This time, the street was slightly busier. Slade had noticed several people wander by during his thirty minutes of reading. He had chosen a different bench this time, further down Hinderlaag Lane. Everyone gave him a puzzled look as they passed. He seemed crazy, this young, affluent-looking white man who was not hurrying to leave the urban wasteland. Both the broken inhabitants of the area and the frightened travelers passing through regarded him with suspicion and bewilderment.

Eventually, one of the inhabitants sauntered slowly up to Slade’s bench. A large black man, well over six feet tall, stopped a few feet away from Slade. The man’s substantial bulk filled his old t-shirt. His eyes were wide, his head shaven. The expression on his face seemed almost friendly, though it carried an undeniable and intangible hint of crazy.

“Hey buddy, what are you reading?”

“Oh, this,” Slade said with a grin, holding up a copy of East of Eden. “This is just an exploration of patriarchal influence in turn-of-the-century western civilization. I really feel that Steinbeck has finally allowed himself to flourish, unleashing the extent of his literary prowess.”

Stupefied, the large man stared back at Slade. Suddenly, Slade’s face tightened.

“You know, a lot of big words. A whole bunch of pages. No pictures,” he said with a shrug. “You probably wouldn’t like it.”

He took another step closer to the seated Slade, towering above him. The large man was now eyeing him fiercely. “Nah, I bet not. Sounds like a waste of time,” he said. Slade noticed his wild gaze quickly shift over to the laptop and then back to Slade. Slade responded by shooting a confident, sarcastic smirk that silently shouted Do it, asshole. Take it.

“I’m surprised to see you here, guy,” said the large man. “Don’t really seem like you belong.”

“I’m just here for a visit. Enjoying the sights and smells of the God-forsaken hellhole you call home. Seeing who I can meet.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad you decided to stop by. See I need a bus ticket to get back over my buddy’s place. I just need a little money for a ticket is all. Just a ticket for the bus. Maybe you see fit to help out a fellow man.”

Slade chuckled.

“A bus ticket, eh? I don’t think so,” said Slade in a manner that was both polite and condescending. “Yes, I have plenty of money. Hundreds of dollars in my back pocket. But I have none for you. Make your own, sell your crack, you worthless pile of shit.”

All humans have a threshold for humiliation, for the unprovoked mocking delivered by another person. And this large man, with the hint of crazy in his eyes, possessed a threshold lower than most. The wildness was no longer localized in his eyes; it now raged through hit entire being. Regardless of his original intentions, his fury was now in control

He grunted as his hand shot forward, grabbing Slade by the front collar of his jacket and pulling him a few inches off the seat. For an instant, Slade hung there, suspended above the bench. The large man’s mouth was slightly agape. If the man had anticipated the encounter, he might have been ready to continue the assault. He might have not stalled for the tiniest fraction of a moment. He may have pounded Slade into nothingness, crushing Slade’s body with his massive limbs.

But he did pause, however slightly. Slade did not.

Upon feeling the strong fingers on his jacket, Slade’s left hand flew to his cup of coffee. In a quick, seamless, motion, Slade squeezed the cup—popping off the plastic lid—and jerked it up at his attacker. Twenty ounces extra-hot coffee splashed onto the large man’s face. Shrieking madly, he dropped Slade onto the bench to rub his eyes with both hands. Wisps of steam rose from his face into the early evening air.

Slade was grinning calmly. With another instantaneous movement, Slade let go of the cup and grabbed the man’s t-shirt with his left hand. He pulled himself up to the screaming man and jammed his needle point pencil into the wedge of muscle connecting his shoulder to his neck. The wooden pencil slid some four inches into the man’s flesh, leaving the half with the eraser sticking out awkwardly. The large man’s agony-filled cries grew louder yet. Slade supinated his fist, snapping the pencil in half just beneath the skin. Wooden shards scattered into his tissue.

“Ahh, a messy break,” said Slade in a charming voice, speaking directly into his ear. “Just what I was hoping for.”

