Villain

by Michael Grant

  No one did. It wasn’t that they didn’t see what he was; it was that it did not bother them. Men looked at him and did an unconscious nod of acceptance. Women and some men did a bit more. They found him alluring, which struck Dillon as wonderfully funny. He liked snakes himself and had a two-hour-a-week school-mandated “volunteer” gig with Reptile Rescue. He’d actually gone a few times because the place had been featured on TV shows. But the point was, he’d seen very few women who liked reptiles.

  With the possible exception of Miley Cyrus fans. Which had the makings of a joke, but needed work.

  The croupier turned the wheel, which rotated as smoothly as if it were levitating, and spun the ball. Dillon enjoyed the sound of the little white ball screeing around in its channel before falling, clattering, to bounce and jump merrily, finally settling in on number 4.

  “I won,” Dillon said, and the croupier began pushing more chips to him. “You know,” Dillon said, “I’m not supposed to be here. Too young. It’s tough being young in Las Vegas. I’m not allowed on the casino floor. I’m not twenty-one.” He fell into the rhythm of a comedian. “I can walk around the casino floor. I can follow certain passageways through the casino floor. But I cannot touch a card or a pair of dice. See, it’s all about protecting our innocence. After all, in Las Vegas, innocence has a cash value. Out at Shari’s legal brothel, innocence goes for five hundred bucks a pop.” The croupier smiled, but an old woman at the end of the table gave up an actual guffaw.

  “It’s true,” Dillion went on, playing to her now, “the drinking age in Vegas is twenty-one, the gambling age is twenty-one, but once you turn eighteen, you have three short years to adjust to the spiritual emptiness that defines the adult Las Vegan.”

  The second part hadn’t worked as well as the first, which left him feeling a bit deflated. Like this stupid game, he thought. Games weren’t that much fun when you knew you would win.

  He stood up abruptly and headed through the vulgar, insistent glitter of slot machines to the Yardbird restaurant, where he strolled through tables of diners until he saw food being delivered. He told the people who had ordered the food to walk away. Only after they had gone did it occur to him that he had placed no limit on how long they should walk. He sincerely hoped they did not end up as piles of bleached bones in the pitiless Nevada desert. He made a mental note to be more specific in the future: no need to create harm unnecessarily. Right?

  Unless it’s funny.

  He sensed that the unseen audience in his head did not approve of his concern. Nor were those unseen watchers pleased with the way he’d spent hours at the roulette table. By means he could not hope to explain, they conveyed impatience. The audience wanted him to do something. It was insistent, relentless, and found an easy resonance in Dillon’s head.

  You want a show, invisible people in my head? Is that it? You want a show?

  Dillon ate what he wanted, then ordered a random passerby to bring him a cheesecake from the kitchen. He rolled his eyes as a fight broke out in the kitchen and laughed aloud when the battered, bruised, panting man brought him most of a cheesecake, pursued by knife-wielding chefs.

  “Okay,” Dillon said, “I really need to try and . . . on the other hand, screw it.” He looked up at the battered tourist and said, “That cake’s a bit of a mess.”

  “I’m calling security,” the nearest of the angry kitchen workers said.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Dillon said. “You can deal with this yourself. This man needs to be punished.”

  “Punished?” the cake thief said, sounding baffled.

  “Sure. Of course. I mean, in the old days the punishment for stealing was having a hand cut off.”

  Was it his imagination, or was the unseen audience now leaning forward in anticipation?

  “But I am merciful,” Dillon said. To the cheesecake thief he said, “This cook is going to cut off your right index finger, and you’re going to let him.”

  Sure enough, the man who had brought the cake sighed and flattened his hand, fingers spread, on the table even as he muttered, “This isn’t fair, this isn’t right.”

  The chef grimaced and said, “Lo siento, lo siento!” as he raised his fourteen-inch chef’s knife and brought it down with a sickening sound.

  It took three whacks, by which time blood was everywhere, puddling on the table, sprayed on the faces of both the victim and the chef and indeed on Dillon himself. It was all ignored by everyone within the sound of his voice, but more distant tables screamed and pushed over chairs and shielded their children’s eyes.

