Evil Genius (Part 14)

Chapter 2

If Ivan was forced to sign one more form or hold one more meeting today, he was convinced that the fury which was welling up within him was such that his head would explode. He did not mean this metaphorically either. He truly believed that with just one more slight nudge over the edge there would be one final primal scream and then the walls in the Oval office would suddenly be covered in his blood and gray matter. But what bothered him most about that thought was that it was actually accompanied by a sense of relief.

Almost as if on cue, the door opened and his chief assistant Walters walked in. Sure enough, he was carrying another one of those god-damned, motherfucking, triplicated spawns of Satan in his hands.

“Sir, we need authorization for the new highway bypass through Cleveland. And we’ve been in contact with Rio and they need permission to expand the oil pipeline another couple of miles . . .”

Walters stopped short because he noticed a look that could cut diamonds coming from the face of the Doctor. Ivan had been somewhat tamed but he would never be fully domesticated. The Mall no longer held thousands of disembodied heads but he was still very capable of making a man disappear without a trace. Walters decided to retreat from the precipice.

“…but of course that can wait till tomorrow. Just wanted to give you a heads up, your Excellency.”

Ivan knew he was being patronized, but at least that meant his temper was still something to be feared. He might only be a neutered shell of his former self, but he still had teeth. He sighed and relented, something that was becoming more and more of a habit lately.

“No, give them to me. I’ll take care of them.” He read through the forms, signed them, and Walters was on his way.

He had to appreciate the irony. He was the undisputed ruler of the Earth. As such, no major decision was made without his consent. But because of that, he spent almost all of his waking hours being bombarded with what amounted to low-level bureaucratic decisions to the point where he felt like little more than a secretary. Why the hell did he care that a new nuclear plant needed to be commissioned in Moscow, or that the fisheries were being overfished in Nova Scotia, or that a crippling bacon shortage had broken out in Nashville(6)? But ceding power was not in his nature, so he insisted on remaining at the center of it all.

His bribery plan had been brilliant. In fact it had succeeded beyond his or anyone else’s wildest dreams. It turned out that utterly destroying the world’s technology and economy was just what everyone needed. People had a new appreciation for the simple things like electricity, hot water, Perfect Brownie pans, and electric nose hair trimmers.

During the downward spiral, all manner of feisty individuals had seen fit to challenge the Doctor. Whether they fancied themselves new super-heroes, ideological or theological soldiers, or just plain anarchists the Doctor had taken on all comers and emerged victorious. The result was that the greater population of Earth was now more passive than at any other point in human history, and were only too happy to be led back into the light of outlet malls and all-u-can eat sushi bars.

Truth be told, in a lot of ways things were better than they had ever been. With the religious zealots gone, half of the reason for major conflicts no longer existed. And the fact that there were no more territorial borders to fight over - now that everything was under the rule of Doctor Destructo - pretty much eliminated the reason for the other 50% of major conflicts. Sure there was still petty crime to be dealt with, but since the Doctor was also the ultimate head of the judicial system, very few people were willing to act up enough to land on his radar.

And so Ivan sat, day after day, signing forms authorizing new construction projects, building renovations, wildlife refuges, hunting licenses, eel hatcheries, moose crossings – the list went on and on. When he finally got a request to approve construction for the Norman Rockwell Commemorative Dinner Plate Museum, he was convinced that they were making this shit up. He flew out to the proposed dig site just so he could catch the lying bastards trying to take advantage of him. But it turns out that the people of Dayton, Ohio just really, really like Norman Rockwell and his related fine china. He approved it with the sole intent of blowing it up on the day of its grand opening.

A few minutes passed and Walters was in the office again, this time with a stack of forms.

“Sir, would you like to be briefed on these now or shall I save them for tomorrow?”

Ivan had had enough. Not just for today, not for tomorrow; he had had enough period.

“You know what Walters? You handle them. I’m going for a walk”

And with that the Doctor was out of the office, out the back door of Skull Manor, and across the back lawn.

(6) - Actually, when this one had occurred he had instantly given it top priority.

Evil Genius (Part 13)

Update: It's 9:41 P.M. and less than 2 minutes ago I just finished the book/novel/novella/story/whatever the hell it is. The important thing is that it's done (or at least the first draft of it is). Yay me! Probably about another 4 or 5 parts to post. I might put them up quicker than once a week now that I don't need the time to write it any more. We'll see. Alright, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Part 4: One year later

Chapter 1

Meg still did not understand why she was still alive, but she had long stopped wondering about it.

After the visit from the Doctor on what was to be her last night amongst the living, she had been moved over to the Four Seasons along with everyone else. The Doctor had not visited her again, and no one else bothered to enlighten her as to why she had been granted this stay of execution. She was escorted to her room and the door was locked behind her.

And there she sat, day after day, week after week. Each day she had 3 meals delivered to her room, and once per week she was handcuffed to the bed while a maid changed all her sheets. All in all, except for the mind-numbing boredom, it wasn’t a bad existence. Especially taking into account that she was supposed to be dead.

From the view out her window, she could see the city starting to come back to life. Where in the beginning only roving bands of gangs and looters could be heard milling the streets, slowly but surely the idle chatter of pedestrians began to replace it. Soon after, traffic resumed with all its telltale sounds and smells. Then one day Meg looked out and realized that Pennsylvania Ave. looked and sounded pretty much as she had remembered it 2 years ago.

She still hadn’t seen or heard from the Doctor, nor was she getting any information from her guards. Confused at what was responsible for this turnaround and frustrated at the complete absence of information, she finally decided to take matters into her own hands. She set her mind to escaping.

She estimated that she was on the 5th or 6th floor, not an automatically lethal distance but certainly far enough to not want to chance it. She began by calculating the length of rope she could make by employing the various towels and linens in the room and found they only afforded her about 25 feet. That still left her with 25 to 35 feet to drop – still too far. She leaned out the window and calculated how thick the ledge was (9 inches) and how far it was to the corner of the building (about 13 feet). She thought that if she could maybe get to the corner, which involved transversing a stone gargoyle directly in her path, she could possibly shimmy up the corner piping up to the next floor. At that point she’d either hope for an open window on the next floor or, in the worst case scenario, continue floor by floor till she got to the roof. At that point she was fairly confident that she could find a staircase, stealthily make her way down to the ground floor, find a back door – either through the kitchen or garage – and gain her freedom.

In the end, she abandoned that plan for a slightly simpler one. She walked to the door of her room and turned the handle. It turned effortlessly and the door opened with no resistance. She slowly peeked her head out of the door just in case a guard was stationed nearby, but somehow she knew there wouldn’t be. Sure enough, the hallway was empty. She shook her head slowly and softly asked herself, “who’s a stupid girl now?”.

When she was a child, the Courtland family had a dog named Cupcake. A little black labradoodle. Rather than ruin the detailed landscaping that they meticulously tended with a mesh or picket fence, Meg’s dad opted for the invisible electric fence instead. One of those where the dog wore a special collar and if they wandered too far from the house they’d get a little shock. After a couple of weeks and more than a few gentle jolts, Cupcake learned with great precision exactly where she could and could not tread. A couple years passed, and one day Meg took off the collar to give Cupcake a bath. Only she forgot to put it back on again. When she finally realized this a couple of days later, the entire family was astonished to see that Cupcake was still respecting the boundaries of the fence, even though there was now absolutely nothing containing her. She had simply learned that those were the limits of her territory and saw no further reason to test it. So from that day forward they simply left the collar off. Meg found all of this so humorous that she delighted in telling all her friends and neighbors about what a sweet, dumb dog they had. Cupcake would hear Meg talking about her and come running over with her tail wagging all the way. And Meg would playfully grab her snout and put her face next to hers while cooing in a high-pitched babytalk, “Who’s a stupid girl? You are; yes you are! You’re our stupid little girl!”

