The Market of Closed Mouths

     The television switched itself on sometime after midnight. No crackle, no warning, just the blue flicker bleeding through the room like cold aquarium light. A DVD menu rotated endlessly before finally settling on a song I should have recognised. That was the disturbing part. It moved through me with the familiarity of a forgotten favouritesong, something buried deep in childhood corridors and morphine dreams. But no, I couldn't remember it.

*I am here for you.*

The voice was soft, almost maternal.

*I am here for you.*

But it did not comfort me.

We were standing then in a market square somewhere in the north of England, one of those exhausted towns where the sky always resembles wet concrete and every building appears to have survived something catastrophic. I have always hated the north. Not openly. Quietly. Privately. The hatred comes from not understanding it.

The people there feel sewn together differently.

Not community exactly.

Something older.

As though generations never properly separated, but folded back into one another repeatedly until bloodlines became rope.

“It’s a strange place,” I said.

“To outsiders,” she answered.

The market had already closed. Metal shutters pulled down like eyelids over dead eyes. I wanted to buy baby clothes from a lonely stall at the edge of the square. Tiny snow suits. Little knitted matinee cardigans in pale cream wool. Ridiculous things for a life not even confirmed to exist.

She became irritated immediately.

“You’re embarrassing me,” she snapped. “It’s only suspected.”

Suspected.

As though pregnancy were a criminal allegation.

I bought them anyway.

The woman serving us looked vaguely like Bonnie Tyler after a lifetime spent smoking in seaside arcades. Her eyeliner had collapsed into the wrinkles beneath her eyes and her voice sounded dragged over gravel. She watched me carefully while folding the cardigan into tissue paper.

Almost pitying me.

“What was the atmosphere like?” you asked later.

Strained.

Like everyone present had already heard terrible news but agreed not to discuss it aloud.

I noticed the clothing first. Scarves. Long dark garments. Very little western fashion. The streets felt divided into invisible territories, each person watching the others without appearing to look directly at them. Even the silence carried suspicion.

Then came the restaurant.

She wanted pie and chips. Of course, I thought to myself.

I needed eastern food, something with heat, cardamom, chilli, saffron, anything alive enough to distract me from the dread collecting in my stomach.

The upstairs restaurant was full, so they sat me alone downstairs beside a broken drinks fridge humming like a swarm of wasps. The food was terrible. Greasy lamb drowned beneath sweet sauce. Wilted coriander.  Roti like damp paper.

On the bathroom door someone had pasted fake Louis Vuitton wallpaper. 

Counterfeit luxury in a room that smelled of shit.

That felt important somehow.

Did you find the building?

Yes.

Though building is the wrong word.

It looked more like a supermarket abandoned during civil collapse. Vast empty aisles. Grey flooring. Fluorescent lighting that buzzed overhead with insect energy. Somebody was showing me around but I no longer understood why. The place was sparse, freezing cold, stripped of identity.

Then I noticed the glass doors.

Huge expanses of them.

Outside stood young men with their faces covered. Scarves over mouths. Eyes bright with excitement. One waved a weapon carelessly while another fired upwards into the sky. The sound cracked through the air like God snapping a branch in half.

And they laughed.

That was the worst thing.

The laughter.

Not rage.

Not protest.

Joy.

Pure joy.

I remember walking downhill afterwards trying desperately to find a route home. Streets twisting into unfamiliar terraces. The daylight looked wrong, dimmed somehow, as though the entire town existed beneath smoked glass.

Then I saw him.

The Arab man.

Standing beside his wife.

“What were they doing?” you asked me.

He told me to go with him.

She was instructed to face the wall.

Quietly.

Obediently.

Like she already understood what came next.

I remember apologising to her.

Not for anything specific.

Just apologising in general.

For humanity perhaps.

For men.

For inevitability.

Then the song returned.

*I am here for you.*

Again and again.

Only this time the light he carried was fire.

Actual fire.

Held too close to my face.

Orange swallowing everything.

