Seering Into Evil...

His limp corpse started to grow cold. The echo of the gunshots dissipated after a minute. The fleeing birds and howl of wolves faded soon after. I couldn't stop staring down at him. The heavy revolver almost dropped out of my hand until I came back to reality and slipped it back in my pocket. The bundling storm of nerves causing jitter finally faded. All he was now was a corpse. Another slab of meat in the lonely cabin in the middle of a winter wilderness. The old crone was just another elderly that would have another funeral with people all gathered to make sure that the truth was actually that: that David Hotchins was dead. His dark and white patchy skin grew leathery and synthetic the more I stared at it and his withering hair became soaked in blood.

They wouldn't want to see him like this. Ma definitely wouldn't want to. But I do. So long I urged for this moment. This moment to see such a kind, benevolent man who helped thousands be left a stain on the floor. You wouldn't understand. Not yet at least. Maybe if I take you back to the beginning you’d understand why I had to do this. Why David Hotchins had to die.

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September 21. The first official day of fall. The school year was still starting and it was already becoming chilly in Blue Island. Guess that's what we get for being a suburb around the “Windy City”. It was a low-income town, a ‘trap’ others would call it. With taxes so high, that even if you could save enough after working your entire life at Mcdonald’s to find a way out, it would still swallow you whole. That’s where I grew up. I was an only child, single mother, but with a neighborhood full of lively but suspicious neighbors, I was right at home. I’m surprised I didn't get swallowed by the prison complex.

I was an “odd” kid. I tried to fit in, act normal, but some silky impulse told me otherwise and made me stand out like a welt on a sphynx cat. The old folks and wary parents were right. Ma called it the devil. Mrs. Chidubem, the only widow that was just as weird as I, said I was blessed by the Orishas. I didn't know what the hell to make of it. I thought the voices were some childhood delusion I had but after a while, I knew the truth after hearing a classmate make a comment on how Mrs. Shoemaker’s toes looked like goblin’s feet. Only he didn't say it out loud. I call it Seering. Seering into the minds of others and learning their darkest secrets.

It used to be just for spying on school crushes or nosing around my neighborhood. That changed when David Hotchins entered the neighborhood. From a town over, Harvey, Illinois, born and raised in that old broken downtown but somehow found a way out, a way to Harvard college, only to come back here and run for mayor for Blue Island. He’d made it a routine for him to stop by the neighborhood and check on the people. He’d host water parties in the summer with melted popsicles in the park and snowball fights in the winter. Sometimes, he’d help feed the homeless lying around town, even come along and offer lectures to the school kids.

We thought he was a god-given blessing. We thought he was actually making a difference in the town. I thought otherwise. Then again I was often looked at as the outsider of my neighborhood, rumors always circling about me. That I was crazy. That I was abused as a kid by my mother, maybe an ex of hers slapped me around too much and made me weird. They couldn't just accept the fact that their little secrets aren't safe in their heads anymore. That meant Hotchins' secrets weren't either.

I was taught to stay under the radar and remain to myself, no matter how much I tried to fit in. The other people reminded me of that rule every day. It took me ten years to take my Seering to lengths where I still didn't fit in, but I was the most important asset to the C.I.A. I got a glimpse of how important I could be when on one Thursday, on the first day of fall, David Hotchins came around. I’ll admit, I was excited alongside the other kids in the neighborhood to see him. He walked on the sidewalks like any normal person, no entourage, no news crews, just him by his lonesome. Even in the chill air, he looked decent. Ebony skinned with a shaved head and a bushy mustache to cover the constant disgust he had for us secretly. He always wore fine jackets, double-breasted, with some maroon or dark red underneath, with his black leather gloves and click-clacking shoes.

“How we doing Mrs. Jefferson?” he’d wave to an old woman and she’d show her dentures and he’d continue on his way. His way to who he really wanted to see. 

Her house was next to mine, a brick two-story that was old, but taken care of well by her father. Hotchins went by there as much as he could, act as if he would talk up a storm with her father, and mother, but in reality, came to see her. It was autumn, yes, not hot and revealing like summer, but it didn't matter to him. He loved to see his favorite girl.

Now I’ll admit, for twelve years old, Deshae was a little “fast” according to the neighborhood old ladies that would gossip about everybody. And she acted and dressed like it too. I used to pay no mind to that, I was too focused on trying to block out the constant buzzing in my head from open minds with loud DMX and The Beatles. Even when it was chilly, she still wore nearly torn leggings, brown boots, and a simple hoodie with that white and blue glittery striped scarf. She was cute, what we called “Redboned”, caramel unlike chocolate like everyone else, with hazel eyes and long curly hair, nearly golden in the sunlight. She was a beautiful sight for some. Fast to others. I didn't realize she was wearing all that and the heavy makeup just for me. 

Made it even more painful years later when I found that out.

Hotchins always made a note to stop and stare a little too long at Deshae. To her scrawny, a little slow of a father, it was nothing, not even to her mother swooning over the Harvard grad that she was hoping would sweep her by her feet and take her away from this town. But I saw it. He was eyeing the only girl, the only person who paid me some mind without looking at me like some beast. And Hotchins was looking at her like a meal.

No matter how loud DMX could get, the buzzing in my ears formed into voices, loud but with a tiny echo to let me know that I was seering into people’s minds. I knew who I was into. Whoever I thought of or paid enough attention to that’s where I would be seering into.  I just didn't expect to hear what no child should hear from Hotchins.

