Just Toying by Harry F. Kane

“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!