For the Joy
by Shannon Lee Martin
Copyright 2012 Shannon Lee Martin
Any similarities between persons, places or things, living, dead, or otherwise, is what it is.
* * *
“The first person I burned alive deserved it. I don’t know what to tell you about the rest. No good reason, really. It was like something sparked (Ha!) inside me the first time, like life was suddenly something completely different than anything I had ever known before. Perhaps it was all the rage I felt for what I found that bastard doing to my son, who knows? But you asked me did I like it, and I avoid the answer. Not intentionally.
“You wanna know how it made me feel to bind someone to a log buried in the dirt, pile straw around them, and douse man and grass in gasoline? You wanna know how I felt when they screamed that their eyes were burning from the gasoline, when they screamed even more as I lit the match that lit the piece of cardboard or whatever I had handy? I tell you, those screams were nothing compared to when a man or woman screams when their hair catches afire, when their skin melts and crackles and chars black and peels away from their bones. . . How did it make me feel?
“I didn’t like it. In fact, I didn’t care for it at all; I fucking loved it! And I’ll love it again, because you can’t keep me here, and you fucking know you can't. You've heard the rumors, and disbelieved every last one of them.
“Unless you kill me right here, right now, life will go on for me much as it did before you found me.” He lit another cigarette, and waved it around in the air like a firefly, taunting the Bounty Hunter driving the van.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. In two hours you'll be behind bars, but I don't see any point in arguing about it.”
You're the one that started asking the fucking questions, not me.”
“Yeah, well, it was my mistake. I don't want to hear your mouth again.”
“What, are you gonna come back here and gag me? I think not. You barely got me in this van to begin with, and I've already called your bluff on pulling the trigger once. Need I do it again?
The Bounty Hunter was silent. A little while passed, and the Bounty Hunter spoke again.
“How could you? How do people like you exist? If I hadn't ah caught you in the act, with that roll of toilet paper burning in your hand. . . How does a guy like you get up and look at yourself in the morning? There ain't no reason for that kinda shit. If I wasn't a law abidin' citizen, I would take you down a dirt road and shoot you myself,” he spat.
“You mean, if there wasn't a fat wad of cash in it for you takin' me all the way back to Arkansas, right? Because some Senator's paying a fat reward, right? I torched his niece, niece? It's all about the money for you, of course.” The man took the last drag off his cigarette, and stamped it out on the metal floor.
“Whatever.” More time passed. They were passing through a tunnel when the passenger in the cage spoke.
“You wanna know how it works? You wanna know what makes a guy like me tick?”
“Not particularly.”
“Really,” the man said. It wasn't a question. “Can I have your name, Bounty Hunter? Do you like that label?”
“I prefer Skip Tracer, if you don't mind. Names William. People call me Bill.”
“You prefer Skip Tracer, and yet, I've never skipped out on a bail. That makes you a Bounty Hunter, whether you like it or not, Billy.”
“Don't call me Billy. Bill. Get me?”
“Yeah. Bill. Got it. I meant no offense.” He tried to spread his hands, but the chains would allow them to only go so far.
“Right,” Bill growled.
“No, really, I don't like to be offensive. I generally try to get along with everybody I meet,” he said sincerely.
“You've got to be kidding me. You burn people alive, and you say you don't try to be offensive. Saying that, in my humble opinion, makes you even more offensive. God-damn!”
“I would explain myself to you, but I doubt you would understand, or even care. You think you're the first person that's ever caught me, don't you.”
Bill kinda looked at the prisoner for a minute in the rearview mirror. “Of course I am. If anyone else had caught you, you'd be in The System by now. What the fuck are you talking about?” He paused a bit before continuing. “Alright, alright! I admit it, I'm guilty, I'm curious. I can tell you're dying to tell me your psycho story back there, and if it will lead to eventually shutting you up in general, please, by all means, enlighten me, pardon the pun.” He almost chuckled, but he swallowed it at the last moment.
