Burn Phone

by Thomas Malafarina

  Wilson stood in shock, surprised by the reaction, not to mention the level of composure that this clerk possessed. He realized that he had definitely underestimated this man, a mistake that apparently many others had made in the past, with less than desirable results. The clerk was slowly working his way toward the end of the platform, obviously getting ready to rush down to floor level and offer Wilson a serious lesson in physical discomfort.

  Wilson grasped the phone firmly as the clerk continued, “Yeah they might manage to fire a shot or two at me and might even get lucky and nick me on occasion, Lord knows I got the scars to prove it, but eventually they leave here either on a stretcher or in a body bag. You see, my friend, I am one of those special people who likes to hurt other people. I mean; I really enjoy hurting people. It’s a bit sick, I admit it, but it seems to be the way my clock is wound or something like that.”

  Charles understood that he could be in real trouble with this man. The clerk said, “So you will have to forgive me if I don’t get all worked up by you poking your finger, or cigarette lighter or whatever the Hell it is that you have hidden in your pocket. You see, this ain’t TV and it ain’t the movies pal, this is reality. And, in reality, people like you get hurt and sometimes die, and people like me tend to be the ones who do the hurting. Why is that? I suppose it is, just because it is. So I’ll tell you what I am going to do for you. I am going to give you a break tonight. The best thing I can recommend is that you turn around and head back out the way you came before I really lose my temper; because when I do, and I will, then things are going to get real ugly in here, real fast.”

  Wilson was astounded. Now what was he to do? This guy obviously had a lot more experience than Wilson had realized. But, Wilson knew that no matter how big the man was and no matter how tough the man might be, he was still no match for the threat he was facing; the threat that was the new and improved Charles Wilson. The clown had no idea what sort of forces Charles held at his command. Wilson knew that this was a perfect test for his new evil friends. Chances were that most of his future encounters would be much easier than this one, so why not accept this as what it was, a great opportunity to test the waters.

  Wilson pulled his right hand out of his trench coat pocket and showed it to the clerk saying, “Very well. You are correct. I do not have a gun, but I don’t need a gun…. because I do have this!” With a flurry of motion, Wilson held up his ridiculous looking cell phone and prepared himself for what was to follow. The clerk looked on in bewilderment.

  The huge man watched Wilson proclaim his strange declaration, unsure of what to think. From his vantage point Wilson looked like a genuine street crazy, standing there waving his bizarre looking phone about the air mumbling a variety of threats, none of which the man actually bothered to listen to, he was too busy trying to decide what to do with the loony. The clerk knew that he was going to have to bust this character up a bit then throw this guy out of the store. He really didn’t want to get the cops involved and by the looks of things he probably wouldn’t have to. This guy was obviously just a harmless kook.

  Wilson now knew he was actually going to enjoy this. That idiot clerk had no idea what sort of wrath he had just brought upon himself. Wilson was thinking that he might make the man suffer for quite a long time before he finally allowed his pets to drag his flayed carcass into the abyss. Maybe he would have the man’s guts ripped out and have him choked with his own intestines for a while as the tentacles slowly flayed his flesh away to nothing.

  Wilson screamed at the man at the top of his voice. “Prepare to face the demons from the very bowels of Hell.” He waved his phone about his head in a circular motion. “In a few moments you will be begging for death to end your agony but death will not come until I have enjoyed watching you suffer for a very long time. Prepare to die you insolent piece of mortal garbage.”

  “Look buddy.” The clerk said, “I don’t want to have to involve the cops in this. You seem like a harmless old coot. So why don’t you just take your magic cell phone and get out of here before I have to come around and throw you out.”

  Wilson stopped and looked up at the man in amazement. Nothing had happened. No portal opened. No creatures came forth to do his bidding. Nothing happened. Wilson shook the phone and struck it multiple times trying to get some sort of reaction but not a single thing happened.

  Chapter 24

  By the time Charles realized that his phone was not working, the massive clerk had made his way to the end of the platform. While stepping down to the floor level and rounding the counter the man grabbed a large baseball bat that he apparently kept hidden for just such occasions.

  The smart thing for Wilson to have done at this point was to turn and run from the store as fast as his feet would carry him. But, when he saw the large man approaching with the menacing baseball bat at the ready, he panicked, shoved the useless cell phone back into his coat pocket and ran of the far right aisle of the store, back toward the rear. When he got to the door in the back of the store, he grabbed the door handle hoping for another way out but found it locked. Looking back down the aisle he saw the clerk walking slowly and menacingly toward him bringing his bat down into his open palm, showing Wilson that he was about to receive the beating of his life.

  Wilson rounded the corner at the back and headed down the center aisle toward the front of the store. Half way down the aisle, he had to stop suddenly as the clerk landed directly in front of him. The agile man must have climbed the shelving and jumped over to block Wilson’s escape. Charles could see that there was a savage anger in the man’s glare and that the clerk had only one intention, to hurt Charles very badly.

  “Look”, Wilson said, backing up slowly, “I’m really sorry about all this…. It is just some sort of misunderstanding…. I haven’t been myself lately… I am honestly sorry.. just please, let me go and I promise I will never do anything like this again…please.”

