Jason Devere is bound to his cold steel throne with heavy chains, observed by two guards facing him in the corners of the stark room. He shifts his weight lazily and lifts his head to peer through greasy hair at the clock on the wall as the second hand ticks rhythmically towards two o’clock. He licks his lips in anticipation.
On the stroke of two, as if summoned by the clock, Lydia sweeps breezily into the room, wearing a sleek black suit over a white blouse and carrying a blue box. Jason’s lips twist into a grin when he sees her. Lydia does not say a word to the guards or even acknowledge them, but they animate together like statues given life and walk to the door. Lydia waits until they are gone, then crosses the floor to the chair on the opposite side of the table to Jason’s, her high heels clicking on the polished floor and echoing around the bare walls. Eyes fixed on Jason; she places the blue box on the table, and takes her seat.
“I’ve been thinking,” says Lydia casually, taking her phone from her bag, tapping the screen and setting it down on the table, “about how this is going to end. Who is going to win this little game of ours?” She watches Jason, but beyond the smirk playing around the edge of his mouth he shows her no reaction. “Maybe you?” she continues. “Maybe me? Maybe we will both be winners. Or both losers. Who knows?”
“You’re persistent,” says Jason, amused, “I’ll give you that.”
Lydia smiles at him pleasantly. “Did you get the items you requested?”
“I did!” Jason replies, cheerily. “My penmanship is becoming a sight to behold.” He raises his manacled hands with a clatter and mimes writing in the air with long, elegant strokes.
“Good,” says Lydia. “So, today I thought we would try something different.”
“Variety is the spice of life,” says Jason, with another wave of his hands. He seems in good spirits today, Lydia thinks. Is it genuine, or an act? And if an act, to what purpose? Only one way to find out.
“As you can see, I’ve brought something with me.” She motions to the blue box with an open palm. “A gift.”
“What kind of gift?” asks Jason, peering at the box curiously.
“You’ll find out,” says Lydia, “if you answer one simple question for me.” She holds up a lily-white finger.
“Which is?” asks Jason.
“Why do you kill?” asks Lydia, simply.
Jason considers the question for a moment, then shrugs his shoulders. “Fish gotta swim,” he says, brazenly.
“I need a better answer than that, Jason,” says Lydia. Her voice is measured, calm. She sees the flash in his eyes and it gives her a warm feeling of triumph in her heart.
“It’s my nature,” says Jason, as if forcing himself. “I’m just not like other people.”
“Why do you think that is?” Lydia asks, flipping open her notebook.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Jason sits back, his chains clinking. “Suppose I wasn’t wired up the same as the rest of you.”
“You think you were born this way?” Lydia asks, a note of scepticism in her voice.
“Yeah,” Jason replies. “Sure. Why not?”
“Well,” says Lydia, scratching her nose with her pen, “in all my years studying people like you, I’ve never found one I thought was born evil.”
“Yeah?” Jason asks, as if only mildly curious.
“Their behaviour is always caused by some sort of trigger,” says Lydia, peering at Jason and pursing her scarlet lips just a little.
“In your opinion,” says Jason, politely.
“Let’s not play games anymore, Jason,” says Lydia with a demure smile. “I told you there were only a few different ways this could end. Why don’t you help me to help you?”
“And just how do you propose to do that?” asks Jason, leaning towards her.
“Tell me what you’re hiding,” says Lydia, calm yet forceful.
“I’m not hiding anything,” Jason growls softly. “Not anymore.”
“I see,” says Lydia, frostily. She slides the blue box towards her, opens the lid and begins to retrieve items from within, lining them up neatly on the table between herself and Jason. A creased photograph, a comb, a mirror, and a silver, heart-shaped locket inlaid with sapphires. Jason eyes them greedily. He licks his lips. “Your personal effects,” says Lydia. “As requested.”
Jason can’t help himself. He lunges across the table and there’s a loud clang as his steel chains hold him back. He snarls in frustration.
“You see, Jason,” says Lydia, unmoved, “I always keep my word. If you keep yours, there’s a lot that I can do for you.” Jason doesn’t answer, but stares at her, seething, his eyes fierce behind that matted curtain of hair. “Now tell me,” says Lydia, “what is the significance of these items to you?”
