by Guy Adams
"That's power," the box said, "that's all the power you ever need."
He let go of her hand and she fought to control tears as she unclasped the box from her mashed finger. Her whole body shaking with the effort to contain wails of pain.
"You can keep the box," he said, reaching back to unlock the door. "It's a gift." He went to leave and then, unable to resist, punched her in the belly. "So was that," he said as she crumpled, winded to the floor behind him.
He walked back towards the party and then, noticing his bloody hand, made a diversion to his room. He stood in front of his own basin, preparing to wash it off and finding he couldn't. It seemed such a waste. He unzipped himself and masturbated with the dirty hand.
"How does it feel?" the box asked him as he ejected pink pearls into the basin. "How does that power feel?"
"Wonderful," he had admitted. Cleaning himself up and returning downstairs to the party. "It feels wonderful."
He sat back down amongst the partygoers, sipping at a glass of champagne. He didn't see the catering girl again, no doubt she had come up with some believable excuse for her damaged hand and begged the rest of the night off. He hoped she went home, sat down with her boy and thought about how close she had come to losing everything.
3.
From that first step, that acquiescence to the box's suggestion and his own pitiful wants, there had been no turning back. The box would encourage him to much greater heights of power and control, it assured him. All he had to do was listen.
Then he met Penelope Simons.
She was a sweet girl – as far as any girl ever felt sweet to Chester, his parents made no concession for emotional attachment and he had followed their example. For a while, even his father had seemed pleased. The Boston Simons were an affluent family and well respected. The idea of an alliance through his son was most favourable. Perhaps, his father said to him one day, you didn't turn out to be such a waste after all.
Chester wasn't a natural beau, his emotions too stunted, his nerves too rough. But he went through the motions, arranging several dates with Penelope, with her friend Dolores as chaperone – a ludicrous notion if either parents had had the least idea as to the girl's personality. They had eaten in a number of fine restaurants, visited society functions and dinners, they had, in short, become an item. Chester, still in regular discussions with that strange voice from the box, began to have other ideas about his future. As if the time he spent away from his room and the close proximity of the thing, began to loosen its hold on him. There were many times in fact, when he gave serious thought to abandoning the box entirely, throwing the damn thing away and forging a more wholesome – and, he had to admit, pleasurable – future with Penelope.
The box would have none of this. When he returned from his nights out, it was always there waiting for him, a shrewish mother eager to criticise his behaviour and demand to know who he thought he was, gallivanting around the town like that.
"She doesn't like you," it told him, "I can tell. She laughs about you when your back is turned, her and Dolores both, cackling and jeering at you the moment you're not in earshot. They treat you like a joke. A blundering, foolish joke."
Chester tried not to listen. Tried to fix a smiling image of Penelope in his mind and blank out the box. But, in the middle of the night, when his resistance was at its lowest it would whisper to him, reminding him how it had felt in that small servant's bathroom, reminding him what real power had been like. And on those nights Chester would be lost to it, crying into his pillow with shame at the excitement he couldn't deny inside him.
Then the box told him what he should do to Penelope.
4.
They had arranged to meet at the Cotton Club. It wasn't a favourite venue of Chester's – he found the music too loud and the atmosphere too thick – but Penelope adored it there. "Slumming it amongst the niggers" his father would have said, a man to whom the very notion of the Cotton Club was anathema.
Henryk took the wheel of the family De Soto, and began to make his way towards Harlem. The driver had become a confidante to Chester, ever since the box had informed him of the Polish man's enthusiasms. There seemed little in life that was distasteful to the hulk of a man. He rarely spoke but his eyes roved the world, lusting after the women and the money he saw. He was a simple man, Chester understood, a man of hunger. Such people were easily controlled by those willing to feed them a little every now and then.
"He is loyal," the box had said once, "and that is the only quality in a man you need."
As they moved through the Manhattan streets Chester held the box in his hands and did his best to negotiate with it.
"Tonight's the night," it said, "the night that I'll open for you and all that power you wanted will be yours."
"But, Penelope…"
"Is unimportant," the box insisted, "just as flimsy and rank as that light-fingered girl we taught a lesson to."
"She's nice…"
"She's nothing!" the box had shouted so loudly that Chester had flinched and, even more worryingly, he had noticed Henryk jump in his seat too. Did Henryk hear the box too? Was its voice not just for him?
"We will take the girl and we will feed from her," the box insisted. "We shall grind her under our heel, bathe in our command of her, she will be so beholden to us that she will beg to dine from our shit…"
Chester wasn't sure he had much interest in that. It wasn't that he loved Penelope – he had never loved anybody – but he certainly didn't hate her. Now if it had been his father… that was different, he would quite easily make a turd-munching supplicant of that old fuck.
