Hey, Asshole
As Tanith as I were walking out
of Garland Industries, I think we were both trying not to smile. “Nice piece of
negotiation back there. I love seeing a suit go pale and sweaty like that,” Tanith
said.
“Well thank you, my dear. Your
singularly dangerous mien went a long way towards establishing our criminal
credibility.” I was in a good mood. We had a lovely paycheck in our future for
what should be a relatively straightforward job. I put on my best posh accent.
“I think tonight, we shall dine and carouse like in days of old.” I pulled out
my phone, saw another missed call from Talia and knitted my eyebrows. Four
calls in the past hour. Something must be up. She’s not the type to try to chase
me down for anything unless it’s important. I’d call her when I was in the car.
I swiped my phone’s touch screen
to dial Patch.
“Hey asshole! Get over here!”
My conditioned response kicked in
and I started to turn, but stopped myself. I didn’t recognize the voice, but
I’d know the tone anywhere. My hackles rose and my smile became a thin, flat
line. I turned to find the source of my distress.
I saw a slouching Human boy of
about eleven hurrying over to man in ill-fitting business casual clothing.
Beside him was a woman with a faraway look in her eyes. A look that said she
just simply wasn’t there. When the kid got within arm’s reach of the man, the
guy grabbed him roughly and shook him. He spoke in a quiet, angry tone. “What
the fuck do you think you’re doing? Clean the shit out of your ears. I told you
not to go anywhere.”
“I was just...” the kid
stammered.
“I don’t give a fuck what you
were ‘just’ doing. We’re not here for you to take in the fucking sights.” The
man punctuated his words with rough shakes, his fingers digging into the kid’s
arms. The woman avoided looking at them.
It was a scene I knew very, very
well.
I went on autopilot. My emotions
became so confused and roiling that I felt none of them. I noticed Tanith
looking at me expectantly. Not taking my eyes off of the scene, I leaned in her
direction. “Restrain him. No blood. Now.” To her credit, she paused for only a
fraction of a second before recognizing my seriousness. She slithered ahead and
around to come at the man from behind. I walked slowly behind her, my eyes
never leaving the son of a bitch.
I heard my own blood rushing
through me. It was thundering.
Tanith came up behind the man and
pinned him efficiently, slowly wrapping her huge body around him. His look of
surprise was like a salve on my soul. I stepped up behind the boy and gently
placed my hands on his shoulders. “Excuse me, young man,” I said as I moved him
to the side. He yielded and looked up at me, dumbfounded. I tried to give my
best attempt at a warm smile. I returned my attention to the man and stepped
invasively close to him. I smelled his breath. He used an overabundance of
mouthwash. Of course. The same subtle signs of alcoholism...
I stared at him, my face a tense
mask of neutrality. He sputtered and started the transition from surprise to
anger. “What the fuck...”
My dagger was in the hand I used
to press a finger over his lips. I shushed him. I spoke with an even, dangerous
tone. “It’s listening time.” I raised my hands to cut a lock of his hair and
held it in front of his eyes. “Rejoice. For this is the day you become a decent
man.” I pulled the hair back from his face and looked at it contemplatively.
“With this hair, I can always touch you. I can see through your eyes. I can...
affect you.” I took the moment to send a sharp burst of dark energy through
him. He jerked in Tanith’s grip and let out a short bark of pain. “I want you
to listen to me and know that what I say is true. I will look into you
occasionally. And if I ever see you treat this young man or this woman like
a... thing. Ever again. You will regret it. Do you understand me?”
“Hey, who the fuck...”
I sent a bigger, sharper pain
into him, cutting him off.
“I don’t require you to speak. I
repeat. Do you understand me?” He nodded. “Do you believe me?” He nodded
again. Improvising, I took a dollar bill out of my wallet and carefully wrapped
the hair in a neat package and held it up in front of his eyes. “Do not test
me.”
I turned around to the woman and boy. She
looked terrified. I slipped my dagger back into its scabbard at my belt. I
stepped towards her and she backed away, clutching the boy to her. “Don’t,” she
said.
“You. You need to know that
enough is enough. And if you don’t have the strength to protect yourself, find
the strength to protect him,” I said, nodding towards the boy. I knelt to be at
eye level with him. There was a mixture of awe, fear, and, I hoped, gratitude.
I pulled my card out of my suit jacket’s inner pocket. “This is an anonymous
email address. Memorize it. If he strays, tell me.” I tried to think of
something encouraging to say. Something that would let him know that being
victimized wasn’t his fault. Something that would make the hate and fear in him
not take over. No words came. “You have power now.” It was the best I could do.
But he took the card and nodded.
I straightened up. “Let him go,”
I said to Tanith. She did, and I thought for a moment he might do something
stupid. If he had been considering taking action, he thought better of it.
“Now. Run along.” I flashed something somewhere between a grin and a grimace.
“Enjoy your new life as a better man.”
