“I am evil, I am the devil, I am
the ultimate darkness,” Hugh chanted to himself inaudibly as he walked the city
streets. No one noticed his moving lips.
No one noticed
him at all.
He was of unimposing build. Eyes behind ‘spaceman’ shades; face below
the shadow of his ‘love terrorist’ baseball cap; the
plumpness of his gut disguised by the folds of his jacket… He was slouching his shoulders, and rarely did
his eyes meet the gaze of another passerby; even with the
defense offered by the shades, still he would only dart quick scanning glances
left and right, left and right, as he walked.
Although just
thirty four, he didn’t feel as a competing male at his prime, looking at the
world as his oyster to be forced open, as his ripe fruit to be plucked. To the
contrary - Hugh knew himself to be an outsider, an onlooker - completely
divorced from the complicated webs of relations,
obligations, and the various common bonds that held the other atoms inhabiting
this city in one big molecule. Hugh was not part of this
molecule, no sir. Hugh was a single atom.
An evil single
atom.
Look at their complacency, he thought,
as he watched the girls and their boys, the middle aged and their spouses, the
young couples with their babies in their prams.
They imagine that their world is all there
is to it. Puny humans. You are nothing for me, nothing...
Hugh passed a
group of dangerous looking youths and sucked in his neck
even further, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead. He couldn’t afford to get
involved in some messy situation with young morons who just want to prove to
themselves how important and tough they are. He had other things to do. Things of the highest importance.
Inside the
pocket of the jacket his sweaty hand clutched the handle of an illegal knife, which he always had with him. I can kill you all if I want to, he
thought, as he passed the youths, I could
cut open your throats and your blood would flow on the pavement for the glory of your master. The master, of
course, was Hugh.
A bunch of kids on ‘4-whizzers’ whizzed past him and other bemused
pedestrians. What used to be a simple skateboard (or perhaps the ole
roller-skate was the ancestor) just decades ago, had mutated year by year into
a number of alien contraptions, each generation using a
modification virtually unrecognizable in comparison to the previous one.
Today
‘4-whizzing’ meant kids using one wheel per foot and three small wheels per
knee, which afforded a variety of fantastic positions in
which to swish through the pavements and park alleys. Most of
the ‘4-whizzers’ also wore latex tuxedos and nylon carnations above the left
ear.
Above the right
ear if they were gay.
Hugh watched
the children, who crouched, kneeled, and swayed at incredible angles, speeding
by and away, annoying and scaring the slow moving grownups.
He smiled.
Watch it, kids, you could get in trouble
like that, you could get in trouble…
He passed by a
brown skinned fella, who was selling good energy Martian stones: ordinary
looking pebbles laid out on a piece of cloth with Indian
designs. Even in this day and age there were enough fools who not only believed
that Martian stones held a special power, but also that so many of
the stones really found their way to the street dealers.
Of
course Hugh himself never stooped to such lows of
superstition, indeed, the only time he felt like believing in the supernatural
was in connection with a salvation cult, during the asteroid scare eight years
ago. But when the space platform defense really had worked and blasted the
asteroid out of existence, his faith in science had been
reinstated with a vengeance.
The sight of the asteroid exploding in the sky was something his
generation would never forget.
Funny how
selling asteroid stones never caught on.
***
When Hugh entered his home, he
checked his e-mails, updates and newsletters, read some gossip about the
genetic changes a pop-star devised for the embryo she was carrying, read the
statements from both sides denying that there is any cause for conflict after
the small misunderstanding on the North Pole between the American Alliance and
the Union of Sovereign Nations.
And then he
undressed.
He studied his
face in the mirror. His mustache was rather mousy, but his cheekbones were
those of an aristocrat. A dark aristocrat! These cruel lips… He made a cruel face. These piercing eyes… He squinted. But who deserves to see these cheekbones? No
one.
Hugh put on his
mask.
He looked at
himself in the mirror, completely naked, with a ski mask on his head. “Evil,
the evil incarnate”, he muttered to himself, but didn’t yet feel quite the way
he wanted to. He flexed his muscles, sucked in his stomach, tucked in his chin,
and bent and twisted his body, until he got the best reflection possible.
Now that’s one mighty evil fella… Nope,
nope, not mighty enough.
Something was
missing.
Boots!
He opened the
cupboard and put on his special shiny red boots. The smell of
rubber and plastic combined perfectly with the glitter lining the soles. His
heart started thundering out of sync and he had to put
the boots down and take a breather on the floor for a minute. Then picked
himself up, in control again, and pulled on the magic boots.
He posed in
front of the mirror again. The devil, the red devil, the black devil, the slow death, the master of masters, he thought as he pranced in front of the mirror and felt his desire stirring.
The bulge. The bulge!!!
He strode over
to his desk, the drawer rattled unhappily as he yanked it open firmly,
mercilessly, like a master. Then he took from inside the tiny packet with
greenish powder and snorted up a few grains from the moist tip of
his forefinger.
“Ahhhhhh...
oooooh”, these were the sounds escaping Hugh’s lips as the effects of the ‘Green Monster’ kicked in almost instantaneously. He
felt his chest expand like a barrel; his body grow until it was eight feet tall;
his muscles fill up with sizzling, crackling superhuman energy. I can now bend steel with my bare hands,
he thought and licked his upper incisors. I
am the ultimate master!
With an
elegantly coordinated movement of both manly arms, he
pulled his purple cape from the back of the swivel chair,
posed again for a second with his shoulder squared, and took out the key from
his desk’s drawer, that was still gaping open, defenseless.
