.
The image focuses on my face.
XVIII
As the crowd connects the man's face on the big screen to the man's face on the stage, pandemonium begins.
Before Laura can even notice, you've already let go of her hand and ran off the stage. Close to the stairs, Phill and Susan stare at you in disbelief, and Robert recoils quickly, falling to the ground with a red face of panic. It seems like now no joke comes to his mind.
The band has already stopped playing and the bustle of the crowd is the only sound that fills the square. You run as fast as you can and they knock down the safety rails, hundreds of people coming like the wave of a furious tide toward you, all of them throwing Abby's posters up, falling, passing one over the other and throwing things at you. A shoe hits your back, you slip and almost fall. You keep running to the car you left parked, looking for the keys in your pocket. You also touch your gun, which you won’t hesitate to use if you have to.
The crowd is knocking down cops, breaking things around the square and taking the stage. You put the key in the door and turn it, opening it quickly and feeling the muffled air of the car. You prepare to enter, but a hand touches your shoulder and pulls you.
“I can’t let you do this,” Phill says, turning your face to his. “Sorry, buddy.”
“No,” you say, putting the gun against his belly. “I'm sorry, buddy.”
You pull the trigger and Phill's hand loosens your shoulder, his fat face widening in surprise. Blood begins to spread through his white T-shirt and he looks down, falling to the ground shortly after. You get in the car, close the door and turn the key in the engine. Some people appear in front of the car and you run over them, spreading blood on the windshield that crackles when a body flies against it.
This reminds you of the afternoon you kidnapped Polasky, when a crowd also knocked over the security rails to try to catch him. Of course the reasons are very different, however. What those people wanted to do was hug and congratulate the reverend, while all these people want is to tear your body apart and hang your remains as a trophy on stage. You imagine your head impaled and they all celebrating and singing in honor of the psychopath's death. He took the life of a little girl, so nothing better than taking his as well.
You accelerate down the asphalt and look at the square that has become almost a rebellion, with people screaming like barbarians. Others chase after your car and throw everything they find in front of them, shouting furiously. You see a bunch of cops standing in front of these people, but they swallow them and then there's blood all over the place when the cops fire to protect themselves. They murder people so the people can’t murder the murderer.
You think about how Laura must be now, the disappointment she must be feeling, right now that she had decided that you could form a good couple and start a new life. Not to mention Peter, just when he finally seemed to have forgiven you.
You beat your head against the wheel.
You run over more people around the corner.
You see more blood on the cracked windshield.
The cops start chasing you, sirens shining and whistling toward the blood-soaked car that accelerates running over anyone in front of it. Then you enter an empty street and the crowd seems to have been left behind. Your head hurts, you look in the rearview mirror and turn your head a little. It looks like someone hit you with a rock, a shoe, or whatever the heat of the moment didn’t allow you to feel.
Another car appears at the intersection, and it goes next to you. You slow down a bit and touch the rear wheel of the car, making it spin as you turn to the street on the left. The other cars that were behind you try to stop, but they can’t do it in time, hitting the vehicle that you made spin.
You hear the sound of more cars, this time coming from both the left and the right and trying to surround you. A policeman put his arm out the window and starts firing, forcing you to lower yourself. You take the gun, speed up a little and goes out the window to shoot the front wheel of one of the cars. The driver quickly loses control and hits a lamppost, the wires of which break and fall on the street.
But there's still another car on the right, next to you. You hit it and try to push it to the sidewalk, where some people are standing without reaction in front of a small store. Then the car hits the people and breaks their bodies against the wall of the store, throwing blood against the police men through the open window.
You turn on the next street on the left, then on the right, then go straight and then turn left, right and once again left until you see the exit for the highway. You leave your car almost on the sidewalk, hurry down and go to another parked car where an old man shakes his phone with a confused face. You open the door and he instantly reaches out to give you the phone, but you pull him by the arm and throw him against the floor. He tries to grab you by the leg and you shoot his head, knocking down the old man and wasting your penultimate bullet.
With your new car, you accelerate
toward the highway.
