text: I’ve had an effect on people ever since I was a child. I can’t explain it and it’s driven me to the brink of insanity. I never asked or prayed for it. In fact, I don’t even know if I believe in God. But the circumstances around my unique condition aren’t natural, or even human. There was a time when I thought I had been cursed with some kind of spiritual intervention. Even if that were the case, I don’t know what purpose it would possibly served. I first noticed I was different when I was in kindergarden. I was engaged in some minor dispute with another boy in class. I don’t even remember what we were fighting over. But I got angry and punched the kid in the face. He went down, clutching his mouth, and began to cry. His lip began to bleed. Instead of just lying there though, he got up, wiped his eyes, and gave me a hug. A teacher saw it happen and I thought I was going to be punished, as I should have been. Instead, she praised me for doing the right thing and the next day my class had cake, in my honor. Even at that age, this confused me. I had always been taught to do the right thing, respect others, and listen to your elders. Television, media, literature, and outside social interactions built the same constructs of normal human behavior we were all supposed to abide by. I saw others getting in trouble for acting out, for talking back, or for being violent. But never me. I was always the exception. Whenever I did anything bad, I was applauded, admired, and rewarded. This led to a very confused upbringing, as you can imagine. The constant positive repercussions of my bad behavior seemed to exist in a bubble, and were judged by a set of rules that were not only alien, but incomprehensible. As I grew up and went through school, I began to test the limits of what I could get away with. And no matter what I did, my seemingly immortal morality remained unstained. I was gifted countless things, praised by other parents, and admired by my teachers and peers. It was madness and I had the self awareness to realize that. One time in fourth grade I wanted to trade lunches with one of my friends. He refused and so I knocked his food to the ground and stomped it to mush. Terrible, right? Well, some teachers saw that and what did they do? They went out and got me exactly what I wanted from the store and presented it to me in front of the whole class. They all clapped. They all smiled. Even my friend, the one I had attacked, told me he was glad I was his buddy and invited me to his house after to play Xbox. In seventh grade there was a girl I had a crush on. I tried to kiss her, but she told me she didn’t want to. So I grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her against the wall and screamed in her face, told her she was ugly and I didn’t want to kiss her anyway. She started to cry, but after a moment, she wiped her eyes and told me she didn’t deserve someone as great as me. A teacher had seen the whole thing and pulled me to the side. She told me I had been brave and acted with maturity. She led me into an empty classroom and showed me her tits. Then she let me touch them. I knew I could do whatever awful thing I wanted to her and so I twisted one of her nipples as hard as I could, digging my nails into her soft flesh. She started to bleed and I could tell she was in pain, but I didn’t stop until she began to sob. I should have been locked up for something like that. My teacher kissed me on the mouth afterward and told me I was a good boy, that she wished her own son would be more like me. And the insanity of that statement is that if her son did what I did, he’d get into a hell of a lot of trouble. He’d be sent to counseling, pumped full of medication, and shipped off to a school for troubled kids. I saw it all the time. People doing things I did everyday and getting punished for them. Highschool hit and I turned into a monster. I felt invincible. The moral bridge I had been trying to balance myself on completely collapsed during that time. I stole whatever I wanted, skipped class as often as I pleased, beat up kids I didn’t like, and fucked whoever I had a passing horny thought about. I was a tornado of unrest, angst, and carelessness. Why? Because I never had to deal with any kind of fallout. I was always slapped on the back, given a toothy grin, and told what a swell guy I was. During my first year of college, I hit celebrity status because I ran over one of my professors with my car. I hated the guy. Not because he did anything to me personally, but because he always smiled at this Junior I had a crush on. So I waited for him one night in the parking lot and ran him down. It took a couple passes, too. I heard his bones break beneath me, his screams, and the awful whine of my car as it struggled to get over his mangled form. Before he died, I went his side to watch him take his last breath. Around a mouthful of blood, he smiled and thanked me. I caved his head in with my heel. The next day, there was an article in the paper about