Latest Roleplays
”I am one in a row of specimens. It’s when I try to flutter out of line that He hates me. I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. But it’s the dead me He wants. He wants me living-but-dead.” – John Fowles
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Up near the ceiling, on the wall of a small office, a clock ticks. The sound reverberates through the roughly 10×12 room. At a small makeshift desk pressed up against the back wall sits the 4th Wahl. He has a phone in his hand, and he absent-mindedly fiddles with it to pass the time.
It isn’t the worst task he’s ever been assigned, babysitting a convicted murderer, but it’s not exactly fun either.
He starts lightly tapping on the desk, then looks up as he hears footsteps coming down the hall. He sits up straight and keeps his eyes on the open door, and waits.
After a few moments, a hand reaches around the side of the door and knocks on it. Seconds later, this is followed by Arthur Pleasant, who takes a couple of steps into the room, then stops.
“Nice office.”
Arthur looks around. There’s nothing but the desk and the clock. Nothing but white walls and an old linoleum tile floor.
“You decorate this place yourself?”
4th Wahl pushes his chair back and stands up, then walks over toward his visitor.
“You’re early.”
4th Wahl pushes past Arthur, who grunts but lets the unwanted physical contact slide. He turns and follows the big man through the open door and into the hall of the makeshift prison.
Arthur watches as the huge employee of the Best family walks purposefully down the hall. Up ahead a bright light can be seen shining from one side, the only light anywhere around. As they approach, they see the large plexiglass wall with steel bars ensconced.
Sitting in the middle of the cell, cross-legged, and staring at the two men as they walk into his field of vision, is Jeffrey James Roberts. He keeps his eyes trained on them both as they walk over to the locked door, saying nothing.
4th Wahl looks down at the two sets of keys on his belt loop and unhitches the carabiner from its perch. He selects a small bronze-colored key, with a small chip, set into it to make it near impossible to pick the lock. Looking up at Roberts, he inserts the key and turns it, and a clicking sound is made as the locking mechanism releases.
Arthur reaches out a hand as if to shake hands, and 4th Wahl looks at him like he fell out of a spaceship.
“I just wanted to say that you’ve been doing a great job.”
Arthur smiles, and 4th Wahl looks at him, then finally rolls his eyes and reaches his hand out, shaking the visitor’s hand.
He lets Pleasant inside, then takes several steps back.
“Don’t be too long. I’ll be right back.”
4th Wahl turns to leave and starts walking back down the hall to his little office. Reaching the door, he turns to enter and sighs, but just stands there. After a moment he finally walks back inside and sits down. He leans over, his elbows on his knees, and unlocks the screen on his phone. He scrolls through messages, reading as he goes. Nothing important. He sits up, finally, and looks around at the empty walls.
Surely He wouldn’t mind if he put SOMETHING on the walls. Anything to look at other than plain white painted cinderblocks.
As the thought crosses his mind, he stops and sits upright as he hears a noise.
It was faint, but a small clicking sound was there for a moment, then gone again.
He leaps to his feet and breaks out into a slight jog as he turns the corner through the doorway and heads back down the hall. He sees the light ahead of him and bursts into view of the cell, then turns and freezes in place.
Sitting in the middle of the cell, cross-legged, is Arthur Pleasant, and nobody else.
4th Wahl scrambles for his keys, pulls them off, and searches furiously for the correct key, but can’t find it. Frustrated, he goes through them again one by one, then a realization comes over his face. He looks back up and sees Arthur, still sitting, holding one hand up with a small bronze key in it, and smiling.
“Lose something?”
The color drains from 4th Wahl’s face.
“Oh fuuu—–”
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”You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” – Oscar Wilde
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I am the flail of God. Had you not created great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.
You can’t offend Him and escape justice. And justice comes in so many forms. You, David Noble… you, Conor Fuse…
My my how nice to see you both again.
I owe you both something, you see. I think both of you are pretty naive in the way you’re approaching things.
Couple of phonies, that’s what you two are.
I bet you’re feeling something like invincible these days, Fuse. We won’t talk about what it took for you to beat me and regain that shiny belt of yours. You and your new “friends”. I had to deal with that in my own way, the knowledge that if not for the actions of a couple of insignificant fossils, I would be World Champion today.
And how very fortunate for you, being plucked from your inevitable washing out in your Marauko Cup group, and dropped into mine. Let our World Champion fall so emphatically on his face so early?
No, we couldn’t have that. Couldn’t have that. It’s not in the plan, not the idea of any of this. Yes, I should be World Champion today. But, I can’t be that when what I am is this. I am the tool of retribution, not for your failures, but for your existence itself. I don’t like that either of you exists, and I want to wipe you from the face of the Earth.
And why should I give up my revenge? On behalf of what? Moral principles? And what of the higher order of things, in which evil deeds are punished? For a philosopher and ethicist, an act of revenge is bad, disgraceful, unethical, and illegal. But I ask: where is the punishment for evil? Who has it and grants access? The Gods, in which you do not believe? The great creator, which you decided to replace the gods with? Or maybe the law?
I know what evil is afraid of. Not your ethics, not your preaching or moral treaties on the life of dignity. Evil is afraid of pain, mutilation, suffering and at the end of the day, death. The dog howls when it is badly wounded. Writhing on the ground and growls, watching the blood flow from its veins and arteries, seeing the bone that sticks out from a stump, watching its guts escape its open belly, feeling the cold as death is about to take them.