I told him to put it down.

He smiled as though I had misunderstood the purpose entirely.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to get out of here,” you told me later.

“And you?” I asked.

You shrugged.

“Does it matter where we are contained? Here? Our minds?”

Maybe not.

Perhaps the body is irrelevant once the corridors inside the mind begin locking themselves one by one.

But then you mentioned Hart Island.

The island of the unwanted dead.

Mass graves layered beneath thin soil and salt wind.

“A million lost souls,” you whispered. “And all of them will eventually connect themselves to you. Then you’ll break spiritually.”

Outside, somewhere beyond the room, I could hear the television still playing that impossible song.

The same line.

Over and over.

Waiting patiently.

I closed my eyes.

“No,” I said finally.

“I will not. I will not break spiritually. ”

Beyond The Carnival

“So this is the wedding dress?”

The assistant held it carefully from the silk hanger as though it were a body being lowered into a grave. White Gucci satin, impossibly expensive, impossibly pure. Tiny diamonds stitched along the neckline glimmered beneath the yellow lights of the changing room.

“But the groom?”

“Yes,” she smiled faintly. “Someone unexpected.”

The woman behind the counter looked uncomfortable.

“Well… congratulations.”

“Don’t worry,” the bride whispered, almost to herself. I  know what I'm doing. “

Outside, dusk collapsed into neon darkness.

The fairground was alive that night. Carousels spun violently beneath coloured lights. Children screamed on rusted rides while drunk men staggered between stalls carrying melted sugar on sticks and bottles of beer. Music cracked through old speakers, distorted and warped and very loud. Too loud.

She moved through the crowd slowly in the wedding dress, the train dragging through mud and cigarette ash. She knew what she was doing.

Then she saw them.

The sisters.

Huddled together at a tiny circular table near the edge of the carnival. They never separated. They never spoke to outsiders. People claimed they had invented their own language in childhood after surviving some unnamed horror inside the old mansion on the hill.

No one knew for certain. 

Their gowns were grotesquely beautiful. Towering silk structures ballooned around them like royal costumes from another century. Emeralds and rubies dripped from their necks in thick almost suffocating layers. Wherever they walked, the crowd parted instinctively.

No one looked directly at them for too long.

It was said if you listened carefully enough to their strange language, eventually your own thoughts began changing shape. People are afraid of strange, of not knowing,  and they were strange (...)

The wedding procession erupted through the carnival like a street theatre. Strangers clapped and cheered. Flowers were thrown high into the warm night air. The bride raised her hand, showing two tiny platinum wedding bands covered in diamonds.

Everyone celebrated.

But inside her mind something cold remained untouched.

Because the man she had married lived inside the decaying mansion beyond the carnival gates. And inside that house lived the silent sisters and his mother, a woman people described in whispers, no one said their names out loud, like they had some unknown  illness passed quietly between generations.

Best to stay away.

The mansion stood at the far edge of the coast road.

Palatial once.

Now dilapidated. 

Inside, the chandeliers still worked despite layers of dust thick as velvet. Ancient clocks ticked endlessly in different rooms. Curtains smelled of cigarettes and mould. 

She wandered the hallways alone carrying her shoes in one hand.

She would find the phone she'd hidden earlier that day, she would call him, he would come and take her out of here when the time was right.

Then she would find a room where she could sleep alone.

The telephone rang before she even reached the bedroom.

Sharp.

Sudden.

Waiting.

“Where are you? You married him? Now where will this take us?”

“Don’t worry,” she replied calmly. “I know what I’m doing.”

But even saying the words made her stomach twist. 

Because she really did not fully know anymore.

She removed the stained wedding dress slowly, stepping out of it like shedding skin. Dirt marked the hemline. One sleeve had torn during the celebration. Her long hair fell loose across her shoulders as she collapsed onto the enormous bed.

Sleep arrived instantly.

Heavy.

Drugged.

Downstairs, the groom returned home hours later.

Alone.

