by Roman McClay
“Yeah, I had bought the land for $110,000 -years earlier- and I took my $130,000 in cash and built this house and compound; with my bare hands little sister,” he raised his hands from the water like the kraken.
“Bear man!” she said, as that was her sobriquet for him for obvious reasons. He looked like a Viking rex to her, one that had been kicked out and banished to Vinland a thousand years ago.
“But that is not the end of the story,” he warned.
“No?” she was feeling drunk on the heat of the water and the cold of the air and the way this man spoke and sat like a sunken and carved arch-angel at the entrance to a temple abandoned and overgrown. She couldn’t decide if he was man or element; mortal or that which blew through the trees, sank down into the sea; made metal melt.
“No, see, I saw what I had failed at, and then I saw that what I failed at is also what the whole society has failed at,” he said and looked out over the edge of the land, the plateau.
“I saw that alphas were not kicking ass any more. Alphas were too rich and safe and comfortable and didn’t want to risk jail or poverty for a principle anymore. See, my ancestors had to risk it, if they didn’t, if they let an insult or a side-eye go, then they lost it all in a coup . This ain’t an algorithm or some game-theory, this is real life. From chimps to Scottish sheep herders, the alpha that failed to smash the first sign of rebellion and hint of disrespect, well, they lost it all,” he said, and his black eyes seemed heavy again to her. He knew the mathematics and the evolutionary biology was all on his side; but he wanted this girl -something human- to be on his side too.
“Sheep herders?” she was wondering now if he was domesticating animals at some point.
“Dude, yeah, this social scientist Nesbitt showed that Scottish sheep-herders have a cultural propensity for honor disputes being settled with violence and this manifests in the southern white male culture which is literally twice as violent as anywhere else in the US,” he said with an approving nod.
“Really?” she was amazed by how much specific knowledge he had. She felt it all fall away from her memory though.
“Yeah, we -I am Scottish on both sides of my genome, and from the south- my whole family is southern, like redneck as fuck; and my mom’s side is from New Zealand which has the same cultural source, the Scottish kicked out of England in 1745. I am literally the grandson of sheep herders in the antipodes , New Zealand Scots. Literally,” he said.
“Wow, your life is life a movie,” she was wondering how any of this was possible. But he seemed genuine; and he looked like he had a lot of bad things happen to him. He seemed beat up by the world.
“Dude. So, what Nesbitt missed -and he alluded to it with the testosterone and cortisol studies of southern Scottish subjects, you know study subject- what he missed were the alleles. The genomic underpinning. I had to go to de Waal and other sources to piece it together. I did my own research project and discovered that my genome is built by God for retributive violence and magnanimity and generosity and high moral reasoning in defense of women, underdogs and my own honor. I mean, look, I defended the fat girl in the 1st grade against the whole play ground; I was that guy .
“I am built for this and yet our society -thanks to liberalism and corporate, pusillanimous, conservatism aligning to stamp out all so-called violence; and thanks to faggots like Steven Pinker who think the State should handle every fucking dispute- our society is intolerant of street fights, of retributive violence, of settling scores the old-fashioned way.
“Thus, our society is suffering massively from this. It’s an epidemiological crisis,” he said.
“What?” she had no idea what he meant.
“An epidemiological crisis, a sickness like dengue fever or rickets or some shit. We have women banging every beta in the bushes; men, beta males, getting away with gossiping, insults, both verbal and semiotic, symbolic ya know? And they are cuckolding alpha males too. We have it in spades, man.
“It’s rampant and it is destroying our culture because alphas used to act like the immune system and clean this shit up with some face-smashing-of-the-guilty to restore order among the amoral types. I mean, the data is clear: old school alphas kicked ass; physically. And it worked; it kept the low-level sociopath in check.
“The alpha was killing germs for the city. See, people like my family do not get why guys like me are so angry; because they do not care that society is immoral and low-brow. Betas only care about money and financial stability. They see no value in the enforcement of ancient moral norms. So, to them I am the problem, to them the antibiotic is the problem, not the disease. That is how backwards America is now; the solution is hated and the disease is tolerated.