what I had done. What was the headline? “Local hero stands up to biased teacher!” Sure, they buried him and people were sad, but there was never any anger. Even the professor’s family held no ill will. In fact, they called me soon after and told me they respected what I had done and apologized for the dead man. It was then, that night, that I began to wonder if I was a god. By the time I hit my twenties, I was almost always in the news. My face was plastered to hundreds of billboards. My name was on the cover of dozens of magazines. Everyone looked up to me, praised me, practically worshiped me. I was given money, cars, houses, boats, whatever the hell I wanted. All I needed to do to get these things...was something terrible. Didn’t like my Miami mansion? No problem. I kidnapped a popular pop star at one of the clubs I frequented and tortured her in front of a webcam. I broadcasted it live on my website, something that had been set up for me for just such an event. The next day, a billionaire from Italy called and told me I had inspired him. That my actions had moved him, brought him to tears. He gave me a twelve bedroom house on a forty acre plot of land. When I was twenty-five, I lusted after a famous movie star. We’ll call her Fran. I met her at a high society party I had been invited to. Flashy cars, expensive clothes, cigar smoke and plastic smiles. When I was introduced to her, I thought we hit it off, that she was into me. But during my follow up afterwards, she made it clear she wasn’t romantically interested. Sure, she respected and thought the world of me, but so did everyone else. I couldn’t make people love me. I couldn’t make them want to be with me, share a life with me. I was an icon to her, nothing more. Her rejection sent me into a spiral of depression and hatred. I wanted to kill her for turning my affection aside. Because that’s just what I fucking did. That’s how I dealt with things. That’s how I had obtained everything I had ever wanted. Destroy, kill, steal, fuck, rape and watch the masses bow down before me in admiration, watch them shower me with every material thing I could ever want. So what did I do? How did I cope with this loss of connection I so desperately wanted? I went to her parent’s house and put a gun to her father’s head. I made him call Fran over to the house. When she arrived, I made her take off all her clothes and pretend she was a cow while I jerked off on her back. All the while, I kept the gun to her father’s head and made him watch. After I ejaculated, I made Fran’s mother lick it off her skin. And they thanked me the whole time, eyes shining with sickly veneration. Even Fran, who held no desire for my attention, smiled at me and for a second I thought I saw a shadow of love in her expression. Or whatever I thought love was. I misinterpreted it. I mistook it. I thought I was winning her over by being the monster everyone wanted. So I shot her father in the head, blew his brains out all over the floor. Screams followed, but were cut short as glistening eyes widened and glorified expressions of worship took over. I went to the kitchen and got a knife. I thought I was on a role. That look in Fran’s eyes. It was growing brighter. Perhaps I just had to push things even further. I sat down in a chair and got Fran’s mom down on her knees. I pushed her head into my lap and sawed it off. I never broke eye contact with Fran, who just watched, mouth agape, her eyes glowing with absolute wonderment. When I was finished, I pushed the headless corpse away and asked Fran to marry me. She just shook her head, saying nothing, tears running down her face with a smile so big I could have shoved her mom’s severed head into it. I left, overwhelmed with a sense of loss so great I thought I would die beneath it. I spent the next month locked in my LA mansion. I drank myself half to death and injected every kind of poison I could find into my veins. I blanked out, zoned out, took off to another place. When I came out of my daze, weeks later, the president wanted to meet me and shake my hand. A film crew wanted permission to make a documentary about me. My mailbox was flooded with money I didn’t need, items I didn’t want, and praise I didn’t desire. It made me sick. It made me enraged. Why was I like this? Why was I able to get away with this? Why didn’t anyone punish me for my actions? Why did I sit at the top of the world and feel so goddamn hopeless? Why didn’t anyone fucking love me? What was I doing wrong? It may seem obvious to an outsider, but to me it was chaos. It was around that time that I noticed the man with the bandaged face. I was coming out a store I had just robbed, my pockets stuffed with cigarettes, junk food, and energy drinks. He was leaning against my car, arms crossed, dull eyes poking out from white cloth. His appearance stopped me dead in my tracks, a sudden tremor running through me. He was wearing a black button up, jeans, and looked completely normal except for his wrapped features. He apprised me without any expression, our eyes meeting and locking. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, he simply reclined casually against my car, as if waiting for me to do something. And something told me...something warned me...whispered...that I needed to stay away from him. So I turned down the sidewalk and strode in the opposite direction, heart inexplicably racing. I chanced a glance over my shoulder and felt my blood turn to ice. He hadn’t moved, but he was still watching me. As I put distance between us, a horrible familiarity began to emerge from the depths of my memory. I had seen this man before. In that moment, I couldn’t place it, but I knew I had seen him before. His presence jarred my memory, dug at it with insistent certainty. It was like a layer of my past suddenly unfolded, revealing a trail of hidden encounters. I ripped open a pack of cigarettes and lit one as I walked, racking my brain for some clue. It wasn’t until my second smoke that I remembered. I stopped and stared horrified into the middle distance. Pieces fell into place. Memory rebuilt itself. They were so fleeting, so minute that I almost lost them again. My sixth birthday party. I was at a pizza parlor with my friends. The man had been there, sitting alone at a table in the corner. Twelve years old. Going to the movies. He had sat a couple rows behind me. It had been a horror movie and I thought it was just some weirdo who had dressed up for it. I had made fun of his bandaged face to my friends. We all laughed loudly. High school. During the bad times. My neighbors dog had been barking all night. It kept me up. I had gone down that morning and killed it with a shovel. When the deed was done, I looked across the street, my hands splattered with blood. The man had been there. He was across the street, hands in his pockets, watching me. He stayed like that until I went inside. Twenty-two. Drunk as hell, stumbling through a bar, punching anyone who got in my way as I staggered to the bathroom. I had thrown up. Blearily, I remember he had been sitting in the adjacent stall, door open, hands resting casually on his knees. He never said a word to me. And now this. Here. He was back and I had no idea what the hell he wanted or who he was. I just knew, felt, that he was a danger to me. I managed to get back to my apartment without another sighting and made an impulse decision to fuck off to Europe for a couple months. Within the day, I was on my private plane throwing back expensive bourbon, and staring out at the Atlantic Ocean. The alcohol didn’t have the desired impact I wanted, but I kept pouring anyway. I let the drone of the engines fill my head, but it wasn’t enough to stop the insistent thoughts, the memories of the bandaged man. As the hours passed, I uprooted more of them, like snippets of film, little flashes of previous sightings. I wanted to stop thinking about it so I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When I woke up, we were landing. I was groggy, cranky, and a little hungover. I just wanted to get to my hotel, close the blinds, and keep sleeping. The limo driver was a little too chatty on the way over so I told him to shut his goddamn mouth and slammed the divider closed. The next couple weeks went by in a haze. I was irritable the entire time, never seeming to get what I wanted out of whatever experience I sought. I pumped a ton of drugs into my system, went to every club and party I could find, drank daily until I threw up, and caused enough property damage to put a country in debt. I also killed four people. In my wake, I left the usual trail of wide eyed adoration. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I was becoming violently restless and I had no idea how to suppress it. My baseline for sobriety plummeted, my head vibrated, and my fuse was at an all time low. By the end of the fourth week, my knuckles had permanent scabs. I would often come back to my elaborate residence to piles of packages - gifts from my admirers. I didn’t even open them. I burned them. But this perpetuated the cycle and they kept coming. One time, a couple years past, I had tried to stop my rising fame. I had controlled myself and mellowed out my behavior to a place that bordered normality. After about a month, people began to forget about me. It wasn’t as if I were disappearing, but there was a noticeable dip in attention. The money stopped coming in, the cars, boats, and offers began to dry up. All because I was trying to do the right thing. What I knew I was supposed to be doing. But after a lifetime of attention and freedom, this new reality was both alien and terrifying to me. I was becoming invisible. And so I did what I knew how to do. What I was rewarded for. After six weeks of clean living, I went on a horrible spree. I picked an apartment building at random and went inside with a knife and an axe. Not many people made it out. And if they did it was usually because I shoved them through a window. These weren’t people to