There was no doubt who the stupid girl was now. Cupcake’s revenge.

It could have all been an accident, but Meg didn’t think so. She had the feeling that she’d simply been trivialized, and that although the idea of the Doctor actually pardoning someone was completely unthinkable, this was his way of doing it without doing it. The equivalent of the teacher “accidentally” leaving the world map up on the board during the geography test. She still had no idea what she’d done to help him and the thought of it still haunted her, but this was one gift she was not going to refuse.

Having decided this with certainty within a few seconds of appearing in the hallway, she saw no reason not to test it. Instead of the back stairs, she walked confidently towards the elevator and pressed the down arrow. After a few seconds she heard the familiar ding, saw the button light blip off and the doors slowly opened. It was empty, and Meg couldn’t decide if she felt relief or disappointment. She pressed the button and 10 seconds later was standing in the lobby. Here about a dozen people, a mix of employees and customers, were milling about. If any were members of Destructo’s personal security detail, they showed no outward sign of it. None gave her a second glance as she covered the 30 feet from the elevator bank to the front door. With a push and a whoosh she was through the revolving door and out onto the street. And just like that, for the first time in more than 18 months Meg Courtland was free.

Evil Genius (Part 12)

Chapter 4

The next day, Ivan gathered all of his henchmen into the press briefing room. Just 100 muscle-bound, thick-necked Neanderthals standing shoulder to shoulder in the tiny space. Very few of them spoke; they were excited and more than a little nervous. A gathering like this could only mean very good or very bad news. Very bad news meant anything up to and including all of their deaths. And with very good news, the only benefit might be relief that it wasn’t very bad news.

The small amount of chatter immediately ceased as Doctor Destructo walked regally into the room and up to the podium. He sensed the undertone of anxiety in the room. As usual, he reveled in it. On most days, he would do all he could to heighten this tension and unease, but today did not call for that. Today called for exactly the opposite.

“My loyal servants and, dare I say, friends – thank you for coming here today.”

Now there was a great deal of confusion in the crowd. They had rarely ever been thanked, and had certainly never been called friends.

“I’ve asked you all here today because while we have achieved everything that we sat out to do lo those many years ago, it is now time to embark upon a new era. With your help, I have proven to the whole world that they are powerless against me and that mine is the only will that matters. And in my hands I have taken this world and all that the pathetic masses of peasants hold dear and broken it as if it was nothing more than a twig. This world now lies in ruin.”

Few in the audience would disagree with that. But what was so puzzling was the fact that the Doctor seemed so please about it. Though they would never have dared to say it out loud, the Doctor had seemed increasingly despondent over the world’s slow decay. It seemed as though his plan, at least in as much as he had ever shared it with them, had been to take his place atop the power food chain and preside over the Earth as it was. But had this been the plan all along? To install himself at the seat of power and then destroy it all? Yes, they seemed to all reach the same conclusion almost at once. That had to have been the plan, because why else would the Doctor stand before them now and seem so pleased about it?

“My friends, now that we have forever proven our strength and conviction so that no one could ever doubt either, now is the time to rebuild this world. To make it greater than it ever was; to prove that my power is only exceeded by my intelligence and leadership.”

Now heads were nodding, and some applause broke out. This was good, very good. Only the most perceptive of the bunch bothered to wonder the obvious question: how? But Ivan was just getting warmed up.

“This will not be accomplished overnight, and it will certainly not be easy. But make no mistake that it will happen. Just as my ascension to this position was inevitable, so too is this. I promise that you will all live(4) to see this world rise and stand tall on the wings of my dreams. I have seen the mountaintop, and I promise you that we will get there. Because when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Now the crowd was really going. Soft murmurs of assent had turned into wild cheering, clapping, hooting, and hollering. If he had asked, right now they would have all gladly gouged their own eyes out for him without a second thought. Such is the persuasive combination of hackneyed clichés, groupthink, and single-digit IQs. Now that Ivan had them, it was time to mobilize them.

“Tonight we will celebrate the grand reopening of the Four Seasons hotel. We will get the basement generator fired up there and tonight we will all sleep in luxurious air conditioning and have a great feast. Furthermore, I want you to send the word out that anyone who has experience in hotel service, be it concierge, maid, cook, or waiter is welcome to come as well. In exchange for a day’s work, they and their families can also sleep in the hotel and share the feast. This is only the beginning. This will be our lives from now on – a life of luxury and comfort. Now go; go forth my friends, and let the Destructofication of the world begin!”

A great roar went up from the crowd as they charged out of the room. Within 30 seconds, it was just Ivan and the podium in the room. He gathered his notes, smiled to the empty room, and began to laugh.

He hated to give credit, but some was definitely due here. That Courtland woman, through all her bile and insolence, had hit upon an inescapable truth. To this point in his life and career as a master criminal he had accomplished everything through intimidation. In fact there was no one more fearsome or intimidating than he. He had built everything upon a foundation which assumed that everyone valued a life, whether it was their own or someone else’s. Therefore he could achieve success by taking or threatening to take that life. But, as much as it pained him to admit it, take away that threat and he was a piss poor motivator. He was all stick and no carrot. But it wasn’t until she had spelled it out for him that he had understood it with such clarity.

So now, through necessity, he would reinvent himself. He would introduce the carrot. He started with a new foundation – that what people now valued was a return to the meaningless and vacuous lives they had led before he had come to power. He could give them that, and in the process restore the luxury and meaning to his own life that he had imagined for himself.

That first night at the Four Seasons had gone well. Very well in fact. Morale was higher than it had been in months. The initial response for hotel staff had been lukewarm. After all, who wants to work for an employer who is a slave-driver, considers you easily replaceable, and will never appreciate or value who you are or anything you do. However, this was quickly overcome once everyone remembered that this pretty much described every boss and company they’d ever worked for, so what was the difference? Within a week the hotel was fully staffed.

Following that, Ivan sent out word that anyone who had worked at the electric company was welcome to stay in the Four Seasons as well if they returned to work immediately. The response was so overwhelming that within 2 days he had to provide another generator and open up the Ritz-Carlton as well. Within two weeks power was restored to the entire city.

Now the domino effect started to work in reverse. Within a month, Ivan had fired up the presses at the U.S. mint and the Destructo dollar was born. Ivan set the first prices for all the major goods. This allowed the rural farming communities to start coming in from the city to trade their surplus crops and meat. Very slowly a sense of normalcy started to return to the area.

Next, Ivan tackled the oil pipelines. Since this was an interstate job he used some of the dwindling fuel supply to fly Air Force One into all the major cities between DC and the Gulf. In each one he used the same model as DC – first giving a small group of people a taste of luxury, then slowly broadening it once some trust was obtained, and finally introducing a supply of the new currency and letting the economy take off on its own power. Within 3 months the entire East coast was living in a manner which, to the outside observer, looked almost indistinguishable from the lifestyle they had lived before the collapse.

Once again, the Doctor held a meeting in the Skull Manor press room. But this time, it was a meeting comprised of the most highly skilled and intelligent lieutenants he had acquired over the previous months. He told them that they’d all be boarding private jets in the coming days and weeks. It was time to bring the plan that had revived Destructopolis(5) to the rest of the country and then the world.

Yes, he definitely had to hand it to Meg Courtland. Bribery was definitely the way to get things done.