  Dillon lifted the severed finger and gave it to the chef. “You’ll want to cook this. It’s a sausage.”

  Come on, audience, laugh!

  Had they laughed? Not in any way he could hear, but did they find it funny? Did the dark and invisible audience even have a sense of humor?

  Hello, is this microphone on?

  He walked back out onto the casino floor as screams of horror and pain rose behind him. He was in a confused and anxious state of mind. On the one hand: power! On the other hand: a very tough audience.

  But an audience, just the same.

  Dillon was very aware of them and very aware that he had very little of what comics would call “material.” It was as if he’d been suddenly thrust onto the stage at the Comedy Store with a bunch of VIPs in the audience. He felt like he was at some flop-sweat-inducing audition, not sure what to do to keep the audience amused.

  He stood between craps tables and blackjack tables and in a loud voice said, “Everyone! Slap yourself in the face! One hard slap!”

  He watched the results. Everyone nearby raised a hand and slapped themselves once. But beyond the reach of his voice life went on as normal.

  “Yep. Like I thought,” Dillon said. “It’s all about the voice.” He had a vague notion of a joke involving the old TV show The Voice, and Adam Levine, but he couldn’t quite put it all together. He looked around and saw the main cashier’s kiosk. He walked up, told one of the employees there to let him in, which of course they did. He asked where he could find the public address system and was shown a microphone and told how to use it.

  “Testing, testing. Dillon Poe radio is on the air, here at the Venetian. How’s everyone doing today? Good? All right, then, everyone who can hear me, raise your hands.”

  It was mid-afternoon, not the busiest time in the casino, but still, between gamblers and employees, there were a couple hundred people. And every single one of them raised their hands. Cocktail waitresses with trays of drinks raised their hands, and beer bottles and cocktail glasses fell, bouncing on carpet.

  “Okay, very good,” Dillon said. He thought for a moment, then happened to spot a Walking Dead–themed slot machine and grinned with sudden inspiration. “You are all flesh-eating zombies. Eat everyone you see!”

  Unfortunately, one of the cashiers immediately ran at him, jaws gnashing, and he had to amend that a bit before he started losing body parts.

  A craps croupier suddenly grabbed a woman and began gnawing on her nose. A man in a wheelchair was set upon by three people. He yelled feebly for help even as he tried to bite the people biting him. A woman pushing a stroller toward the front desk stopped, pulled her baby from the stroller and, eyes streaming, babbling apologies and desperate pleas for someone to stop her, began to chew on her child.

  “No, no,” Dillon said. “Not you, lady. There are limits!” He keyed the microphone and amended: “Don’t eat children under . . .” He considered an appropriate age, then grinned. Of course. The cutoff in the FAYZ, the age beyond which people had poofed, was fourteen. “Don’t eat anyone under the age of fourteen.”

  The woman returned her bleeding, screeching child to the stroller, at which point she was attacked from behind by an old man biting with feeble jaws into her neck.

  Dillon clapped his hands in sheer amazement. He kept doing the impossible, and it kept working!

  From everywhere came cries of outrage, screams of pain and
anger, shouted apologies as people clawed and bit like . . . well, like zombies. But self-aware zombies. Zombies who knew they were doing terribly wrong things. Tears dribbled down into blood.

  It was mayhem. And given that the average age of the Venetian’s patrons was ninety . . . No. Try again. Given that the average age was senile . . . Not quite. Given that the average age was Jurassic. Yeah, that was funny. Jurassic. Anyway, given the age of Dillon’s zombies, it was wildly funny and, despite the frenzy, not likely to actually get anyone killed.

  That will be my rule: funny above all, and no actual killing.

  He savored the madness for a while and tried to gauge the reaction of the Dark Watchers. He guessed they were loving it—yeah, baby—but also that it wasn’t enough. Not enough. He felt harassed by a need to think of the next line, the next wacky move. And he’d had very little sleep. He was tired.