Again, Jason remains silent. Lydia nods and turns her head slightly towards the observation window without actually looking at it. A moment later, a fire alarm bursts into life, filling the room with an unbearable cacophony. Lydia doesn’t flinch. She is expecting it. But Jason jerks upright in his chair, his wild eyes flying straight to the silver locket.
Lydia holds up one hand, and the alarm ceases immediately. “Thank you, Jason,” she says, with a small smile. He looks confused and furious. “Upon hearing an alarm,” Lydia explains, “a person will usually look to the thing most important to them. Like a loved one,” she reaches out and picks up the locket, “or a prized possession. So tell me.” She meets his burning gaze and dangles the locket in the air by its silver chain. “Why is this so important to you?”
Jason stares at the locket as it swings lazily back and forth, jewels glimmering and dancing even in this harsh, artificial light. He looks transfixed. “It was my mother’s,” he says finally.
“Was?” says Lydia. “Is your mother gone?”
“She’s…” Jason grits his teeth. “She’s in the hospital.”
“Why is she in the hospital?” asks Lydia. Jason doesn’t answer. He seems to be lost in his own thoughts. “She fell down the stairs, didn’t she, Jason?” Lydia prompts, gently.
“Yes,” says Jason quietly. “While I was in here.”
“She used to visit you in here, didn’t she?” asks Lydia. Her voice is quiet, warm, empathetic.
“Yes,” says Jason. “But she can’t now.”
“Tell me why this locket means so much to you,” says Lydia, placing it gently down on the table and pushing it towards him. Within his reach. Hesitantly, he reaches out and takes it, holds it, runs his fingers over it. Just for a second, Lydia sees Jason Devere’s mask slip, and there is a completely different man sitting across from her. But then just as quickly the other side of him is back. “Why does it mean so much to you, Jason?” Lydia asks again.
“It just does,” says Jason, flatly. Lydia half turns towards the window again, and within seconds the two guards burst into the room, making straight for Jason and slamming his face down on the table, his arms pinned behind his back. “Get off me!” He growls. One of the guards wrenches the locket from his shaking fingers and throws it back to Lydia. “Give it back,” Jason spits, resisting his captors with all of his might even though it is hopeless.
“That’s enough,” says Lydia calmly, and the guards immediately release Jason. “Thank you.” They leave the room again without a word.
“You’re a fucking sadist,” Jason growls, chains clinking as he wipes saliva from his face.
“And you’re a murderer,” Lydia retorts. “So I guess neither of us is going to heaven.”
“Why did you do that?” Jason demands, slamming his manacles on the table.
“Because you weren’t cooperating,” Lydia replies, calmly. “Look Jason, this isn’t complicated. Give me what I want and you get what you want too. It’s not a trick.”
“I don’t know what you want from me!”
“I want to know why you are the way you are,” says Lydia.
“How can I answer that?” says Jason. “Can you answer it? Go on, try. Why are you the way you are?”
“That’s not how this works, Jason,” says Lydia, shaking her head. “I’m not here to answer your questions; you’re here to answer mine.”
Jason scours her with his eyes, the wolf sizing its prey, circling, formulating a new plan of attack. “What was the question again?” he asks, that familiar smirk creeping back onto his face.
“Why did you kill those people?” Lydia asks.
“Just something to do.” Jason shrugs. Lydia feels anger boil up inside of her, and is distantly aware that it has little to do with his stubbornness. Something about this man doesn’t make sense to her and she can’t figure out what it is, and it’s making her mad at herself. She knows that something about this whole situation is wrong, but can’t find the language to describe what it is. She’s aware of it only in the abstract, like a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t quite fit together properly.
“I swear to you, Jason,” she says, hotly, her own mask slipping, “you may think you’ve known torture in here but I can devise punishments worse than you can imagine. Mark my words if you don’t start talking, I will make your life hell.”
“I don’t know why I killed them,” says Jason, raising his voice. “I don’t know what made me do it. Why don’t you tell me? Huh?” He whips his chained hand in her direction. “You’re the shrink. You’re the expert. You tell me why I did it. Go on!”