The pair stood extremely close; Slade was still holding the man’s t-shirt in his hand. The large man was now whimpering pathetically. Fresh tears mixed with the hot coffee streaming from his face. His eyes were swollen shut, his skin already blistering. With his free hand, Slade grasped the side of the man’s head and then flung him backwards onto the cement sidewalk with both arms.

“You are scum,” said Slade. “You have no value. You are a parasite.”

Slade glared down with contempt at the large man, who was rolling back and forth, moaning.

“I am your superior. Look at me! I am better. Do you understand? If—”

“HEY, YOU ALRIGHT?”

Slade turned quickly to see a pair of young men sprinting towards him. They appeared well-dressed, reputable.

“Yes, I should be fine,” said Slade, performing a superb impression of a person recovering from panic. “Thank God you came along!”

When the two young men reached the bench, one focused on Slade while the other apprehensively surveyed the writhing figure on the ground.

“We saw him attack you,” one of them said to Slade. “That was amazing, the way you fought him off!”

“Oh, it was just the adrenaline,” said Slade, shaking his head slowly. “I didn’t even realize what was happening.”

“Well I’m glad you took care of him. We were definitely ready to help, but I wasn’t liking our chances against the guy. I bet you were lucky; he probably wasn’t expecting any resistance.”

“I bet not,” said Slade coolly.

“Hey, we have a phone—we can go ahead and call the police for you, so you can just relax a bit. Will you be alright for a few?”

“Yeah, I think so. Thanks again, fellas. I’m really lucky you were around.”

The pair stepped away to dial 911. They seemed to approach it as a joint venture, stopping just short of holding the phone in tandem. As their collective attention shifted to the call, Slade walked quietly back to his fallen victim. The noises emanating from him had devolved to soft, incoherent appeals for mercy.

“Realize that our current position also represents our eternal places. I, above you,” he whispered. “Even the imminent repairs that will come to your body will be way of my tax dollars. I pay for your healing. You should thank me.” He punctuated his last point with sharp, subtle kick into the man’s lower ribs. Because the cracking of his bones was overwhelmed by the large man’s fresh screams of agony, the pair of dialers simply glanced in his direction before going back to the call.

Slade took in a deep breath of the evening air, which consisted mostly of smog and coffee fumes. Even so, he found himself refreshed. The police would not dally for long in a situation like this. They would rush to his aide, knowing the story before they ever asked him a question.

Slade knew that he should feel the thing called guilt for using people’s inherent racism as a tool for his own amusement—even a black officer arriving on the scene would not look past the large man’s skin when determining victim and villain. He knew that he should feel the thing called guilt, but he did not. Far from being deluded into a sense of self-elevation, he maintained a perfect grasp of right and wrong, one continually sharpened by the musings of the authors of old. His actions frequently belonged to the side of the continuum known as evil. He recognized this, perhaps even reveled in it. This was how he got his glee. To really enjoy an act one has to understand its true impact. Slade pitied the poor perpetrators who knew not the ghastliness of their sins. For him, bliss came not from ignorance but rather from embracing reality.

***

The medical student watched his hand draw a single black line across the white paper. It was a remarkably straight line, in ink. This surprised him; art was never his forte. He was not sure why he cared, but he did feel that it was right that this particular line was in fact crisp and straight.

The line pierced each alphanumeric character in a line of text on a page. That line contained all of the information required for identifying a patient on the internal medicine service at Russell County Community Hospital. This information was no longer necessary. The other lines of text deserved his attention now; they were still alive.

His mind was not so narrow as to think that the mere prolongation of life was the only goal. No, it was a practical matter. He had no desire to be prejudiced against the dead, but living was a prerequisite for being a patient. On hospital grounds, his focus, time, and energy were limited resources, and he had none to spare for non-patients.

He had spent in excess of thirty minutes preparing a plan of treatment for he who was now deceased. The laboratory values and overnight nursing reports had indicated a change for the worse, but he had researched, calculated, and formulated his way to a new plan. He had already communicated this to his attending, seated nearby, who had approved of the adaptation. They had been ready—but a phone call from the nurse on the wards caused yet another change in strategy. The patient had died. New plan: cross off the deceased and then attend to the living.