He had never been married before. In truth, he had barely known how to behave during the ceremony. He seemed confused by the entire ritual, as though marriage were merely another object someone had handed him to keep.

His elderly mother sat waiting in the kitchen beside a flickering lamp. 

She poured tea into a saucer.

He drank from it obediently.

“I don’t like her,” the old woman said.

Her voice was soft but poisonous.

“You have always been mine ever since you were born. Why do you need her?”

He stared blankly into the tea leaves gathering like drowning insects at the bottom.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just like her.”

The mother’s eyes narrowed.

“But I don’t understand why she wanted a wedding dress. I bought her beautiful rings. She is now my wife. Whatever that means. ”

Outside, wind rattled the ancient windows.

The old woman leaned closer.

“Well, get rid, son. Get rid.”

Silence settled between them.

“She will spoil everything.”

Upstairs, asleep beneath layers of dust and velvet darkness, the bride dreamed of the two sisters standing beside her bed speaking in their impossible language.

And for the first time… she understood every word.

The Second Act

 

     When you look at a photograph, what do you really see?

A smile perhaps. A face turned slightly toward the light. A family gathered shoulder to shoulder beneath a summer sky. A birthday candle. A wedding veil lifting in the wind. A child squinting into the sun.

But a photograph is never just a photograph.

It is evidence that somebody existed.

A single frozen second stolen innocently from  of a living soul. One tiny mechanical click capturing warmth, memory, heartbeat, breath. 

Behind every image is an entire universe invisible to the eye, griefs survived, private fears, hopes whispered at three in the morning, laughter echoing through kitchens, lovers entwined in darkness.

An entire lifetime balanced upon paper. Glowing on a screen. 

And then comes the predator.

The one who decides they possess the right to end that story.

To freeze the frame permanently.

To rip a soul violently from the arms of those who loved them and leave only photographs behind for others to stare at in disbelief. To play God with lives they never created.

Who does that?

What kind of creature looks upon innocence and feels resentment instead of tenderness?

Someone hollow.

Someone who stood outside warmth their entire life looking through the glass at the love inside belonging to someone else.

Someone who watched happiness the way the starving watch feasts they are denied.

Jealousy became the blood in their veins. Bitterness became the marrow.

They moved through life like a shadow in human form, collecting grievances, rehearsing injustices, convincing themselves the world owed them worship, attention, obedience. Even kindness offended them because kindness reminded them of what they could never truly become.

You removed from society the very people who cared for you.

Those who listened.

Those who helped.

Those who opened doors and offered love despite the warning signs curling beneath your skin like black smoke.

But it was never enough.

Nothing could ever be enough for something with a hole where the soul should have been.

So you remained in darkness.

Coiled there.

Quiet.

A snake in the undergrowth.

Anonymous and watchful, drifting beneath moonlight, desperate to be seen yet terrified that anyone might truly see you at all. The anomaly hidden among ordinary people. A black soul crossing paths with innocence.

And now the cracks are beginning.

Tiny fractures are showing in the carefully constructed masque.

Because secrets do not remain buried forever. They breathe beneath the surface. They wait in bottom drawers amongst the old sweaters. They gather dust in the back chambers of the mind beside the old nightmares and things best left alone.

Do you dare open them now?

Or are you frightened by what may crawl back out into the light?

Because light is coming.

Slowly.

Mercilessly.

Pouring through every crack in the performance.

The audience is no longer asleep. They were never truly sleeping,  just waiting with their eyes closed.

The curtains are beginning to sway. Soon they will swing open.

And somewhere beyond the stage lights waits the terrible moment every predator fears most:

the moment the masque finally slips.

Act One is over.

And the second act is about to start. 

I heard the bell.

So hurry, let's take our seats.

Mirror, mirror..

 

The queens arrived like a hallucination in sequins.

