I want him to say something, but he is like a brick wall.
“You want to be bad. You want to be evil. You want to do evil things. And this whole excuse you’ve dreamed up, this purification crap, that’s the ultimate bullshit. I call ultimate bullshit on you, Wolfman. What you want is to rape and kill and destroy, and you want to find a way to justify it, so you came up with that crap excuse. You hear me?”
He says nothing.
“You hear me?”
He still says nothing.
His silence sparks my rage, and I jump up and press the barrel of the gun against his forehead. “You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a coward. You hunt people half your size, you hide behind made-up justifications, you won’t admit the truth of what you are, and what you are is a thousand times worse than me. As bad as I might be, you’re a thousand times worse. A million times worse. And I’ll admit it: I can be ruthless. I get why the barn girls call me that. I get why you think I’m arrogant and mean. I am arrogant and mean and ruthless. But you’re a million times worse. Because at least I love my family. Even if they did say those things, I don’t care. I love them. I love Caleb. I love them with everything I am and I would do anything for them. I’d die for them. The rest of the world, I leave alone. Unless they come at me first. And you, Wolfman, you came at me first. And now you deserve everything you get.”
Then I just sit there and wait. He says nothing; I say nothing. It takes a while. He must have been very dehydrated. But then he begins to shift in his chair. I let him shift around in silence for a long, long time, but even so, he breaks sooner than I expected.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“You can use the same bathroom I did.”
It’s like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, and he repeats, “I need to use the bathroom.”
“And I’m telling you, you can use the same bathroom I did.” It’s starting to sink in, but just in case he’s missed any nuance, I say, “You can sit in your own sticky stink just like I did, Jerry T. Balls.”
There is a comedic level of disgust when he says, “You are a terrible person.”
“Hypocrite.”
Eventually, the shifting stops and there is a new smell in the air. Wolfman’s shoulders have slumped some, but his mouth remains a thin, tight line. He looks pathetic and small and disgusting. He looks violated and degraded and wounded. There is no dignity to be found, tied up and blindfolded and sitting in your own mess.
And a part of me feels a thrill of gladness at the sight, for here is a man who deserves to suffer.
And in the echo of that gladness, horror blooms within me. In its own strange way, it’s a horror as deep as any I’ve experienced so far. I’ve succeeded in taking another human hostage, in making him urinate on himself. I made a plan to torture someone, and then I carried it out, and it satisfied me to do so. As much hurt and hell as the Wolfman has caused, I don’t want to be his judge and jury, his jailer and tormentor. I don’t want to be that person. I want to be good. I don’t want to fall into a big, black pit of darkness, because what if I can’t get out?
“Wolfman? Can I ask you something?” My voice comes out hushed, oddly respectful. I get silence in return. “Were you born this way?” More silence. “Please tell me.” Even more silence. But I want to know, so I put the empty gun up against his head. “Were you born this way?”
“Born what way?”
“Bad. Were you born bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you first want to do bad things?” He doesn’t want to speak, but I really want to know, so I push the barrel into his temple. “When did you first hurt someone? Or want to hurt someone?” His lips are pursed tight. “I won’t kill you if you tell me. And don’t lie, or I’ll know.”
“My mother.”
“Why did you want to hurt your mother?”
Wolfman tilts his head toward me, as though he can see me. “I’m not talking anymore. Shoot me if you’re going to shoot me, but I’m not talking anymore.”
I look out through the giant windows of the great room, at the twinkling lights of the faraway town.
“How old were you when you first wanted to hurt your mother?”
Although he said he wasn’t going to talk, he answers immediately. “Six or so. It’s my first memory.”