  The man continued to advance on Wilson, his eyes filled with anger and anticipation. He knew this man was going to beat him and maybe even kill him. And, the worst part was that the hulking thug was going to enjoy it as well. As he had told Charles, he loved to hurt people, and Wilson had just given the man a legitimate and legal excuse to do what he loved best.

  Wilson turned and sprinted toward the back of the store, dragging his right arm along the shelving trying to knock down as much merchandise as possible to maybe slow the man's progress. As he continued to his left and rounded the corner at the rear of the store putting him in the third aisle, he knocked down a display rack featuring glass bottles of some sort of perfume. The bottles crashed to the floor behind Wilson spilling their contents and filling the store with the overpowering smell of perfume.

  The clerk was also running trying to grab Wilson, and did not have the ability to stop in time slipping on the liquid covering the floor, falling backward to the hard floor, knocking himself unconscious. Wilson slowly worked his way back into the aisle and saw the clerk lying on the floor, his clothing soaking up the perfume. Wilson looked down at the unconscious man with frustration and a substantial degree of embarrassment. This man had made a fool out of Wilson, chasing him down the aisles like a frightened schoolgirl. He had practically made Charles Wilson beg for his own life. Wilson did not understand why his cell phone had failed him but he did know that this clerk, this thug was about to suffer for the humiliation that he now felt.

  Wilson calmly walked over to the man, bent down and picked up the baseball bat, which the man had dropped during his fall. He could have just turned and walked away. He should have just left the store. But something deep inside of Charles Wilson had changed for the worst. Something snapped; releasing a savage, primitive side of the man the he, himself, didn’t realized existed.

  Then, letting go of every bit of fury and hatred he held inside, Wilson proceeded to bash the man’s skull to a bloody pulp with the bat. When he was finished, the floor was slick with blood and brain matter and the clerk’s head was n
o longer recognizable as human. Wilson realized that now he had really crossed the line; the final line. Prior to this his actions may have caused others to kill themselves and he had used to phone to kill others but this was the first time that he had ever consciously committed a brutal act of cold-blooded murder. And it felt good to Charles Wilson as if he had finally evolved, finally become what he was meant to be. He had no regrets, no remorse nothing.

  Wilson saw a display with “Have-A-Hank” handkerchiefs. He took one from a pack and used it to wipe any fingerprints off the baseball bat. Then he threw the bat on the floor next to the corpse and pocketed the rest of the package. On his way toward the front door, he went around the back of the service counter, opened the cash register and helped himself to all of the bills inside. Then he calmly walked back to his hotel and up to his room as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Later in the hotel room, Wilson sat staring at the cell phone wondering why it had not worked for him. He had to figure out what had gone wrong; in order to make sure it did not happen again. Maybe he could only use it once a day. No, he knew that was not true because last evening he used it on the mugger then again in the hotel, on that child molester at the courthouse back in Yuengsville. He also had no problem with it this morning at H & W, so why now? What was the difference? The only thing Wilson could come up with was that every other time he used the phone he was angry, furious at the time he grabbed on to the phone. Tonight he was not. He had simply tried to use it like a tool. Perhaps that was it. Wilson had a feeling that had he grabbed on to the phone while he was bashing the clerks brains in, it might have worked then. One thing for certain was; he was going to have to test this phone out a lot more before he took another risk like the one he took tonight.

  He found it so strange that the fact that he was now a full-fledged murder did not faze him in the least. It was as if he had completely lost his ability to feel guilt or remorse. He suspected this is how a sociopath must feel. Perhaps he was now a sociopath; perhaps he was always a sociopath. He had read an article once that stated that most business leaders and politicians were natural-born sociopaths. That was why they could easily close factories and fire thousands of people without remorse. He was not sure about the validity of that, nor did he really care. He was too busy trying to figure out how things had gone so terribly wrong.

  Wilson counted the money he got from the robbery and was disappointed to discover that he had seized only about three hundred and seventy-three dollars. He was not sorry that he had to kill someone for so little money since the clerk’s behavior made the killing necessary in Wilson’s mind regardless. He was however, sorry that the take could not have been more, considering he come very close to having his own brains bashed in.

  Whatever the outcome, what was done, was done. Wilson decided that he could not worry about it anymore. Tomorrow, he had bigger fish to fry. He was going to gather all of the anger he could when he met with his boss, the great T. Martin Edmondson. That old fart would not consider himself so great tomorrow when Wilson unleashed all of the evil that Hell could offer and that old man would be screaming for mercy that would never come.

  Wilson packed all of his suitcases, called down to the front desk for a seven o’clock wakeup call and crawled into bed. He had thought that he would have trouble getting to sleep. He should have, considering he had just murdered a man in cold blood. His adrenalin level should have been so high that sleep should never have come, but to his surprise, Wilson feel instantly into a deep and restful sleep.

