The Loop

Been wantin’ to do this a long time, thought the man who the world called Dale, but who had been christened Peter. Been needin’ it. He stood over his latest victim, imagining the fox he’d hit on his way home from the bowling alley and tossed under the tarp protecting the tailgate of his truck was a person. A woman.

The man had the presence of mind to realize how disgusted others would be by him if they knew about this, about any of it, so he always made sure they didn’t. He was good at it, too; had ’em all fooled. At work he was a patient, helpful, friendly coworker. In public he was pleasant, courteous, and charming. And behind his eyes there were pains and pleasures that the world couldn’t perceive.

He made the incisions slowly, savoring the way the flesh yielded to his blade, how the body permitted the act, unable to prevent it, the way the sticky, pulpy crimson and black secretion seeped and pooled. He was methodical and precise, but not without feeling. No point in it if you don’t feel, he thought. Perception was key, he thought: how he perceived the object of the act: a woman, not an animal; how he perceived the act itself: a passionate, tender deed—a privilege, even, to be released from the pain of existence; and how others perceived him: a professional, ordinary, prosaic individual.

Perfect, he thought as he peeled back the pelt over the fox’s abdomen. Four incisions and he was in. The thing was pitiful, lying there, prone and passive. Pathetic, he thought. This was why it required his love. It was elevated, uplifted, put on a pedestal by his attention, his piety, his passion. It was made more than it had been in life. He gave the poor thing purpose. It was an outlet for his predilections, a passage for the pent-up pressure within him.

He pried open the ribcage and pulled out the heart. He split it into three pieces and ate the first two ploddingly. The third portion he wrapped in a bit of napkin and put in his pocket for later.

A momentary paroxysm. A release.

He hadn’t felt so good in a long time, but the act wasn’t as palliative as it might have been months or years ago. A lingering doubt had left him perplexed after each procedure lately. It was a problem. Power, he thought. Powers, he thought. He had never done to a person what he’d done to the beasts. He’d always justified this by telling himself that without perfect plenary power over a subject, the probability of peril was too high. He couldn’t risk the prospect of being apprehended, and ending up in prison. He’d worked too hard to cultivate his image as a proper and prosperous citizen. To put that in danger was preposterous, he’d thought.

But now …

Powers existed. Perchance he could have one. Then he could do as he pleased.

The false objects that had only ever been placeholders for his proper targets could no longer please him. He was on a precipice, he felt. It was an exciting sort of feeling. When he’d first heard about powers, his interest had been piqued, but he’d written them off quickly as ridiculous. Now, with evidence mounting toward proof, he was more and more predisposed to belief.

It hadn’t always been like this.

He stood up and dusted the dirt off his pants. He picked up the corpse and pitched it with a perfunctory motion of his arms to the back of the yard, where his mother’s parched pansies stood pathetically in their patch. He didn’t worry about leaving the bodies here behind her house. His mother was sick, and never made it past the porch these days. A coyote or some other predator would probably take care of the remains and if they didn’t—if the bodies stunk up her yard—what of it? For what she’d done to him growing up, he felt no penitence at the thought of a little payback.

She’d made him shoot his first pet, a potbelly pig named Porky, because he’d failed to provide her with the pack of cigarettes and bottle of Patron he’d promised he’d bring home after school. How the fuck am I supposed to procure those things? he’d wanted to ask her. I’m ten years old. The next day he’d stolen fifteen dollars from her purse and purchased the biggest knife at the speediest pawn shop. He hadn’t used it on her, though.

He wiped the blood from his hands onto the wood post at the corner of the patio. He peeked in the window, but of course the house was dark. Perfidious bitch is asleep, he thought. It brought him no shortage of pleasure to know that she was in there, rotting, putrefying, and no one was there to help but an endlessly shuffling posse of nurses who never stayed for long because they couldn’t pull off putting up with his mother’s poor treatment, no matter how well they were paid.

He’d started with a porcupine, he remembered, and he’d projected his mother’s face onto it as he set to work. Prey, he’d thought. Predator, he’d thought. Predator, Prey. Pray. Pass away, he’d thought. And that was the first time he’d found paradise.

In high school, he’d stopped for a while. He’d decided that what he’d been doing was wrong. He supposed he’d known that all along, because he’d never spoken of his actions to anyone. He’d tried to become normal, as much as anyone was, and had largely succeeded. He’d had friends, he’d played sports. He’d developed feelings for a girl named Pam—his mother’s name—and discovered that she felt the same way. In his junior year they’d started dating, and things had moved quickly. One night, at Pam’s house, in Pam’s bedroom—her mother and father away for the weekend—things had nearly reached their inevitable conclusion. But at the moment that mattered most, he’d been unable to satisfy; visions of vivisected animals had flooded his mind and to his horror, they brought him not disgust or shame, but desire. Pam had told him not to worry about it, that it happened to lots of guys from time to time. The next day at school, though, everyone was either openly laughing at him or whispering whenever he came into earshot.

He’d resolved to murder Pam. Either one of them, really.

Instead he’d returned to his prey, and their sacrifices had been a panacea for his soul.

Power, he thought again. And he knew what he had to do. Power first, then the new woman at work. She seemed pure. And he couldn’t deny his partiality for her. They’d even developed a pleasant rapport. He’d been making progress—paving the path—before he’d even known he was after her.

———————

Once he’d decided powers were real, he’d become enraptured by them, but that wasn’t the case for the majority of the populace, who wrote them off as pretend until the president’s address, during which the planet got a glimpse of how profoundly things were about to change. He’d wondered afterward why everyone had remained so seemingly calm, peaceful, and patient with the situation. In his experience, people weren’t generally like that.