(4) - He assumed that it went without saying that he didn’t mean this literally.

(5) - Washington D.C.’s new name

Evil Genius (Part 11)

Chapter 3

Meg sat on the cot in the bedroom that was her prison and carefully rewrapped her wrist in the ace bandage. The idiot guards weren’t much for medical care. In fact they weren’t much for anything except following orders, preferably those involving putting their meaty, oversized fists into some poor sap’s nether regions or dragging some even more unfortunate soul by the hair out to the chopping block.

That thought made her pause mid-wrap. Tomorrow that unfortunate soul was going to be her.

She had made peace with that fact, but that didn’t make her indifferent to it. Even if this was hell on Earth and each day was agony, who knew what the alternative was? Then, of course, there was the anxiety involving the actual procedure itself. They say that decapitation is quick and painless. But they were also the same geniuses who at one time had decided that the Earth was flat, that leeches could cure diseases, and that the best thing for those nagging headaches was a simple frontal lobotomy. There was no getting around the fact that quite often, they ended up being completely full of shit.

But best now to put all that out of her head. She had made up her mind and that was the end of it. All she could do now was make herself as comfortable as possible and maybe try to think of one final way to slit Ivan’s wretched throat as she was led to her execution. And with that pleasant thought in her head, she resumed wrapping her aching wrist and finished just as her door opened and The Doctor stepped into the room.

Instantly her pulse quickened and her blood started to boil with revulsion, but she remained silent. She loathed his presence with every fiber of her being. The only thing that helped her maintain even a fraction of her composure was constantly picturing that stupid smug face of his drenched in a pool of his own blood.

But as he approached her, she saw that there was something different about him tonight. The walk, a mixture of pride and cockiness, was the same. The steely gaze was as piercing as ever. Yet, there seemed to be something else just behind it. If she didn’t already know that it wasn’t possible, she’d have sworn that Ivan the Destructor was actually scared.

He stopped a few feet from her and looked down at her.

“I’ve come tonight because, even though it goes against every impulse in my body, I’m willing to be merciful and grant you another opportunity to recant your previous refusal and carry on with our prior arrangement.”

Meg leaned back and rested on her good hand and looked up at him somewhat inquisitively. Definitely something different about him.

“Is that so?”

“Yes”

Meg laughed out loud, surprising both of them.

“This really bothers you doesn’t it? You destroyed the most powerful man on the planet and brought the world to its knees, but you just can’t stand the idea that someone actually said ‘no’ to you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Meg was sure that this outburst was going to get her slapped, if not executed right here on the spot. Or at the very least that he was going to cut her off abruptly or walk out of the room. Instead he just stood their silently with a puzzled look on his face. So she continued, gathering steam as she went.

“God, you’re like a toddler being told to put the candy down. This is your version of a temper tantrum isn’t it? You just haven’t the first idea what makes people tick. I’m not talking about heroes like Terry, or ego-maniacs like Presidents and CEOs. I mean regular ordinary people that get up every morning and go to work not because they want to or because they think it’ll bring them riches or glamour but because there are people that love them and depend on them and that’s what they have to do to make sure that those people don’t starve and have someplace warm and dry to sleep. It’s called altruism you sad, miserable excuse for a man. But you wouldn’t know the meaning of the word if someone painted it on the side of a 100-foot cruise missile and shoved it up your ass. Oh no; if you can’t blow-up, maim, poison, rape, pillage, or stab it you’re just completely clueless. Other than actually doing one of those the only other arrow in your quiver is threatening to do one of those. Well, I’ve got news for you jackass. Threats only work on people who have something to lose, and you’ve already taken everything from me. My friends, family, career, Terry - they’re all gone thanks to you. The last thing you can take from me is my life, and I’ll gladly give it to you rather than have to endure that pompous smug look on your face for one more day! So that’s it Doctor, this is one round you don’t win because your arsenal is empty.”

She hadn’t so much said the words as chewed on them and spat them out. By the time she was finished she was out of breath and trembling, but she felt incredible. Whatever happened to her now, she would know that she had looked pure evil in the face, laughed at it, and told it how small it really was. There was some small morsel of triumph in that.

Now Ivan, still silent, slowly turned and walked over to the chair on the far side of the room and sat down. He leaned his head against the wall and fixed his gaze on her. No - not on her, Meg decided – through her. There was a vacant and distant look in his eyes, like he was somewhere else, and suddenly Meg was reminded of the night she had snuck up behind him in the Oval office and almost slit his throat. Now, with a tilt of his head and a slight adjustment to his gaze, he was back and looking at her.

“What about bribery?” He asked, simply.

Meg almost laughed again.

“Bribery?!?! Are you joking, or just terminally stupid? Have you not listened to a word I’ve said? You have taken everything that I care about in this world from me, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. What is it that you think you could possibly offer me that I would care about, short of your own head on a stick on the Mall?”

But instead of taking it in the mocking and insulting manner in which she had meant it, he seemed to have found her remark rather amusing. He smiled that famous icy half-sneer and slowly shook his head.

“Nothing, I suppose. To you, I can’t offer anything at all.”

And with that he stood up and made his way to the door and opened it. Without turning, he said, “Thank you Ms. Cortland, you’ve earned the right to keep your head for at least another night.”

As the door closed and bolted behind him, a feeling of dread washed over her. She had no idea how it had happened, but somehow in all that had just transpired she felt that she had someohow managed to help out Dr. Destructo. She immediately ran into the bathroom and threw up.

Evil Genius (Part 10)

Chapter 2

As his henchmen carried Meg across the lawn back to the White House, newly christened Skull Manor in the last month, Ivan followed slowly behind. He was starting to get depressed again and, frankly, almost everyone in the world would agree with him that there was a lot to be depressed about.

Once he had made it clear to everyone that he really, truly didn’t assign even one ounce of value to their lives, most people decided that it was in their best interest to stay as much out of his way as possible. In practical terms this meant emptying out of the cities, since those were the most likely targets the next time someone evoked his wrath, and heading to the vast expanses of rural land in between. Here small bands of people would gather together and, assuming they didn’t kill each other on sight (which happened fairly frequently), form small farming villages and communes. This meant, of course, that within the span of about 2 weeks, 90% of the world’s workforce simply stopped showing up at work. The domino effect to the global economy was swift and absolute. First, money became useless and the barter system was reinstated. Then, with no one but computerized algorithms and the occasional devoted bureaucrat left to run them, all the public utilities started to fail. Cell service went almost immediately, then natural gas followed. Power went out after about 90 days, and finally running water ran no more.

The radio and television airwaves had stayed somewhat active at first, thanks to media moguls with industrial-sized generators and egos as well as battery-operated receivers. But as each day started to more and more resemble the last, with less and less new news trickling in, most people decided that there wasn’t much worth listening to anymore and that there were better uses that their limited supply of batteries could be put to. Young women in particular seemed extremely concerned with protecting the battery reserves. Eventually, the only ones left broadcasting were the same deep-woods hermits who had been on the air predicting the apocalypse for years, but all most of them were doing was gloating and saying “see, they told me I was crazy but look who’s laughing now”. But even though almost all of them said some version of this (even the ones who weren’t actually on the air and had just been talking into pine cones and using tin foil antennas), none of them actually laughed when they said it. The irony was lost on them.

For a while, too, the highways were full of traffic as some folk streamed into cities from the countryside to do some looting while most streamed out to literally search for greener pastures. But with no new oil and gas being delivered and a finite supply in each area, soon most cars became nothing more than road ornaments littering the interstates, or else they were converted into non-mobile homes in a newly-formed shanty-town.