"Later," the box said, "he comes later… if you do as you're told."
And so Chester had relented, placing the box safely inside his coat pocket and resolving himself to the night ahead.
He had sat with Penelope and Dolores, listening to the house band with feigned interest. Lighting Penelope's cigarettes – she smoked too much, that was one thing against her, he didn't like ladies that smoked, it spoke of no self-control – and waiting patiently for the night to draw to a close.
By the time they left the club, Dolores had been stumbling drunk. Which was good, that would make her far easier to control.
"You can control anyone," the box insisted in his head, "with my help."
Henryk let them in to the back of the car and Chester saw him grin at the sight of the girls, no doubt thinking of what treats he had in store. Let him salivate, Chester thought, if that's what it takes to keep him at heel.
They drove out of Harlem towards Chester's father's plant. He was confident that neither of them would know their way around well enough to realise they were going the wrong way. Certainly not while they still had time to do anything about it. Chester tilted his head back against the leather of the seat. Penelope was talking about the things she always talked about: people she knew, things they had done, the music, who the musicians had been… all things that Chester had once made a show of caring about. He had enjoyed the game – and that's what it had been he realised, the box was quite right in that, he had been pretending to be someone else and the mask would always have fallen off in the end. He really wished he didn't have to do what the box had told him would be necessary. "Is there no way I can just drop her off first?" he asked, stroking the box in his pocket. "You can have Dolores, who cares about that drunken idiot? But not Penelope, let's leave her out of this."
"I will not have this conversation again," the box replied, "you will do as you're told."
Chester acquiesced. In his head was the unwelcome image of the voice of the box leaning over him and clamping its lid down on his index finger. Was I ever really in control? he wondered as the car pulled into the rear entrance of the meat-packing plant.
"Where are we?" asked Penelope.
"My father's plant," Chester replied.
"What for?" asked Dolores, leaning drunkenly to peer out of the window. "All you big families blend into one, steelworks to chicken plants,
I can never remember who's who. What do you guys do?"
"Whatever we want," Chester replied, reaching forward to shove Dolores' face hard against the glass of the window. And there, with that simple lie there was no going back.
5.
But it hadn't gone according to plan had it? In a matter of half an hour Chester had been left with aching balls, a dead woman in his front seat and the knowledge that his precious box was currently bobbing somewhere down the Hudson. Control? No, he had certainly never possessed that.
He had helped Henryk dispose of the body, feeling as he did so that this finally set him on the same level as the chauffeur, certainly not the man of authority he had always dreamed of being.
They had scrubbed the car clean, Chester working in silence, thoroughly resolved to his subservient status. He had fulfilled his father's expectation of him and lost everything. Now there was no hope with Penelope and no higher power guiding his hand. That had passed on, floating away to someone more worthwhile.
They drove home, Chester's head as empty as his dreams.
He had gone to bed, and lain there in cold, pointless darkness.
The next morning, there had been conversations with the police supervised by his father and – later – the family lawyer.
No, he hadn't seen or heard from Penelope since he dropped them off last night. Yes, he should have walked them to their door but Dolores had been drunk and Penelope had insisted she walk that off in the grounds before she faced Penelope's parents. He had been tired and, besides, it wasn't as if he'd just abandoned them on the street was it? He had not wished to cause Penelope any further embarrassment – and in truth she was quite insistent, in fact he wondered if she hadn't had a few mouthfuls of whatever it was that Dolores had been drinking. The police were far from satisfied, naturally, and when Dolores' body had been discovered floating face down some miles away from his father's plant they had come to the logical decision that the remains of Penelope would soon join them. Even when they did not, nobody seriously expected to see her alive again. There had been accusations from her parents but Terrance Arthur squashed them. He was a man only too used to making unpleasant suggestions vanish. It was all a matter of business.
When they were alone, those looks of suspicion that Chester had grown used to on the faces of investigating officers had been present on his father's face too. But he never asked. He didn't want to know.
Eventually it was agreed that Chester should take some time away from New York, travel a little while the gossip ran its course. Europe perhaps, there were always opportunities for a young American in Europe.
Satisfied with this – Chester no longer cared where he was or what he did, he was a shell of a man and nothing interested him – he went to his bed and lay there in the darkness giving serious consideration to ending his life.
Which is when the box broke its silence and began talking to him again.
6.
And it had never stopped, leading him away from New York and over into Europe. They sent Henryk with him to act as both a facilitator and – if they were honest – a wet nurse. The chauffeur wouldn't be missed. If Terrance Arthur was pressed he would admit that he had never been all that comfortable with the fellow, and had often considered sacking him. Things were just about perfect. The dirty linen was sent away where it could no longer embarrass and Chester knew that one day, soon, he would see the box again.
