He has an empty smile, and a genuine laugh. He managed to hang on to that. In 40 years he’s managed to amount an impressive career, and he’s even made a name for himself in his field, psychology.
He goes to events, conferences, and recruitment meetings for the university to promote his program to potential students.
Known to be fair, encouraging, and well versed in most topics, he is the pinacle of what the university wants in their staff. A fundraisers hero.
Fame and fortune. That’s what they say he, or people like him seek when they commit such heinous crimes. And it wasn’t just one homicide, there’s tons of those everyday and almost nobody gives a shit.
This was an entire family. It’s ingrained in the local press, it even made the front page of the paper. They’ve probably been anticipating this story for months, hoping to write it for years. For the longest time it was a stack of notes in a dusty drawer. A reminder of the paper and the town’s unfinished business.
His picture up on a bulletin board next to Nixon, and Willie Nelson. Meanwhile the population skyrockets from 5,000 to 50,000 and continues growing. Meanwhile the only news around town is about what local governments and businesses are trying to promote, about what the Washington politicians are doing to destroy their way of life. A voice for the community.
The story has become a thing of myth. It was almost forgotten though.
You’ll probably see a bed & breakfast or mystery getaway open up, and tours stopping at the house that changed Smalltown forever. Just wait for it.
The famous psychopath “resurfaces” half a world away with a brand new name, living a life like your kids’ teacher. He won teacher of the year in the last 15 years. Everyone said he deserved it.
By the time he got the job he’d already become a man with no past.
A brilliant professor of pyschology, an area he’d been fascinated with his entire life, and a lover of all things, one of the original geeks or fanboys. He’d overcome so much to get there. In a different world he could’ve been a Nasa Scientist, or a science fiction writer, but he could never shake his obsession with scholarship and the human mind.
He was after truth.
The articles publication was an admission of defeat. The town had moved on. The family forgotten while a massive influx of new citizens changed its landscape forever. The memorial was only something friends of the family had told each other about, a gathering of nomadic worriers just barely about to pay off their mortgages. Some of them expecting grand children. The topic only came up when the coffee got cold and the biscuits were all eaten.
Some never wanted to know what happened. They never wanted to hear the rest of the story.
A few held out hope. They readied pitchforks and guns, eager to find and apprehend the bastard, or maybe something worse. By the time the story broke, it wasn’t about this family anymore, it was about justice.
The real story’s being ignored in favor of this “mystery” they’re telling that’ll turn into local mythology by the next generation. You’ll hear old wives tales about it. Your kids will talk about it when they’re drinking, or smoking weed, and they’ll dare each other, “let’s drive down there. I hear there’s a ghost.” For their parents it was the cemetery. People did that then. It was weird. It broke the monotony. In this town, it was a right of passage.
It was disturbing, but nobody cared. They were too busy puking their brains out, promising not to tell the coach. Most of the time because they couldn’t find anywhere else to party.
The real story, the final point of all of it isn’t much different, just a bit more nuanced. There aren’t really words to describe it, because sensible people avoid thinking about such things at all costs. It drives them mad. It reveals something about them they’d rather not know.
The best way to look at it: the boy always had potential. He would’ve been a great professor, or a great scholar in his own right. He was smart, driven, and articulate. But his father was better. He was always better. Even though his son was good, he wasn’t better. He was a regression. He would always be his father’s son, like Julian Lennon, Patrick Wayne, or Jakob Dylan. All artists in their own right. All talented.
But he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t be satisfied with his own work being less revered than his fathers. The idea was unthinkable. It haunted him.
Slowly, he developed a twitch. An uncontrollable sensation in his eye that reminded him he wasn’t always in control. A suggestion that maybe he didn’t see things correctly. That something was distorted.
He had to pay for greatness at the crossroads. He could never be compared to the previous version, it would be like a prequel trilogy that just didn’t quite match the expectations. It was a reality that drove him mad. His madness marked a rebirth for the town. The whole town baptized by his story.
He gave into it. He picked up a hunting rifle, the only appropriate weapon, and removed himself from conciousness. He wasn’t doing this. It was nature. It had to be this way. You want motive? Read Joseph Campbell instead of Freud. You want closure? Watch American Beauty instead of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Just don’t look for logic in the eyes of nature.