In short, in the span of 6 months the world was sent back to approximately mid-18th century living. The most technically advanced group in the world was now the Amish. Unlike the renegade broadcasters though, this irony was not lost on them. As a group, though, they were probably the least surprised about the recent events. As far as they were concerned, the world had just gone on a 300-year rumspringa and was now finally getting back to where it was supposed to be.

This wasn’t what the Doctor had planned. He had always aspired to be something like an Ayatollah, but ruling the world instead of just one country. And in even the most backwards third-world country, the dictator managed to live in lavish luxury even as his people starved. But this was not the case with him. Sure he had the most powerful generators to provide him with electricity, and more gas to power them than anyone else on Earth. But even his supplies were not infinite, and before too long he’d be on candles and heating oil like the masses already were. And sure he never had to lift a finger to get anything he wanted; the problem was that there simply wasn’t a whole lot of luxury to have. There was very little fresh anything to be had anymore, and more and more he found his dinner consisting of various canned goods. Between their expiration date and his sanity, he really couldn’t guess which would give first. But of all that he had to endure, it was the collapse of indoor plumbing that bothered him the most. The truth is, no matter how powerful one becomes, one does not feel powerful when one is pooping in a bucket.

He had tried to fix these things of course. But, as it turns out, some orders are easier to follow than others. Ordering someone to do a menial task like throwing another log or musician on the fire was a hell of a lot easier than ordering them to “sort out the whole power and plumbing thing.” It wasn’t a question of will. His men would gladly crawl through broken glass on their hands and knees just for the privilege of being the one to take the bullet for him. But, as it happens, the people most suited to that purpose aren’t particularly adept at highly-skilled technical work, nor are they well-suited to seek out the individuals who are.

And so, with little choice in the matter Doctor Destructo, great ruler of the broken machine known as Earth, persevered. His almost-nightly exercise with the Courtland girl had been the highlight of his day the last few months. It’s true that she was hopelessly outmatched and would never succeed, but the weapons he gave her were real enough. And she had come so close to besting him once, wasn’t it at least technically possible that it could happen again? That’s what he told himself anyway, and that thought alone was enough to give him at least some minor thrill of victory each night that he foiled her. Some small daily affirmation that whatever this world had become, he was still the ruler of it.

And now that bitch wanted to take that away from him. He would kill her, of course, because failing to back-up a threat was the beginning of the end for any figure of authority. But her death would give him no pleasure. Just one more head on the Mall.

And, frankly, one more head was not what that Mall needed. What had seemed like such a poetic and symbolic gesture at the time had backfired immensely. When he had first conceived of this grand vision of the heads of one thousand decapitated adversaries on spikes sprawling as far as the eye could see, he had failed to account for his other senses. Specifically, what the heads of a thousand decapitated adversaries might smell like after 3 months of sitting in the hot summer sun. But the Mall wasn’t even the worst of it. Do you know what happens to a lagoon of blood once it’s been allowed to congeal? Ivan did; and as a result all the lagoon-facing windows had been shut and sealed permanently.

As he neared his private entrance to Skull Manor, he was filled with immense fury at what she was doing to him. But more than that, he felt terrified. Because for probably the first time in his life, he really and truly had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do now.

Evil Genius (Part 9)

Part 3: 6 Months Later

Chapter 1

Ivan stood frozen in the center of his courtyard, straining to hear. There was nothing to be heard save a few crickets to his left. He glanced in their direction and soon they too were silent. Suddenly he heard a very small rustle in the brush to his right. As faint as it was, it was all he needed. In a flash he dove towards the bushes just as Meg exploded out of them, dagger at the ready. She raised the knife back quickly to get a little weight behind it, but before she had even started her forward thrust he was on her. One arm shot straight at her neck while the other secured her wrist. He twisted her wrist hard and she cried out. As determined as she was to hold on to the knife, her muscles just would not obey her and it fell to the ground with a soft plop, at which point the Doctor threw her to the ground away from it. He bent down and picked up the knife. Meg started to scramble to her feet, but as she leaned on her twisted wrist she cried out again and decided to just stay on the ground. There was no point in getting up.

“How many is that now Ms. Courtland?”, Ivan asked rhetorically; “I believe we’re up to 92 failed assassination attempts up to and including that last little exercise.”

Meg just continued laying there. The searing hatred was still there, but it was no longer capable of fueling her.

“The mistake you keep making is being passive. You’re waiting for me to come to you. The problem is that my senses are far sharper than yours could ever hope to be, so by simply waiting you’re giving me an unbelievable advantage. If you recall, in your first attempt, the one you were almost successful with until you gave yourself away, you weren’t passive at all. You were aggressive. You didn’t wait for anything to happen. You made it happen.”

Meg just continued to lie on the ground, looking up at the night sky impassively. It was a nice night. The sky was clear and the stars were bright. The stars had been very bright these last few months since the power had gone out in most of the major cities. No more light pollution for the heavens to compete with. And thinking of the sky as the heavens was never more appropriate, since it very clearly was now hell on Earth. She tried as much as she could to tune out the words of The Doctor. He was pacing back and forth a few feet from her as he continued.

“In short, you were the predator and you turned me into your prey. That’s the right way to do it. Now you’ve just transformed yourself into the helpless teenager hiding in the closet with a butcher knife waiting for the axe-wielding maniac to find her. That never works for them, and it won’t work for you. So, for tomorrow night’s attempt…”

“No.” Meg cut him off. She was still staring up at the sky as she said it. She stated it simply and in a matter of fact way.

“What do you mean, no?”

“Just what I said. I’m done with this.”

The Doctor had stopped pacing now. He was genuinely surprised.

“Do I need to remind you of the alternative to your participation?”

“My head as an ornament on the Mall. I don’t care. It’s obvious you don’t believe I can succeed or you’d never keep giving me these chances. And you know what? I think you’re right. And the fact that you’re getting some enjoyment out of this, and that I’m a part of it, is just too much for me to take. So I’m done. Do whatever the hell you want with me; that’s what you do with everyone anyway.”

Ivan looked her over carefully, attempting to discern if this was some kind of bluff and decided that it wasn’t. He grabbed a small flashlight on his belt and used it to signal the guards nearby. Instantly he heard the faint scurrying sound of boots trampling over grass and dirt and a moment later they were before him.

“I’m finished with Ms. Courtland for the evening. Wrap up her wrist and lock her in her room. She has a lot of thinking to do this evening.”

Meg remained silent and motionless as the guards picked her up by her arms and legs. She didn’t even cry out under the strain on her twisted wrist, though the pain was sharp enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Evil Genius (Part 8)

Chapter 5
Speeches. They always felt the need to give speeches.

That was the thought going through the Doctor's mind as he quickly flipped his would-be assassin over his head and sent her crashing to the floor. Before she knew what had gone wrong one forearm had the knife-hand pinned to the ground while the other forearm was on her throat cutting off her air supply. The Doctor surveyed his foe with a mixture of curiosity, annoyance, and disdain.

“Tricky little minx; you’ll be dropping the knife now.” He spat at her. He could see the fiery hatred in her eyes. She clung to the knife and he could feel her pressing harder in vain to try and get at him.

“That was not a request; merely a statement of fact. Whether voluntarily or through unconsciousness, I promise you that the knife will fall from your hand momentarily.”

The hatred was still there, but it was starting to give way to panic as her lungs started to burn and her heart continued to race. Her face was turning a scarlet that deepened with each passing second and she began to shake uncontrollably. Finally, her grip relaxed and the knife fell to the ground.