One moment the room was silent except for the low electrical hum of the refrigerator and the ancient ticking clock on the wall. Then suddenly the air ruptured with colour, noise, perfume, laughter. They spilled into the room as though they had stepped directly from a forgotten theatre stage abandoned sometime around 1964. Satin gowns dragged across the floorboards. Rhinestones caught the dim light. Their faces were immaculate beneath powders and paints that concealed every decade they had survived.

Tiny Fair remained stretched across the pale grey velvet sofa, unmoving, staring upward at a water stain spreading across the ceiling like an inkblot. Goddam. Fucking houses.

“Oh my god, look at you,” one of them laughed, cigarette burning between lacquered fingers. “Do something with yourself bitch. What is wrong with you?”

Beneath the couch her hand searched absently until it discovered a tall bottle of nail polish hidden in the dust and darkness. Pink. Ancient pink. Elizabeth Arden Blazer Pink. The glass bottle looked as though it had survived wars, divorces, overdoses, house fires and nervous breakdowns. The lid was cracked. The liquid inside had thickened with age but still clung to life stubbornly.

Like her.

She unscrewed it carefully and began painting her toenails.

The chemical smell filled her lungs instantly, transporting her backwards through decades she no longer trusted herself to remember correctly. Dance halls. Cheap perfume. Silver heels. Men with polished shoes and predatory smiles. Women smoking elegantly while dying internally.

An era that didn't belong to her.

The pink darkened slowly as air touched it.

Pink to crimson.

Youth to ruin.

“So dramatic,” another queen smirked, pouring herself gin before midday. “Hurry before it turns to blood entirely.”

Tiny Fair continued painting in silence.

Then fingers next.

The oldest queen watched her closely from an armchair near the window. She was clearly the one in charge. Her gown was emerald green velvet, her white hair sculpted perfectly into place as though even death itself would not dare disturb it.

“Tiny Fair,” she asked softly, “where did you go?”

The room quietened.

Even the laughter retreated into corners.

“Do you remember the lights?” the queen asked. “The music?”

Tiny did remember. With a memory that was not hers.

God, she remembered.

The lights had once felt heavenly. Golden spotlights pouring onto her skin while music swelled around her like ocean tides. There had been applause once. Desire. Names spoken lovingly. Entire rooms turning to look at her when she entered.

But memory was dangerous now.

To remember too deeply was to drown.

“That was another age,” she murmured eventually. “Things are different now.”

The queens exchanged glances filled with the kind of sadness only ageing survivors possess.

One wandered toward the kitchen.

“You have two coffee machines?”

Tiny nodded slowly.

“Which machine do you want coffee from right now?”

“The big one.”

It was absurd how seriously this question mattered.

The large machine hissed and groaned to life like some exhausted mechanical animal while Tiny examined the women around her. Their gowns remained pristine. Hair immaculate. Jewels glittering beneath soft yellow lamp light.

Meanwhile she felt as though she had been dragged beneath reality itself.

Frayed.

Worn thin.

“I don’t know how long this charade can continue,” she admitted quietly.

Nobody interrupted her.

“I feel like I was put through the machine…” she whispered. “And somehow emerged physically intact.”

Her fingers trembled slightly as she stared at the drying polish.

“But inside…”

She looked toward the mirror opposite the sofa.

Cracked.

Long ago shattered violently from corner to corner.

“My thoughts,” she continued, “my innermost feelings… they’re like that mirror. Too broken to repair.”

The queens remained motionless now.

Listening.

“But you remain visible in every shard.”

Outside, rain began tapping softly against the windows facing the sea.

Tiny Fair closed her eyes.

A lifetime spent searching for truths. For answers. For identity. Digging endlessly through memories like a grave robber clawing through wet earth hoping to uncover something still alive beneath it all.

And sometimes she had found herself briefly.

A glimpse.

A face.

A certainty.

Only for it to vanish once again beneath dark crashing waves before she could hold onto it.

The oldest queen finally approached her quietly with the coffee cup held between both hands.

“You survived,” she said simply.

Tiny Fair stared into the black surface of the coffee.

Did she?

Or had some essential part of her drowned years ago while the body continued wandering elegantly through rooms pretending to still be alive?

