thoughts from an empty head

NOTE: I wrote this after reading a particularly disturbing case of a young girl who had been raped by persons unknown. I always get this little flash in my head, a brief rage that I would gladly spend on any creature who tried to harm a child, and I wondered what I would do if I had the chance to catch a predator like this one, and I wondered about what I would lose in the process.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

Blake opened his eyes slowly, the dim light sending stabs of pain through his head. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead across his eyes. As he moved his hand to wipe the sweat away, he noticed for the first time that he could not move his hands. His eyes snapped open in surprise as he strained against the restraints holding down his wrists and arms. That’s when he noticed the rest of the chair.

The chair was a simple metal chair, much as one would find in a second-hand surplus store, green and metal and all manner of uncomfortable. The chair’s unwieldy appearance was made all the more sinister by the number of straps and locks attached to it, holding Blake down in an unbreakable hold. Try as he might, Blake could not move. Attached to the chair was a homemade extension arm, which telescoped upwards towards his face. At the end of the arm sat a tall plastic bottle of liquid with a straw aimed at his face.

Blake looked at the man sitting in another ugly chair across from him, this one unadorned by any restraints. Next to the chair was a small round table such as one could purchase from a department store, compressed wood fiber held aloft by three wooden dowels. On the table sat only three things: a box filled with papers and photos, a small electronic device with a single blinking red light and a LED screen, and a steaming cup of what smelled like hot tea.

The man who sat in the chair regarded Blake as if he were an entomologist studied an especially distasteful species of cockroach. From what Blake could tell in the dim light, he was a tall man, possibly in his mid-30′s, round and well-fed, with the soft hands of one who had never had a hard day’s work in his life. His pock-marked face glistened slightly, as if he had been exerting himself recently. His clothes were simple; black suit with white shirt and black tie, comfortable-looking brogans, and a long black trench coat, which stuck Blake as odd, as it was the middle of July. Who the hell wears a coat in this hellish weather, he thought?

Blake opened his mouth to speak, and a large croak escaped his lips. His eyes widened in surprise.

The man in the black suit grinned. “Sorry about that. You were making a fuss earlier, and I didn’t want us to be disturbed.”

Standing somewhat stiffly, the man reached into the box and pulled out a small hand mirror. Walking over to Blake’s chair, he lifted Blake’s head slightly, holding the mirror at the proper angle to let Blake see the jagged scar running across his neck.

An angry moan escaped from Blake’s lips. The man withdrew to his seat, pocketing the mirror in his coat.

“As I said, sorry about that. You probably don’t feel the pain from the stitches yet. The cocktail I gave you knocked you out effectively. I’m not well versed in pharmacology or anatomy, but still, not too shabby for a gifted amateur. If you find yourself getting thirsty, however, feel free to imbibe from the water bottle directly in front of you.”

Blake realized how thirsty he was, and he sipped greedily from the bottle, choking a bit.

The man made no move to assist him. Instead, he watched Blake intently, waiting for Blake to finish drinking and to take in the small area around them.

Blake looked around and deduced that he must be inside a freight container of some sort. A single luminescent light hung overhead, powered by what appeared to be a large lantern battery. With the exception of the light and the setup around him, the container was empty.

Blake tried to call out for help, but his voice weakly croaked, unable to muster any appreciable volume. He struggled against his bonds, but they held fast.

The man in the black suit shook his head slowly.

“You’re not very smart, are you, Blake?”

Turning away from Blake, the man in the black suit opened his arms and bellowed out, “Hey! We’re in here! Someone save us! Heeeeeelp!”

He put a gloved hand to his ear and cocked his head slightly in Blake’s direction. No sound came from outside.

The man in the black suit smiled at Blake. It was not a good smile.

“I made sure that we would be undisturbed, Blake. I have much to say, and not much time to say it.”

Walking back to his seat, the man in the black suit picked up the small device, punched a button and watched as the readout glowed back at him. Satisfied, he put the device back on the table.

“Well, just enough time, then. Time enough for a story, Blake,” he said, sitting back down in his chair. He took a sip of his tea before he continued, his breath showing in the steam of the tea, and Blake realized why the man had a coat on. He wondered briefly why he could barely feel the cold around him, and then the man in the black suit spoke again, setting down his tea.

“My name is Peter. Dr. Peter Simpson, at your service. And you are Officer Blake Donnelly, late of the Boston Police Department.” Reaching into his pocket, Peter withdrew a small shiny object and examined it for a while before casually tossing it on the floor with a hollow clang. Blake’s badge shimmered in the dull light.

