Victor’s phone dinged with another private message. Just as he expected, it was from CamaroChick19. He read it with great interest, but also a degree of confusion. He wasn’t certain what to make of it. For one thing, he still didn’t understand why this person he barely knew was trying to talk him out of his knockout game.
Why was she trying to talk him out of doing something he really wanted to do? He needed a breakout viral video and this could be it. Maybe somewhere deep down inside he knew she was right. Perhaps he shouldn't be acting so recklessly. Who was he kidding? He had poor impulse control. If he wanted to do something he did it. He accepted that about himself and he totally fucking owned it.
Was CamaroChick19 reacting out of her own benevolence? Was she just a good person who tried to help people do the right thing? The internet-savvy part of him wondered if this might be some kind of scam. Something like those Nigerian princes who were always asking you to help them get their funds out of their country. Yet if she was a scammer, why was she offering him encouragement and trying to keep him out of trouble? Scammers didn’t usually go out of their way for their victims. That part didn’t make any sense to him.
Victor clicked on the link to open her larger social media profile. It had been recently updated. It wasn't just a handful of pictures and no other content. There were consistent updates, comments from other social media users, and an extensive friends list. There were regular posts and shares. There were lists of things she liked, books she’d read, and movies she'd seen. She had to be a real person.
The username itself told him nothing. Victor rolled off the bed and went to his computer, bringing up the same social media site on his desktop, which would allow him access to more advanced tools than his phone would. He searched for CamaroChick19’s profile, then saved her profile picture to his hard drive. He went to Google, navigated to its image search engine, pasted the picture into the image search, and clicked the button.
In an amazingly short time Google began matching the picture with other places the exact same picture had been used on the internet. Victor found other social media accounts that used the same picture. Other than the CamaroChick19 account, all of the social media accounts using that picture had the same name attached to them.
Amanda Castle.
So he had a name now. A real name.
Victor clicked on one of the more popular social media accounts and found a wealth of information. There was an email address, a phone number, and a list of family members. There was also a wealth of other posts that provided more information about CamaroChick19, or Amanda, as he now knew her.
Victor clicked back and forth between the profile CamaroChick19 had used to contact him and the profile on the more popular social media site using her real name. He found no contradictory information, nothing to indicate that Amanda Castle and CamaroChick19 were not the same person. After an hour, he had reached one conclusion.
Amanda Castle and CamaroChick19 were indeed the same person.
Opening the messaging app, Victor banged out a reply to CamaroChick19. “I don’t know why you care if I do something crazy. It’s my ass if I get in trouble, not yours. I REALLY want to do this knockout game. If I get good footage, it could be my breakout video. It could be the start of something big. It could change my life.”
Victor sent the message, then sat back in his desk chair. His stomach growled and he recalled he hadn’t eaten in a while. He decided to go upstairs and find some dinner. What he found instead was Stanley sitting at the kitchen drinking a cup of Sanka while Clara finished getting her things together for their trip to the Cherokee casinos.
“Well,” Stanley said with the most malicious smile Victor had ever seen, “look what the cat dragged out the basement. A fucking sewer rat. Greasy black fur like a rat. Smells like shit. Yep, it’s a rat alright.”
Victor looked hard at Stanley. This wasn’t the day for the old man to be messing with him. People like his mother and Stanley saw him as weak, and he probably was by their standards. He’d been run over by adults his entire life. His mom, his dad, Stanley. He couldn’t recall a moment that an adult was ever nurturing or encouraging to him. Everything was always about what he’d done wrong or what a disappointment he was. One day he would show them. He would show them he was strong. He would show them strength like they’d never seen before.
They would be sorry.
“What you got to say for yourself, shit-rat? You coming up here to say goodbye before we go and gamble away your toy store earnings? I’m going to enjoy it too.”
Victor pulled his eyes away from Stanley’s soulless orbs and went to the refrigerator. He opened the door and leaned in, looking for something to eat, and trying to block the bad thoughts.
“You’re letting the cold out,” his mother said, tucking a few last things in her purse.
“It’s hard to look inside without letting the cold out,” Victor said. “You want me to look in without letting the cold out, get one with a glass door.”
She sighed loudly but didn’t comment.
“You’re about as big as that damn refrigerator,” Stanley said. “I can’t even see the thing for your big fat ass. You probably just ought to stay out of there and skip a meal.”
Victor raised up and shut the door. “I’ll find something later,” he said, heading back to the basement. He couldn’t handle their chatter now, couldn’t even handle the sight of them.
“You should buy some damn groceries for a change,” Stanley said. “You ever think what it costs to fucking feed something like you on a regular basis? It ain’t cheap, I can tell you that. And your poor ole mother on a fixed income.”
Victor felt his face turning red but he continued toward the basement door. Usually his defenses were better and the comments just rolled off him. He’d learned that over the course of his life. Today he was so distracted by everything else in his life—the job loss, the CamaroChick19 messages, planning a knockout game—that his force field was running at less than optimal power. Their jabs and comments were reaching him. He could feel the sting. The burn.