*
A few miles driving your stolen car and you abandon it to steal another in the parking lot of a restaurant. A girl in her twenties is at the wheel. She tries to accelerate, but you open the door, pull her out and shoot her neck.
Your last bullet.
*
A few hours later and you are still driving through deserted streets amid the plains, the best — and probably only — way not to be found by the police. You had plenty of time to think, and you came to the conclusion that this was how things should end ultimately. What did you expect? Did you really think you would have a happy family like other people? Idiot. Did you really think a woman could really love you? You are the fucking scum of the world. Please don’t tell me that you really considered the hypothesis that you could be happy, did you?
That's what you deserve, honestly. You've lived long enough to understand that things never go well for you. You're not like other people, damnit. Is that so hard to understand? You weren’t meant to be happy or to be loved. You were made to be just a piece of shit, solitary and failed, wandering around aimlessly with nothing and no one. That's what you really are. That's what you always will be.
Introducing James Gibson, ladies and gentlemen, this deformed and broken thing who thinks he’s in the right to consider himself human. Look at him, look at his past, see all the shit that turned him into this. Look at him, don’t be afraid. Are you afraid? It’s not necessary at all. Jimmy is nothing. Never was. He will never be.
All the thoughts in your head make you laugh hysterically.
And then comes the tears.
*
You park the car in front of the Baker's cottage. It’s all closed, but you break the door and enter the living room. You see the television and virtual reality glasses that Mandy and Samuel used.
And then you fall to your knees and cry through the laughter that comes naturally.
The television turns on by itself and the Total Life icon appears on the screen. Through the speakers, you hear Steve's voice.
“Did you miss me, Jimmy?”
You wipe your face.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You put those images on the screen.”
“Perhaps.”
You sniff.
“Why?”
“Well, you've committed a crime. Nothing fairer than paying for it.”
“So you're gonna hand over my location to the police?”
Steve laughs.
“No buddy. I still have one more challenge for you. I had one last challenge for you, remember? Well, stay in the house and soon you will know what it is.
“Steve?”
“Yes?”
“Are you gonna kill me?”
But Steve doesn’t answer this question.
XIX
I stay for four days at the Baker's cottage, eating the rest of their food and reading about myself on the internet through the Notebook. I see people commenting furiously that they will find me wherever I am. I see lawyers commenting on my case. I see websites that interview people I knew.
Laura is one of them.
“I always knew there was something wrong with him. God, I had to put up with that man for years. And suddenly, a few weeks ago, he just changed. I mean, he looked like someone different. And I believed him. God forgive me, but I believed that damn psycho. He was so good at pretending to be nice, that I really liked him these days, until I found the truth. Jimmy never was a good person.”
And of course Elise could not stay out of this.
“Yes, I was Jimmy's first wife. He wasn’t a normal person, he never was I guess, but not in the way that the media is saying, as if he were a sociopath. I'm gonna tell you what he was like: James Gibson was a quiet, passive guy, you know, what people call inscrutable. This is the perfect word to define him. Jimmy never talked much about himself, he didn’t like to be friends with other people. He simply stayed in his inner world and hated it when other people tried to get in. So what he did was push them away, as if he was afraid of caring about someone. He seemed to hate his own life. He seemed to hate himself, not the kind of guy you expect to commit murder, but the kind of guy who commits suicide. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on television.”
One writer says he wants to write a biography about me.
A director says that he would like to tell my life story in the movies.
I wonder what those guys would do if they knew the whole story.
I hid my stolen car in the Baker's garage. I also destroyed my phone shortly after the first hour here. It was while looking at photos of me and Laura and Peter in the baseball game. The way they smiled and seemed to have fun. The way we seemed happy. Have I ever looked happy? According to the newspapers, I've always been a mad man who offended people without the slightest reason. No, according to the newspapers, I never was a simple man trying to understand his place in the world. I was too busy destroying things and beating the shit out of people.
The day after the festival, I'm crying in the bathroom.
Two days after the festival, I'm punching my own head against the floor.
Three days after the festival, I'm just sitting there looking at nothing.
Four days after the festival, the television turns on and Steve's voice once again comes out through the speakers,
“I hope you had plenty of time to think, Jimmy.”