The queens resumed laughing eventually.

Music returned softly from an old radio somewhere deep in the apartment.

But Tiny Fair remained motionless upon the pale grey velvet sofa while the red polish dried like fresh wounds beneath the dim and failing light.

The Second Death

     The man on the Harley Davidson circled us slowly at first, the engine low and growling like an animal protecting its territory. The headlamp cut through the sea mist in pale slices. Behind him stretched an opening in the dunes, and beyond that, the ocean itself, black and endless.

Broken boats littered the shoreline and the water beyond it.

Not driftwood.

Not wreckage from storms.

Actual boats.

Fishing vessels split down the middle. Small sailboats overturned like dead insects. Rotting hulls half submerged, gently rocking in the tide as though something beneath the water  breathed against them. Their masts leaned at impossible angles. Some looked burned. Others looked abandoned in panic.

The Harley rider turned slowly toward us.

“Follow me.”

His voice was calm, amused.

And naturally, against all instinct, we obeyed.

The mansion appeared suddenly through the fog like an hallucination. Huge. White. Colonial architecture. Balconies and towering windows facing the sea as though the house itself worshipped the darkness rolling in from the horizon.

Beautiful from a distance.

But madness often is.

Inside, there were people everywhere.

Older men with expensive watches hanging loosely around stick like wrists. Women with faded glamour, lipstick bleeding into the lines around their mouths. Crystal glasses. Cigarette smoke. Laughter too loud to be genuine.

Nobody acknowledged our arrival at first.

Not one face turned.

We stood awkwardly near the doorway feeling like intruders who had wandered accidentally into the afterlife itself.

Then eventually a woman noticed us.

She laughed.

Soon the others joined her.

Not cruel exactly.

But entertained. Like children observing stray dogs attempting to sit at a dinner table.

I sat finally upon a velvet chair near the fireplace and immediately felt the springs collapse beneath me. The upholstery was torn open. Yellow foam bulged through the seams like exposed flesh. Everywhere I looked the mansion carried this same contradiction.

Grandeur collapsing quietly.

Gilded frames blackened with mould.

Paintings warped by salt damp.

Silver trays tarnished green.

The illusion of wealth rotting in plain sight.

The Harley rider approached carrying two drinks. "I'm David. "

Up close he was tired looking,  small in stature. Compact. Wiry. Curly silver-grey hair framing a face that had once undoubtedly been handsome. The type of man women forgive too much.

“You see,” he said, noticing me studying the furniture, “I do not replace any of this now.”

“Why not?”

He smiled.

“ There is no point. When I am gone, the children will only care about the structure. Nobody inherits sentiment.”

I told him he looked healthy. Strong. A man with years ahead of him still.

He laughed at that.

“I have already died. I am dead.”

The room seemed quieter suddenly.

Not silent.

Never silent.

The laughter continued elsewhere in pockets, glasses clinking softly, but around him there seemed to be a strange pressure in the air.

“I had five children. Maybe six, seven even.”

“You don’t know?”

“One loses count eventually.”

He stared toward the black ocean through the  windows.

“My last wife was very young. Beautiful. Too beautiful perhaps. She gave me two babies. There was jealousy. Arguments. Suspicion. Possession. You know how humans are when they begin confusing love with ownership.”

His fingers tapped slowly against the dirty glass.

“I shot myself with a shotgun one night, when we had been fighting, we were drunk, we had enjoyed some class A's also.”

No one nearby reacted.

As though they had heard this story hundreds of times already.

“I died. Left the body. Moved into the next dimension. Problem solved.”

“And?”

“And then I killed myself again.”

That sentence. What? Of course it made no sense. “You cannot die twice.”

His pale eyes met mine.

“Oh yes,” he whispered. “You can die many times.”

Outside the tide crashed violently against the skeletal boats.

He explained slowly, almost gently,  like a teacher speaking to a child unable to grasp mathematics.