He’d understood the answer before most, probably before even the government’s top scientists: the things from space, whatever they were, were broadcasting a sort of subliminal proclamation to the public, and he’d tuned into it. It spoke of peace and unity. It was intended to pacify the people. How could the plebeians not hear it? Because he was different, and his mind was peculiar. Once he understood that, things started making sense. People weren’t freaking out or protesting because they were being told not to, only they couldn’t perceive the things whispering platitudes in their ears.

But he heard them. Maybe it was a quirk of his psychology, but he was better at understanding them than he was other people, once he knew where to focus his attention. And now he had reason to listen closely. He didn't hear their voices, not exactly, but he heard their intention, their purpose, their point. If he focused, he could follow the signal, letting his subconcious mind lead the way.

The day after the fox, his mind finally made up, he pursued the most powerful broadcast to a nearby diner, the sort that survived on its claim of having the best pie in town, even though nobody believed it. People were like that though, he had discovered; society was built on a plethora of false premises, deceptions that no one really believed.

His childhood had existed in such a precarious state, one where he pressured himself to believe that his mother loved him because she periodically told him so, although the evidence to the contrary was patently obvious. It was a presupposition that he had eventually come to question, a pretended love he’d learned to protest. Of course, his mother hadn’t liked that. There was power in having him believe the lie. Pushing past it had come at a cost. It was a price he’d paid willingly.

He arrived at the diner and looked at his surroundings. It was filthy, much polluted with decades of cigarette smoke and grease. The booths and pews were composed of ripped purple plastic. The plaster on the walls was shredded and the lights in the ceiling cast a pale, perverse yellow light. The smell was a revolting perfume of cleaning chemicals and day old food and a pungent odor of spilled petrol that must have wafted in from the dripping pumps of the gas station next door.

Yes, he thought, taking pleasure in the pageant of suffering and pain on display in places like this. This is a powerful place.

“Can I get you anything started? Coffee maybe?” the waitress asked as he took a seat in the corner, where he could see hapless pedestrians on their pointless errands through the grimy windows.

“Coffee would be lovely.” He flashed her a winning smile, and she returned it warmly. “And if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your favorite pie?”

“Between you and me—” she moved in closer as if telling him something private “—it’s gotta be the pecan.”

“Perfect,” he replied. “Pecan sounds great.”

“One coffee and a slice of pecan coming up,” she said, still smiling warmly at him.

The noise of the orb in his ears and his mind was practically overwhelming, almost paralyzing now, but still he maintained his composure. He looked around placidly, giving pleasant smiles to anyone whose eyes he met.

Where would such a thing be? he wondered.

He had seen the news programs like everyone else. The phenomenon had begun with things arriving from space, entering earth’s atmosphere and probably crashing all over the place. Since there wasn’t a perforation in the ceiling of this establishment, the object must be outside, he reasoned. Potentially on the roof, he amended.

He finished his pie and coffee, waiting patiently for his precocious perception to put him on the proper path.

Even now, as his patience was wearing thin, he didn’t let slip his true personality. To do so now, after so many years of keeping it planted deep would not be prudent.

Finally, he had a flash of insight, a prophecy of sorts. From outside the restaurant, he’d perceived a sort of irregularity to the profile of the building. He had been unable to square the dimensions as observed externally to those seen from inside, even taking into account space for a kitchen and washrooms. The proportions just didn’t match up. And the shape inside was all wrong, too. A courtyard, he thought.

And yes, there was a door behind the poorly polished bar—directly behind the phosphorescent glow of the pie display—that could lead nowhere else if his measurements and predictions were correct.

“Excuse me, miss?” He motioned politely to the waitress. “I wonder if you couldn’t point me to the privy?”

“Of course,” she said. She pointed toward a short hallway past the other end of the counter. He slipped around that end of the counter, then, propelling himself in the opposite direction when he saw the coast was clear, positioned himself in a crouch behind the counter, and moved purposefully toward the door.

He placed his hand on the knob and said a pithy prayer, not to any god save the dark one inside him. He turned the handle. He saw what lay before him and any doubt he’d had about his purpose was purged. His skin prickled as its voice, previously broadcasting to the entire populace, adjusted its pronouncement to address him personally.

Hello, it said. It spoke to him in the voice of Pam, his long ago childhood love. It’s good to meet you, Peter. I think we’ll make a perfect pair, don’t you?

July 27th

The man—formerly called Peter, then Dale, now Pitch—drew the smoke-like tendrils of shadow around himself like a blanket, then pushed them away. He had been furling and unfurling them like this for some time already, thoughtless, passive. He was pensive, ruminating, planning.

The trap he’d set for his mother was no trap at all; he’d simply walked into her home, ignoring her labored cries of panic as the penumbra of his power swallowed the room’s light and he fell upon her, wrapping her up and pushing her down into the darkness. After she’d spent some time there, he’d let her out again, and recorded her as she confessed to all the pernicious things she’d ever done. Then she went back into the pitch black nothingness. He wasn’t sure yet if he’d ever let her out again.

The ploy he’d used to get Gabriela had been somewhat more involved. He’d sent her a personal message, saying he had stopped by the office and it looked like someone had broken in. When she’d arrived, he’d cornered her and done much the same as he’d done to his mother. Again he made a video. Documentation, he’d thought. Proof. So whoever happens across it knows I had a reason. Gabriela hadn’t been as cruel a mother as Pam, but she wasn’t much better.

Then he waited. He prepared the office for the arrival of the third person. He planted the laptop with its videos as proof of his righteous purpose, and as a warning for anyone who might find it and think to come after him. All night he waited there, letting the natural darkness permeate and mingle with his own. All night he thought of how he would get her, of what he would do with the three of them. Power, he kept thinking. Power and perception.

He had more of the first now, and so the second didn’t matter so much. He could finally be who he’d always been, and no one could stop him. No one could prevent him carrying out his plan.