The family quickly departed as I
stared after them.
I turned to Tanith. She was
considering me with open worry and surprise. “Are you okay?” she said quietly.
I flushed deeply, my sense of self returning. I had just threatened a man on a
busy street in broad daylight.
“I need a drink. And we need to
get off the street.”
I had forgotten about calling
anyone entirely.
We found ourselves in the bar of
some chain restaurant. Overpriced drinks and over-enthused wait staff. We sat
in the closest thing to a dark corner we could manage, license plates and
pictures of baseball players crowding us in with banality. We both ordered
whiskeys and sat in silence for a minute. Tanith’s eyes didn't leave me.
She opened her mouth and I interrupted
her “Why did you get into this gig?”
She shook her head slightly in
surprise. She opened her mouth again, but paused, considering me. “Are you
asking me because you want to know or because you want to tell me why you
did? Because I’ll tell you if you want to know. But if you really just want to
use this as an opportunity to divulge, you’re not really going to listen to
what I say, are you?” Gods damn it, she could read me.
“Both. But I do want to hear your
story. Plus, I might have to work my way up to mine.”
I’m going to pause the story
here. Her and I talked. It was serious and honest. But if I tell you about this
now, you’re just going to think it’s some ham-fisted narrative technique to
make me relatable. I’ve already established that I’m a bastard. Now would be
the time to establish that I’m also sensitive and hurting. Someone you can
empathize with. Give you a reason to not set this book down in disgust. It
would be, and I hate this word, humanizing. So fucking racist.
If I told this now, it might seem
like I was rushing things, but I’m relating the events as they unfolded. Trust
me, I’m not impatient to make you like me. That ship’s probably sailed. So I’ll
tell you this story later. It’ll be right at the end of the book. A little
flashback to that place and time that Seth showed the chinks in his armor. If
you really want, you can go read it now. Or you can wait. Or you can skip it
entirely, I don’t care. I guess it depends on the kind of person you are.
I’ll tell you this, though. I am
Seth Shannon. I don’t use street handles like almost everyone else in this
business because I have spent a great deal of time and effort building the
reputation of a monster. I am a carefully crafted idea and image, built on
lies. Real monsters hide their nature. Only cowards employ the magnitude of
bluster and pretense that I do.
People who like Seth Shannon won’t
like who I actually am. I speak from experience, because I like Seth Shannon
and I don’t like me. That’s why I spend so much time as an empty persona. So if
you want to see the man behind the curtain now, later, or never, I give you
that choice. Look at all my generosity. But if it were me, I’d wait until the
end.
So read on, however you want to
read.
That Scene in the Bar
We waited for our drinks to come
in silence. The waitress cheerfully asked if we’d like to hear the specials and
I was too emotionally tired to be rude to her. She bounced off to another
table, leaving a veritable trail of sunshine in the air. Tanith and I both
sipped from our glasses.
She stared into her drink and
played with the gathering condensation on her glass. She took a breath, let it
out, and started talking. “When I was eight, it was the first time my mom tried
to kill my dad. We were put into a foster home for a while. Me and my sister, I
mean. I don't know if I can blame her really. Not that my dad deserved it, but
she was really fucked up. He was always trying to protect her from the world.
Even more, he was always trying to protect her from herself. Blamed himself when
she went off the deep end. Trying to save their image in front of their ever-shrinking
number of friends. Maybe if he’d let her really go nuts and not hold the world
at bay, she might have been forced to get help. I don’t know.
“She would just disappear
sometimes. He had to work, so I was left in charge when no one else could – or would
– help out. So it was me and Corina. Mom would be off some terrible place doing
some terrible thing and only come back when she ran out of money. I always
hated it when she did. I wanted her to stay gone. But no. She’d come back and
start trying to destroy my dad, piece by piece. She’d lay into him with words,
and when words weren’t hurting him enough, she’d beat the crap out of him. He
only ever tried to restrain her, never struck her in anger. Sometimes, I wish
he would have. I think that’s what she wanted.
“She came from a pretty awful
family herself, but I only ever heard blurry details when she was hammered.”
Tanith raised her glass and toasted me. “To the honesty of bad habits.” She
took a big gulp. “So yeah. It was hard to really blame her. She was broken, and
broken people, if they can’t find the way to piece themselves together, are
bound to pass that shit on.
“But yeah. I was eight when we
went to our first foster home. Corina was six. I had to watch out for her.
People... abuse the system. Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent people
out there. Our last place was with two pretty good people. But by that time, a
lot of damage was done. I had to protect Corina, which often meant taking the
beatings for two. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to hand them out
pretty well, too.
“When I was eighteen, I was able
to leave. I got a shitty place nearby so I could still keep watch over Corina.
We hung with a rough crowd. Shocker, I know. But she was smart. I kept pushing her.