  He sauntered out of the casino toward the elevators to the rooms above through a mad melee of people biting and clawing and crying and apologizing as they did it. Despite the TV and movie depictions of zombies, it isn’t easy for a human jaw—especially the jaws of the Venetian’s septuagenarian patrons—to actually pierce flesh. But he saw an elderly man doing a reasonably good job of biting off a woman’s ear as she in turn tried to bite a chunk out of his shoulder.

  “Come on,” he said, hands outstretched, addressing the Dark Watchers, “you have to admit: that’s funny.”

  Security people who’d been beyond the reach of his voice were pouring from concealed doors, unaware that Dillon was the source. He nodded at them as they rushed past, took the elevator to the top floor, and ordered a maid to open the nicest suite. A man was sleeping in one of the beds, and Dillon ordered him to go away. The man, wearing nothing but underpants, left immediately.

  Dillon wondered vaguely how the man would interpret the word “away.” The English language was not designed for such orders.

  Specificity, Dillon, specificity. The best comedy is always specific.

  This all might become part of a routine. He could see himself on Fallon, doing a tight five minutes, then schmoozing with Jimmy afterward.

  It was gray-on-gray violence, Jimmy. Old people thinking it was the early-bird special! Today’s specials: human sushi. And for dessert, ear à la mode! And you know old people: waiter! Oh, waiter! This bicep is cold! Ha, ha, ha, ha.

  Biceps? Thigh? Liver?

  Liver. Liver was always funny. And it would be a sort of reference to Silence of the Lambs. People liked Anthony Hopkins, even when he played a cannibal.

  But what about the Dark Watchers? Would they get that kind of reference?

  The suite was fabulously gaudy and tasteless in the way only Vegas could be, and Dillon threw himself back on a king-sized bed and looked up at his own reflection in ceiling-mounted mirrors. It was the first time he’d seen himself in this body, and he spent some time admiring what he saw. High school would have been a very different experience if he had looked like this.

  He contemplated an amazing fact: he, Dillon Poe, was quite likely the most powerful person on earth. He could do anything, or at least anything he could order another human being to do. He couldn’t fly or live forever, but if a human could do it, Dillon could do it.

  Amazing!

  But after a while of contemplating just how he could use that power, he came back to a couple of realities: he did not have much imagination, and, aside from comedy, he’d never had any sort of life plan or ambition. The dark audience had appreciated his act in the drunk tank, and the impromptu finger-ectomy as well as the old-farts zombie attack. But Dillon knew the difference between a spontaneous bit of fun and a well-thought-out, well-honed act. (Jerry Seinfeld was his uber-hero, and Jerry was a meticulous craftsman.) Random acts of gore? He could do that easily enough, but audiences always wanted more, and he didn’t have more. Not yet.

  He needed a narrative, a goal. A point of view. He had listened to almost all of Marc Maron’s podcasts, and Maron always emphasized specificity in comedy. You had to have a position, an approach, and you had, above all, to be yourself.

  Also, as much as he hated to admit it, nothing was much fun unless you had someone to share it with. So he made a call. Strange, he thought, but he was nervous calling Saffron even now. She was a year older and, to his eyes at least, the essence of the sort of girl he could ordinarily never hope to approach.

  “Saffron?” he said into the phone, delighted by the suave confidence that had replaced his more usual thin squeak.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Dillon. Dillon Poe, from school. I was just calling to—”

  “I’m kinda busy—”

  “—tell you to come to the Venetian right now. Steal a car if you have to.”

  He gave her the suite number and hung up. Two minutes later, the doorbell to the suite rang. He walked back through the huge living room with its floor-to-ceiling windows open to Treasure Island casino across the Strip. He opened the door on a man and a woman, both very fit, both wearing identical blazers with “The Venetian” stitched onto their breast pockets.

  “Casino security,” the woman said brusquely. “You need to come with us.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t need to come with us, but we need to know who you are. Your ID, please.”

  Dillon shook his head. “You don’t need that, either. Go away.” He slammed the door on them.