“Let me light another cigarette first. I appreciate you letting me keep these, by the way.” He pulled the thirty cent lighter from the cellophane, and took another Camel from the mostly full pack, lighting it with a satisfied sigh.
“Yeah, no problem,” Bill said, lighting a cigarette of his own. You never did tell me your name, by the way.”
“Doesn't matter what my name is; I can't really remember it anyway. So I gave myself a new name. I change it like my underwear, which isn't really as often as you'd imagine. You probably didn't need to know that.” Bill wrinkled his nose. “My name for the day is. . . Raoul.”
“You don't look like a Raoul.”
“What about Prometheus?”
“What about I call you Ray? You look like a Ray.”
“Ray? But I don't have crossed eyes, do I?”
“What?”
“I don't know. Nevermind. So you want to know about me. It doesn't much matter what I tell you, you won't remember it tomorrow anyway.”
“Why's that?”
“Don't know. All the times I've been captured and photographed, fingerprinted and booked, and have you heard one single story? Seen one single record? A picture? Even so much as a description? The papers call me The Torcherer. Every killer's got to have some kind of silly name, I guess. I think I'm the first one whose label is some kinda pun. Whatever.” He didn't say anything for awhile.
Bill had some obvious questions for Ray, and he knew that whatever story “The Torcherer” had was going to be another one of those, and he'd heard plenty. If only I hadn't asked him, “So how does it make you feel to burn people alive, you sick fuck?” If it hadn't been for the first thing “Ray” said in response to that, Bill wouldn't be asking any more questions. He wasn't a curious person by nature, but that didn't seem to matter.
“You said the first person deserved it. I thought you were going to tell me your story. Well? I'm listening.”
“Well, if you're gonna keep rolling your eyes at me every time I tell you the Plain Truth as I know it, I think I won't bother.”
"What do you expect me to do? Swallow that kinda bullshit whole without flinchin'? I'll try not to offended your tender feelings. I'm interested in hearing your story, sure, but if you're gonna whine every time my eyes say 'Yeah, right!' in the rearview mirror, then you can forget it. I just wanna know why the first one deserved it, is all. I'll try to suspended my disbelief when necessary. Will that do it?"
“Yeah. I was just fucking with you, anyway," Ray chuckled. “I was just thinking," he smiled.
“Fuck you," said Bill. Ray laughed, and lit another cigarette off the one he'd just finished.
“Well, I was a normal guy, you know, at one time. No weird shit, just ordinary shit happened to me. I had a wife and a son. Well, I worked steady somewhere, I can't remember where anymore, and I often came home late from being overworked on the second shift. I didn't get to spend much time with my family 'cept for weekends and holidays and such, and one particular night I was coming home late, as usual, and I walked in on a robbery. Walked in on a dead wife and a son who was in the process of being raped. I picked up something heavy, I don't know what it was, and snuck up behind the guy, you know? Knocke
d his ass out cold. I thought that, surely my son was fine, but. . ." Ray swallowed a lump in his throat.
“But what, Ray?"
“The fucker had a buck knife duck-taped to the side of his penis. I don't think I have to go into detail any more than that. I took the tape he was using, and bound him with it. Then I went out to the garage, and got some gasoline. The whole time I was doing it, I wasn't even thinking about what I was doing. I was going on automatic, you know? But I was determined. Didn't know what I had in mind, exactly, but I knew I was determined to do it, whatever it was.
“I doused him, doused the family, and then I sat in front the fucker and waited. He didn't wake up, so I kicked him until he did. Then I kicked him when he did. Then I poured gas over the whole house. I dragged that bastard out to the front yard, so the whole neighborhood could see. That was when it happened."
“When what happened?"
“I had just lit the guy, and the trail of gas I'd made back to the house was just getting to it's work, when that fucker looked me in the eyes. It was such a strange look, made even stranger by the fact that the man never flinched once when I was burning him. He was looking into my eyes so calmly, such haunted eyes. . . My mind had been in an emotional turmoil, as I'm sure you can imagine, but when I looked into that bastard's eyes as he lay there burning before my very eyes, I gradually began to feel calm. Even after his eyes had poured out of their sockets, it was like I could still feel him looking at me, you know?