“You don’t know?” says Lydia, incredulously. “You don’t know why you murdered all those people? You don’t remember? Do you have amnesia or something?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Why did you display their bodies like you did? Like some sick kind of art?” asks Lydia fiercely, leaning towards him.
For a second, Jason looks hurt. A deep hurt, like grief, and it takes Lydia by surprise. Then a second later he’s smiling, not the usual smile, but a bitter grimace of resignation. He sits back in his chair and fixes Lydia with a penetrating look. “Do you like art?”
“Do I like art?” She repeats the question incredulously.
“Do you?”
“Sure,” Lydia replies with a shrug. “I like art. Why, is that what this is all about to you? Do you think you’re an artist?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who’s interested in my work.”
“I’m interested in what makes a human being capable of doing what you did,” Lydia replies, coldly, “not to appreciate the aesthetics of torturing people.”
“If their deaths hadn’t been spectacular, would you be quite so interested?” There’s a calm, judgemental quality to his voice that Lydia resents. Is he judging me?
“Spectacular?” she says, mastering her anger. “Is that what you wanted people to think?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Don’t you remember?”
“I don’t know,” Jason repeats, forcefully. “Maybe I was on drugs or something.”
“No you weren’t, Jason,” says Lydia. “You weren’t on anything and even if you were, there are no drugs that can make a person do those things.”
“I honestly don’t know what to tell you,” says Jason, sitting back in his chair, suddenly calm. “It’s all a blank to me.”
“A blank?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Like when you wake up and can’t remember the dream you just had, even though you know you had it and you can sense it right there at the edges of your mind.”
“You’re saying these events are like a dream to you?” Lydia asks, watching him carefully.
“That’s right,” says Jason. “Like a dream I forgot a long time ago.”
There’s a long pause. Lydia is trying to decide whether she believes him or not. It doesn’t seem plausible, but Jason is so defiant, so utterly impervious to her questioning that it forces her to entertain the possibility that he might be telling the truth.
“Did you know any of the victims?” Lydia asks finally. “Before you killed them, I mean.”
“No,” Jason replies.
“Not one?” Lydia asks, a note of surprise in her voice.
“Not one.”
“Huh…” says Lydia softly, sitting back in her chair, her eyes fixed on him.
“Lemme ask you something,” says Jason quietly, leaning over the table. “D’ya ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
“You are being watched,” Lydia replies impatiently, gesturing to the window.
“Not me,” says Jason, “you. And not just here, anywhere. Everywhere. That feeling like there are always eyes on you.”
“You’re talking about a manifestation of self-doubt,” says Lydia. “Insecurities. I have no insecurities.”
“Oh, come on,” Jason grins, “everyone’s insecure about something.”
“If these are the games everybody warned me about,” says Lydia flatly, “they’ve clearly grossly overestimated you.”
“Funny thing to say,” says Jason, his eyes flashing with annoyance, “after everything I’ve accomplished.”
“Murder isn’t an accomplishment, Jason,” Lydia says, returning to her calm, patient persona.
“It’s made me famous, hasn’t it?”
“And is that all you want to be known for?”
“Out of my hands now, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s never too late to change,” says Lydia. “Never too late to start making amends, if you really want to.”
“How do you suggest I do that, locked up in here?” Jason asks defiantly, holding up his shackles.
“Well,” says Lydia thoughtfully, “if you did get out someday, what would you like to do?”
Jason considers the question for a moment. “I always wanted to be a teacher,” he says finally.
“Really?” Lydia asks, genuinely surprised.
“Yeah,” says Jason wistfully. “At a little school, someplace quiet. Wife. Two kids. One boy, one girl.”
“A normal life?”
“Yup,” Jason agrees. “A normal life.” He looks away, straggly hair hiding his face. “But the world didn’t want that for me.”
“So you believe in fate?” Lydia asks, curiously.
“I think we all have our parts to play,” Jason replies. “Don’t you?”
“I’ve never really considered it,” Lydia lies.
“You’re not as good a liar as you think you are,” says Jason, smirking.
“And you’re not half as smart as you think you are.”
“Yeah I believe in fate,” says Jason, sitting upright, suddenly animated. “And I’ll prove it to you as well.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“One day soon I’m going to ask a favour from you,” says Jason seriously. “A big one. And you’re gonna have to do it.”