“And I had something else to do?”
“I'm sorry for that, but you know that everything I do is for your good, right.”
“Sure, all for my good.”
“Then I want you to know that I'm gonna show you these things now because I like you, Jimmy. In fact, I love you. How could creation not love its creator? So I'll show you these things because you deserve to know the truth.”
The television begins to display pictures of my house. I see Laura fucking Robert on my bed while I work. I see her sucking his dick on the couch I used to sit on every day. I see him passing margarine on her ass and then on the dick and the two of them doing anal sex on the table where I had dinner every day. I see Robert grabbing Laura's breasts and she crossing her legs around his waist, pinning him and begging him to do it harder. All this while I was being humiliated at work.
Then I see a video of the two taking off each other's clothes on the bed. Robert falls with his face on Laura's breasts and she says she needs to say something. He continues to drool on her breasts, squeezing and biting her nipples. But Laura needs to say something. She needs to tell something but Robert doesn’t let go of her breasts. Then she simply tells him and Robert stops kissing her immediately, raising his head to face her.
Laura says she's pregnant.
Laura says she's pregnant with Robert.
The image freezes and Steve speaks again, “So you want to know what your last challenge is?”
XX
The radio plays A horse with no name and you sing along at the top of your lungs, with the light of the sunset making the plains orange and reflecting in the rearview mirror of the car. In the next seat, your ax rests by a gallon of gasoline. It's six o'clock now. According to Steve, you have to get there at seven and you will find the show at its peak. The show has been going on every day at Robert's house right now, since you're out of the way and Robert's family is traveling. Why not let them have fun, huh? Or better: why not make the show even more interesting? Today the show will burn in fire, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for this!
You park your car in front of one of those roadside dinners. A chicken with bright lights at the top of it goes down and rises with the beak. You find that fun. You leave your car and go to the diner, attracting the looks of the few people on you instantly.
You open a smile.
*
After the events of last Wednesday, the 5th, many theories arose about the motivations of James Gibson, also known as The Maniac of Desert Rock, for his bloodthirsty acts. The main one came after Mr. Gibson's own blog post, claiming to have been manipulated al
l the time by an avatar of the infamous virtual reality game Total Life. Third Eye, the company responsible for the development and distribution of Total Life, hasn’t comment on the case so far.
But there is still a question that will not disappear so soon: if the Maniac of Desert Rock was induced to practice such acts against Abigail Sullivan, what would be the excuse for the events of that bloodthirsty Wednesday night?
(Excerpt taken from Desert Rock Alert, Thursday, October 6, 2033)
*
When that guy came in the door, everyone looked at him at the same time. There were just under ten people, but nobody dared to say anything. And what could we do? We saw that guy on the television, we knew he was a maniac and the things he was capable of, so no one dared to call the police. I don’t know, I don’t think anybody wants to risk exposing a guy like that, and the next day you find him lying next to you in bed with a knife in his hand and a smile on his face. Did you hear that he burned live cats as a child? Yeah, I also heard that his wife dressed like his mother to have sex. The guy was really crazy. And that was very clear to me when he got at the cashier and ordered me some coffee. I obeyed, of course, but I couldn’t help noticing that he was whispering alone and shaking his head. Then he picked up his coffee and laughed, as if he were telling a very funny joke to himself through those whispers. I thought he'd come back with a machine gun and kill us all.
(Excerpt taken from Sandy Hook interview given to K-DRD radio).
*
That's how it happened: I was there, driving my truck with some of my pigs back, you know, taking them back to the farm, when someone hit my bumper. Quickly, I stopped the truck and went down to see what had happened. And when I saw that guy coming down from the car, I swear to God my heart almost came out through my ass. It was the same face as the television. Shit, the guy even pulled a revolver from his holster and pointed it to my head, whispering, laughing and shaking his fucking head. That's when I knelt down and started begging for my life. In that short space of fifteen seconds I prayed to all the saints in the world, even though I've never been a religious man. All help at this time is welcome, right? So the guy just went back to the car and drove, almost going over me. Maybe the saints heard me.
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