Then and only then will evil begin to beg…. Have mercy! I regret my sins! I’ll be good, I swear! Just save me, do not let me waste away! But I am not the evil one. I’m not the one who created me. You are. You and all who are like you. And yes, I know the way to fight true evil. When evil seeks to further harm me… inflict pain. Anticipate them. It’s best when they have already forgotten when they feel safe. Then pay them in double. In triple. An eye for an eye? No. Both eyes for an eye. A tooth for a tooth? No. All their teeth for a tooth.
I will repay your evil. I will make it wail in pain, howling until your eyes pop from their sockets. And then, you can look under your feet and boldly declare that what is there cannot endanger anyone, cannot hurt anyone. How can anyone be a danger when they have no eyes? How can someone hurt when they have no hands? They can only wait until they bleed to death.
There’s a beast inside me. And that’s not a metaphor. There’s a literal beast inside me. Right now, he’s howling and wildly feasting as he rampages. For some reason or another, he seems to have the power to negate wounds. Not the power to heal them or to recover but to negate. The reason he’s able to do this isn’t totally unrelated to the circumstances of my birth and of my upbringing, probably. It’s not unrelated to the suffering I’ve had to bear all these years.
The beast is a manifestation of something within me. I still don’t know what that something is, but if He commands me to stand, then I can’t not stand – just like if He negates my wounds, then my wounds have no choice but to disappear.
I envy the two of you, obviously. I envy your freedom, not that I deserve it myself. But I can’t only hate you because I want to be you. You, David Noble, are free to come and go as you choose. You Conor Fuse, walking around with a championship I was just a few moments from. But envy and hate are intertwined. They are enhanced by the other. It is an endless loop that cannot be contained. The chain reaction has overtaken me, and now all that flashes through my mind are the myriad methods I could use to end your pitiful, shallow lives.
No friendly competition will this be.
No, that ship has unfortunately sailed.
Turns out your freedom is a fucking farce. It’s a joke.
You think you can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. But when you have all these things, you’re still not satisfied. You realize happiness is not simply having your material needs met. Thus, society sets up for you a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment.
Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, you spend your short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives you the feeling that you have achieved something in your lives, but in reality, you have sacrificed everything. You can no longer see, hear, act, feel or think for yourselves. Everything you do is dictated by whether a thing can get you social gains. In the end, you’ve spent your lives following other people’s demands and never lived a life of your own.
How different is this from the life of a prisoner?
This I promise you and everyone else like you listening to these words. Those plastic cuffs won’t protect you from me forever. Snide comments waving away the threat I pose will not save you.
I have been emboldened by my newfound success, and I think it’s time I take the next step. I will address the past, and then I will address the present.
I will bring the punishment deserved.
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”The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.” – G.K. Chesterton
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The heavy door to the parking garage clicks open, and Detective Rona Callaway walks through, her shoes clacking along the cement floor.
It’s late, nearly 1 am, another long day.
She sighs and puffs a tuft of hair from her face as she walks down the row of cars. She reaches into her handbag and pulls out a set of keys, looking back up as she reaches her car. The car, a 2016 Toyota Prius, all that she can afford on a cop’s salary, is parked backward, and with a click of her key fob the headlights pop on and shine out into the aisle.
She thinks back over the day’s events. Two homicides, three burglaries, one busted drug transaction, and a partridge in a pear tree.
She shakes her head, looks back at her handbag as she approaches the driver’s side door, and stuffs her keys back inside. Opening the door, she swings her leg inside and plops down. She tosses the bag onto the passenger’s seat, then looks up. As she does so, she hears a clicking sound and freezes in place.
She’s been a police officer for almost 20 years, a detective for nearly 10, and she knows the distinctive sound of a gun’s hammer quite well.
Looking in the mirror, she sees a shadow in the back seat and a Remington Huntsman rifle raised and pointed at the back of her head. The light from the scope shines into a point on the nape of her neck, and she closes her eyes, squeezes them tight, then opens them again, terrified.
“Good evening, Detective.”
She slowly blows air past her lips.
“Hi, Jeffrey.”
She can’t see his face clearly, but she knows the voice, and she hears the distinct chuckle.
“Boy how I’ve missed you, Detective Callaway. I’ve missed you oh so very much. This is, how would you say…. Fortuitous? Yes, fortuitous for me, maybe not so much for you, now that I think of it.”
“What do you want, Jeff?” she replies, steeling herself.
“Have you forgotten?”, he asked, questioningly.
She keeps her eyes focused on what she can see of his face in the rear-view mirror.
“Forgotten what?”
“Oh..” he says. “You know. Don’t you remember? Oh, I’ve missed our little chats, Rona darling. I’ve missed them very much. I have new friends, but it’s always good to touch base with the people who were there with you in the beginning, or the end. I suppose it’s all in how you look at it.”
She sighs again. “I remember you talking way too much. I do remember that.”
He grunts in annoyance.
“Do you remember what I asked you that night in the woods? Do you remember what I said to you… in the woods??”
She doesn’t respond, and he continues.
“I said, maybe we’d meet again, maybe we could go hunting together sometime. Remember that?”
No response.
He bellows in a thunderous voice. “REMEMBER?”
She closes her eyes, then opens, and breathes deeply again.
“I remember.”
He chuckles again.
“Good. That’s good. Well, it’s your lucky day, my dear. Sometime just became… now.”
She tightens her grip on the steering wheel, knuckles turning white. “You gonna shoot me, Jeff? Is that what this is all about?”
“All in good time, Detective. All in good time. First, I think we need to go for a little drive. The backseat of a cop’s old Prius is no place for us to have our first date, is it? So tawdry and demeaning. No, I’d like to take a little walk with you… in the woods.”
No response, as she’s too scared to speak.
“DRIVE.”
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”Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.” – Anais Nin