Sins of The Father

What’s the point of being superhuman, of trying to make the world a better place if someone out there is counteracting my work? I’d guessed there were others like me out there doing what I do. I was naïve to think they would all have humanities best interests in mind.

            I hide in the home of a climate change activist. She’s asleep in her bed, next to her boyfriend. They don’t know what’s coming. I use chloroform on both, then inject a sedative that will knock them out for a few hours. I don’t want them to witness what’s going to happen.

            Their home is covered in posters about how humanity has altered the world. Comparisons of the Amazon Rainforest over the years are pinned alongside photos of the activist smiling in a fluorescent jacket as she picks litter at the beach. The house is a new build fitted with insulated walls and windows. It’s a cosy place because being green is presumably expensive. I noticed recycling sorting bins outside.

            I spend my days deprogramming violent people so that they cannot hurt others. Now I know there’s another person like me who drains good people of their values to take their hope from the world.

            Why? He’s like me. I suppose the way our powers manifest is subject to our beliefs.

            I’m patient. I wait behind the door thinking about my girlfriend Billie. She’s just one of the reasons I need this to go well.

            I hear creaking downstairs. Most would dismiss it as the natural sounds of the house. Some would think it’s a ghost. I know it means a man just picked the lock on the back door and is moving through the house.

            Silence for a while. He’s cursing himself that he made any noise at all. He’s hoping that he didn’t wake the homeowners. No chance there.

            He stands in the hallway. I see his shadow across the room. He waits. Something inside him probably senses me.

            I breathe shallow breaths. It’s a skill I’ve perfected over years of hunting monsters. Murderers, rapists, fascists, and thugs. It’s my life’s work to diminish them.

            He’s here to undo things like that. He works for hatred. The woman in the bed is everything he despises. She’s intelligent, articulate and she’s changing the world. I hate myself for sedating her. It’s a violation. Exactly the kind of thing she speaks out about.

            He takes a step into the room. I see the shadow move but I can’t hear a sound. I need him further into the room so that I can use the same chloroform and sedative combo to deal with him.

            “What the fuck is that smell?” He asks.

            Smell? Do I smell of something?

            The chloroform.

            He swings the door away. It creaks. My hand shoots towards his face. He has his own rag. I duck under his counterattack, years of martial arts practice kicking in. He’s fast. He drops his rag, grabs my wrist, and punches the inside of my elbow, trying to bend my arm back on me.

            I kick him in the balls.

            “Fuck you,” he says. “Race traitor.”

            I bite his arm. He recoils, letting me go. I punch him in the throat. He coughs, holding his neck. I trip him back into the hallway. He slams into the landing with a noise that would wake anyone that wasn’t sedated.

            He lands a punch on my chin. I still have the rag in my hand. He tries to knee me in the privates but I’m kneeling on his chest. I get my weight on his arms and force them down. He tries to scream. I have the rag on his face before he gets out a second moment of screaming.

            I hope the neighbours didn’t hear it. He shakes his head, trying to escape the chloroform. His eyes roll as it takes effect. I get the needle that I’d stashed under the bed of the sleepers. I inject him after finding a vein in his arm.

            Now the real work begins. I’d felt his mind with every punch. Whenever our skin met, we were seeing the opposing ideologies. He’s a far right, climate change denier who thinks women should be seen and not heard. Guess who he voted for.

            He thought he’d been sly. He goes from state-to-state rendering advocates of gun control or equality into blank slates. Hank Blume is his most used alias. He’s one of those people who really likes a confederate flag. He’ll wax lyrical on message boards about Q Anon and he thinks climate change is a conspiracy to destroy the capitalist utopia of America.

            Somehow despite that he’s an intelligent man. At the very least he’s an excellent predator. He never mentions his targets on the message boards. He just celebrates after the fact. Sometimes he’s celebrating before news has broken.

            Hank is his real name I see. Blume is not. He moves around more than I do. He goes after mid-level targets. He likes to drain away the minds of people making big waves on a local level. People who only make the county papers. People who have a profile on Facebook but not Wikipedia.

            One by one he snuffs out the bright lights of progress. Because his daddy told him to? Seriously. I see an oppressive father. His dad was the kind of guy I meet a lot through my calling. He hit Hank. He hit Hank’s mother. He hit anyone who talked back. He was part of a white supremacist group and initiated the man I’m now draining before he could walk.

            Women never liked Hank. It was a mutual thing. He wasn’t good at the love and sweetness stuff. He’d never known it. His mother wasn’t a partner, she was a prisoner. He has convictions for violence against women. All in different states. Somehow each time he was tried as if it was a first offence. He would be in prison if the states communicated better about assault.

            He believes in the red, the white and the blue. Mostly the white. I feel sick when I learn that he can only achieve an erection when the Star-Spangled Banner is playing. This guy is beyond fucked up.

            Hank has never killed anyone. It shocks me and it doesn’t. He doesn’t have to kill people to remove them from the world any more than I do. We can take away a person’s memories and their predilections.

            He wants love but he destroys it every time. Whenever a woman shows him kindness, he lashes out physically or verbally. He’s been alone for years. His friends are users on the anonymous messaging boards where mass shooters are made.

            It all has to go. I take the memories, good and bad. He’s happy when he learns about police brutality against people of colour. He gets angry every time he reads about gay people getting married. He thinks of the church where he was raised. A church where half of the congregation had swastika tattoos.

            I take away the memories. I wipe Hank Clean. Tattoos that commemorate his hatred drip into his clothes.

            I feel the first rays of sunlight through the bedroom window. I have to go. They’ll wake up soon. I gather up the needles and the rags. I wipe surfaces clean of prints. I carry Hank over my shoulder. It’s a feat of strength only possible because I must blend with fitness obsessed, steroid enhanced neo-Nazis on a regular basis.

            I take the keys from Hank’s pocket and dump him in the back of his pickup. There’s no sign of his hatred on display. He wasn’t dumb enough to show off what he was. There are no confederate flags or Proud Boys bumper stickers. The only hint is the number 88 hidden within his licence plate. It’s a stupid reference to the eighth letter of the alphabet repeated in heil Hitler. It’s going to burn.

            I drive away from the house. Hopefully I didn’t leave any traces of what went on. They’ll have headaches but unless they find footprints or needle marks, they should be able to get on with their lives.

            Hank is going to hospital. They’ll determine his mental incompetence and he’ll hopefully end up in a care home. He’s a dribbling mess. He might recover some mental faculties over the years, the way a baby learns about the world. Maybe not.

            I watch him shrink in the rear-view mirror. Hank is gone.

            Fire covers the pickup. Smoke spirals into the blue sky. I pull out my phone.

            “Billie, can you come and pick me up when you get the chance. The job is done but I’m out in the middle of nowhere.”

            “Are you alright?” Her voice is full of concern.

            “Yeah, I’m fine. We had a little scuffle, but he wasn’t used to people who fight constantly. He’s done now. I’ll send you a link on google maps alright?”

            “Alright. Listen I’m not done with my shift yet so I can’t leave right now. Walk to a rest stop or a bar and I’ll pick you up there. I have to go. Love you, bye.”

            “I love you.” I hear the beeping as she hangs up.

            I start walking. Birds are singing in the trees that line the road around the ploughed field. It’s a beautiful day.