Some people are born with good genes, but they’re not fit for the environment they live in. Or they don’t play well with others around them. They remain a big cluster of potential energy. Never kinetic. Always wondering “what if?”
Ever see a wealthy man buy a brand new sports car and leave it on the lot? What would the dealership do? Let it sit there, taking up space, and not field questions about it to the rest of the customers? “Sorry, this one’s not for sale, and we can’t allow you to test drive it.” The only option is to call a tow truck. “Technically, this isn’t my car. I’ve sold it. I need it off the lot as soon as possible.”
When the tow truck comes, what’s the driver supposed to do? Let the car sit in his lot? Take it for a spin? It has an owner. In all likelihood the owner knows how to take better care of it than anyone, and maybe he does. The difference is that the car takes on no personality. The car knows nothing of wrongdoing, or action. The car has no will. It is an arbiter for man’s desires. A tool of homo-habilis to get somewhere quicker.
This isn’t the Twilight Zone though. This is real life.
That car was made to drive. Let it sit idly at the impound and someone’s bound to take it out for a spin. It’d be tragic not to. Word would spread of the car nobody cares about. It’d be a challenge to criminals to just “come and take it”.
That was him. The car. A vehicle. Momentarily devoid of will.
He had the process down. He had the brainpower. He would seize life, but he simply couldn’t take action. And it had nothing to do with his father. His father was a great man. He wanted the world for his son. He taught him to read, to reason, to question, to shoot. He taught him everything. The father had big plans for his son. A secret college fund, seed money to go anywhere after to try out any career in the world.
The world was his oyster.
The father had been so good his son never had a chance to “best” his father, to “conquer” him. They never did anything in competition with one another. Only in cooperation, and the son was always doing the tasks he wasn’t very good at. The tasks he was good at, the planning, the reasoning, the organizing, all of it was what the son was good at, but his father was better.
And the son couldn’t change his natural abilities.
It had nothing to do with his mother. She was a great woman, nurtured him to pursue his geeky interests, and loved every second of it.
It had nothing to do with his sister. She was a great girl, bright, excited, and envious of her older brother’s brilliance.
And so the town is left facing unanswerable questions: where did we go wrong? Why did it turn out like this? Who do we blame?
You didn’t. It just did. Irrelevant. Wrong answers. All of them.
These answers simply weren’t good enough. They had to be hidden in a conspiracy of willful ignorance against the truth.
Subconsciously the journalist couldn’t write anything else. The answer was on the tip of his fingers, but he could never say it. Nobody could.
Nobody wants to live in a world like that, especially not a jury. They agreed unanimously that he was insane. They simply couldn’t believe he had committed the act maliciously. How could he? He had the perfect family. It was a moment of insanity. He could be fixed.
“Not guilty” by reason of insanity.
He did but he didn’t. In the short term that meant he would go to a mental hospital to get care. Nobody expected him to make so many strides towards getting well so quickly. He immediately set about making something of himself.
He studied hard to get his GED. Listened to his doctors to find the source of his insanity and eviscerate it from his mind. It was a major breakthrough. The gowns, the drugs, the conversations, the support of the staff was all a part of it. It was the one in a million case where someone got better. The one that made it all worth while.
One flew over.
After so many years, they had made a productive citizen. They had proven that some people get better if they have the right attitude and the right people implementing treatment.
The world would be grateful.
If you met the man today, you’d be shocked at how likeable he’s become. He’s smart. He’s courteous. He has a purpose. Devoid of a past he sold to buy his future.
He’s the man with no past shaping the future of young minds. Slowly imparting his wisdom in one brilliant, digestable thought after another. But deep down he’s the same person. He remembers.
A street commemorates his family’s name, but it’s no longer his. He’s a bastard in this world. A runaway. A migrant. His prison wasn’t the courtroom or the mental hospital, those things he got. Those people in charge of him were brilliant like his father. His prison was the home he grew up in in Smalltown and the truth that he was no better than his father. And it simply wasn’t good enough for him.
If only he could get out of it. He would be remembered.
A cool breeze blows through the town now. The weather’s changing. 45,000 people must’ve brought a new climate. That old family’s home has been bulldozed. The wind shuffling dust along its grave, soon to be an apartment complex for all the new residents. Even if the man with no past came back, he’d never know where to look to find any evidence of the life he left behind.