Ivan continued to look down at her and contemplated whether or not to release his grip or finish the job and eliminate the threat. The part of him that was curious won out, and he released her as he picked the blade up from the ground.

He took a few steps back and surveyed her again as she began coughing and gasping for air. The threat was over; he had won. But along with a sense of triumph and a modicum of relief, he suddenly felt very angry.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he glared at her. “How long have you been planning this for? How many nights have you sat at home and thought about that one moment when you would have me at your mercy?”

He started pacing back and forth, and the anger was flowing freely.

“I haven’t the slightest idea how the hell you managed to get in here – and believe me that yours will not be the only head to roll for that infraction – but the fact that you did so already made you 95% more effective than any of the other delusional fools who thought they were a match for me.”

Now he knelt down next to her and put his face close to hers.

“And you know what? You almost pulled it off. You happened to pick just exactly the right moment where my thoughts were elsewhere. Ordinarily I’ve got the awareness of a gazelle. I’ve long assumed, rightfully I might add, that at any given time there were at least 100 people actively plotting to kill me. But I’ll admit that you caught me completely off my game tonight. I honestly had no idea you were there. Do you know how I discovered you were there?” He looked expectantly at her. She remained silent.

He suddenly grabbed her by the collar and shouted, “When you opened your mouth and told me!!!” He let go of her shirt and she collapsed in a heap again. He got up and started pacing again.

“God, the stupidity! I mean, what is the point of sneaking up on someone to gain the element of surprise if you’re just going to broadcast your presence the very second you’re in reach. It just defies belief. Do you realize that you chose the exact, precisely worst moment to do that? Honestly, you did, and I’ll prove it to you. Had you waited until after you slit my throat there’s a good chance I would have retained consciousness for a good couple of minutes before bleeding out. Plenty of time for speeches then. But let’s say you were insistent on saying your piece before the cutting. You would have been better off shouting at me from the doorway! At least then you would have had a chance to throw the damn knife at me! But you know what upsets me more than anything else?” he asked rhetorically; “It’s the fact that someone this stupid almost succeeded in killing me!!”

As the Doctor stood ranting, Meg was staggering onto all fours and, for lack of a better plan, was crawling very slowly towards the door. As the Doctor started railing about it “being like Hitler getting assassinated by Elmer Fudd” she had almost managed to reach the door when she ran headlong into two pairs of legs that belonged to two of the Doctor’s henchmen. The Doctor turned and noticed them.

“Ah; at long last my loyal, faithful, completely worthless security detail. Either of you two gentlemen see something in here that seems a bit amiss?”

The henchmen said nothing as they picked Meg up and secured her.

“Any idea how this happened?” he inquired of them. The cold stare and colder smile bore into them. Meg was not the only one in danger now.

The henchman on the right cleared his throat. “Your excellence; we found Frank’s body by the back door. He was stabbed.”

“Ah, so the minx does know how to act after all.” Ivan stood in front of Meg and lifted her chin with his hand so he could look into her eyes. “Bet you didn’t have any speeches for him did you? No? Well, then I guess we’ve learned something today haven’t we?”

He turned to his men and said “Take her out front. Cut her head off and display it along with the rest.”

He turned to head back to his desk when he suddenly became aware of something. His pulse was racing and his temper was flaring. He was angry and triumphant, satisfied and full of disdain. In short, he was feeling more alive right now than he had in months. He turned back to his men as they began to lead Meg to her execution.

“Hold that order, gentlemen. I might have found a better use for this one.”

Evil Genius (Part 7)

Chapter 4

As much as everyone in the world was inconvenienced by the collapse of civilization and the beginning of the rule of an evil dictator wielding the proverbial iron fist (and sometimes an actual fist), it’s probably true that the one person who’d gotten the worst of it was Megan Courtland. Not only had she suffered what certainly seemed like the apocalypse along with everybody else, she had the added misfortune of being the girlfriend of the man whose death made all of it possible.

Immediately following that fateful day in Decatur, she shared in everyone’s stunned shock. As that gave way to grief, she initially received at least a modicum of emotional support. But once the full scale of The Doctor’s plan began to be revealed, she was pretty much left to cope on her own.

Unable to fully process events as they unfolded, her coping took the form of revenge fantasies. Somehow, someway she would see to it that the Doctor died a horrible and excruciating death at her hands. The most elaborate plan she devised involved thumbtacks, a melon baller, both a Phillips and flat head screwdriver, baby oil, a welding torch, and a car battery. That one disturbed even her, although she still relished the thought of carrying it out. Eventually though, she reluctantly came to the conclusion that she’d settle for simply having the pleasure of staring down at his corpse, no matter how it got accomplished.

And that’s how it came to be that almost exactly a year to the day after Doctor Destructo vaporized the man she loved, Meg Courtland set out from what was left of her apartment complex in Washington D.C. armed with only a butcher knife and her infinite hatred. She walked solemnly but purposefully down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the rubble of the Capitol building, through the field of disembodied heads on spikes in the National Mall, and arrived at the gates to the White House. Expecting to confront an army of guards, she was shocked to discover very little resistance. Apparently most would-be assassins found the collection of heads on the Mall to be rather discouraging. There were certainly still guards, but they formed a very loose ring around the perimeter and didn’t seem particularly organized or interested in performing regular rounds. So Meg found a vacated spot, clumsily scaled the 7-foot wall, and headed towards the window of the Oval Office. If The Doctor wasn’t in the Oval Office, there really was no Plan B. In all likelihood it would have come down to an impulsive decision between smashing through the window anyway and hoping like hell to find the Doctor before anyone else found her first, and retracing her steps to try again another day. But as with everything else this night, fortune seemed to be shining on her. The Doctor was seated behind his desk; he seemed to be lost in thought and looked perhaps even a little troubled.

“Aw; butchering the human race too much work for you?” she icily thought to herself.

As determined as she was to not let this opportunity slip away, she was also determined to give herself the best chance of success as possible. There were two entrances into the Oval Office. At the moment, Ivan was facing away from one of them. If she somehow could gain access to the interior, there was at least a chance that she could sneak up behind him completely undetected. As a journalist, she had been to the White House on a number of occasions and knew the layout decently enough. There was a back entrance which was no more than 30 feet from the door to the Oval Office. She crept silently towards that entrance and flattened herself against the cool exterior of the house next to the door. From her vantage point she could still see into the Oval Office window. If it came down to it and the Doctor made a move to leave the room, she estimated that she could be across the lawn and through the window in under 5 seconds. He would probably see and would no doubt hear her approaching, and in all likelihood there would be little to no chance of success, but having already laid eyes on him the raw hatred seething in her now would never allow her to turn back now. It simply wasn’t an option.

After a few minutes, with the Doctor still seated comfortably the door opened and one of his henchman emerged. Meg waited only long enough to see his head before jamming the knife into the man’s eye with all the force her 5 foot 6, 120-pound frame could muster. The man made only a slight gurgling sound before collapsing in a heap. And with that, she was inside.

Her pulse raced, but everything else seemed to slow down as she moved methodically down the hall and across the room that bordered the Oval Office. She encountered no one else. She paused by the Office door and delicately opened it just a crack. The bastard was still at his desk, still facing the other direction, and still oblivious to the world. She opened the door just enough to barely fit through and then dropped down as low as her leg muscles would allow her. She was 12 feet away now, and closing. She took two steps and then paused. 10 feet now. She edged forward another 3 small steps. 8 feet now and the Doctor still hadn’t turned his head. Another few steps and now she could feel the fire in her quads but she ignored it. 6 feet; now 4 and her muscles were screaming at her. She covered the last few feet in one smooth motion and brought the knife up just under Ivan’s chin.