“Alphas are 12-15% of the population, they are the immune system that destroys pathogenic organisms. And beta males are the rapists, the cheaters, the liars, by far they commit the most anti-social acts; not crimes per se , but anti-social acts, acts that undermine society; acts like lying, cheating, scheming. Why? Because they just wanna get laid and they cannot unless they scheme and plot and undermine the alpha; that is how they win. And they aren’t going to just sit back and lose to a guy who is 6-foot two and 210-pounds of doom with looks and brains and money and talent. No way.
“They -despite their narrow shoulders- are living creatures, man. They gotta reproduce somehow. And so, they take the low road; and the alpha’s job is to smash them when they get out of line and the whole system is like a Gaian balance of placid weather and gathering storms, wind & fires and calming rain, destruction and the re-building by Nature and God. Right? It’s an eco-system of push and shove, of peace and war. Lava encroaching upon the sea.”
“Right,” she was -in fact- following him now. She, as a woman, understood the concept of balance, of the whole.
“If you take away forest fires, or volcanoes, or disease outbreaks, if you take away lightning then you take away thunder too. Life is chaos and order in a tense balance, and the alpha is the ordering balance to the chaos of beta scheming. And the State tries to provide order, but they cannot do it at the micro-level. They can’t.
“Shit, gossiping ain’t illegal, either is cheating on your man. And when my business partners ripped me off and stole my million-dollar business, the courts, the State, said I had no standing . They refused to help me right a genuine wrong,” he said.
“Why?” she was upset at this instantly .
“Technically medical marijuana is illegal federally, and the courts are all federal. So, I had no standing at all,” he said as the water remained blue in general and clear in particular and hot wherever they put their body.
“But you paid taxes on that business and the state of Colorado said it was legal as fuck,” she said because she had heart and brains and knew right from wrong; unlike the government.
“So, you see my point then?” he said with an ironic grin.
She laughed and the Valravn flew off in the distance in an elliptical pattern, a swerve, and the clouds lifted as the sun broke over the top of the black eastern tree line, ragged and feral and noisy with the lower order of birds.
“Why did you bring that guy in Hawai’i up?” she asked, no longer nervous. “Don?”
“Because I never understood why he lied about me to you and Brandon until I understood the way betas and females work together to take down an alpha. See, Don one time was walking with me into a job site, a hotel we were working on; doing spall repair. And as we are walking he noticed a girl staring at me and he stops and says, dude, what are you good looking or something, that girl is like staring at you with her mouth open? ”
Jadi laughed and flicked water at him. He was cocky sometimes in a way that was funny. He just said shit people aren’t supposed to say. They all think it, and this guy just said it.
“I am not enjoying recounting this shit. I find it embarrassing and overt; like, it lacks class to bray about your own looks, especially since I am not handsome anymore,” he admitted.
“Oh, that
is not true,” she said, although the beard made him look older now; and his eyes were as sad as she had ever seen. But he was still sexy as fuck , she thought.
“But, I have to explain it -thank you, sorry for just blowing past that- but I have to explain the details because it’s the only way his behavior makes sense. He was jealous; he got jealous once he realized I was handsome and girls were all slack jawed in the lobby, and so when he found himself around another girl -you, and a beta he could corral, Brandon- and he had a way to gossip about me and make you laugh at me, he jumped on it. And it worked. He won.
“And see, that shit is constant and that is why most alphas, successful alphas -of which I am not one- I am the world’s least successful alpha,” he said, as his sentence was broken in half, thinking of all that he had lost.
“I don’t know dude you have nice shit and have had many girls,” she countered, seeing how much more he had than anyone she knew. The land alone was luxurious and expensive and had innate, endogenous, permanent value. And the dude had taste, that concrete counter top was something you see in magazines, she thought, and he drove a $100,000 car for crying out loud , she thought as she shook her head.
