It was a nice yellow and white trim two-family clapboard house just outside of Brookline Village—one of the old owner occupancies from the age of gentrification. With two large Romanesque pillars supporting a porch roof, it was built in the old Georgian style. Quietly prim with well-maintained lawn and shrubbery on a quietly prim street.
On the second floor, Clark Christian, a portly, balding man with a slumped posture wearing a blue terry bathrobe, was getting his little girl ready for bed, standing in the recently rehabbed kitchen with gleaming new fixtures. The little girl, who had to be at least six, maybe just a little older and wearing freshly washed sweetheart pajamas, was named Jenna. She looked very sleepy.
“Daddy, can I have more milkies?”
“No, honey bunny. No more milkies for you. Too much of a good thing.”
“Is it loving-time, Daddy, before I go sleepies?”
“Yes, angel. Did you brush your teeth?”
“I did, Daddy, like a really good girl. You like me when I’m a really good girl.”
“You’re always a really good girl, sweetheart.”
She puffed out her little chest at this and smiled. “I know I am! You tell me all the time.”
“Now you get into bed and very soon we shall have some lovin’- time.”
She squealed a tired, happy squeal and skipped off to the bedroom adjoining the kitchen. “Okay, daddies!”
There was banging coming from downstairs. Christian didn’t look out the window. He didn’t have to. From the mini-drawer next to the classic premium giveaway gas stove, he withdrew a 38 Smith & Wesson revolver, opened it, gave the carousel a spin then snapped it closed. He put it in the pocket of his bathrobe, which made it hang funny.
He paused for a long time in between breaths, but there was nothing but silence—not even the bedtime murmurings of a small child.
Christian started breathing again, chuckling to himself and shaking his head.
Christian rinsed out the pot, and the unicorn decorated glass from the warm milk he had given Jenna, wiped the stovetop shaking his head at his own foolishness.
He jumped back hard and threw the glass to the side when Null kicked in the door, his shoulders rounded from the weight of his coat, face darkened in shadow from the porkpie hat, wheezing just slightly.
“Shit!” barked Christian.
“Where’s the kid?” Null asked, as if he were seeking the time of day.
“Get out before I call the police.” Christian grabbed hold tightly of the Smith & Wesson in the pocket of his robe but kept it there.
“There’s no chance of you calling the police. But go ahead. It should be interesting if you do.”
Christian breathed a sigh of relief, chuckled a bit and looked up at Null with twinkling eyes. “Mister, I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but you’ve got the wrong house. All I am is a retired single dad, living with his little girl. That’s all.”
“You didn’t say she was your daughter.”
“I didn’t have to. Obviously, she is.”
“Let’s find out from her.”
“It’s her bedtime. I don’t want to disturb her.”
“Just you and her. No one else here at all?”
“The downstairs tenants. Why don’t you go ask them and leave us alone here?”
Null looked about, wandered off into the dark hall then wandered back.
“Pretty nice set-up here.”
“It should be. My life’s work.”
Null picked up a small bottle from the counter beside the stove. Examined it. “Liquid Thiopental. Must be hard to get.” He put it down.
“It’s prescribed. Any good pharmacist can prepare it that way.”
“Expensive.”
“I have health insurance off the ObamaCare.”
“You dose her pretty heavy with it?”
“You need to leave.”
“I do, but not yet.”
“I can make you leave.”
“Can you, Clark?”
“So, you know my name. Big deal. Who cares what you know?”
“You’ll care. And soon.”
“Listen, fuckstick. My daughter is asleep in the next room—”
“No, I’m not Daddy! I-I-I’m still away-ake!” It was Jenna, popping her little head abruptly out the half-opened door to her bedroom. She opened it all the way and shuffled into the kitchen. “Whosis?” she asked.
Christian grabbed the Smith & Wesson ever tighter in an already white-knuckled grip in his pocket. He blanked on knowing how to play it—and he had been playing it for years. Despite this, he froze.
“This is, um, Mr….”
“Hello, Jenna. I’m Mr. Null.”
“Hi, Mister Null. Can you please go ‘cause Daddy and I are gonna have some lovin’ time soon an’ it’s private.”
Null knelt down to Jenna and looked her dead in the eye. “Daddy and I have to talk about some grown up stuff, so you should get back into bed and I’ll come and tuck you in in a little bit.”
“What about my daddy?”
“He’s going to be very busy.”
“He’s going to boot your ass out of here!”
“Do you really want to do this with me in front of the child?”
Jenna waddled over to Christian sleepily and tugged on his robe. “Is it lovin’ time yet, Daddy?”
“Yes, daddy,” echoed Null. “Is it time?”
“Milkies, Daddy?”