The only time we really fought was when I was trying to mother her, but it’s
not like I wanted to. I just wanted her to have an okay life. She got some
scholarships and went to college. I tried to make ends meet where I could to
make sure she didn't have to drop out because of money. So I took more and more
dangerous jobs with that rough crowd. Eventually got a reputation. I could
start demanding higher rates. Started working for better clients and broke into
corporate gigs. I helped her through college and she got a decent job. Now she’s
married to a decent guy and has a couple of little shits that I love to death.
But this is what I became to make that happen.”
“Are you okay with it?” I asked
quietly.
Her mouth twisted a bit in
thought. “Mostly. Hell, I think we’re doing good as much as we are bad. Even if
the way we do it is pretty brutal. Like you. I think sometimes, like on the
street, you’ll do a good thing. As long as you get to hurt someone in the
process.” She finished her drink and slid the glass to the edge of the table to
the universally recognized position signaling the desire for a refill. She
cleared her throat, maybe a bit self-conscious. “Your turn.”
I sighed. I’d barely touched my
drink. Her story was different from mine, but it was familiar. “I think you
caught a glimpse of it out there. My mom was a... weak woman. I don’t really
remember my dad, but apparently, as soon as he took off, she latched onto the
next guy she could find. I think she was the kind of person who would rather be
miserable than alone. He became my step-dad. He was a fiend.” I paused, took a
sip of my drink, and sniffed. “No, no he wasn’t. He was a pathetic man that
took out all of his rage at the world on my mother and I. I have to resist the
urge to make him more than he was. But he terrorized me. And she let him.
“Every day was a battlefield, and
I was completely unarmed. Everything I said or did was a personal affront to
him. And kind of like you said, when the words weren’t enough, fists usually did
the trick.
“By the time I was a teenager, I
was terrified of everything. I saw everyone as a threat. Deeply, deeply
isolated. I couldn’t find anything that made me happy. Like, ever. I led a rich
fantasy life, dreaming of power and the freedom it would give me. I hid in
myself constantly. ‘In’ was the only place I had left to run.
“One day, when I was fifteen – I’ll
never forget this – we were at a friend’s of his place. Him and his friend were
getting drunk. I don’t think they’d known each other a long time. My mom was out
smoking a cigarette. So his friend, I guess he was just aching to get it out
and the booze let him do it, he confessed to being a shitty two-bit hit man. I
was fifteen, in this fucking scruffy redneck’s house, and all of a sudden this
shit goes down. I’ll always remember it because of the fear in my step-dad’s
face. God, that moment. That was it. This dumpy, unwashed Floridian suddenly
became an object of terror to my greatest monster.
“Whether I knew it or not, that
was what put me on my path. I was already a weird little goth kid reading too
much horror and fantasy. But then I put everything in me to becoming something
to fear. I read what I could about becoming a Devout. I figured that was my
best chance at real power. And who better and more terrifying to serve than the
Nameless Ones? I needed to become a bigger monster than all of my own
tormentors. So by eighteen, I’d made my deal. Reached them through meditation
and Dreaming. Promised them my servitude for the power to protect myself and
deal out death as I saw fit.”
I paused. I downed the rest of my
drink and considered if I should tell her the rest. The rest was the real hard
part. I felt my throat tightening at the mere thought of speaking it. The
waitress came by and we ordered another round. We waited. I think Tanith knew I
was conflicted.
The waitress brought our drinks
and I actually smiled at her. Getting all touchy-feely makes me oddly polite
for some reason.
“When I was twenty, I killed him.
Made it look like an accident. It was so, so satisfying. For a while.
“Two months later, my mom killed
herself.” I tried to find more words, but it had been thirty years. They’d
still not come. I pursed my lips and took another gulp of my whiskey.
Tanith reached across the table
to put a scaled hand on top of the one that had been unconsciously drumming the
wood. “I assume you blame yourself?”
I snorted. “Well, yeah. It’s my
fault. I might as well have pulled the trigger.”
Tanith leaned a little more over
the table. “You didn’t make her the way she was. You didn’t put the gun to her
head. As near as I can tell, you gave her freedom from a tyrant. Despite the
fact that you had seen too much and were already worn around the edges, you
were still young. And you were still, in your own way, extremely naive. You
thought you were helping. How could you know that she had the life that she
didn’t know how not to want? Seth. I’m not going to say you did a good thing.
But I can’t say you did a bad thing. Not to her, at least.”
I stared into my lap, not taking
my hand from under hers. My throat was too tight to talk and it was everything
I could do not to start crying in that shitty, loud, boring restaurant. I
chewed my lower lip. “Maybe someday I’ll see it that way.”
Back to the Story
So we talked. It was a touching
moment between killers. We got drunk. We called Patch to drive us home. He
bitched that we were gone basically forever. We went home, I drank some more
and passed out. The last thing I remember seeing was the LED on my phone
flashing and thinking that I was too drunk and too emotional to deal with the
outside world.
