The Absence of Good by Thurman Hart

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I don’t believe in God; and I’ll tell you why. I don’t believe that good exists. There’s just evil and the absence of evil. It’s like your air conditioner doesn’t actually blow cold on you. It simply absorbs the heat and expels it elsewhere.

Evil, on the other hand, exists. I’ve seen it. Smelled its fetid breath, covered with sickly sweet mint. Watched it kick its legs in glee as a lesser being squeals with fright and pain. Oh, evil exists. It more than exists. It incarnates itself and infinite number of times.

Yeah, yeah. Everyone brings up Hitler. Pol Pot. Whatever. But their achievement was really just about scale. To really and truly embrace evil, a person has to get up close and personal with their victim. That’s the only way a perversion can ever escalate to an unholy spiritual exercise. The only way a mere human can become a god. Demon.

Whatever.

I’m told the law recognizes two forms of homicide. There’s what they call “hot-blooded.” That’s what happens when you catch your wife screwing the neighbor and you freak out so bad that you shoot them both. But that isn’t what you’d call evil, is it? It’s just a fragile mind trying to impose denial upon a resisting world. Or maybe a weak man trying to regain his privilege spot within his household by destroying it.

I can respect that. Destroying all you love to show you are strong enough to withstand it. It’s a special kind of hell a man can build for himself.

But that ain’t evil.

After I won the lottery, it was all too easy to set up shell corporations. After seven or eight layers, I had a plausible level of deniability over what they were doing. It was conceivable that I would find out one of my companies had bought some land and I would just drive out there to take a look at it.

I spent three-and-a-half million dollars to make that work.

Now, that ain’t what you’d call “hot-blooded. Is it?

The sheets smelled like sweat and hormones. A goddamn bird was singing right outside the window. The dirty sheets that hung over the windows screened out most of the light, making the early morning mostly gray.

“Go ahead,” he said, pulling the sheets back. “Just like an ice cream. Lick and suck so it won’t melt.”

I could have brought in equipment. I had plenty of it. But that would have left a trail, and I couldn’t have that. So, I hiked out in the woods, stopping when I had to catch my breath, and I found the right spot. I don’t know what made it the right spot. It just felt right. I had an ax and I had a shovel, and I did what I did, knowing all the while why I did it.

The other kind of homicide is “cold-blooded.” That’s when you know it’s wrong, but you plan it out and do it anyway. Some say it’s evil at any level. But like I said, there’s evil; and then there’s evil. If you can’t see it in their eyes, then it doesn’t count. Not in my book.

And who else’s book would matter to someone like me anyway?

The fist was hard and brutal. I tumbled over the end of the bed, stunned. Blinking. Coughing.

“You have to swallow it, you stupid fucker!”

“I can’t!”

“Bullshit! Don’t be a pussy!”

I got back to my feet, just like I’d always been told. You get knocked down; you get back up. That’s how a man does it. Get up one more time than they knock you down. Even if you know you can’t win.

“Try again!”

Social media is an incredible thing, isn’t it? The single most advanced form of communication ever concocted, and we use it to share cat videos and argue with people we’ve never met.

I found him. It took me a few years, but I found him. Down and out and barely getting by, running a grift on yet another unsuspecting single-mother who just wanted a man to make her feel safe. But who would make her feel safe from him? Well, I guess it’s better to be scared of one man than the whole world, right?

Anyway, I saw the happy family smiling back from the screen, and I could see it in the little boy’s eyes. There was a darkness there that shouldn’t never have been there. And I knew what it felt like to be inside those eyes. I knew how fake that smile was.

I called up Tommy Landis and told him we were going to expand into Pennsylvania. Make it happen.

Tommy is a good man, and whatever else you think, don’t you think for a minute he was part of this. If I’d told him what was what, I’d have had to kill him. The fact I didn’t shows that I’m not entirely evil, I think. I let him be. So, you let him be, too.

Sweat soaked the sheets that my face was pressed into. There was no need for a pillow. I wasn’t going to scream. I knew how this worked.

That same fist slammed into my ribs, knocking the wind out of me. It was the only way he could make me cry. So, he laughed and did it again. And he dug his hands between the scrawny muscles of my arms until he was done.

Then he laid down next to me, panting, and ruffled my hair.

“You ain’t bad for a piece of shit,” he told me.

Pretending not to remember was easy. It only took a shake of the head and an uneasy smile. He showed me his family, and I saw her flinch from his touch. I saw the fear in her eyes and saw him glorify himself with it. When no one was looking, I told the little boy what I knew. I gave him a wink and told him I would take care of it. Told him to take care of his mama.

Then I ruffled his hair.

“You’re a good kid,” I told him. “You don’t deserve this.”

I knew he wouldn’t believe it. Who the hell was I to say what he deserved?

“The fuck are we out here in the woods?”

I laughed.

“Scared of the dark? Don’t be a pussy.”

That was enough to keep him moving. Keep him trailing me.

He never saw it coming. Swing for the nose, aim for the back of the head. I gave him forty fucking years of holding back, biding my time, searching, waiting, looking. Let loose the hounds of my hell-bound soul. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t run from what I saw inside me. I embraced it. I fell into it and drank it down and let it flow through me until I was goddamned invincible and omnipotent.

What I want you to know is that I kept him alive through the whole thing. Every. Damn. Bit. I looked in his eye and I let him see me enjoy it. I laughed at him. Could’ve done it quick. I chose not to. Chose. Intentionally. When he was broken and crying, begging for mercy, I simply had none to give him.

So, I covered him up and I pissed on his grave.

You know what the hardest part was? Lying to Sylvia. Kissing my wife goodbye and telling her I’d be back, knowing that, if I came back, I wouldn’t be the man who drove away. I’d be a demon. God.

Whatever.

Thurman Hart

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