me. That was an outlook I had parted ways with long ago. These were paychecks I was cashing in. These were the bricks I needed to lay to continue down the path I had been set down. I didn’t really know how to feel bad for being...bad. When I walked out of that building, sweating, exhausted, and covered in blood, I found myself facing an ocean of police lights. When they saw it was me, they lowered their weapons. Their shoulders relaxed. They began to smile and greet me. They talked like they had just witnessed a miracle. In that moment, I wanted explode. I wanted to detonate myself and cease to exist. If I had been a braver man, I would have. Sitting in my bedroom, the European countryside expanding out my window, I felt like I had that night outside the apartment complex. I felt like I had reached the end of another chapter and I wasn’t sure my book held another. I looked around me, at the empty liquor bottles, the needles, the self-destruction. This was who I was. This was what I had built for myself. The world lay at my fingertips and all I had to do was punch it hard enough to bleed. I covered my face with my hands, feeling hollow. A knock came at the door. I looked up, eyes bloodshot. Without thinking, I walked across the room and opened it. The man with the bandaged face stood in the doorway. My eyes went wide and I took a step back, almost tripping over an empty tequila bottle. “\*You\*,” was all I whispered before he came in, closing the door behind him. He didn’t ask for permission. He soared across the room and settled onto the bed, sitting quietly at the edge as if waiting for me to gather myself enough to hold a conversation. I just stood staring at him with my back against the door. Finally, he turned his head enough so that our eyes met between his bandages. “Been looking for you,” he said after a moment, his voice all edges and canyons. I didn’t move from the door, my heart slogging past the shit in my system, “Why are you following me?” “Because we need to have a conversation.” “I have nothing to say to you.” “Well, I have things I need to say to you. So come over here and sit down. I’m not going to hurt you.” Hesitantly, I skirted the corners of the room and slunk over to a chair opposite him. Our eyes never broke connection. He didn’t seem threatening. But he also wasn’t smiling beneath his bandages. We stared at one another for a moment before he spoke again. “I’m pretty disappointed in you.” “Excuse me?” “I said, I’m pretty disappointed in you. You’ve gone completely off the deep end.” I shook my head, confused, “The hell are you talking about?” He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together beneath his chin, “They expected better.” My eyes turned to slits, “Who?” “The Old Horns.” I sat back, cocking an eyebrow, “I’m afraid I have no fuckin’ clue what you’re talking about.” The man with the bandages didn’t move, his voice low, “But you know that you’re different than everyone else, correct?” “I feel like that’s pretty obvious.” “They chose you,” the man continued. “Picked you out of a metaphorical hat. And what have you done with your moral freedom?” The fear I had felt earlier began to ebb away, replaced by a rising anger, “Look pal, you better start explaining this nonsense quick. I don’t really have a whole lot of patience these days.” His eyes went empty, “Clearly.” “Who the fuck are you?” I snarled. “Someone who’s been gifted the burden of watching you all these years. I can’t tell you how many times you’ve let me down. You haven’t made this job easy.” “Well I’m sorry if my heart doesn’t bleed for you.” “Can I ask you something?” The man asked suddenly. “Oh Jesus...” “You’ve been given something no one else has ever been given. Complete lack of moral boundaries,” He quickly shook his head, “no, not just that. They made it even harder on you. They decided to reward your bad behavior. You’re...you’re evil. I’m not blind to how difficult it must have been for you at times. I only watched you from a distance, I wasn’t witness to whatever warfare went on in your head. But I’ll tell you this: as an outsider? It didn’t look like you even tried to be a good person. Once you saw the benefits of being a bastard, you went hard and heavy and never looked back. Except for that one month, but you made up for that didn’t you?” He placed a hand to his wrapped temple, “But I”m getting off topic. My question is this: given the chance to do it all over again...would you do anything different?” I kept my tongue locked behind clenched teeth. My hands were shaking and I balled them up into fists. My head thundered beneath a mountain of stress, despair, and anger. My body buckled beneath the years of chemical abuse I had put it through. My thoughts sloshed together as I ripped them apart searching for answers. Finally, I stood, towering over the bandaged man. My voice hissed from the furnace in my chest, “Who the fuck are you to judge me?” I managed to gasp. “How the hell could you possibly lay blame at my feet? I never asked