He stared at the ink line on the paper for a few moments upon their return from pronouncing him dead. He felt he should stare at it. He thought he should be troubled by the recent happenings, face some inner turbulence. In reality, he did not find it troubling, and even that did not disturb him. He understood it completely. A man had died who had been sick. It was unfortunate, but not tragic, in any cosmic sense, and certainly not rare. It was important, but only to those close to the patient. He had known the patient for a few days, had talked with him several times, knew just a little more about his life than would be found in the obituary.

He wondered if he shouldn’t be a bit more emotional about it. He did not wonder for long.

The medical student sighed, shook his head, and looked through the other names on the page. He needed to refocus his attention on a living human. One name stood out to him. It read "Pierson, Jeremy" and was followed by a question mark in parentheses. He frowned. What the hell was he supposed to do about this guy?

This man had been in the hospital for two days after arriving at the emergency room with the chief complaint of, "I think I’ve been shot twice." He had been transferred to the internal medicine team from the surgery service yesterday since they had deemed him not to be a surgical candidate. He had only been admitted from the ER in the first place because—surprisingly—an x-ray had verified the man’s suspicions by showing two metallic objects in his chest cavity.

The question mark by his name had been added because, like so many patients at Russell County Community, there was some question about his identity. He claimed to be Jeremy Pierson, even knew his social security number and birth date, but could not produce a single piece of documentation validating who he was. Although the man believed he had been shot, he could not provide any sort of credible story explaining why or how. Sadly, this too was not that uncommon among the patients of Russell County Community.

He sighed again and then gathered together all of his papers and pens and medical tools. Once the numerous pockets of his little white coat had been stuffed with various items to the point of overflow, he headed out to the wards to see his patients. More out of curiosity than convenience, the medical student structured the morning’s journey so that it would begin with Pierson. He was intrigued by the polite gunshot victim and his bizarre story. Upon arriving at the patient’s room, he shuffled his papers a bit more than was necessary and sighed once more before making his entrance.

There were two beds in the room, separated by a white curtain. Jeremy Pierson lay in one, the other was occupied by an older fellow that was possibly unconscious and definitely drooling. Jeremy turned from the small box of a television above his head as the medical student approached. Russell County Community had yet to invest in flatscreen TVs.

"Good morning, Mr. Pierson!"

"Hi doctor—I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name."

"No prob, there’s a bunch of us always popping in and out. Not a doc, just a med student. You can call me Jon."

"How are you feeling today?"

"Terrific, just like yesterday."

"That’s good."

"I guess. I feel like something should hurt or something."

"That is not a common complaint around here, but I can see where you’re coming from. How’s your appetite?"

"It’s great. No problems on the other end either."

"That’s good. Anything bothering you at all?"

"I’m thirsty. I’ve been so thirsty since I got here even though I’ve been drinking constantly."

"Huh. You been peeing a lot?"

"A ton."

"Huh."

"How are my labs today?"

"Well, sodium is still up, and some of the other electrolytes continue to be abnormal. Your urine showed evidence of bacterial infection but no actual bacteria again…"

"Still pretty weird, eh?"

"Yeah. Still pretty weird."

"So what’s the plan for today?"

"Actually, that’s a great question. Of course I am certainly going to have to run it by the attending—my boss—but I think it’s going to come down to how you’re feeling about it. We’re not doing much for you here. We can’t heal you if you aren’t sick. The labs are abnormal, but that’s something we can work on on an outpatient basis. What do you think?”

“What about the bullets?”

“Surgery said no. If they aren’t causing you any problems by now, they should be fine.”

“It’s only been a week.”

“Well... The holes are looking pretty good. Surgeons think it’s probably been longer than that.”

Jeremy shrugged. While he knew for certain that he had only been in the woods for one week, he really couldn’t blame them for thinking that he was lying. His story was pretty ridiculous, and the wounds did seem unusually well-healed for that amount of time. Still, he was frustrated. He had come to the hospital for answers and found none. As much as everyone here was irritated with him for not providing more information on what had happened to him, he himself was angrier than anyone. He had been shot, and he had not the slightest suspicion of who had done it or what the motivation could have been. When he was first admitted, he was fairly surprised that no one offered to contact the police for him. He realized that he had held the assumption that these things just happened naturally once you get involved with the “system,” of which the hospital seemed like it should be a part. However, these magical connections now proved absent. That made sense, he thought, as the hospital probably liked to keep squads of officers from trudging through the halls if at all possible.