“This is for Terry, you son of a bitch!”

Evil Genius (Part 6)

Chapter 2

Had the greater U.S. population not been distracted by their fixation on blaming the local authorities, they could have simply stayed home, tuned into C-SPAN (one of the few stations still broadcasting) and gotten all the information that they needed. They would have been watching when, the day after Los Angeles was incinerated, the Doctor arrived in Washington, D.C. They would have seen him walk into the U.S. Capitol building, open up his jacket, and reveal that the large trigger button in the middle of his chest was wired directly to his heart. The second his heart stopped beating, all 98 (really 38) remaining nuclear weapons would be triggered instantly.

He demanded the floor on the Senate. When he met some initial resistance, he calmly pulled out his cell phone, punched in a few numbers, and a few seconds later Syracuse, NY became a crater. That was the last resistance he encountered.

A sea of ghostly pale faces belonging to men and women who just days earlier believed themselves to be among the most powerful people in the world stared silently as he strode down the aisle of the Senate floor and stood behind the podium. He faced his captive audience, turning slowly from side to side, taking it all in. He could not be more pleased with how things had progressed so far. When he was ready, he looked dead into the nearest camera and flashed his blood-curdling smile. Although he couldn’t see it, he could feel the faces of millions of viewers across the world being drained of color as they looked on in horror. Finally, he spoke.

“My soon to be loyal subjects. I’ve come before you today to tell you that it’s over. Everything you have known as true in your pointless and meaningless existence is now irrelevant. That’s the bad news. And for all of you, that’s the only news. The good news is for me and me alone, and it is that mine is the only will that matters. My desires are commandments; my whims your new laws. But I like to keep things simple, so we will start with just one rule: please me or die. We will begin this new era with a simple task. Every elected official in this country is now unemployed. To eliminate any and all reminders of your former regime all national, state, and local assembly houses will be burned to the ground by midnight tonight. But if any town should fail to complete this task, fear not. I will accomplish it myself by relocating one of my remaining nuclear devices to beneath any house still standing. This will also have the unfortunate side effect, from your perspective at least, of rendering the entire city and most of the county it resides in, to radioactive ash. Some of you may not be familiar with the fine art of arson, so I believe a little demonstration is in order. The room I currently stand in will be set ablaze in precisely 30 seconds. I would advise all of my newly unemployed friends before me to vacate the premises immediately if they value their lives. To those of you watching at home, you may enjoy the show until the cameras burn and the video feed cuts out. Rest assured that you will be hearing from me again shortly. I’ve enjoyed our time together today.”

And with that he walked slowly down from the podium and back up the aisle. Everyone in the room was frozen. Was he really about to burn down the Capitol building? When he reached the door he paused and uttered just two syllables. He didn’t even turn around when he said them.

“Tick. Tock.”

And then he was gone.

The Senators just continued to stare at one another, but seconds later all the doors to the Senate floor flew open and a swarm of Molotov cocktails and makeshift explosive devices exploded into the chamber. This was enough to shake everyone from their daze and disbelief. Screams echoed through the room as smoke began to darken the air and everyone made a mad dash for the exits. Those who made it out alive did so just in time to turn around, look up, and see the dome of the Capitol collapse in on itself.

The delusions were now all over and the blame game was at an end. Suddenly, there was tremendous clarity on exactly who was to blame, who was in charge, and just how much trouble everybody was in.

Chapter 3

The next day the Doctor and a team of his closest henchmen paid a visit to the White House to relieve the President personally but at this point it really was just a formality. The President had fled in Air Force One during the night as thousands of amateur arsonists across the country sought to fulfill the Doctor’s orders. The Doctor found the house largely deserted, but that was just fine with him. He’d find and kill the President later of course, for denying him the pleasure of seeing him officially cede all power over to him in person. He’d also been hoping for some high quality groveling, and maybe even some tears. But still, the goal for the day had been to capture and move into the White House and it had been accomplished so all was still going to plan. The fact that it had been done with minimal bloodshed (they’d found a few pesky Secret Service agents still milling about and taken care of them) was regrettable but not catastrophic. He needed to keep reminding himself that there would still be plenty more time for massacres in the days ahead. One cannot commit genocide every day. One needs to rest up from time to time.

He threw open the doors to the Oval Office and couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of satisfaction. He walked easily behind the desk and sat in the plush leather reclining chair.

“Now,” he thought, “we can really begin.”

And begin he did. Since that day he had been more or less the undisputed ruler of the planet. Once he had officially gained access to the US military and, along with it, its nuclear arsenal, he was able to practice his own special brand of Destructo diplomacy(3). It’s amazing how smooth negotiations can go when you don’t have to worry about pesky things like “good faith” and you have the threat of nuclear annihilation to dangle over the opposition’s head like a guillotine. His terms were simple: do whatever I ask, whenever I ask and live, maybe. Oh sure, there were the few odd countries who decided that The Doctor was bluffing and refused. He quickly proved them wrong. In the end, it took less than a year for him to be recognized, unequivocally and without exception, as the sole ruler of the world.

The Doctor looked back on those early days fondly. For the first few months he filled his days simply wandering around and making people bow to him. Oh sure he had to decapitate the odd prideful individual who refused but that wasn’t viewed as much of a chore. Hell, that was half the fun! One of his first orders of business was some major renovations to the White House. The front lawn had been transformed into a giant man-made lagoon that was filled with blood. Rumors, which he not only didn’t dispel but actively encouraged, were that he had filled the lagoon by slaughtering people. In fact, the “volunteers” who gave their blood were actually treated quite well. It wasn’t a question of proper treatment, it was simply a question of mathematics. Killing a person and draining them yields you 10 pints one time. But keep them alive and relatively healthy and you can get a pint per week out of them for as long as you need it. He affectionately (in as much as he was capable of such an emotion) referred to them as “my blood cows.” Once completed he surrounded the lagoon with tiki torches because, well, nothing complements a blood-filled lagoon quite like tiki torches.

But the piece de resistance, the thing that really tied the rehab together thematically, was the entrance. Gone were the stately columns of the foyer. In their place was a 50-foot façade of a giant skull, with flames in the eye sockets and the entrance through the mouth.

Most nights those early days, he fell asleep laughing. A cold and mechanical laugh that sent chills down the spines of anyone within earshot. For a long time, he was content. Completely and utterly content.

And then, very slowly, something started to change. So slowly in fact, that he was able to deny its existence for quite some time. But eventually he had to face it head on. Here was the thing he hadn’t been prepared for. It came to him in an odd way. He suddenly had a very vivid image of the last scene of the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Mr. Wonka tells Charlie “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything that he always wanted.” Charlie asks “what happened?” and Wonka’s reply is “He lived happily ever after.”

Only now The Doctor knew the real answer to that, and he was filled with bile at the thought. So much so that he wished Gene Wilder hadn’t been killed in the LA nuclear blast so he could hunt him down and kill him again.

What happens to the man who suddenly gets everything he ever wanted?

He ends up being bored out of his fucking mind.

Ironically, at just the moment that this thought finally crystallized in his head, Doctor Destructo stopped being bored. Because at just that moment he suddenly found a very sharp knife pressed against his throat.



(3) - Patent Pending

Evil Genius (Part 5)

Author's note: This section, and subsequent sections, contain a couple footnotes. Superscripts and footnotes are not something the blogosphere handles well (or at least I don't know how to use them) so where applicable you'll just see a regular number in parentheses and then the note will be at the end of the post. Just didn't want to confuse anyone. On with the show!