“Believe it or not, I've never had any real impassioned emotions ever since then. Could be a lot of reasons for that, I know, but when you hear the rest of what I have to tell you, you'll wonder. Hell, I sometimes catch myself in a state of wonder for days, as I sit out in the woods somewhere and just stare up at the sky. I still have dreams about that guy's eyes, sometimes. The way he reacted to being burned alive wasn't natural. Believe me, I know. You might call me an expert." He winked at Bill in the mirror.
“Now you're being offensive back there again, Ray. Any more comments like that and I will gag you, story or no story. You got me?"
“Yeah, yeah, so you done interruptin' or what?"
“Yeah, yeah."
“You know, you're the first Bounty Hunter who hasn't taken me somewhere out of the way first and beaten me half to death.
“I always get caught in the act, you know." He looked for a reaction from Bill, and finding none, he continued. “Anyway, you're not as dumb as a lot of my captors have been. So back to my story.
“Life went on, but not as normal, and the quality of my life got steadily worse, as time went on, until I finally developed a philosophy. Ok. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll stop.
“First my memories before that night started fading, and I thought I'd lost my mind, until I realized I still remembered everything in crystal clear detail since then. I'd had to flee the town I'd met my wife in, because of the fire, and burning a man alive. I took some money out of the bank, and bought me a used car, and started roaming the roads, until I met little Jimmy Holmstead. He was a six-year-old boy, and there was nothing outwardly about him that made him stand out any more than anybody else. That's when it hit me for the first time. The Need!
“It hit me like a ton of bricks, and The Need! is the best way I can describe it. It wasn't really possession, which I don't believe in, and it wasn't a compulsion; it was a necessity. I didn't have to do it, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it so bad, I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I would look at other people, you know, to the right and the left of the boy, and nothing. But when I looked at him, the thought of burning him alive brought me such indescribable joy. . . I just can't describe it."
“Don't. I mean it. Don't. You're a sick fuck, you know that, don't you? Your type always goes for the insanity plea. The way I find myself actually believing you, I think your chances are good."
“You drip with sarcasm, but I understand where you're comin' from. I respect what you do, and some small, (very small) part of me wishes you could stop me. Unless you kill me, though, I can't do anything to help you. I'm all about self preservation, you understand," he winked.
“Trust me, if I thought I could get away with it, I would."
“But that's just it, my captor. You would. There's nothing I could do to stop you, and no one will miss me. It's a knack I have." He chuckled grimly.
“You just have a death wish. Keep on dreamin'."
“Oh well. Think what you want."
“Don't worry, I will."
“But as I was saying, that's the way it works. I'll break it down for you like this: I'm going along, minding my own business, and then it happens, and when it happens, I never miss my mark. I often get caught, and sometimes I even try to get caught, just to see if I can. Then, when I'm captured, as sometimes happens -- now this is the part you won't believe. . . until it happens to you.
“Hear me out! Ok, you don't have to believe me, you'll see for yourself soon enough. I'm gonna tell you how it happens, and when it happens to you -- for as long as you remember it, that is -- you'll, ah hell, nevermind about that. Fuck it. It doesn't matter. I'll just tell you how it is from my side of things. Alright. All I know is that eventually, I'll doze off, and when I wake up, I'll be somewhere else, and I won't know how I got there.
“Now, you wanna know how I know that you won't remember any of this? Simple: I'll remember you, and if I ever came up to you, you'd look at me with a strange, glazed look in your eye, kinda cock yer head at me, perhaps, like Michael Meyers, and that would be about it. Anyway, that's on the agenda for later in the day, or night, or whenever I go to sleep. Something to do with my dreams, probably, but I'm no analyst. Just a hypothesis, well, maybe a theory, but --"
“You're startin' to babble back there, jerkoff, and frankly, it's getting on my fucking nerves. Do you mind giving it a rest for awhile? Thankee kindly."
