Using a napkin, Mallory picked up the cards, holding only the edges. He removed the rubber band, let it drop, then carefully laid out each of the cards, left to right, along the dining room table. Taped to one card was a creased Daily News clipping. Above it, in the familiar, cramped handwriting, was written:
To complete your collection.
Mallory unfolded and held the clipping so they both could see. It concerned Will Hill and featured a photo of Will’s father and mother, looking dazed, drained, lost. Across their foreheads a Roman numeral had been written:
I
“The Hills are Level One?” Gunner asked. “Does that mean he killed them? … They’re dead?”
Mallory searched his notes quickly, moved to the phone, punched in a number. “Mr. Hill, sorry to wake you, sir … This is Detective Mallory … I am perfectly aware of the time, sir, but we’ve just received … we needed to confirm you and your wife were okay … Good. I’m sending a couple of uniforms over to keep an eye out … Actually, sir, I think it is necessary, and I’m not offering a choice here.” He hung up, then dialed another number. “Detective Mallory, Manhattan Special Cases, I need to speak with the C.O. on duty. Thanks” When the C.O. came on, he explained quickly the veiled threat, requested uniforms at the Hill apartment, and thanked the C.O.
He rejoined Gunner, who was flipping through the last of the cards. “He’s schooling us here, I think,” Gunner offered.
“Schooling us?”
“Lecturing, laying out his manifesto or something.”
“Bring it on; maybe we’ll get a handle on this guy.”
Betrayal. It is in every facet of your delightfully deranged culture. Drunk college girls flash their breasts for anonymous infamy. The pop celebrity reveals gay tendencies; he beds a married man, she marries a red neck, shaves her head, endangers infants, all to further fame.
Rich kids make sex videos to launch their pointless careers. Amateurs turn their intimacy into bad internet porn, part of their own pitiful grab for fame, or at least notoriety. Olympians and low-level starlets do the same in magazines to extend their brief time in the spotlight. Remember when all we needed was love?
Executives blow thousands of dollars on lap dances, sealing multi-million dollar deals doing so. Wild animals are kept as house pets. Family reunions end in gunfire. Mothers drown, burn, or starve their children. Men stare into their computers, lying about themselves in hopes of meeting underage girls for sex. Every variety of pain, degradation, humiliation, and domination is available to anyone who cares to find it. The world used to make us work so much harder to destroy ourselves.
Ruthless men get richer writing books about how to screw colleagues for profit. Entire investment companies work to wrestle money away from their middle class clientele. See the gory glory of the royal scam.
Politicians toil to reverse environmental laws meant to preserve what little of this planet we have left, rape the Bill of Rights, declare war under false pretenses, drive this once great country into deeper debt than all of its previous history combined, all to secure more power. John Kay was right; there sure is a monster on the loose…
And the news media savors it all. No shame too great, no disaster too horrible, no crime too heinous. They’ll deliver all the depravity, and sell advertising space alongside, promoting virility pills, breast and phallus enhancements, diet plans, and hair restoration treatments. All this deliciously distracting pressure to be beautiful: how we love it so. Because we’re not beautiful; we’re ugly, getting uglier, and completely lost.
Look at them all flocking to the mall, tattooing and piercing themselves, buying the newest fashions, the hottest trends, the latest DVD, MP3,PSP, the best of everything, blind to the truth of how worthless, how fleeting it all is. None of it has the soul our time did, and no one cares. Nations starve while they all willingly succumb to the mind-numbing, omnipotent call of Fame, Beauty, Sex, and Wealth.
All hail the new Four Horsemen.
The lowest common denominators have won. I would never doubt my Lord’s wisdom, but giving you over-stimulated, savagely self-centered cretins the honor of free choice? Some mysteries even I can’t fathom.
Yet, it is exactly this morbidly consistent human failure, this utter lack of moral integrity that keeps me working, isn’t it?
Please to meet you, hope you guess my name.
Amen.
I know you see me as an “alienated loser stuck in the past.” You have no idea of how far back my past actually extends.
I am not the sinner.
I’m the saint.
I’ve surrendered my very soul to the work I am called to do. Can you say the same of yourself?