Part 2: The Aftermath

Chapter 1

Ivan was not prepared for this, and the shock of that alone was almost enough to knock him over. He was never unprepared. Never. If there was one thing he had been known for since his youth it was his deliberate, meticulous, almost obsessive-compulsive attention-to-detail planning (some would argue that there was no ‘almost’ about it). The very idea that there was a contingency that he hadn’t planned for kept him awake night after night. He simply couldn’t sleep until he had convinced the rest of his mind that he truly had every angle covered. But now as he leaned back in his reclining leather office chair that sat behind the blood-splattered desk of the White House’s oval office, he reflected back on the events of the previous 6 months and wondered how he had possibly failed to account for this.

After vanquishing Captain Invincible(1) everything had pretty much fallen into place just as he had planned. He quickly revealed to the world, via an internet video that was quickly picked up by the major networks, that his nuclear surprise in the U.S. heartland was by no means a solitary phenomenon. He divulged that he had over 100 other nuclear weapons at his disposal, all strategically hidden beneath major population centers throughout the world. In truth he had only about 40, and about half of those were not exactly positioned amidst large urban throngs (unless one considers Fruitland, Idaho to be a burgeoning metropolis). Nevertheless, no one was in a position to dispute his claim and, following a brief demonstration, an accurate inventory became the furthest thing from people’s minds. He had always had a particular disdain for L.A. and the greater Southern California area. Not necessarily for the shallowness and greed that it represented; he was actually a big fan of that aspect. It’s just that he’d always hated the motivations of a group of people who, it seemed, wished to spend as much of their time as humanly possible standing around getting cooked by the sun. He decided that it was really just a tremendous service to increase their ultraviolet radiation exposure by a few thousand orders of magnitude. Sure, they might all be cadavers and piles of ash, but man did they have a nice healthy tan!

After incinerating the city, he quickly discovered that although the capital of the U.S. might be listed as Washington D.C., almost everything that mattered to most of the general population occurred on studio lots and in recording studios in the City of Angels. Even after the death of Captain Invincible, there were a lot of people that found it surprisingly easy to ignore him. They considered his presence a problem for the politicians or possibly the army, if it came to that. The most important thing was that it certainly wasn’t their concern. After all, they had families to feed, bills to pay, and sports to watch. They couldn’t be expected to drop everything and worry about the health of the country and the world every time a super villain got his hands on a few dozen nuclear warheads. When every news show in the country was broadcasting his video, a lot of people simply changed the channel or headed out to the movies. But once that mushroom cloud ballooned over LA, everything changed. Once people realized that the one movie they had waited for all summer was now in fact never going to be released, all future episodes of Lost were just that, and that Us Weekly had just lost its entire subject matter, everyone found it suddenly very hard to be distracted.

So naturally they did the thing that, as Americans, came most naturally to them. They started blaming people. Namely, anyone and everyone that would listen, or at least pretend to. With tremendous efficiency the blame recipient would then waste no time in calmly explaining that they had in fact done all that they could and it was in reality someone else’s fault because either a) it really didn’t fall under their jurisdiction or b) someone else had not provided the support that was desperately needed at the critical hour. This process was repeated ad nauseam until it reached a high enough level where the individual being blamed was sufficiently insulated from public outcry that they could safely proclaim that it wasn’t at all their fault, and anyone who thought it was could go straight to hell. At which point the proceedings would begin again with another low-level blame target, and round and round it went in that phenomenon of modern civilization whereby a problem gets tremendous exposure followed by seemingly endless debate and in the end absolutely nothing is accomplished.

People first began to blame the Soviet Union for not taking better care of their weapons arsenal. After all, most of the world’s nuclear weapons that were presently unaccounted for originated with them. This had shades of actual logic, and in fact it was right here at the start that the general population was closest to blaming the right people, at least in terms of actual responsibility. However, given that the Soviet Union had been disbanded for the better part of 20 years, this left everyone a little less than satisfied. Given the choice, people find it far more preferable to yell at someone that at least has the capability of yelling back. This is not at all out of a sense of nobility that it is not right to attack those that cannot defend themselves, but instead probably arises from a rudimentary understanding that those no longer in existence cannot be sued, voted out of office, or lynched. It would be a bit like the citizens of Atlanta still screaming at General Sherman for burning their town to the ground during the Civil War. Given that many citizens of Atlanta still actually do scream at General Sherman to not burn their town to the ground, it would probably be in the best interest of the greater Georgian population to reread this paragraph.

After the Soviet Union scapegoat turned into a dead end, the next target became the Decatur power plant that Dr. Destructo had infiltrated and where Captain Invincible had met his doom(2). First the head of security was paraded out to answer questions of how the Doctor had managed to infiltrate what undoubtedly should have been top notch security. The head of security responded that he was merely an administrator at the plant and that the job of plant security had actually been fully transferred to municipal law enforcement several years ago. Then the local Chief of police came out to say that due to budget cuts they had been unable to upgrade security equipment since approximately 1986 and had even had to let their best trained and consequently highest paid guards go in favor of mainly 18-year-old high school dropouts that had somehow managed to pass a GED equivalency exam.

Next the mayor came out to answer questions about why the budget had been cut so severely, and he responded that it had been on referendums that the citizens of Decatur themselves had proposed and voted for. Since most of the residents of Decatur had been incinerated, this was not at all a popular response. The fact that it was the truth did not dissuade those offering a dissenting opinion. Many accused the mayor of dancing on the graves of those dearly departed and of being a corrupt good-old boy (he was 27), who had no education (he had a B.S. in Psychology from Southern Illinois and a Law Degree from Northwestern), and anyway he was the one responsible for what referendums ended up on the ballot (he wasn’t). However, sensing a dead end here (at least until the next election), the metaphorical angry mob of less-than-ethical journalists and blame-mongerers went off to find a way to tie the state legislature and, hopefully, the governor into the disaster.

At the same time that this was going on in Decatur, all across the country people wanted to know what their local government was going to do to make sure that this catastrophe didn’t happen there. How good was the security? What progress had been made on finding out if there was a nuclear warhead under their town? Was marshall law being declared? Did all citizens have the right to arm themselves? When was Bravo going to be back on the air? This line of questions followed the Decatur blame model as well, until finally communities in every state across the country were ready to bring their grievances to their state capitals and Washington D.C.

But by that time, there was no state or national Representatives to hear them. Dr. Destructo had disbanded them.

(1) - When you have been the cause of death of a super-hero, and especially one you consider to be your arch-enemy, the appropriate terminology is always “vanquish”. Only if one wishes to trivialize his importance is it acceptable to use “dispatch”. This is not advised, however, if his death has been achieved only after multiple attempts, as it has the undesired effect of making you appear weak.

(2) - In this context, “met his doom” is also acceptable

Evil Genius (Part 4)

Chapter 5
Megan and Terry lay next to each other in a post-coital embrace, passing a cigarette between them. He knew that she was going to attempt to pry information out of him now, but he was fine with that. It just came with the territory when you were involved with a journalist. The amusing part of it was that she always approached him after sex, figuring that he was most vulnerable and thus susceptible to reveal more intimate details then. The reality was that he would decide far in advance what he would and would not share with her, but he always held out because he knew she’d end up sleeping with him. It was a nice little dynamic they had worked out.

She rolled over onto one side and looked up at him. Here it comes, he thought. He was right.

“So what’s going on with you? What is it the Doctor is planning this time?” She asked, attempting innocence. She was very convincing and if he had not already been prepared for it, he probably would have been fooled.