There was no
sound from the room as the key entered the keyhole, and as the tiny mechanisms
inside the lock clicked and snapped. Hugh opened slowly the door to the unlit
room; a beam of light fell upon the dark bed and the girl
opened her eyes.
“Get up, little
girl, the big bad wolf is here again!” Hugh’s voice boomed, overpowering the
whimpers of the girl. He grabbed her shoulders and lifted
her into the air. “You will obey me and call me master you understand that?!”
The girl cried
and did not reply.
“Master! I am
your Master, say it!” shouted Hugh, trembling, wrinkling his nose and biting
his upper lip without realizing it. He slapped the girl’s face correctly and
that did the trick.
“You are my
Master, my Master” cried the girl, and Hugh lovingly bit her chin.
“Hit me again,
Master, again...” after these words were uttered, the usual dark cloud
descended, dimming Hugh’s consciousness and with an animal growl he threw the
girl face down on the bed and climbed on top of her.
As she writhed
and struggled beneath him, he felt the rush of total power.
In moments like this, his awareness of his special
destiny, of his special status, of
his unique role in this world, was completely validated. He had plucked this child from a forest... she was walking there with
her backpack...
No, what would she be doing in a forest
alone?
He had met her in a park, she had been
walking her pooch, and he’d hypnotized her with his animal magnetism...
Yes much
better...
…His animal magnetism had made her follow
him to his lair, to obey his every command, to put her life entirely in his
hands... And she liked it...
“Do you like
it?” he shouted hoarsely and grabbed the girl by her hair, “say you like it!”
he repeated and touched her right nipple.
“I like it, Master,”
cried the girl on cue, “I never want to stop being your slave!”
As Hugh neared
his climax, the fantasy narrative inside his head splintered into spinning
fragments: he had met her in a park - he had abducted her from her school yard
- he had broken into her home and stolen her - he had become an overseeing in a
Nazi camp and she was a filthy little Jew who wanted to be used by a superior
man...
And suddenly a
convulsion went through the little body, a strange sound like the screech of a guitar feedback swept aside Hugh’s fantasies, the girl’s
limbs began flailing left and right.
Hugh jumped
back, away from the little body, sweating, breathing erratically.
Acrid smoke was
exiting the open mouth of the little figure.
No, no, what happened? he thought,
unable to make up his mind what to do next. I
shouldn’t have hit her head so hard, I shouldn’t have, now I’ve broken
something. Maybe her processor is busted. What now? What now?
Again, Hugh
stepped closer to the smoking, convulsing body. The sight was very disquieting,
and the strange thin whirring made things even worse.
He clenched his
teeth and lunged forward, grappling with the toy. Finally he found the button
beneath her left ear, and the top of her head opened up,
bringing her Saint Vitus dance to an immediate halt.
He unhooked the
main battery from its nesting place within her skull, and the body went limp.
The battery was hot; he put it on the bed cloth, counted to twenty, returned it
back into the girl’s head, and pressed the scalp shut with a click.
Nothing
happened! It wasn’t working! He shook the limp body, but it refused to become
animated again.
Damn, damn, double damn. Hugh bit his
fist. Now what?
He left the
inanimate body and retreated to the living room. As he paced back and forth he
even stubbed a toe on a chair, which made him grab it with a howl of rage and
hurl it at a wall.
It didn’t even
break, it just bounced off and fell on the floor, toppling a pile of comic books.
Why was life so
unfair?
***
After he calmed down and
collected his thoughts, Hugh sat down in front of the
computer and went to the ‘Safe Sanity Program’ website. He punched in his ID
number, and was redirected to the ‘latent sex crime behavioral sublimation’
section. He chose the ‘replacement of sublimation toy’
option.
There was a
window for additional comments, and after a few false starts, he finally
started writing: “Dear sir/madam. I realize that the time for replacement of products is up to two weeks, but allow me to remind you,
that your program is the only thing, which... which...”
Hugh thought
for a moment, and started again from 'your program', “your program is all that
stands between social order and utter chaos. I trust I will receive my
replacement as soon as possible. Thank you in advance, Hubert B.”
He pressed the
‘send’ button.
The ‘Green
Monster’ was letting him down hard, he lurched over to the kitchen nook, made
himself an instant coffee, gulped down half of it
immediately, and pressed the lever that transformed his chair into a couch.
He popped two
‘White Silk’ pills and immediately became pale and weak, but utterly calm. He
sprawled powerlessly on the couch, and lazily accessed a few gossip newssheet.
A Nevada
senator has been found out to have a black underage girl imitation sex doll in
his office. He was currently not returning any calls, while his wife has taken
the children to their provincial home in Northern California.
Hugh wrote a
comment beneath the article, “Stop picking on d guy his life just a toy anyway
for H’s sake, libtards!”
No, that
sounded wrong. It was not just a toy. It was a way of
life, a locus of existence. It was the one thing which
kept alive the magic, the defensive magic, which protected good folks like him
from the bad, strange world.
Hugh deleted
his comment, exited all news and gossip sites, and decided to download the
newest zombie slasher film instead. As he pressed the download link, he looked
with scorn at a banner on which a pale youth was kissing the neck of a mousy schoolgirl.
Losers!
Hugh grinned
and snapped his fingers at the thought of the losers who
would watch such crud. But not him, no. Not for him the lame laze-haze romantic
vamp comedies, only hacked off zombie limbs would satisfy his esthetic desires!
He knew quality from second-best films.
He was, after
all, the master!