In addition, his employers at the ECPI had seemed oddly untroubled by his absence when he called them from the hospital. His boss expressed generic sympathy for his misfortune, encouraging him to take what time he needed to recuperate before returning to work. Maybe she was right—he just needed to rest Although he had spent the greater part of two days sitting still, he had discovered that time in the hospital was not very restful. Yes, he would go home and achieve true relaxation. After that, things could clear up and return to normal. He would have plenty time to file a police report—that seemed like the kind of thing you did when stuff like this happened—and get back to work. Everything would be ok.

“So…” said the medical student awkwardly, “what are you thinking?”

“I’ll go,” said Jeremy.

“Okay. I think my attending will be okay with that. I don’t think the wounds got infected—your white cell count isn’t elevated—and it seems no vital structures were injured by the bullets. We’ll get moving on the paperwork. I’m guessing you don’t have a primary care doctor to follow-up with?”

Jeremy shook his head sheepishly. “How’d you know?”

“You’re a 27-year-old male.”

“Ah. Right.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll set up the appointments for you. Can somebody come to pick you up?”

“Well, I’m not really sure what happened to my cell phone, and I don’t have any of the numbers memorized, and I didn’t—”

“Not a problem. We’ll have a cab take you home. We do this all the time.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you know when we get everything together. I’ll be honest; it could be a few hours. There’s a lot going on today. So, just sit tight and—oh, are you just headed home? I need an address to put in the discharge paperwork.”

Jeremy thought for a moment. His own apartment didn’t sound like a relaxing option, with his front door resting on the hinges. And, he did feel like he needed to talk to someone he knew, just to have his sanity reaffirmed. It was Saturday, so Roger wouldn’t be working. He’d prefer to call before showing up, but Roger wouldn’t care. He was probably just watching TV and drinking beer, knowing Roger.

“Actually, I think I’m headed to a friend’s house. I can give you the address.”

The medical student took down the information on one of his many papers with one of his many pens. He then completed a cursory examination of the man’s heart and lungs, after which he nodded patronizingly and made his exit. He filled out the discharge paperwork on a computer before continuing his daily trek down the hall to the next patient’s room. The nurse, as was her custom, printed out the discharge paperwork for each of her patients that were leaving that day and left them on the counter at the nursing station in order of room number. It was an efficient system; she found it helped to expedite the process of discharge.

No one paid particular attention to the nice-looking young man in glasses who wandered up to the nursing station, stalled for a bit as he glanced down at some paperwork, and then meandered off again.

***

Roger sat at his kitchen table, leaning back with his fingers interlocked behind his head. It was 1 p.m., and he had zero plans. He wondered to himself what adventures the day had in store. With no answer at hand, he headed for the refrigerator.

Within three hours, a small collection of Dursky & Hutt bottles had accumulated on the table beside the old leather recliner in the living room. His right leg hung over the armrest; his left hand held yet another bottle of beer against his chest. He belched. He watched with raised eyebrows the second disc of a television comedy series about cubicle life. Since he could relate, he found himself consistently entertained.

Before long, a knock at the front door broke his conscious coma.

Roger grunted in irritation as he lumbered across the living room, wearing his typical relaxation apparel—a baggy maroon t-shirt and mesh basketball shorts. A nipple peaked through one of the many holes in the tattered shirt. Though he was slightly taller than average, his body showed the typical signs of an athletic teenager who had yet to realize his metabolism had abated upon reaching his mid-twenties.

He saw the culprit responsible for the knock through the window just before reaching the door: a short, sharply dressed young man with a clipboard and a nametag, wearing an expression that landed somewhere between nervous resolve and blind naiveté. The guy looked pleasant enough, but Roger was not in the mood to be bothered by a virgin salesman.