“Yeah, but I am always in the process of losing it all; my life is one long arch of ascendance followed by demolition; it’s permanent chaos. And it’s because I do not thwart these cabals of betas and females that plot against me. I remain aloof, indifferent or at worst I fatuously use moral suasion tactics which are useless on the non-honorable class of men or on women .
“They are immune to moral arguments; they are pragmatic. They are biologically practical, built by nature to think of getting laid and paid, and they are modern, they live in a modern milieu which forbids alphas from kicking their ass, and so it’s the perfect storm of chaos.
“You show me a pragmatic man and I’ll show you a betrayer and plotter,” he said as he looked at her in a way that made her feel like he wanted to fuck her, then eat her and throw the black bones into the white fire, “but God is too high and the King too far away, as they say.”
She was quiet and did not like how he kept obliquely including her -as a woman- in his critiques. But she had laughed at him, taken part in this undoing so long ago. He was not wrong, she and Brandon had believed Don over him; over their ostensible friend.
Why? she asked herself. Why had they wanted to believe that Lyndon had lied, and that Don had told the truth? She had no answer as the water’s jets turned on and the clear water turned white and foamed; making their bodies beneath it no longer visible at all.
“And my own father and brother have hated me from day one too; and for the exact same reasons. And I was a fool to play along with their passive aggressive little games. I let them get away with throwing stones at me. But, those days are over too,” he said and watched as her hands rose from the water and steamed in the cold winter air. He thought of how they had sank and swam in the sea by Diamond Head two decades ago, and how he knew she was an angel from heaven sent by God all along.
“You don’t mind I’m half Mexican?” she asked finally; apropos of nothing, except that he used racial slurs early and often.
“I wouldn’t mind if you were half beer can ,” he said as she smiled and lowered down into the tub; she laughed into the water with her lips.
III. 2018 e.v.
Detective Ron Emickole of the Denver Police Department handled the card.
He wore white latex gloves and held it by its edges; as the card had been slid into a book so it stood out like a mark. He looked at each side, and noticed it was a custom playing card, riven in half from lower left to upper right and the color was matte black.
The printing was in a gloss black that only became visible as you turned it into the light. As he rotated it he found the right angle and stopped to look at the image. It was a spades card, and a Jack or possibly a joker, as just a lower case ‘j’ was printed on the upper left; the center was -he now saw- a man’s face with a sword and a black rectangular bar over -and hiding- the eyes. The man-in-profile -a Jack he saw now- wore the normal regal robes of a Bicycle Playing Card Company card, but all in black. And his partner, Tristin held open a clear cellophane bag as Ron turned the card over to see the other side.
It was just a series of lines, geometric, gibberish to him, but maybe the lab would understand it and he dropped it into the bag as his partner told one of the techs to stop treading by the body.
“We need to photograph it first, Bob,” he said, and the man gingerly stepped back from the corpse .
Emickole had begun to allow his mind to wander, to go big-picture and not over-focus on the details. This was the 8th murder-scene, and the 23rd through 28th bodies and he already knew there were no shell casings, no DNA or other trace evidence, and no witnesses. Since that was what was already absent, he began allowing himself to wonder why.
Why no shells? Revolver? Or did the perp pick them up?
Why no witnesses? Stupid, insentient neighbors with loud TVs blocking the report of a pistol? Or was it a suppressed weapon?
Why no DNA? Not in database? Or did the perp wear fresh clothes, new clothes and fully garbed? Did he use an aerosol?
The scene photographer asked for his angle -the angle Ron was taking- and the detective stood up -to give it up- and walked back to the corner of the room. He directed his eyes up high, then at normal eye line, then down at the level of the bodies that looked out from dead eyes four inches from the floor.