“The first death removes the body. But the second death…” he leaned closer, “…the second death removes the lie.”

“What lie?”

“The person you believed yourself to be, when the body dies, consciousness remains exactly as it was. Arrogant men remain arrogant. Jealous men remain jealous. Violent men remain violent. Death does not cleanse anything. It merely strips away the disguise."

“You carry your sickness with you.”

The room is feeling colder.

     The people seated around us no longer seemed drunk or joyful. Their laughter had become mechanical somehow. Delayed. Hollow. Some stared into space, others started to wail like injured animals,  nobody noticed.

One woman near the piano had tears rolling down her cheeks while smiling broadly at absolutely nothing.

What the hell is this?

“What faith are you?” He asks.

“Kabbalah. Hinduism. Buddhism. Pieces of all of them.”

“Not Christianity?” He smirked faintly.

"Christianity should have been about conduct. Mercy. Protection. Kindness. Instead humans transformed it into theatre. Performance for frightened crowds. That is how I feel,  how I think. Christianity is an action."

The chandeliers flickered overhead.

For one brief second the lights dimmed enough that every face in the mansion appeared corpse-like. Hollowed eyes, teeth too big for the face, all smiling, but not actually smiling, just showing teeth. 

Then brightness returned,  dimmer than before. 

“What is the second death?” I asked quietly.

He stared directly at me now.

“The moment you realise you were never important. That you are but a grain of sand in a desert.”

That makes sense. To me.

“Your possessions gone. Your enemies continuing life without you. Your children eventually forgetting the sound of your voice. Your beautiful face collapsing into the soil. Your grudges becoming microscopic. No one cares. They will cry for 20 minutes then go eat the free buffet. ”

He smiled then.

Not kindly.

Wearily.

“I refused to accept this. Even after death I clung to my old identity. My house. My women. My anger. And so I destroyed myself again in the next world.”

“You committed suicide… spiritually?”

“In a sense.”

“And now?”

“Now I am returned here. To walk the Earth.”

“To haunt the house?”

“No,” he replied softly. “To understand it.”

The ocean outside roared like a starving Lion.

I suddenly noticed stains spreading across the mansion ceiling. Cracks travelling slowly through the walls. Salt erosion eating the foundations. The entire structure was decaying from within despite its magnificent exterior.

Like the people seated inside it. Slowly dying, but rapidly decaying.  That sweet smell of decay (...)

Like all of us.

The Harley rider stood slowly.

Every face turned toward him.

And for the first time since arriving, none of them were smiling.

“You fear death too much,” he said. “You should fear becoming trapped between deaths. For we have to die many times. Only when you can live through the final cycle of life's lessons without getting blood on your hands, or committing acts of darkness against the light do you get to rest peacefully. ”

The lights went out completely then. David and the Harley had disappeared and we were back on the ferry crossing the Hudson.

And somewhere out there, in a place no one has ever seen, is the grand mansion, out amongst the wrecked boats drifting in the black water, with something enormous and unknown moving beneath the surface.

And somewhere out there is David, riding his motorcycle in circles for all eternity. 

Dr Jimmy

The family called him gifted before he had ever earned the word.

Before the schools, before the academic failures,  before the white coat and the carefully rehearsed smile, there was a little boy sat at the centre of a warm kitchen while the women around him whispered prophecies into his ears like scripture. He was special. He was destined. He was brighter than the others. His siblings were ordinary furniture in the room, but Jimmy, little Jimmy, was spoken about as though the world itself would one day kneel before him.

Children believe what they are fed repeatedly.

Some are fed love.

Others are fed poison and impossibility.

By adolescence, Dr Jimmy had developed the strange stillness of a child who no longer sees other human beings as equals. There was already contempt in him then, a quiet reptilian contempt hidden beneath politeness. Teachers were fools who failed to recognise genius. Friends were useful until they were not. Family members existed only in relation to how they reflected upon him.

When he failed, and he often failed despite the mythology surrounding him, the responsibility could never be his own. Failure was theft. Sabotage. Envy. Conspiracy. Lesser people holding back a superior mind.