“Dude, I‘m real sorry, but I just don’t need another vacuum,” said Roger in a sleepy voice as he opened the door. “I mean, I got that little robot thingy a couple months ago, and once you go Roomba you never go—“

He had stopped short upon he noticing that the fellow had dropped his nervous expression and begun squinting over Roger’s shoulder into the house. Scanning.

“Need something in here, do ya?” said Roger as he glanced down at the nametag. “Carter?”

“Oh, no sir!” said Carter, resuming his innocent persona. “It’s nothing about vacuums. I was just hoping to get your responses to a few questions about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. My church is doing a survey to become better acquainted with the needs in our community and find out how we could best minister to them. We just want to get a handle on where you happen to be in your spiritual faith-walk."

"Yeah? And what church is that?"

"I’m from St. Bernard’s—it’s that old brick building over by the new Strickland’s Drugstore."

Roger eyed him skeptically. "St. Bernard’s Cathedral, you mean?"

Carter nodded.

"Door-to-door evangelism, eh?" asked Roger. "I don’t think anyone’s from there has been here before. Doesn’t really seem like their style."

"Oh, it’s the first time we’ve done something like this."

"You all are really branching out. And how is ol’ Father... ah--what’s his name again?"

Roger scoured him with his eyes as he asked this question, looking for some sign of fabrication. When Carter shifted his glance to his clipboard for just a fraction of a second before responding, Roger knew he had found that sign. This kid was full of bullshit. Bulging. And Roger couldn’t help but feel a little proud of himself that he had noticed.

"Aldritch. Yeah, Father Aldritch has really brought some freshness to our congregation since he took over. It has been a very rejuvenating time, spiritually."

“Right… Hey Carter, I am going to have to cut you off there. I’m kind of in the process of using some spirits to rejuvenate myself also. So, good luck to you.”

“Ok, sir. Goodbye. May the peace of Christ be with you!” With a last peer inside, Carter turned and walked down the sidewalk.

Roger shut the door promptly but watched intently through the window. The man proceeded down the front steps before turning left along the sidewalk towards the next house. Roger recognized each car parked along the street. The guy must have left his car further up the block.

He was lying, Roger thought to himself. He was astonished by the certainty he had about this fact.

As he was pondering this, he noticed in the corner of his vision that the guy had changed direction—well before the next front walk. He walked nonchalantly in a direction that would take him directly into the backyard between the neighbor’s house and the fencing that separated the properties.

He sprinted into the kitchen to get his cell phone. He vetoed his initial reflex to run out the backdoor and tackle the mysterious fellow when he realized the sound of the door opening might incite the guy to violence rather than mere skulking. He decided a quick phone call to alert the neighbors might be the better move. The kitchen was located on the back side of the house, so he watched the fence dutifully as he opened the phone and scanned the numbers. Just as he found the home number for his neighbor, Roger watched the man he knew simply as Carter vault over the fence and into his own backyard. The maneuver was made awkward by the fact that the intruder could not employ his left hand, which was now busy holding a pistol.

Roger fell to the ground and closed the phone. His eyes widened. Frantic thoughts scuttled about in his mind; each one occupied valuable space in his concentration, but none would stay still long enough for him to fully recognize it. He had always scoffed when he heard news reports about people freezing in times of crisis, but now he could commiserate. This was the first time in his life that he knew real panic.

With considerable effort, he forced himself to accept a very important truth: I have the element of surprise. I know he is coming.

Thus, Roger was able to work linearly through the things he had to do. He took another look outside, trying to stay out of view: Carter continued to skulk along the fence toward the house. As Roger peaked out, he was at first concerned Carter could see him, but Carter did not look directly at him and never altered his posture. Given his trajectory, Carter would enter first into the living room through the sliding glass door. Roger looked at the handle: unlocked. The living room was separated from the kitchen by just a marbletop peninsula, hardly the cover he preferred.

The skulker would enter through the glass door; that much had become inevitable. Roger understood the immediacy that the situation required: he frantically grabbed one of the empty beer bottles and bolted down the hall leading from the kitchen to the bedrooms. When he came to a pair of doors across from one another, he closed the one on the left before diving into the one room on the right. He frantically yet quietly shut the door behind him. This was his bedroom; the first door had belonged to the bathroom. With any luck, the presence of choices might briefly halt if not confuse his pursuer.

