If I wasn’t convinced at that point that Jack might well be a sociopath, something happened a couple of weeks later that drove the point home. In one of those end of the year activities that are designed to both pass time and entertain the restive natives at year’s end, it was decided that we would have a Geography Bee and different students would be chosen to run each half.

A very mature “popular” girl raised her hand and became an easy first choice for leader. Then Jack began pushing in his unique, extremely demonstrative way to be chosen as “boss“ of the second half. I held off choosing a second assistant, hoping someone else, indeed anyone else would step up to the plate.

The beginning of the contest did not go well, with the young lady showing absolute favoritism toward her friends. She would take points from everyone else at will, while letting her tight little group talk and cause problems for the class. I ended that fiasco after a few minutes and again asked for a new leader to come forward.

Running a contest comprised of a group of your peers is very difficult at any age and in fact becomes almost impossible for a seventh grade child. Jack was insistent on being named “the one in charge” and cognizant of what just happened I didn’t think it could get any worse, so I acceded to his wishes and let him saunter boldly to the front of the class.

I can’t say that what happened was a miracle, because what we witnessed was far scarier than that. He absolutely took over, berating and harassing every child in the class as they sat there in fear. He was scrupulously fair, giving out demerits for the smallest infraction while hollering, chastising and picking on every single person in that class. As I sat there watching in awe, I let him continue running the Bee in implausible perfection until the very end.

I'm enthralled again.

The entire class sat there in silence, but I did notice little smiles of smug satisfaction on the faces of the less popular kids as they watched one of their own absolutely shred their long time nemeses, all of whom were sitting there in fear for their very lives. At the end, when I called time, Jack turned victoriously toward me and began almost hollering,

“See! I told you I could run things! I ran it just like an adult would!”

At these words, a great sadness swept over me and I knew that Jack and I were suddenly sitting alone in that crowded classroom.. I called him over to sit on the table next to me and told him to watch the class as I asked them a question. I simply asked the chastened students how many were used to being treated like that by the adults in their lives and would they please raise their hand if they were.

Two hands slowly went up, Jack’s and mine, while the rest of the class looked at us like we had lost our minds. My well-raised, spoiled little rich kids had never been spoken to like that in their entire lives and had difficulty believing that anyone had actually ever really been treated that way. Jack and I sat there, wrapped in a cocoon not of our making, knowing that we had something wicked placed inside of us that would never go away and at that moment that scary evil was boiling just under the surface.

I sat there next to him wondering about what it all meant. This boy, a human without a conscience and me, an adult working daily on faking one; monsters lurking within us and begging to be let out, moral relativity incarnate. It was sitting there that I had the first of several prophetic waking dreams that something would bring us together in the future and our amoral wanderings would bring forth some sort of frightening reckoning on the world.

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When the school year ended we continued to stay in touch. He needed a recommendation for a private school, but I didn’t hold out much hope that they would take him in. I wrote an impassioned letter telling the school that if they really wanted me to be impressed with their system they needed to stop cherry picking all the top kids, while patting themselves on the back and instead accept one of the “Jacks” of the world. I told them that if they could make him an upstanding citizen then I would really be impressed.

To no one’s surprise, they didn't take him into their vaunted school and he went on to the public school in the area. In his favor he stayed pretty much in control as I counseled and cajoled him into playing within the rules that he hated so much, at least to the extent that most people would view him as fairly average kid. He was always tall and athletic, as well a smart and street wise, so as the years went by, he didn't get in any real trouble as he grew into a young man. Every once in awhile somebody would cross him, but his ferociously over the top temper led to most giving him a very wide berth.

We would talk on the phone about once a month and he would fill me in on his life. I was the one person that he could share his doubts about the human race with and I would let him in on my own secret that I felt just about the same.

It was when meeting at a restaurant, years past middle school, that he unexpectedly noticed that I was feeling sad. When he asked me what the matter was, a sure sign for each of us that at least a cursory bonding was taking place, I explained that the newspaper that day had an article that had upset me greatly.

It was an article about man who had stolen a family dog out of the back of a truck and for some unexplained reason had drug it to it’s death. The family was bereft and the man had been charged, but the most upsetting part to me was that the man’s neighbors were hosting a fund raiser to help with his defense.

Jack could tell that I was extremely saddened by the cruelty and he asked me what he could do to help. His question took me by surprise, because usually these sort of things are just something that darken your day, they don’t lend themselves to easy conclusions. As I was thinking to myself about what I really wanted to happen, he asked me the question that would eventually change the rest of our days.