The terrifying thing about people like Jimmy is not rage.

It is the absence of visible rage.

The truly dangerous ones do not scream in public. They do not smash glasses in restaurants or beat walls with their fists. No.

 They cultivate coldness. They become students of appearance. They learn that calmness disarms suspicion. So they walk slowly. Speak softly. Smile carefully. They disappear into the background, become churchgoers, community men. They create a shell so polished that nobody notices the furnace sealed inside.

Inside him lived an ancient fury.

Not explosive fury.

Stored fury.

Compressed fury.

The fury of a man who believed the universe owed him worship and who quietly resented every living thing that failed to provide it.

His siblings became targets long before they understood they were in a war. Jimmy could not tolerate equals because equals threatened the grand architecture of delusion he had spent his life constructing. So he reduced them psychologically. 

One sibling was “unstable.” Another “jealous.” Another “not very bright.” He whispered different stories into different ears, creating invisible fences between people so they would never compare notes.

That was one of his greatest talents.

Division.

He understood early that isolated people are controllable people. Keep everyone separated and no collective truth can form. One person questions him and they are dismissed as bitter. Two people compare stories and suddenly patterns emerge. Jimmy could never allow patterns to emerge.

So he triangulated relentlessly.

A quiet comment here.

A lie there.

A concerned expression.

A warning not to trust somebody.

A fabricated insult.

A performance of victimhood.

And all the while he remained composed, the exhausted saint surrounded by difficult people who simply failed to appreciate him.

Pathological liars are fascinating creatures because they lie even when the truth would suffice. Jimmy lied the way other men breathe. Not always for gain. Sometimes merely for stimulation. Sometimes because reality itself felt insulting to him. Ordinary life could not contain the size of his internal fantasy. So he rewrote events constantly, editing history in real time until he became simultaneously hero, martyr, genius and persecuted victim.

He lived off people with the entitlement of royalty.

Money.

Time.

Energy.

Homes.

Forgiveness.

He consumed human beings like fuel while privately despising them for being weak enough to give. Every kindness offered to him became evidence not of love but of superiority. In his mind, generosity from others proved they existed beneath him.

And beneath it all sat the thing he concealed most carefully.

His hatred of women.

Not ordinary resentment.

Not bitterness.

Hatred.

Visceral hatred.

The kind forged in the strange contradiction of being worshipped by women while simultaneously despising them for their emotional power over him. The women in his childhood built the false god, and later he punished women endlessly for believing in him. Every woman became either a servant to validate him or an enemy to destroy. He could mimic affection flawlessly, but intimacy enraged him because intimacy threatened exposure.

Women eventually saw behind the mask.

And when they did, the rage surfaced.

Not immediately.

Never immediately.

Predators like Jimmy do not erupt without calculation. They withdraw first. They study. They punish subtly. Psychological starvation. Gaslighting. Humiliation disguised as concern. Tiny invisible cuts to identity and sanity. They enjoy confusion because confusion restores control.

And somewhere deep within him, hidden beneath the calm exterior and the measured voice, was the catastrophic belief shared by many psychopaths:

That other people are not entirely real.

Not as real as him.

Not as important.

Not as human.

Once a person reaches that psychological territory, murder no longer feels like murder to them. It feels like correction. Erasure. Removal of an obstacle. The final act in maintaining the fantasy kingdom inside their own mind.

That is what frightens people when they encounter men like Dr Jimmy.

Not the violence itself.

But the coldness preceding it.

The ability to discuss weather while harbouring annihilation.

To shake hands while imagining death.

To smile while despising every soul in the room.

And perhaps the darkest truth of all is this:

Many people saw fragments of the monster over the years.

But monsters wrapped in intelligence and civility are often protected by society itself.

Because people would rather doubt the wounded than confront the possibility that evil can sit calmly at the dinner table smiling and speaking softly.

And he's about to lose his grip, for he has lost control.