“What? You’re not going to kiss your mother goodbye?” Stanley asked. “What an ungrateful little bitch. Somebody should knock some respect into you. In the Navy they would have. Pussy like you wouldn’t have lasted. Somebody would have chucked you overboard like a dead cat.”
Victor paused and turned. “Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, Mommy,” Stanley mocked, locking a hate-filled gaze on Victor.
Victor had no idea why Stanley disliked him so strongly. It had been that way since the moment they met. Victor’s emotions were starting to get out of control. He went to the basement stairs and shut the door behind him. He stood completely still on the top step, taking deep breaths, and trying to blow out the rage building inside him. They continued to talk about him.
“I apologize for talking about the female privates there, Clara, but he really is a damn pussy,” Stanley said.
“I know,” Clara said. “I’ve said it myself. I don’t know what to do with the big dumb bastard. He can’t fend for himself. There’s something fucked up in his head. I think he came out with a lot of loose connections.”
Victor and his mother’s relationship had never been about love. It had been about manipulation, cruelty, and domination. He was aware the pregnancy resulting in his birth came about by accident. He was a mistake that caused his mother to make another mistake, marrying his father. Victor became the lifelong physical manifestation of her ruined life, her unattained dreams, her faded youth. She never let him forget that.
He listened to his mother and Stanley talk about him a little longer before they went out the back door. Even after it slammed behind them, Victor stood on the dark steps thinking about what he had heard. He had no champions in this world. Most days he didn't notice because it had always been that way. Some days though, when the entire world was closing in on him, he wondered what it would be like.
He heard feet on the back steps and the back door to the house was opened again. They must have forgotten something. With an irrational terror, Victor detected the scuff of penny loafers approaching the closed door to the basement. It was an old door, stained dark and worn by many fingers. The lock required a skeleton key that had been lost for as long as Victor could remember.
"Hey, Victor," came a voice through the keyhole. "I know you were still standing there listening to us, you sack of shit. You heard what your mother said. She thinks you’re worthless too. The best thing you could do is be gone when we get back. Leave town and never come back.”
Victor stood in the dark paralyzed with fear, hoping the door at the top the steps would not open. It didn't. Instead he heard faint metal-on-metal grating, then the click of the barrel bolt inside the kitchen being shut, locking Victor in the basement.
“Enjoy your weekend at home while I'm living it up with your mother and blowing your money."
Victor wasn’t certain how long he sat on the dark steps dwelling on his circumstances. Despite having heard the barrel bolt closing he tried the door anyway. It was indeed locked from the kitchen side. Victor was no stranger to navigating the steps in the darkness and effortlessly reached his bedroom. He clicked on the lights and looked around.
He certainly had enough soft drinks, energy drinks, and half-finished bottles of water to not die of dehydration. If he finished all those, there was always the laundry sink. Starvation was unlikely too. There was an extensive buffet of junk food laying around, and he was certain his refrigerator held enough thin, curling slices of dehydrated pizza that he could build an entire pie.
His basement room was below the grade of the surrounding yard. His room had small hopper windows that only opened to about eight inches. When Victor regarded himself in the mirror he was certain he was at least twice as thick as that. Despite not really needing to be out of the basement, being trapped there gnawed at him. He found his anxiety level increasing. He became even more frustrated and angry
For a change, Victor did not go online to find relief from his feelings. He opened a game and entered single player mode, seeking comfort in the familiarity. It brought the profound realization that this was probably as good as it would ever get for him. He would never find comfort and caring in the way other people did. He was not like them and never would be. The only question was where did that leave him? What did it make him? What was his place in this world?
He probably could have gotten out of the basement right then if he wanted to. He could have put his shoulder into the thin pine door and shattered it into kindling. The door between him and the upstairs represented more than that. At this moment it was a barrier between the inside world and outside world. It was the barrier between him and them. He would go through the barrier soon and he hoped the world was ready for it. Life would never be the same for him. Nor would it ever be the same for the world.
There would later be speculation about what happened. There would be experts who talked about underlying psychiatric issues and decades of emotional cruelty. They would talk about the failure of the system and the phrase slipped through the cracks would be used more than once. But it was this day that it changed, with the locking of the basement door. With that small thing, it was as if Victor’s composition changed pH, moving from alkaline to acid.
While the young man locked in the basement was the same Victor who had lived in the house his entire life, in some ways that Victor never existed again after that day. He might as well have died in that basement or disappeared just as Stanley had encouraged him to do. What came out when the barrier between basement and world was finally shattered was someone who had only existed previously as a simple user name for logging onto a gaming server.
It was DeathMerchant6o6o6.
Did anyone notice? Not likely. Perhaps Victor didn't even notice himself. All he knew was that when he left single player mode and turned off his gaming console he felt different.
He spun in his computer chair and looked around his room. He stopped at the pegboard with its assortment of metal hooks displaying the knives and weaponry that so fascinated him. He got up from the chair and picked up his favorite knife. It was not a particularly well-made knife but there was something about the handle and the long, jagged blade that appealed to him. Holding it gave a sense of completion to a person who did not always feel complete.
Victor laid down on his bed, still wearing his clothes and shoes. He rested the knife across his chest and closed his eyes. Tomorrow would be a new day.
Perhaps even a new life.