There was silence again for a while, and at least five cigarettes for the both of them before either spoke again.
“I didn't choose to be like this, you know. I wish I could choose who I am, but I can't. The person I once was reels at the person that I am, but that person died a long time ago, and there's no going back. When I took the first innocent soul, my path was set, and I have a feeling, don't ask me how, that I've still got at least nine years left in me before it's my time. Like everything else about me, don't ask me how, or why, because I'm in the dark about it just as much as you are."
“You just want to get your name on this year's updated deck of Serial Killers. You want that pampered cell on Death Row, you want the book deals, you want the notoriety, the infamy. You can't tell me you don't."
“Well, that might be nice for a psycho, but I'm tellin' you, you've got the wrong guy. I'm as normal and plain as you are, except for the one thing that separates us. Even if I was remembered, I would avoid such things. I'm pretty sure of it at least, anyway. All anybody knows about me is that I exist, and that I am the Fire that Burns. No rhyme nor reason, no good or evil, no chaos or order. I simply am, and I do what I do with no discretion between man, woman, or child, young or old, black or white. The joy of Burning is All. I do not live for it; it lives for me. I do not seek its pleasures, nor do I shirk them when the time comes for action. That's it, that's all there is. That's the way it is, the end, and I do not apologize for doing the things I love."
“That's it," Bill screamed, “I've heard a-fucking-nough! When we get to the next gas station, I'm gonna get out and buy a roll of duck tape, because I know I don't have any in the van, and I know I left my gag with my girlfriend, so. I'm gonna zip up yer trap for good, whether or not you say another word or not. I can't stand to hear anymore. Not one more goddamned word. Not one! So, I'm gonna stop and buy one, and, ok, if you don't say one more word, and I mean not once single little one, I'll stay your gagging. But I swear, if anything else comes out of your mouth that so much as sounds like a word, that's it. You're gagged. I fucking mean it. Just nod your head if you understand what I mea
n."
“I don't give a fuck what you do. I'm gonna take a nap. Goodnight."
“You go right ahead, and when you wake up, don't be surprised when you find yourself gagged, so you better fucking smoke your smokes now while you have the chance, because when we get to the first gas station, that's it. That's it. You had your chance."
“That's a little unbending of you, don't you think? Besides, this is a long lonely stretch of desert. You might change your mind. Don't I even get another chance? I'll even promise not to say anything else about my nasty little habit. Agreed?"
“No. No." Bill took a deep breath to keep calm. In through his nose, deeply, and out through his mouth. “I just can't handle you anymore. I'm about to bust, and I can't stand losing control. You're nuts, you're unpredictable, so it's the best thing I can do, for the both of us."
“I guess you never will understand the likes of me. Ah, well. I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight."
“Goodnight," Bill replied automatically.
It was about an hour before they got to a gas station, and as good as his word, Bill got out of the van, checking on his prisoner before he went in to buy some duct tape, if they had any. Sure enough, Bill was in luck. He thought it was a bit overpriced, but what the hell, it was well worth it!
Bill opened the sliding side door to his beat up, 1978 sky blue Dodge van, and dropped the lit, drooping cigarette from his lips as he looked upon an empty seat, sporting empty chains.
Days later, Bill realized that The Torcherer had only been wrong about one thing that he knew of, and it was a doozy.
You never forget him, you only become unable to speak of him, or write about him, and. . . and. . . he could no longer complete his own thoughts. He wondered how many other officers of the Law, or Bounty Hunters, or hapless bystanders that might have happened upon one of his fires in a clearing in the middle of the woods, had gone mad with the things they saw in their minds from time to time, things that were as crystal clear as a plasma screen television, only they also came with stereoscopic touch, heat, the smell of burning flesh, surround sound, hi-fidelity screams that could not be shook away, and would not end until the corpses had slumped to the ground in merciful surrendering of their spirit, their agony. . .