  It took Saffron Silverman just fourteen minutes to get there, and when he opened the door on her, he burst out laughing. She’d evidently been lying by her pool. She was in a bikini, her black hair still damp. He focused on a tattoo on her hip—Nemo, the fish from the movie. Saffron’s parents were ex-hippie types who had met at a concert, hence the distinctive first name. At school Saffron formed her own clique of nerds and dorks, kids who could get straight As but were too cool to bother. Saffron was the non-nerd queen of nerds, the object of desire for boys and girls who spent too much of their lives writing fan fiction and editing Star Wars mash-ups. She was of average height, with Goth-black hair and a determined nose that defined a face more striking and unique than beautiful.

  “Hi,” Dillon said, unable to stop a blush from creeping up his neck.

  Saffron blinked and frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Dillon. You know, Dillon Poe, the class clown from world history?” He had phrased it as a question, not an order requiring her to believe him. He felt reluctant to use his power on her. Well, at least now that she was actually right there in his room.

  I just made the hottest girl I know come to me.

  Saffron shook her head. “No, you’re not him. You look . . . not like him.” There was an appreciative note in her voice: she liked what she was seeing. Dillon took a second to glance in the nearest mirror. Yes, he was still green. Not vaguely green, but green. And yes, the flesh on the back of his hands and arms and face—and presumably elsewhere—seemed to have etched lines forming scales. And yet, Saffron seemed almost hypnotized.

  “Why am I . . . where am I?” Saffron asked, frowning.

  “You’re at the Venetian,” Dillon explained helpfully. “Come in. Let me get you a robe.” He found one in a closet and held it open for her, the perfect gentleman snake.

  I could . . . he thought. But, no. Not to Saffron, who had occupied more than a few of his daydreams over the last year. This wasn’t just about making her do things; he wanted her to want to be part of this. Whatever this was. She was smart and she was worldly. And she was a writer who everyone said had a wonderful, dark imagination.

  He was the most powerful person in the world, maybe, but he knew enough history to know that ancient kings who had all the power still had wise men advising them. Saffron was to be his wise man. Girl. Woman. He hit upon the perfect example: she would be his Merrill Markoe. Markoe had been both girlfriend and head writer for one of Dillon’s comedy gods, David Letterman.

  My Merrill Markoe.

  “Ever hear the one about Adam in the
Garden of Eden?” Dillon asked. “He asks God, ‘Why did you make woman so beautiful?’ God says, ‘So you would love her.’ The man asks, ‘But God, why did you make her so dumb?’ God says, ‘So she would love you.’”

  Saffron frowned. Not ready to laugh. Especially not ready for a sexist joke.

  Wrong joke, Dillon chided himself. You just blurted that because you’re nervous.

  He ogled her hungrily as she passed by, brushing her bare shoulder against his as she shrugged into the robe, sending a physical thrill through him.

  “Sit,” he said. Then, quickly, “No, on the couch, not the floor.” He sat opposite her. “I have to tell you something, Saffron.”

  “Okay.” She was like a person in the first seconds of waking—confused, aware, but with fresh memories of dreams dragging at the edges of her consciousness.

  “The thing is, I can make you do anything I want, Saffron.”

  She laughed dismissively but not cruelly. “In your dreams,” she said.

  “Not anymore,” Dillon said, smiling inwardly at memories of dreams that involved Saffron. “I can make you do anything. For example, if I told you to put a finger in your nose, you would.”

  “You’re nuts,” Saffron said. She started to stand up, shaking her head the way a person does when they can’t believe what they themselves have done. “I don’t even know why I came here.”

  “Saffron. Take your right pinkie finger and stick it up your left nostril. Wait! Just to the first knuckle!”

  This being a Las Vegas casino suite, there were mirrors everywhere. He turned her head to make her see.

  She frowned and said, “What the . . . ?” but she did not remove the finger.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “I see myself. I have a finger in my nose.”

  “And do you remember me telling you to do that?”

  Her answer came slowly. He could practically see the wheels turning in her mind. Then she said, “I can’t pull my finger out. It’s stuck.”

  He shook his head. “No, you can’t stop until I tell you to stop. Watch. Saffron? Pull your finger out of your nose. Oh, and you can move—if you like, that’s up to you.”