“Do you want me to kill him?”

There are moments in everyone’s life when a single decision is staring you in the face and we are poised to give an answer to the unknown. It was at this moment that for some reason, all I could say was,

“Yes, I want you to kill him and I want you to make it as painful as possible before he goes.”

I assume that my countenance was bleakly dark, my decades long faking of conscience gone, as I stared into Jack’s impassive gaze. I feel that perhaps an explanation is in order here, a defense for the reason that I have cared so much about animals my entire life, while caring so much less so for my fellow human beings.

The secret that I am about to reveal has troubled me for more than fifty years. Yes, even as a child I was plagued by voices in my head; voices telling me sometimes to kill myself, but more often to kill others, I never could tell if they were real or not. The sound, the tenor, everything is as if someone is standing just a few feet away and I learned early on that if I just watched the family pet for guidance, I could at least pretend to be like everyone else.

It also became apparent when I was very young that others didn’t hear these pleadings in their minds. A quick glance toward the dog would let me know that I was indeed alone in the room and these bizarre voices, impeaching me to murder everyone around me, could be best left running around in my head and not acted upon in earnest.

As an adult, the constant companion of a dog to guide me in what is real and what is delusional became my required default. As the years passed, I became attached to these warm and fuzzy, innocent “spiritual” advisors to such a degree that they became an all encompassing focus to my being. The medical community tries to explain the lack of a developed conscience by implying that everyone is the same. This is completely untrue.

With those so called serial killers and their abhorrent attitude toward animals taking up the bottom tier of the evolutionary ladder; the rest of us in the catch-all “sociopath” category, indeed those of us who, through mind numbingly difficult “soul “ searching, have found a lofty compromise within our far less troubled heads. We look down on the others who are lumped in with us as “broken”, but then I suppose we look down on everyone else in the world as well.

“How can I find him and how do you want me to do it?”

“I can find him on the internet. I have a program on my computer and using the info from the paper, I can get you his address. You can’t get caught though.”

“I won’t get caught, I’ll be happy to do it for you if it will cheer you up. Do you want to come along?”

“No, just make sure he suffers as much as that dog did. And you might as well add in some for the children in that family as well.”

“No problem, it’ll be fun.”

I'm impressed by post 506

This is the kind of story that I hope never ends. And I agree with your sentiment. A girl once passively suggested I was a sociopath, and it took me years to understand what that meant. She was probably technically right, but I'm still mutually exclusive from the bottom-feeders of evolution that you mentioned, and if anything, I'm one of the few people who both understand and are capable of bringing them down to their correct size.

I guess it's about figuring out a way to do that...back to the drawing board for me...

Thank you guys. This story is actually fairly long and I'm hoping to finish it sometime around Halloween. My only worry is that "Jack" reads it before I'm done and doesn't really like what I've written, we've promised each other that our secrets are ours to tell.

Before I set him off to do the job, I jokingly offered to pay him on the number of marks left on the body. At least I think I was joking, but as I look back now I can’t really be sure. I was angry and in my anger I felt that we had a good chance of making a difference in the world, at least by extracting a perfect revenge on one single man. That’s what it was, making a difference and if others looking through the skewed lens of conscience couldn't see what I was trying to accomplish, then it was just too bad for them. I hoped that this act would give me a measure of satisfaction, a balm to soothe over my rage.

It was just about a week after I had given Jack the address that he called me on the phone.

“Did you see the newspaper, I’m in it. Well, he’s in it anyway.”

“What does it say?”

“I tried to do something like you wanted, so I thought that I would write a message on him with an ice pick. The problem was that he was screaming and moving around so much that I couldn't read the words after I was done.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, then I thought that I could burn the words into him with gasoline, but even though he was all duct taped down, he went nuts and kicked over the gas can and lit himself on fire. I hope I still did a good job for you though.”

“You did fine Jack, I’m real proud of you. You've always done exactly what I wanted.”

“You know what I want if we do this again?”

“What?”

“Ear plugs, he was really loud.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

It’s funny how normal people want to believe that the “conscience impaired” somehow feel less in life when the exact opposite is true. Having to deal with the cares of others is actually a demanding and taxing chore. How much more perfect is that morning coffee sitting absolutely alone in the world, no one else existing to detract from the experience. How flawless becomes breakfast when one can focus solely on each enduring flavor and nothing else. Only through this perfect selfishness can one really experience what life has to offer.