“I’m going to tell you a story, Blake. This story is about a young girl named Bridget and how she is the most important person in the world.

“Bridget was a beautiful girl. One of the most beautiful girls in her neighborhood, really. A good many young boys and older men watched her, I assure you. One watched her more intently than others, though.

“She was walking home from her friend’s house one night. Not a very safe thing to do, really, and her friend let her know that. But she didn’t want to put her friend out, so she bade her good night and set off for home. The walk was only five blocks, but that night, she might as well lived on the moon.

“Her screams brought help, eventually. No one really got a good look at the tall man who dragged her away, who ripped her dress, who violated her in that alley a mere block from her house. Bloody and broken, she was taken to the nearby hospital. The police eventually came and took her statement, clucking their tongues and telling her that she really shouldn’t have been walking in such a dangerous neighborhood at night.”

Peter paused to take a sip of his tea. His hands trembled slightly as he replaced the cup.

“Her parents blamed her, of course. Bridget came from your typical Christian fundamentalist home. Father and mother, so very holier-than-thou. And Bridget chafed at such an upbringing, as any headstrong teen would. They blamed her for … what was their phrasing? ‘Bringing ostracism upon their house.’”

Peter’s lips curled slightly, as if he had smelled something foul.

“At any rate, Bridget ran away from home the next night. She packed what little clothes she had and the small amount of money she had been saving for night classes at the local community college and struck out on her own. She made it all the way to San Francisco before she noticed that her period was late.

“Eight months later, she had a son.”

Peter paused for a minute. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small photo. Blake couldn’t see the face on the photo.

Peter looked up from the photo.

“She could have had an abortion, I suppose. But she never did. Call it a by-product of her upbringing.

“Continuing,” Peter said as he replaced the photo, “the young boy was pegged at an early age to be a prodigy. Mathematics, physics, history, engineering – anything he put his mind to, the boy could accomplish. He was smarter than any ten of his contemporaries put together.

“His mother always let him know just how proud she was of his accomplishments. She took small waitress jobs to make ends meet and to afford the preparatory academy that the boy attended. They were happy, by most accounts.

Peter paused, his eyes glistening slightly and his voice wavering slightly.

“She found the lump on her thirty-fourth birthday. So small a thing, yet so deadly. The cancer needed only a few weeks to kill her. She was buried in a small plot on a hill overlooking the bay. The boy was alone, truly alone for the first time in his life.

“The boy was packing her things some nights later, donating much to charity, but keeping a few keepsakes for himself, when he found a old manila folder in a locked drawer. The folder contained a police report from Boston. The boy read the report.

“And that night, the boy knew what he had to do. He realized, sitting on his dead mother’s bed, that the world was an unjust place, that no amount of good intentions could ever change the nature of the world around him. But he would find justice. He would make his own justice.

“He studied intensely, immersing himself in advanced physics and engineering, learning the structure of the universe and finding new ways to bend it to his will. He devoted himself to finding a way to correct the many injustices of the world by turning the foundations of time and space to serve his will.

“And he succeeded, beyond his wildest dreams. He mastered time and space with his keen mind and his advanced technology.”

Peter looked up at the ceiling. Blake strained to see what he was looking at. Just above the lamp on the ceiling, a small tremor vibrated the lantern battery.

Peter cast his intense gaze back upon Blake and asked, “Have you ever heard of Jack the Ripper?”

Blake’s eyes grew wide.

Peter laughed, a thin laugh of dark bemusement. “I think you misunderstand me, Blake. I ask merely to ascertain that you have heard of the mysterious case of the Ripper. I don’t imagine that there is a single member of the law enforcement establishment who isn’t familiar with the case in some way, but I’ve learned that you can never be too careful in making assumptions.”

Blake relaxed a bit in his chair, nodding slightly. Peter took that as an affirmative to his question and continued.

“One of the most fascinating aspects of the Ripper’s killing spree is the speed with which his murderous quest ended. He eviscerated his last official victim, Mary Jane Kelly, in the most horrible way possible, and then, poof! The Ripper disappears without a trace, and the police were left with no idea as to the identity of the killer.

“This seemed to the young man I mentioned earlier as a good starting point to begin his quest for justice. He took his inventions and his knowledge of the past and threw himself backwards through time. He arrived in the middle of the Whitechapel murders and waited for his opportunity.