“Oh I am, am I?” Lydia asks, her perfectly pencilled eyebrows raised. “Why is that?”
“Because you won’t have a choice,” he says, simply.
“We always have a choice, Jason.”
“You’ll see,” says Jason, the smug smirk spreading across his lips. Lydia feels a shiver run up her spine. “You won’t have a choice because you are who you are, and your impulse is to act.”
“Like yours is to kill?” asks Lydia, coolly.
“Some of us are born wolves,” says Jason, as though reading her mind. Lydia’s uneasiness grows. “I can’t help what I am.”
“So you’re a predator?” asks Lydia, scratching notes in her pad as she speaks.
“Naturally.”
“Do you prefer to prey on men or women?” Lydia asks, casually. “Or both the same?”
“It isn’t a sexual thing, darlin’,” says Jason with what is unmistakably a leer. Lydia obliges him by tucking her blonde hair behind her ear with those slender fingers.
“But you do like women?” she asks, looking him straight in the eye without flinching.
“Well yeah, but…”
“Ever had a girlfriend?” she asks quickly.
“Not exactly.” He frowns, retreating. “I had one, once.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Anna, her name was… is. We dated for a while, when we were kids. Eighteen, nineteen, I can’t remember, but we had a fun time. I took her to movies, to picnics, I treated her well. I did good by her, but then I…” he breaks away, shaken slightly, as if he was recalling a painful memory. “I broke up with her, got bored,” says Jason conclusively to himself as he goes to fold his arms, but the shackles prevent it. Lydia feels that familiar buzz of success in her chest. He’s rattled.
“How did she make you feel?” she asks to find no reply. “Did you love her?”
“None of your business,” says Jason flatly.
“Have you ever loved anyone? What about your parents?” asks Lydia. “You must love them?”
“What kinda dumbass question—”
“Did they hug you a lot? Your parents? When you were a kid?”
“Na, we weren’t like that.” Jason frowns. “I mean Mom, yeah, when we were little, I guess.”
“But not your father?”
Jason’s eyes narrow with suspicion. “Na, Dad was a hard man,” he says grimly, “’n he brought us up the same way.”
“You and Finley?” asks Lydia, with the casual air of somebody just helping the conversation along.
“Well I didn’t have any other brothers,” Jason snaps. “Are we nearly done?”
“Was your father a competitive man?”
“Yeah, he was,” Jason replies. “He used to tell us that winning was everything and losers were nothing.”
“What do you think he’d say if he could see you now?”
“I don’t give a damn what he’d say,” Jason shouts, whipping his chains against the floor with a crash, getting restless. “He’s gone, ain’t he?”
Lydia doesn’t answer; she just stares at him long and hard, and then lowers her eyes to jot down something in her notebook.
“What are you writing?” Jason demands, irritated.
“Just what I see,” Lydia replies, finishing the note before looking back up at him.
“Yeah?” says Jason, reclining in his seat, attempting to recover his lost swagger. “What do you see? Tell me what you’ve learned about the monster Jason Devere.”
“Okay,” Lydia says, calmly. “Your father taught you that the world was black and white, so when Finley died you thought he must blame you, that it was entirely your fault. You believe that you’re the reason he left and therefore why your memories of your mother are all of her being sad.”
“You don’t know shit,” Jason says casually, but Lydia sees the truth in his sad eyes.
“That’s why you got into trouble at school,” she presses on. “The bullying, the stealing, the drugs.”
“What’s your point?”
“You asked the question.”
“So you know everything there is to know about me, is that it?”
“Not everything. There’s still something you’re not telling me.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Lydia replies, shaking her head. “Whatever it was that made you snap and release all that bottled up emotion in the way you did.”
“You got me,” says Jason, applauding her with slow, sarcastic claps that echo around the room. “I have a deep, dark secret. Is that what you’re looking for? Is that what’ll help sell your little book?”
“Well?” says Lydia, folding her arms. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“Sure.”
“When?”
“When you do me that favour we talked about,” says Jason. He isn’t mad now, but he isn’t smirking either. He looks almost sad, Lydia thinks. “That’s the day you’ll have your answers.”
“And when will that be?” Lydia asks, impatiently.
“Soon.”