It was... life-changing to say the least. Funny how that works. A person’s inner voice doesn't sound nowhere near as the one in real life. Hotchins was different. I would come to realize that that was just a tiny hint to his narcissism and inflated ego, but hey for now it was odd. Grotesque especially with the things he was thinking.

When he left, Deshae came over to my front porch and we’d talk like always. I could hold it in anymore. I had to tell her.

“I don't trust him,” I muttered.

“Who?” he grinned at me.

“David. The mayor. He’s scary. Don't go talking to him anymore.”

“I think you’re tripping a little bit, Journey,” Dashae raised an eyebrow. “My dad loves him, my mom is in love with him.”

“Don't tell me you are too.”

“What's not to like. He’s tall, wealthy, attractive-”

“A grown man.”

Dashae scoffed. “Too much of a man for you Journey?” she said. I didn't realize she was trying to make me jealous but when I sucked my teeth, she interpreted it as such. “Besides. Not enough men around here anyways. I need someone who...I don't know…”

“We literally have an algebra test Thursday. What are you on about?”

“He has a way with words...it's like…” she trailed off and stared into space.  My ears buzzed until her thoughts entered my mind and I could pinpoint the rest. Old conversations with her and him, somehow when they were alone, reverberated into my consciousness. I still remember his words. The way they seemed soft and warm, but sent cold fingers down my body.

“Dashae. You are not in love.”

“And you are not a weirdo,” she turned and stared at me. I was growing frustrated and went to slip back on my headphones when I yanked them back off again. I grabbed Dashae, looked her dead in the eyes, and said “He’s dangerous! Don't you see that?!”

She yanked away from me and stood growing irritated. “Look Journey. I don't know what it is with you! I didn't know this would affect you this much!”

“Of course it is! You're my friend. My best friend!”

I hit a nerve somehow with her. Her eyes fluttered and I swear I could hear her heart jump. “Only friends…?”

I stood. “Yea. you don't look at me like some...some demon or whatever. You’re cool.”

“I’m just cool to you huh?” she stood closer to me and she went off. “You know why I hang out with you? Maybe it's because you're the only boy who doesn't try to get my number and sneak in my window! Or maybe it's because when I’m bored I can be entertained by the freak kid who says he can read minds!”

I was too in my own feelings to hear the rest of what she was saying. I was slamming the door to my house before she could spit off more insults that I’ve heard a thousand times before. I wish I didn't. I wish I would have stayed out there, let her vent, and maybe she wouldn't have done what she did. If I was a better friend, I would have convinced her not to trust that bastard anymore than she already did. To mistrust him enough so that he didn't text her in the middle of the night and convince her to sneak out of her house and walk alone on the streets until a car came by and picked her up. Maybe then she’d still be with her family, would have gained the sense to focus on school more, got to college, maybe have a kid or two now. Not dead.

Say what you will about David Hotchins, but I knew after that day that it was him that did it. It was him that picked her up and did things to her I don't want to think about. They never found her. Her parents are still hoping, even though her dad is nearly dead from the chronic smoking he made into a habit, and her mother who is too depressed to even go back to church and spends her days still making flyers and posts about her daughter on Facebook. And me? I lost my best friend. And I was too small and too shunned to do anything about it then. Until now.

Having the power to seer allowed me to breeze by school with ease. Surprisingly not by cheating though. Somewhere along the way a man by the name of Striker(yes Striker) found me, knew I had abilities, and recruited me out of college in the Central Intelligence agency. Trained me in everything I know. That was until he died and the program was in, PSYOPS was compromised. I disappeared, intent with a new purpose to fulfill that I should have done a long time ago.

David Hotchins grabbed more girls too, this time more careful than the last. He was too well connected and rich with his elite friends that partook in the same shady human trafficking as he did.  He finally retired and decided to spend the rest of his days in Alaska. Out of all the places an old man like himself to go to? Alaska?

There would be no record of me being there, after all, I didn't use commercial flights. Like other silencers before me, I could go anywhere in the world and not even the CIA’s satellite in the sky would not be able to pinpoint me, even though it could be staring at me taking a dump on the Lincoln monument. It's easy to acquire a weapon. A filed revolver, that would be disposed of later. I needed a revolver. I wanted to feel every shock of recoil, every sniff of gunpowder, and all six gunshots penetrate the scum’s body.

We humans actually have twenty-two senses, not just four. There’s pressure, temperature, pain, touch, interoceptors, etc. I learned how to suppress certain ones in others to make it so nobody even knew I was right behind them, with a gun in hand, ready to end their lives. I didn't do that with Hotchins. He heard his cabin door open and felt the cold draft come in. Smelled the firewood and felt his spine shudder when he appeared with his rifle and found me, the little boy known as Journey, now a grown man, looking at him dead in the eyes, telling him, seering into his head to drop the gun and stand at attention.

I told him I knew about the others. I told him I knew about his friends. His old Harvard buddies and their little cult. Even the congressman he knew and how he liked to have a taste of little black girls, inside--and out.  I let it sink into his head that I knew that Deshae Brown, twelve years old, was raped and murdered by him and left to rot in some forest where she would never be found. The only thing he could do was smile.

Fine. It made the six shots in the revolver feel even better when I pulled the trigger.