  Chapter 25

  Early Tuesday afternoon, promptly at 12:30 pm, Charles Wilson’s plane arrived at the Philadelphia Airport after an uneventful flight. Other than the odd looks he received at the security check-in regarding his strange choice in cell phone design, everything seemed to go without a hitch; no major delays or mechanical problems.

  Charles picked up his car from the multileveled-parking garage attached to the airport after retrieving his luggage. Heading westward on the Schuylkill Expressway, called the Sure-Kill Expressway by many locals, he was deep in thought, refining the plan that he had started to put together while in the shower earlier that morning at the hotel. The more than two-hour commute to his office in Yuengsville would give him sufficient opportunity to work out any kinks that might still exist in his strategy.

  Wilson decided that he no longer cared about T. Martin Edmondson’s ridiculous little company. Although he originally thought that perhaps he would force the old fart to sign the company over to him, the more he considered it, the more he realized that he no longer wanted anything to do with the company. Personally, he didn’t think much of the quality of personnel that Edmondson Systems hired, excluding himself of course, and believed the current staff would actually become a burden to him. In addition, if the bottom line were that he would have to fire everyone and start over anyway, he would rather do so from scratch with his own company and eventually drive Edmondson Systems out of business.

  The old man should have turned over the reins of the company to younger men years ago but just couldn’t seem to let go. And, during the past year since recovering from his heart attack the old man was acting peculiar from time to time, as if he might be losing it. Regardless, Charles knew that old Marty boy would rather die than give up control of his precious little company. And, if that were the case, Charles, would be more than happy to let the old coot have his way.

  Wilson had imagined many horrible scenarios, each more gruesome than the previous, depicting how he would have his demons torture the old man, and he could not wait to get started. The closer he got to home, the more the cell phone in his shirt pocket began to pulse. He now understood how the phone was able to feel the anger growing inside of him.

  Wilson thought back to the robbery and subsequent murder he committed the night before. He hadn’t been sure at the time why the phone had failed him, but had a strong suspicion, perhaps an intuition, that it was because he had not been angry enough. He had forgotten that the relic seemed to feed on anger and hatred. While in the store, he had simply pressed a button on the phone. He was now certain that was why it did not respond. Although he may have been somewhat tense at that time, he was not angry, not the kind of anger that it would take to call forth the power of Hell.

  Then Wilson recalled that while he was busy bashing in the clerk’s skull, the phone had been going absolutely crazy vibrating in his pocket. He believed that had he even touched the phone at the point of his ultimate savagery, the thing might have opened a portal large enough to engulf the entire store; if not a whole city block. He still was astounded by the power that the relic had and indirectly, the power that he now had.

  Charles also knew that a lack of anger would not be a problem for him today and that the phone would not fail him. He was letting his fury build greater and greater, wanting nothing better than to see T. Martin Edmondson suffer at his hand; and suffer, he most definitely would. For many years, Charles had tolerated the man’s tyranny and during the past year, the old man had become almost unbearable, but now there was a new tyrant in town; and this was a tyrant with no mercy.

  Just ask the clerk at the convenience store, although he would not be able to answer as his brains were currently drying on the worn linoleum floor a thousand miles away. That clerk had thought he was a street-tough, mean sort of character, but Wilson had managed to bring him down. Sure, maybe Charles had taken advantage of the man’s slip up, but all was fair in love and war. More importantly, he killed the brute without the help of the phone and without a shred of remorse. He had simply bashed the man’s skull in, had committed his first cold-blooded murder and he liked it; yes he like it very much. He understood that he had taken a major step and had crossed over an invisible line, taking him to a new, higher level of human evolution, one from which he could never return; nor did he want to.

  Charles recalled the money he had stolen from the store the previous night. He had been shocked to find that there was so little in the cash
register. He hadn’t known what he had expected to find but three hundred and seventy-three measly dollars was a lot less than he had hoped for. He decided that the small town robbery route might not be the best choice for him, exhilarating as it might be, as it would take too many small robberies to make any decent amount of money. Eventually he would put a plan together to get all the money he needed, but for now, he was determined to achieve one goal and one goal only, and that was to kill T. Martin Edmondson; and kill him very slowly.

  At 3:00 pm, Charles pulled into his reserved parking spot outside of Edmondson Systems, frazzled from his long day of travel and seething with anger for Edmondson. He realized that he had to play it cool, had to look normal, while at the same time allowing his internal anger to fester. He walked purposefully through the double glass doors and past the security guard at the front desk.

  “Good afternoon Mr. Wilso..” the guard stopped in mid sentence. He was looking at Wilson with confusion and apparent discomfort. The guard was sure he must have been mistaken. In fact, he knew he had to have been mistaken. But, for a brief moment, he thought that he had seen Wilson’s face changing somehow. It was extremely difficult for the man to comprehend or to describe. It was as if there was a hideous ‘other face’ existing just under the surface of Wilson’s actual face. It seemed to be swimming liquidly underneath his outer facade. In that split second when the guard believed he saw that horrible under-face he immediately thought one word, “Evil”. He shook his head unconsciously to clear the image and once again saw only Wilson’s outer face as Charles entered the elevator to head up to his office.