“Others” want so much to believe that their connection to their fellow man somehow gives them a fulfillment in life which can make up for their lives of desperate longing. It is a failed conceit that pales when held up to the light and one is forced to peer through those precious moments of false bonding and they are shown the truth for what it is. For those of us so blessed, every experience becomes one of perfection, a complete sense of wholeness in each tiny moment, one layered after another; no guilt, no cares, no worries, wonderfully alone in the universe.

I thought about sending a little message to the man’s neighbors about something really ugly happening to them too, but I didn’t want to give the police any more clues than they might already have. Jack and I decided to just take some time off and let everything calm down. Initially, the news about the torture-murder was huge, with speculation about the reasons rampant for a couple of days and then it just floated away in the wind. As I expected, nobody really cared that some loser was murdered, even if it was in a horrific manner, so life just carried on as before.

We met over dinner several times after that and talked about what to do going forward. I hadn’t really given it much thought before, but now that we had actually gone through with the deed and it left a very positive feeling in both of us, I felt that perhaps we were on to finding that long searched for good in our lives.

We could become “the ones who mattered” and even if most would find our acts distasteful, many, if only in the most private parts of their minds, would be applauding us in fervor. The world would be cleansed of the unwanted (or perhaps it was more that they were unneeded), Jack could earn some spending money and my goal of striking fear into the people who most assuredly deserved it, could become a sort of “hobby” for me if you will, a pleasant way to pass the time.

“What do you think about maybe doing a few of these in the future?“ I asked him one day. “With the right press we could rid the earth of the detritus, strike fear in the hearts of men as they say and leave everyone else afraid to ever mistreat an animal again.”

Sounds good to me, when do we start?”

I must make it clear that I didn't really want to kill people, I really just wanted to put a scare into those in society that really needed to be scared. I don’t view myself as a bad person, I am just very goal oriented, I would simply be solving a sad problem while using the news media as my inadvertent helper. And the people who necessarily became collateral damage in my new pastime? Why, they were a fortunate byproduct of my little plot.

Over what was of course a perfectly enjoyed meal, Jack made the suggestion that perhaps I could better understand his craft if I were to go along on the next little outing and take part in everything that he did.. I agreed that it was important for me to be a full partner in our self appointed scheme and that I really shouldn’t leave the necessary evil all to him. It was decided that we would “do” the next one together, so that I would completely internalize the belief that I was making that difference in the world that I so longed to make.

“Jack, I want to thank you for this.”

“For what?”

“Oh, for giving an old man a new lease on life. I've been looking for a hobby that would help me rekindle my passion for living and you've helped me find just that. I appreciate it.”

And with what I hoped was a very tiny, barely discernible smile on his face, he replied,

“No problem.”

I told him that I would search out a likely candidate for our special visit, I would set a date when we both were free and I would accompany him in this most spiritual journey, a true bonding experience in every sense of the word. My first thought was to choose someone from another state and we could fly out there and back, but Jack quickly denounced that plan as unwise. The necessary tools required for our unique hobby would arouse suspicion if we tried to take them with us on the plane and buying them in the local area could very well lead to our capture.

It was decided that we would drive out to wherever we were going, do the job and then hurry back to Colorado before anyone knew we were gone. We began making a list of the requisite materials, with Jack proudly playing the role of the resident expert, obviously due to his very enlightening experience while carrying out the very first one. It made me happy and proud that he took such care in his work, I really felt that he had come a tremendously long way since those years before when he was a much less focused seventh grader.

Bizarrely, I had really hoped that my research would lead me to a person in Kansas who needed to be worked on with our special care. I wanted so much to be driving through those cornfields at night with only the words of Truman Capote in my head. How inexplicably symbolic would it be to find my very being tied up in the words of one of the greats as we dispassionately hunted down our prey. What could be more perfect than having those profoundly decadent visions floating around in my head as we committed those final acts of vengeance on one so deserving?

Our plan was to locate the resident evil, kidnap him at gun point and then take him to an empty farm house where we could give him (Isn't it always a “him” or am I limiting myself unnecessarily?) the requisite and duly ferocious ticket to the world beyond. This one simply had to be the most perfectly symbolic act of all time, a death so brutal that it would leave me feeling both happy and satisfied, forcing those giant print headers onto the front page of the local newspapers and the talking heads on television to deliver their overly frightening stories, all in a conceited effort to provoke a profoundly visceral fear in any who required it.