The blankets lay disheveled on the bed. Though unsure of whether he had done so on purpose, Roger had brought his beer bottle with him from the kitchen. He slid the bottle underneath the blankets to muffle the sound of breaking glass as he brought the alarm clock from the night table down onto the bottle’s imprint in the blankets. His hand no longer held the neck of a bottle, but rather the handle of a crude, brutal weapon. Surreal—it looked just as he had seen in many a bad-movie barfight.

He twirled the glass in his fingers for a fraction of a moment, watching the edges of glass glimmer in the light, and it was just long enough to allow the birth of an insight that he smothered before it had the chance to pupate. Had the idea been allowed to develop, it would have become in its maturity the realization that it was the smoothness of the glass edges—the purity of the constitution—that gave it the power to harm. He shook his head. He always became reflective after the correct number of beers, but now was definitely not the time. Roger now stood with his ear against the door, breathing long and slow.

The sound of the sliding glass door found his ears, followed shortly by footsteps on the tile floor of the kitchen he had just left. The reality of the situation enveloped him, like the first plunge into a cold pool. All of his muscles were half-tensed, ready to fully contract at the instant his will desired it. On the television shows he watched, the characters who found themselves in similar situations were always uncertain of their ability to act. They hesitated without fail when it came time to inflict violence in the moment of self-preservation. Roger noted, and not without pride, that he had no such reservations; he would strike.

The sound of the bathroom door opening indicated that the bait had been taken.

Roger exploded from the bedroom and thrust himself upon the intruder. The skulker’s expression was one of cartoonish surprise—the gun left his hand as he used both to hold back the edges of bottle. They tumbled into the bathroom as the gun tumbled into the shower stall beside them. Grunting and panic and determination ensued. Somehow the bottle was wrested from Roger’s grasp. Roger tackled the intruder into the hallway when the man stood to search for the pistol. The scrum moved down the hall back towards the kitchen in a clumsy, unsophisticated version of lunge and parry. One party would move to take the offensive but meet a determined defender before any advantage could be gained. Just as the spectacle entered the kitchen, Roger found himself flung backwards against the wall. The intruder darted towards counter, upon which sat a knife block. Continuing to depend on his instincts, Roger dove at the man’s ankles and wrenched them backwards just as the intruder pulled a long, slender knife from the block. The knife clattered to the ground beside Roger as the intruder fell.

And then, quite suddenly, it seemed to be over. As adrenaline surged through his veins, Roger had somehow come to find himself holding a knife out in front of the intruder’s chest with his right hand. The struggle had been hectic and disorienting. He never would have fancied himself capable self-defense when facing a potentially fatal foe, but here he stood. He had—

Roger watched the stranger’s scared face contort into a sardonic smile. The soft crinkles beside his dark, terrible eyes created an oxymoronic impression, like a machete used to slice a birthday cake. For a moment, Roger froze, confounded.

He recovered himself and asked, “What’s so funny?”

He punctuated this last word with a quick thrust of the knife in the direction of the intruder.

That was when Carter’s arms became twin blurs. To the casual observer, it would have seemed the arms moved simultaneously. In reality, however, the right slightly preceded the left. As Roger slid the knife forward, Carter smacked the kink of Roger’s arm with his own right hand. Roger’s arm bent at the elbow, sending his hand inward with its previous momentum. Carter’s left hand jabbed forward with an open palm, striking the bottom Roger’s fist, thus further tightening the V in Roger’s arm and forcing the skinny knife deep into Roger’s chest.

Carter leaned forward and marched toward the wall, pushing Roger with him. Once there, he slammed Roger against the wooden paneling with his hands; he could feel the serrated kitchen knife slide smoothly between two ribs and on into the fleshy parenchyma of the lung. Though Roger still clutched the very knife that was stabbing him in an attempt to pull it out, he was able to offer only meager resistance—the kind of pathetic efforts that provoked cruel snickerings in Slade.