Now, with the business of burglary dealt with, Chester lay in the dark once more. He listened to the buzzing in his head, a brutal tinnitus that never quietened. The box had told him where it was, had demanded he retrieve it. Then, when it was back in Chester's hands, he would have it open at last. He would ride through that door that lived inside. Just as Penelope had done, the box had made that clear, much to Chester's jealousy.
"Get up!" the box insisted in that voice of the actor he couldn't place. "You've botched the job, as usual."
"I haven't," Chester replied, rolling off the bed and putting his feet on the floor. "I've done everything right. Jimenez is going to steal the box and…"
"That dullard will never lay his hands on me," the box replied, "someone else has beaten him to it."
Someone else? Chester couldn't begin to imagine who…
"You need to come!" the box shouted, its voice so loud inside his head that Chester convulsed. "Come now!"
7.
He had pulled on some clean clothes – a dark pinstripe suit, far too heavy for the weather but the first thing he could lay his hands on that wasn't sodden with sweat – and ran above deck.
"We need to go," he told Henryk, "there's a problem."
Henryk nodded. Chester was sure he had caught a glimpse of mockery there, a little "of course there's a problem" twitch of a smile. Even the hired help considered itself his superior.
Henryk reached down to a strongbox beneath the wheel housing, unlocked it and held out a small pistol. "Should we?"
Chester snatched the gun off him and stuffed it behind his back, pinning it in place with his belt.
Henryk gave a small cough. "What?" Chester asked, impatient and sick of always feeling he was on the back foot.
"The safety catch," said Henryk, "you may wish to ensure it is engaged. There could be an accident."
Chester's head was starting to pound, the heat, the voice of the box – Come now! Come now! – and now this. He pulled out the gun and looked for the safety catch. Henryk glanced at the gun and pointed to the small lever near the handle. "My apologies," he said, rather insincerely, "it would appear that you are safe."
Chester came very close to thumbing that little lever and shooting the chauffeur. His rage was such that he actually feared he may burst something in his head. It felt like his brain was swelling, little veins throbbing in his temples, jaw clenched so tight that his teeth were grinding together.
"Come now! Come now!" the box shouted again and Chester nearly burst into tears, anything to relieve the pressure.
He put the gun back in his waistband and clambered off the boat, Henryk following.
They ran along the marina, Chester following the sound in his head as it gave him directions, barking at him like a platoon sergeant.
They moved up into the city, following the route that Chester had taken to Jimenez's house.
Chester was soon exhausted, the weight of that damned suit dragging him down. It felt like swimming full clothed, moving through this hot, muggy city. He would leave Spain once this business was done, he had decided. Go somewhere more civilised, somewhere that had a more equable climate.
"There!" the box shouted. "The girl!"
Looking ahead of them they could see a young girl pushing past an old man – with a face Chester thought he recognised, something definitely familiar about it – and running down the street away from them.
"Shoot her!" the box shouted. "Now!"
Chester pulled out his gun and aimed it towards her. Then froze. She was just a kid… what the hell was he becoming?
He saw his face in the bathroom mirror as he had pleasured himself with a bloodied hand. He saw his reflection in the dark window of the De Soto as he punched a naked Penelope in the face. What was he doing? Dear Christ… what was he becoming?
"Shoot her! Shoot her! Shoot her!"
No… he had to stop this, had to…
THREE
The Ugly
"Give it to me," Henryk said, snatching the gun from him. "I'll do it."
He aimed the gun…
"We need to go," says the boy – and he is a boy, for all his money, his suits and his affectation – "there's a problem."
Henryk is not in the least surprised by this, as far as this boy goes there are always problems. Sometimes those problems are pleasant – he still thinks fondly of the slippery little American girl he had enjoyed on the front seat of the family car – sometimes they are simply work.
Henryk does not mind work, he has no wet streak in him that turns up its nose at unpleasant things. A man
can do anything if he puts his mind to it. There is no shame in any job done, any mess cleared. There is only shame in failure and that is something Henryk has never experienced. Unlike the boy.
He offers him the gun and tells him how to carry it safely – if he shoots himself a new arsehole it will mean the end of Henryk's current employment and he would not wish for that, not yet. He has plans for that day and while it is soon it is not now. He knows this as the box has assured him it is so. And Henryk trusts the box, it has never lied to him. It tells him that his employer is an idiot, this is true. It tells him that the idiot will lose the box, this was also true. It tells him that the idiot will make a mess of getting the box back. And look "there's a problem". This would turn out to be a truth as well, he was sure.