“I think I found a suitable candidate.”

“Really, where is he located?” (Note the “he” again, although that delineation probably did help with the overall effectiveness of our plan and ultimately led us more directly to our goal…)

“In New Mexico, close enough to drive to, but it won’t take us that long.”

“What did he do?”

“Broke into an animal shelter and killed several dogs, we should design something really, really horrible for him.”

And design we did. Terrifying ordeals to be suffered by a single soul, a perfect cacophony of unrelenting pain. Because it was October, I thought that the just punishment might involve pumpkins in a strangely disturbed homage to the season. But in the end I decided that was just too pedestrian and instead began to favor a more traditional approach to producing that look of terror in the man‘s eyes..

I thought that maybe we could instead look to the “classics” in a powerful, almost historical sense of calling forth evil from that distant somewhere in the beyond.. All I knew was that I wanted to use the precise method that created the most powerful headlines, that had the most people talking in fear around their dinner tables and that elicited the most careful, frightened whispers at the work places; yes, the method that forced a look of horror on everyone‘s face after they had heard what had happened..

I wanted individuals to search in their own dark hearts and honestly question themselves about their behavior; could they have harmed an innocent animal, even inadvertently and indeed could they be the next in line to suffer? Fears washing over fears, a brutal unknown about to exact spectacular pain at any moment, all over something that had never crossed their wicked minds before.

Fire and Ice! That’s the idea that Jack and I came up with as the theme for our vengeance killing, our screaming operetta of tragedy and suffering. Our lofty immorality play consisted of the crafty use of rubbing alcohol to do the burning (That was Jack’s idea, owing of course, to his mishap with the gasoline, he always was a smart one.) and dry ice to do the final scarring, a required compliment to the finish of a job well done.

It was a couple of days after we finalized our plans and we were ready to head out on what was becoming a road trip of “epic” proportions that I called him on the phone.

“Well, that was close.”

“What happened?”

“After I kept studying, I found that there were two men in that little town with the same name. The man who killed the dogs was run out of town a couple of months ago.. The guy that still lives there never did a thing.”

“That’s weird, what should we do now?”

“Well, don’t worry, I’ll have another name and address in the next couple of days. This is going to happen this week. Would it have bothered you if we tortured and killed the wrong person?”

“I don’t know. I guess I would care if you did.”

It was about a week later that I told him that I had found a suitable candidate living, in the loosest sense of the word, in Utah. This human garbage was terrorizing the denizens of a small town, a town with the ironic name of Mount Pleasant, lurking in the shadows and simply begging to be dispatched by the forces of good.

This reprobate had killed some puppies in front of his kids as some sort of discipline idea gone wrong, an act that sickened me and left me wanting to taste blood. The online article in The Provo Times stated that they had skipped school to go to a lake nearby and their stepfather decided that this was the best way to punish them for their transgression.

After making sure that he was indeed the right one, I felt that this would actually be serving several purposes at once.. We could get rid of one more lowlife, make the lives of these kids better and create the universal fear of an all seeing, always lurking “boogieman” at the same time. It was at that moment that Jack and I knew we were on a roll, a perfect “victim, a perfect method and a perfect quiet little town where the news, along with seriously frightened word of mouth, would carry each tiny detail to every corner of the state and beyond.

No one would feel completely safe again, at least as far as injuring an animal. Jack was excited when I gave him the news. We were both looking forward to a break in the hum drum of normalcy; we would be like ciphers in the night, only to swoop down in the darkness to become that final retribution that enacts a profound change on the world. We would become those dark lords of the world’s subconscious, yes, we would be gods.

“This time it’s perfect. The guy lives in a small town in Utah and will never expect that we’re coming after him.. We can take him by force, drive around until we find an empty place and work on him there to our heart’s content.”

“How do you know that nobody will be home in whatever farmhouse we choose?”

I’d run that around in my mind and I wasn't really sure what to do if we happened on the homeowners. I thought about just telling them that we had no intention of hurting them and leave them tied in the basement until we finished the job. But, the idea of being tied up in your house while listening to the screams of some stranger might leave lingering psychological bruises, even on the most stout-hearted.

Those few hours of suspense, not really believing that you weren't about to be next, might be too much to take, although in the course of solving the world’s problems, everyone must pay a price.

If james Patterson makes millions per book why cant u?

the Mount Pleasant in michigan is home to soaring eagle casino! i used to grind there the summer after my freshman year of college. made enough to buy a '93 Camry! maybe i'll blog about it...