Terror shone from Roger’s wide, innocent eyes. Something felt very wrong about the situation he had suddenly entered. Until this moment he had felt invincible. His mouth fell open into a perfect circle, and, although Roger meant to scream, no sound escaped for a moment. When it did, the noise was high and hollow, like that made by dead trees swaying in the wind. Slade stared at him, and now his look was free from all of the humble anxiety he had feigned as the door-knocker. His demeanor was now heavy in its usual contempt, swimming with deserved arrogance and perverse romanticism. Indeed, those eyes were so darkly severe that Roger found himself swimming in a sea of obsidian. Plunging into the depth of black, sensing the possessing that now occurred. Yet, there, in the very penumbra of each black sea, as if upon a throne, sat a tiny orb of grey. Almost immediately after its recognition, those pieces of grey swelled with immeasurable speed and at once hurled themselves at Roger in an ashen flash.

Upon seeing into those eyes, Roger new that the entire thing had been choreographed. The intruder had planned out each step for both performers. It was a dance, and this mysterious figure had always been leading. They looked each other in the face for only seconds, but it was enough. The dark eyes told Roger that their owner had seen it all before it happened. The intruder’s tongue was too quick to make such obvious blunders, his vision too sharp to need to squint inside, and his limbs too agile for such inept skulking. His errors were intentional, done to give Roger the confidence that the intruder wanted him to have. He did not desire a dull, rote murder—he wanted amusement. This intruder was the audience as well as the matador.

Every advantage that Roger thought he had managed had actually been orchestrated by the intruder.

His chest throbbed where the skin, muscle, lung were divided by the knife. Each breath brought a fresh explosion of sharp, terrible pain. Oxygen was acid. Somehow, in the movies, it always seemed that the pain could be ignored in such adrenaline-infused moments, but he now recognized the lie. The pain was real; it filled his body and mind.

As was typical, Slade held no obvious physical advantage over his adversary. His frame was not only short but also lean, carrying just moderate muscle bulk and almost no fat, yet he managed to seduce victory in every confrontation. The thing that made him so untouchably dangerous was none other than simple fury, abundant and pure. In those few quick moments at the beginning of a conflict, which others piddle away with surprise or rational thought, Slade released his pre-calculated rage. His danger lay in a lack of inhibition, a practiced acceptance of any havoc his id might venture to wreak.

Jeremy’s taxi arrived at Roger’s house just before five o’clock in the evening. Although the hospital social worker had assured him that all costs of transportation had been covered by the hospital, he still felt very odd not giving the driver money when he exited the car. He had been surprised how long it had taken to prepare his discharge from the hospital, but he no longer cared. All that mattered now was the chance to relax and forget about the strangeness of the past few days. Maybe Roger would share a few of his beers—he was after all a generous man when it came to his booze.

He knocked on the door, very much hoping that Roger was actually home.

“It’s open.”

He was relieved to hear the voice, and it was not until he had turned the knob and taken his first step inside that he realized the voice was unfamiliar. Just as this dawned on him, he noticed the stranger sitting at the kitchen table. The man seemed at home, peeling an apple with a small knife, so Jeremy figured it was one of Roger’s family members in for a visit. Roger had a big family, lots of cousins.

“Hello Jeremy!” the man shouted jovially. “Been waiting for you.”

“Hi, is Roger—wait, you’ve been waiting for me? How did Roger know I was coming? I didn’t get a chance to call him… Did the hospital contact you?”

“They did not,” he said, before taking a large bite of apple.

Jeremy felt uneasy, but he could not tell exactly why. Something about the man’s countenance set him on edge.

“Where’s Roger?”

“Indisposed.”

Jeremy stopped in the living room, several steps from the kitchen. The man stopped peeling the apple and looked up at him. He was smiling, but his expression seemed severely impersonal. The eyes were too dark.

“But he knows I’m coming?” Jeremy asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Who are you?”

“Ah!” the man exclaimed as he quickly rose from his chair. “You don’t remember? I’m not surprised, actually. We met a while back—about a week ago now.”