“Yes, baby.” Null watched as Christian heated some milk and dosed it with Thiopental. It warmed quickly and he gave it to her in the unicorn glass. She drank it quickly, then handed the glass back to Christian.
“Now hop on back into bed and I’ll come in and tuck you in very soon.”
“But Mr. Null said he’d tuck me in.”
“Mr. Null is mistaken, dear heart.”
“Are we still gonna have lovin’ time still?”
“Yes, baby, we sure will.”
He bent down to kiss her on the head and she scampered back to her bedroom and closed the door.
The two stood there, looking at each other for a moment. Quiet but for the buzzing of the overhead light and uneven breathing.
“You’re one guy, Null. Not a very big guy at that. You break in here, and think you can screw with me and disturb my girl? I’ll kick your fucking ass, shit-for-brains.”
“Make your move, Christian.”
He pulled the Smith & Wesson, held it up somewhat shakily. “I don’t have to kick your ass. I could just put one in you, maybe two, for good measure.”
“You sure you want to wake Jenna with that?”
“She’s doped up enough so it won’t matter.”
“You put that drug in her every night?”
“Yeah—it makes things go dreamy smooth. Now, get the fuck out of here before I kill your ass.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“Yeah, motherfucker? Well, get ready.”
“Okay,” said Null, and in the quick blur of a moment just as Christian blinked his eyes, he had the machete out, raised up and slashing down, taking the hand that held the Smith & Wesson cleanly off at the wrist and sending both to the floor. Christian stood there trembling and wordless, the stump of his wrist dribbling down blood.
“Now I’m ready,” Null added, and then put two nine-millimeter rounds directly into Christian’s gut before he had the chance to let out an inarticulate cough of shock and surprise and sink down to the linoleum.
“Wh-what do you want?” sobbed Christian.
“I’ll take the little girl, for starters.”
“No—she’s all I have!”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Christian. All you have is gone now anyway.”
In response, Christian made for the severed hand and the gun by the stove. Null kicked him in the head to stop him, propped him up against the front of the stove, then broke his nose with a direct hammer blow to the face.
He sobbed gushily, “Call 911! Get me to a hospital—I’ll tell you everything you want to know!”
“You’ll tell me anyway. And I won’t be calling 911 until after you’re dead, which won’t be as soon as you would like.”
“No, I wanna live!”
Null sighed. “I’m going to change that.”
“I’ll tell you anything, flip on anybody. Just help me.”
“I’ll be helping you, that’s for sure.”
Blood drooled out of Christian’s mouth. “Please,” he managed.
Null abruptly spread his arms and spun about slowly, addressing all corners of the room. He spoke loudly. “This is going to be a different show that what you’re used to. There will be no lovin’ time tonight. Think of this as a cautionary tale—what will happen to you when I find you. And I am very good at finding people who don’t want to be found. But don’t log off. It’s too late. Just try to profit from what I’m about to show you.”
“You—knew—about the cameras?”
“I did. I knew about the cameras everywhere sent to all you pedophiles by Hebe Group. You’re independent contractor entertainers, each with your own wired up, camera-ready Internet playhouses. A franchise of disgust, horror and torment.”
“It’s-not-that-bad,” Christian spat out, heaving. Then he screamed so that Null thought even Jenna could hear it. “We LOVE—our—little girls!” He began to spasm and Null got down on the bloody linoleum next to him. With an air of weary calm, he hacked off Christian’s left foot.
“Where did you steal her from?”
“I was saving her—” he coughed bloodily—“from a bad home! I was helping her!” His breathing became sharp and shallow and his tongue hung outside of his mouth as Null hacked off the other foot in a hard, single downward stroke with such force and speed there was barely any blood.
Christian wailed.
Null took out his phone and snapped a picture of the craggy, agonized face. “For the files,” he said, then asked again: “Where did you take her from?”
Christian spilled it and concurrently peed a great volume on the linoleum so that Null had to jump up and back to avoid getting wet. Christian repeated it to make sure Null could understand him.
“Thank you,” Null said in a quiet voice, mopping up the area around Christian with the sponge mop that had been leaning up against the refrigerator, then got back down on the floor, and sat cross-legged.
“We’ve got a few more pieces to go before I call 911,” he said reasonably.
Christian whimpered softly, “Please.”
“You need pity,” Null observed. “Compassion. Sensitivity—empathy. Right?”
He whimpered again in answer.
“Human kindness, right?”
“Yes!” Christian groaned.
Null said it firmly, coolly. “These are the things you happily destroy when you rape and sodomize a child. The absence of these things is what you invite when you do it.” Null raised the machete.
Christian answered back stertorously, weeping: “Nooooo!”
“I am the absence of these things.”
Then Null went quietly and diligently about the serious task of hacking Christian to little pieces.