“On the night of November 8, 1888, he found the creature responsible for the brutal deaths of five women. The event went far more smoothly than even he expected. The Ripper was completely surprised when the dark man came out of the shadows and plunged the dagger into his chest.

“Of course, now the young man had a dilemma. What would he do with the body? There could be no evidence that there had ever been a body here in the first place, and now there was physical evidence of a pair of murders, one of a victim and the other of her murderer.

“Here again, the young man’s depth of knowledge held an answer. He removed the body of the Ripper to a small container, making sure to leave no trace of his passage in the alley leading to the poor Ms. Kelly’s door. Programming his machines, he transported the murderer’s remains into a decaying orbit around the sun. His mathematical skills were impeccable, for soon his instruments told him that the container has been completely consumed by the heat of his local star.

Peter paused for another sip of tea. The vibrations in the steel above the light caused the lantern battery to tap against the ceiling. Blake noticed that the air in the container was getting warmer now.

Peter continued, “After his initial success, the young man thought a great deal as to how his technological advances could be put to the service of all mankind. But his pessimism at the world and his innate sense of vengeance would not let him his wonders with others. Being somewhat flush with his success at eliminating the Ripper, he embarked on a program to rid the world of all such vermin who would prey on the weak and helpless.

“Years passed. The young man spent his time tracking down the worst that humanity could offer. Time meant nothing to him. He could easily skip across the years and find the predators, watching and waiting for the right moment to strike, then jettisoning their rotting corpses into the sun.

“One day, many years later, as sending so many ambulatory nightmares to their just rewards, the man looked at himself in the mirror and realized that he had become a monster. A monster with a purpose, perhaps, but every bit the same kind of monster that he spent his life hunting, nonetheless. The blood on his hands … on my hands … is never going to wash off, Blake.

Blake was sweating now, sure that he was about to sliced or shot by the crazy person in black sitting across from him. His eyes crazed from fear, unable to speak, he frantically looked all around him for a way out of this predicament.

“But I still had one last bit of business to attend, one last score to settle for my mother after all those years. I don’t know why I waited so long to confront my mother’s rapist. Maybe I was scared that I would erase myself from time. Maybe I was scared at the prospect of confronting the boogieman of my nightmares.

“I tracked you across the years, Blake. You’ve been hiding behind that badge for years, preying on young girls. Finding you and catching you was easy. I was the one who called out and scared you away, Blake. I followed you to the hospital to take my mother’s report.”

Peter stood up and walked over to Blake, leaning down until their noses almost touched. Nearly choking with rage, he said in a low voice, “You had some nerve lecturing the woman you just finished raping, you son of a bitch.”

The heat of the container was becoming oppressive, but still Peter made no move to take off his coat. His angry expression filled Blake’s view a a few more minutes before he returned to his seat. The small device on the table was beeping now.

Peter’s expression calmed before he resumed speaking. “I gave much thought as to what I might have inherited from you, but all I could deduce was an unending cycle of pain and blood and darkness. And that’s not a proper inheritance. So I devised one of my own making, Blake. One of the side benefits of time travel is, if you’re very clever, you can make a fortune doing it. And I made several judicious contributions, both financially and scientifically, to the fields of law enforcement and criminal investigation. A donation here, a suggestion in a scientifically-inclined ear there. I’ve probably advanced my world’s scientific progress further than I should, but if my meager contributions are able to help a young girl somewhere avoid monsters like you and me, then I’ve succeeded beyond even my wildest dreams.

“As I said, I make my own justice.”

The device on the table now began to make a trilling noise. Peter looked down at the device as it trilled once more, then went silent. The lights on the device went dark.

“Well, that’s my story. I’ve destroyed all of my inventions and my backup notes, and the remainder of my work resides in this box,” he motioned to the box on the table. “All that I am is here in this container. And soon even we won’t be here. Our orbit will soon take into the fire, hundreds of years before the Arabs began making instruments that could see into the heavens. No one will remember us. No one will miss us. A fitting end for the both of us, don’t you think, Father?”

Blake again tried to struggle against the bonds, his angry moans accompanying his vain efforts to free himself. Peter watched him from his seat, his expression no longer angry or sad, but simply tired and drawn. The walls of the container began to smoke and glow, creaking from the pressure being brought to bear from the nearby gravity well.

Peter took out the photo of his mother and looked at it, no longer interested in the dying man across from him who was beginning to cry out from the heat of his chair. He drew his hand across the face on the photo, saying in a low tone, “I love you, Mom. You rest now.”

The edges of the photo began to smolder and crinkle.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.