for this. I didn’t want to be like this. I’m not responsible for the way people react to my actions. This is simply how I get by. This is how I’ve learned to live. I mean Jesus, this is how I’ve been conditioned! My whole life I’ve gotten a pat on the head for things I knew weren’t normal.” I pointed at my shuddering skull, “And that’s not something that goes away. If no one tells you what you’re doing is wrong, then is it really?” The bandaged man stood, facing me. I could smell something sour beneath his wrapped face. “Of course it is,” he whispered, “and you’ve known it this whole time.” “Get out,” I snarled, pointing toward the door, “I don’t ever want to see you again.” “I’m not going anywhere.” I bared my teeth at him, “I’m not someone you want to talk to like that.” The man grunted, disgusted, “Don’t act like you’re invincible. I’m already disgusted enough by you.” “I could throw you out the window, right now,” I threatened, heat rising, “and in the morning someone would throw a party in my honor.” And then he said something that froze the inferno in my throat. “Yeah? And how much longer do you think that’s going to last?” I stepped away from him, faltering, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He sat back down on the bed, exhaling wearily, “I think the Old Horns have seen enough.” Something twitched in my neck, “The Old Horns. That’s the second time you’ve mentioned them. What is that? What exactly are you talking about?” “You’re not a religious man, you wouldn’t believe me.” I stood where I was, “Why don’t you try me.” He ran his hands slowly over his head, his fingers running over the white cloth bound to his head, “They came out of nowhere. They destroyed everything. Whatever theories you have about death and what comes after...they’re wrong. The Old Horns wiped it all out. They’ve taken over. It’s just them now.” I sat down, feeling my stomach begin to buckle, “Afterlife....?” He raised his eyes to mine, “They’re testing you. All of you. You’re a new curiosity. One of the last. They’re debating whether they should eliminate your entire existence. And not just yours...everyone’s.” My throat tightened, “Do you mean...?” He smiled sadly, “You’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.” He looked down at his hands and his voice sank, “And I’m afraid you’ve failed...” “This is insane.” He looked back up at me, “I know it is. Trust me, I wasn’t ready for this either.” I squinted at him, leaning forward, “Who...are you?” He just smiled that sad smile and touched his bandaged face, “Someone who is being punished.” I spun around slowly, raking my hands through my hair, shoulders tense, “What if I don’t believe you?” “Then just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s probably too late to change things anyway. I’m afraid they’ve already made their decision.” He covered his face with his hands, “And I don’t think they like what they’ve seen.” I went to the window, mind reeling, and pressed my forehead against the glass. The sun was setting. “How can I believe any of this?” “I’m not asking you to. I just needed to warn you. I’m going to die for coming here, but I think I’m ready. They’ve already done so much to me...” his fingers traced his face. I closed my eyes against the glare of the sun, “I think...I think you should probably leave.” I heard the bed creak as he rose, “Can I offer you one last piece of advice?” “Yeah...” He reached for the doorknob, “Try.” And then he was gone, leaving me in the impossible silence of my own thoughts. The heat from the window sank into my skin and rippled across my mind. The insanity of what I had just been told stretched the very fabric of possibility. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. But...I had always known something was wrong. And where did that leave me? What was I supposed to do with this conglomeration of nonsense? I peeled myself away from the window, head splitting. I felt sick, tired, and completely empty. I looked around my room, letting my eyes linger on all the false promises of happiness. A thought entered my mind without warning and with all the force of an avalanche. Where had all this gotten me? I was miserable, alone, and depressed. In the material sense, I had everything I could possibly want or desire. Why wasn’t that enough? What was I lacking? A partner? Friendship? Love? Family? Were those things someone like me could even begin to hope for? Could I really abandon all this wealth and power in pursuit of something that might not even exist for me? Was being a good person worth giving up everything else for? The bandaged man’s last bit of advice echoed back to me. \*Try\*. I say down on the bed, hard, and sank my head into my hands. A half empty bottle of bourbon lay between my feet. I reached down and picked it up. I unscrewed the cap and raised it to my lips. Suddenly, beyond the walls of the sky, a low horn echoed over the glowing landscape. It came from the heavens, a single, long note. Eyes wide, I put the bottle down.