I never really think about money, lol, but thanks for the kind thoughts.

Mount Pleasant, Utah was a pretty desolate little town, but of course I only saw it at night.

“I don‘t want to deal with some random family on my very first one, we just need to make sure that nobody is home.”

“I don’t think that we can go door to door and ask if their house is available, that might be a little suspicious.”

Hearing that, I stalled for a second and then realized what he was trying to do.

“Jack, you’re making a joke! That‘s a good one.”

“Yeah, I’m working on it, but it’s not like that joke I made about paintball.”

“Oh please, I can tell that you’re still sensitive about that, I told you I was just busy.”

Many years before, he had tried to make a joke about going with him to a paintball game and I took it wrong. After that, he accused me of not trusting him enough to play in a game with him, even if I was on his team, (he thought that I was worried that he was going to blast me in the back as soon as I turned around) but the truth was that I was just very busy with the house. It’s still sort of a sore point between us.

“When are we going?”

“Saturday evening, right before dark, we’ll pack the car early and then head out. You’re my resident expert, so is there anything else that you think we might need?”

There is nothing like a road trip to make you feel alive. With Jack driving, I could even listen to music on the radio, which I never do in the car because I always get lost. I chattered on like I always do as the miles passed quickly. I assumed he was speeding, but I certainly didn't want to appear overly critical and look at the speedometer.

As the cool air flowed in from the open windows, we worked on random appropriate human expressions to use in various situations that often come up around strangers. We would shine the flashlight right on our faces and critically judge their effectiveness and whether we thought they would work on the average person walking down the street.

In the past, my favorite times were when we worked on smiling and laughing. I’ll tell one of my fantastic jokes that he, needless to say, wont get and I’ll rate the expression he fakes and how deep and sincere his laughter seems to be. I always tell him my jokes are really funny to normal people, so he has to laugh real hard. (I do think he might be coming to doubt me on this though…)

We pulled onto his street and turned off the lights, hoping to float to his home in the shadows. The plan was to walk right into his house and spirit him away, (just as Jack had done the first time around) without anyone being the wiser. We knew that the children could prove problematic if wakened, so we both hoped it would all go precisely as we planned. Perfect evil done to the one most deserving, leaving the innocents to their dreams of a better future to come.

The car stopped next to some thick bushes out of sight of the house, but as I stepped out the door I almost fell straight down on my face. My foot leaves me uneasy on uneven ground, but the always ready Jack caught me by the arm and prevented me from taking a tumble, crying out and potentially alerting the neighborhood dogs.

That would certainly be a strange twist to the plot, because they would become the unwitting alarms for the neighborhood, chasing us away and ruining our plans They had no clue that we were there to exact a terrible punishment on someone who had destroyed one of their own. Had they known our innermost thoughts, they would sit in happy silence, slowly dwelling in their dog-minds on all the cruel pain that was, deservedly, soon to come.

“Thanks Jack, it’s hard for me to walk on this dirt, can you help me to the driveway?”

“No problem, we’ll just go over to that window with the light in it and look in. Don‘t make a sound.”

As we peeked in the window, we could see him sitting there watching television and drinking a beer. It was the very man whose picture had been featured so prominently in that horrible article a short time before. We quickly walked to the back door and it opened right up in Jack’s hand.

This was another irony in a night filled with ironies, in that this immoral subhuman trusted his neighbors enough to leave his house unlocked, no doubt figuring that he was the only person in town to be feared. He was used to taking advantage of the kindness of others, even as he failed to give the same consideration to everyone else. A little smirk crossed my face as I thought about how this profound misconception of reality was about to turn on him in a monumental act of retribution.

The denouement, at least for him, began perfectly as we walked right up behind him and pushed the gun in his face.

“What? What is this?”

“Don’t make a sound or we will kill you on the spot. We’re just here to rob your employer, we don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t have an employer, I don’t have a job.”

“Just come with us and we’ll get this figured out. Don’t make a sound, we really don’t want to injure you, but if you cause trouble we’ll happily murder right now.”

Okay, I probably could have left off the “happily” part, but remember this was the man that I had focused on torturing for a least a week now and it was difficult to maintain impartiality. We led him silently out to the car, duct taped his hands behind his back and as I got in the back seat next to him, we headed off in the dark. We quickly drove to a deserted rest stop outside of town and at the point of a gun, he reluctantly allowed us to tape his feet together with a growing look of suspicion on his face.