“Tattoo shop, car dealership, Aurora apartment, medical marijuana shop,” he said listing the last four locations that he had picked up the phone on. Aurora PD was handing off all these that fit the description to DPD. The other four were being handled by Det. Ravrafters and Det. Pointes, which included an apartment on 13th and Williams, a car in a garage, a public garage, and home in Cherry Creek golf course. All Caucasian except two victims, one African American and one Hispanic. All men, from 25 to 60. All of them were a little dirty.
Tax evasion -by Swinyard- and dope -by the black and Mexican kid- heroin possession and tax evasion -by this latest guy. He tried to recall the name of the owner of 6th Avenue Tattoo, Jeremy something-or-another , he thought.
They were not citizens - in the argot of police who divide the world into good guys, aka citizens , and criminals aka perps, scumbags, et.al .- but they were not total scumbags either; they were edge players , he thought. A lot of people don’t realize this, he thought, but statically, most victims of crimes are criminals themselves with criminal records.
This didn’t affect the need to solve the crime, for the crime was committed against the State technically , he thought, but it was the thing cops knew that the public didn’t; and that meant cops often didn’t care that much about the actual victims at all. They cared about catching the perps; that was the point, not avenging the victims who were likely deserving of whatever rough justice they got. Cops could not and would not admit this, but like all unutterable things, it was true. Cops were pragmatic men, as was the State they served.
The card was not something from any other crime scene, shit, it was maybe not even left by the perp , he thought. It was just something strange that stuck up and out and so he grabbed it.
He watched it as the bag alongside the bags of dried mud and sweepings were taken out by one of the techs. He looked around the room and noticed the large heavy wood beams and old-fashioned fixtures; this was a cool shop , he thought. Someone had loved it, made it nice, and that someone was likely one of the vics on the floor.
They had no leads. They had squat. And the press was treating them -each murder- as totally independent, and so, he was willing to let them be dumb. If people know how young and ignorant beat reporters were, he thought, they’d never read another paper again. But, the beat cop wasn’t much smarter, he mused and asked his partner to come over .
“Yeah Ro,” he said with the head snap and the gum chewing and the swinging of those long apish arms.
“Let’s get a client lis
t for each vic and find out if anyone was out sick today. And ballistics first. If .45 or 9mm text me; if something else, I’ll read it in the 24s tomorrow at 0900. I’m going home,” Ron said.
“Copy that,” Detective Tristin ‘Tim’ Duncan said. “Oh, and the radio cars are canvassing.”
Ron nodded and walked out to his car. Whoever he was going to end up liking for these, he thought, was going to be strange. This was not a normal guy. He was careful and lucky in equal proportion, and he had a motive that was not exactly the kind of thing a cop could get his hands around. It was not money or just revenge, although he took their money and he got his revenge. There was an aesthetic to it; yeah, that was the word, this asshole was an artist , he surmised. These murders were almost art. Which was why Ron picked up that card, he had a feeling that the murderer was beginning to sign his work.
His phone rang, it was dispatch; and a girl had called DPD on these murders, and she was patched through to the SAC.
“Ron Emickole,” he said.
“Hi, my name is Sarah Smith, and I know Messangelo, Jeff Messangelo; and he knows me, so maybe you can call him and ask him about me, but,” she said, paused, then said, “but I know who is doing these murders. But you gotta protect me or he’ll kill me next.”
3. Medea
The vast mass of our fabric, with all its storerooms of secrets, forever slides along far under the surface
White Jacket [The Author]
He drank and wenched his way through all of London; thinking all the time
Becket or the Honour of God [Anouilh, Jean]
Well, when did thinking become not entertaining?
Love All the People [Hicks, Bill]
I. 2020 e.v.
He stood and planted his heels into the snow drift; it had hailed last night, and this had made white ice stones collect and embed in the snow around each tree. He stabilized himself and leaned against -and into- the Juniper Pine as it ran up 45 feet into the air putting the tree at 8,800 feet. Its boughs were just touching its closest neighbors to the north and east; its roots comingling with the other trees, sharing nutrients, yielding to mycelium, plotting against the weakest creatures of the soil.