Jeremy consciousness erupted into a frenzied panic. He backed up a few steps with the intention to put a great distance between him and this man as soon as possible, but he froze when the man pulled a handgun from behind his back. The weapon looked fairly unusual to Jeremy, who had only passing familiarity with guns. It looked like a hybrid of a paintball gun and the old-fashioned handgun that Nazis always used in movies. Despite the odd appearance, the gun provoked tremendous fear in Jeremy. Adding to his trepidation was the fact that the man was still smiling at him.

“You shot me!” Jeremy exclaimed. “Last week, in the woods—it was you!”

“True. But not with this.”

“Why?”

“They told me to. I do what I’m told.”

“Who?”

“You’ll find out. I’m not going to kill you. This is just a dart gun. Truth be told, I prefer to be more hands-on in my procurement process, but I have no desire to tussle with you. I’m betting you’re contagious, and I don’t want what you’ve got. I know they say it’s supposed to be good for you, but I say the jury’s still out.”

Jeremy grew increasingly puzzled. He said nothing, but his expression showed a mix of horror and confusion. They stayed like this, in silence, for about five seconds. Carter Slade seemed to enjoy prolonging the awkwardness of the moment. Eventually, he pointed the tranquilizer gun at Jeremy and pulled the trigger.

Jeremy was overcome with disbelief, even as he reached up and felt the metal shaft of the dart in his neck. As the first seconds passed, he remained lucid and experienced jubilation at the thought that the tranquilizer was having no effect. Just as his eyes widened at this notion, however, he came to realize that he was having difficulty remembering the reason for his jubilation. He tumbled forward on to the floor before Slade. With his last ounce of volition, he rolled over onto his back to look up at his assailant. His hazy mind registered two black orbs floating in a blurry face before he was forcefully taken by sleep.

***

The ECPI officially disbanded on June 3—4 weeks after Jeremy’s abduction—but that date held very little practical significance in the demise of the organization. It merely served as the period at the end of its death sentence. The gradual process of its dissolution unfolded over six weeks or so, and no one was that surprised. The company had long seemed to be in a perpetual crisis of purpose. The employees merely nodded in self-righteous understanding when the doors closed; it seemed that the executives’ lack of a cohesive vision for the company had finally done it in.

The lay-offs began even before Jeremy Pierson vanished. The two least-tenured members of the IT department had been downsized the week before his disappearance, and the supplemental staff had been reduced from five people to three the week before that. Another employee was let go on the same day as Jeremy’s disappearance. Management was very upfront about the situation: they always explained who had been laid-off in the next day’s morning meeting. They informed everyone that Jeremy had taken it quite well, though he was understandably frustrated. He was using it as an opportunity to spend time with his out-of-state sister.

It had been a small organization in the first place, never employing more than twenty people outside of upper management at any given moment. By the time it closed, there were only six employees remaining. These few had given up on the pretense of meaningful work weeks ago and were merely waiting for the end. Due to generous severance packages, no one complained much about being let go. There was even a faint hint of jealousy among the survivors, who wished their paid vacations had already begun.

None of the employees ever definitively knew the source of funding for the company. It is quite remarkable how easy it is to become comfortable with ignorance in such matters. They were given vague reports from management about the ebbs and flows—usually ebbs—of the organization’s capital, but it never seemed to make complete sense. Employees usually found this disconcerting for their first few months, but they got over it. The money was good, and the work was not hard. If they had been asked if they worked for a government-funded organization, they would probably have said no, even though it seemed to be run like one and have those sorts of goals. However, those goals were in no way approached during the two-year lifetime of the company. Even the executives knew very little. They had only hazy inklings that they were the filter for some unknown private investor, a single man who dispensed the financial backing along with peculiarly specific requests regarding the day-to-day operations of the organization. They liked their roles; it allowed them to feel important, as if they were a part of some magnificent scheme or diabolical conspiracy

There were outlandish rumors among the mid- and lower-level employees that some executives knew more than they revealed about the mysterious resignation of Roger Bakowski. The content of these varied from the possibility that Roger had arrived at work inebriated and was subsequently fired on the spot to the more unbelievable notion that management was somehow involved with the disappearance. Such silly gossip is of course very commonplace in a disgruntled office, and, as is always the case with rumors of this nature, they were feverishly circulated while at the same time universally dismissed.

Next Chapter: An Unpopular Idea