“Not sure.” He replied. And that was actually the truth. “That’s what’s got me worried. He’s usually so straightforward with his intentions and demands. But not this time. He is being very cryptic.”

“What do you mean?” She asked, with genuine curiosity now.

“Well, neither I or anyone else has heard anything from him in over 2 years, and all of a sudden from out of nowhere I get a message from him yesterday saying that I have to meet him at some nuclear power plant in the middle of rural Illinois and that if I don’t he will remove the control rods and cause a meltdown in the reactor.”

“Oh my god! Do you think he can really do it?” She was getting a little worried now. She always got worried when he told her about the evil schemes of these lunatics.

“Well, all we’ve been able to confirm so far is that he has indeed taken control of the plant and has punched holes in the containment building. We have to assume that either he or more likely someone he has hired knows how to trigger a meltdown.” He got up and started gathering up his clothes. It was time to get ready.

“What kind of casualties are we looking at if he succeeds?” She asked. Casualties. She was back in journalism mode. He was surprised she hadn’t referred to it as “collateral damage”.

“Well, that’s pretty tricky, actually. People hear the word 'nuclear' and they instantly think 'nuclear bomb'. But a power plant’s not like that. There’s not going to be a huge explosion that’s gonna vaporize people like at Hiroshima. But what will happen if he goes through with it is the creation of a huge cloud of radiation that will escape into the atmosphere. How much damage that does will depend a lot on which way the wind is blowing and how long it drifts before it hits a major population center. If we’re lucky, there will only be a couple hundred deaths. If he’s lucky, it could be a couple hundred thousand or more.”

“My God! So what are you gonna do?”

“What else can I do? I’m not gonna just let him kill all those people. I can’t take the risk that the winds will favor us.”

“But what if it’s a trap?” She was pleading with him now. The journalist was gone again and was being replaced by a semi-hysterical woman that didn’t want her man going headlong into danger.

“Oh, I’m sure it IS a trap, but I don’t have a choice. I’ve got to find out what he’s up to, and this is the only way.”

She was silent. She just sat there looking at him with a slight frown. He supposed it was a kind of pout, but if it was designed to make him reconsider it wasn’t working. She was very important to him, that was true, but this was something far more important. She just lay there in silence as he finished dressing. Then, he sat down and looked back at her, trying to look gentle and stern at the same time.

“Alright Meg, I gotta go.” He said, preparing to battle against her last minute pleadings, but none came.

“I know” is all she said.

He walked over and kissed her, lightly at first and then with a deepness that surprised them both. He had left her on dangerous and important missions before, but somehow this just felt different. That uneasy feeling came back to him again. At last he pulled away from her and brushed his hand lightly against the side of her face as he walked away. As he reached the bedroom door, she called after him.

“Terry” He turned to face her. “Come back to me quickly, OK?”

“Of course, babe” He said, as easily as he could manage. “There's nothing to worry about.”

But nothing could be further from the truth.


Chapter 6
A crimson and blue halo surrounded the nuclear plant in Decatur, IL. Every available police car within 100 miles had turned up to create a perimeter. And since just about every citizen within 100 miles had turned up as well, they were pretty much all available. The fact that a large civilian crowd had decided to crowd around a nuclear power plant that was under the control of a madman might seem unusual. But the people knew they weren’t in any real danger. They knew that Captain Invincible was en route and would have the situation resolved in no time. Their faith was such that their number one fear was failing to get a glimpse of their hero as he majestically arrived on the scene. Total annihilation via gamma rays was a distant second. Public speaking was third.

A great cheer went up as a small bright comet became visible in the eastern sky. No had ever asked the Captain if the light he emitted during flight was a natural by-product of whatever miraculous process gave him his gift or if he just did it for effect. In truth it was a little of both. The friction caused by his body skipping across the atmosphere like a stone created a natural incandescence, but he had the power to either maximize or minimize its effects. Tonight, as with most nights, he chose to maximize it. But unlike most nights, tonight he did it to portray the kind of confidence that he did not feel.

From about 30 miles out he had spotted what appeared to be the biggest hub of police cars and landed there. He was greeted immediately by a heavyset middle-aged officer in blue.

“Captain! Thank god you’re here! We’ve got a madman . . .”

The Captain raised his right hand to interrupt the officer.

“Yes officer, I was briefed on the situation in New York. Anything changed in the last 20 minutes?”

“No sir. He holed himself up in there yesterday, demanded to see you, and hasn’t said a word since.”

“Any casualties?”

“Unknown. We’ve reviewed the exterior surveillance cameras and the only thing we know is that no one’s come in or out of the facility since he entered it sometime after 11 yesterday.”

“Do we have any surveillance inside?”

“Negative. One of the first things he did was disable all the cameras. That’s actually how we first found out something was wrong.” The officer paused briefly and looked off towards the plant, and then back at the Captain. “What do you suppose he’s up to?”

The Captain thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

“Not sure. But you can bet I’m going to find out.”

And with that he started walking slowly but purposefully towards the plant entrance. The officer pleaded after him.

“Wait! Captain! What if it’s a trap?” But the Captain just kept moving.

The wail of the sirens was replaced by the hum of the power plant as the Captain drew nearer to the entrance. The rounded dome of the containment building, which had seemed so insignificantly small from 1000 feet up, now rose up and seemed to double in size with every few steps. He hesitated for just a moment as he reached the doors ,placed his steel fists on the handle, and took a deep breath. A sudden fury erupted inside of him and with a mighty swing of his arm he sent the two metal entry doors flying into the interior of the plant. He stepped inside.

“Doctor!” He boomed. “I am here!”

“That’s absolutely perfect.” A voice over the intercom replied. “Because I’m not.”

And with that a small atomic bomb planted in the bowels of the nuclear plant erupted. Captain Invincible, the police at the plant, the adoring crowd, and everyone and everything within a radius of 30 miles was vaporized instantaneously.


Frequently Asked Questions
Q: So, what happened to Captain Invincible?
A: He’s dead.

Q: Dead dead?
A: Yes

Q: Really?
A: Yes

Q: OK, but it’s one of those things where he’s in some kind of cryogenic freeze while his body regenerates itself, right?
A: No, it’s one of those not breathing, no longer living, completely vaporized kind of things.

Q: Come on!
A: That’s not a question.

Q: I don’t believe it.
A: Fine. He still is.

Q: Ok, so he’s dead. But it’s a death where he needs the kiss of his true love to resurrect him, or something like that right?
A: Are you high? He’s been vaporized! There’s not even anything left to kiss.

Q: OK, so let me get this straight. He’s really dead-dead and is in no way, shape, or form in any kind of healing process and can’t be resurrected in any way?
A: Right

Q: So how does he come back?
A: I hate you.

Evil Genius (Part 3)

Chapter 2
Doctor Ivan Destructo was known in various circles as The Destructor, Ivan the Wicked, or often simply as The Doctor. For a brief time he himself had lobbied for the name Ivan the Terrible, only to be informed that he had been preempted by some 450 years by a Russian czar. What exactly he was a doctor of no one knew for sure. If anyone ever did know they had long ago been disposed of, and any that thought about him long enough to wonder about it knew better than to ask him. You didn’t ask The Doctor questions, he asked you. And when he did you had essentially two choices: 1) supply him with the answer he was looking for, or 2) attempt to fake an epileptic seizure. Option 2 was seldom very effective. There were whispers (and they were only very, very quiet and careful whispers) that he in fact was not a doctor at all, and had just taken the title himself, like a rapper. In actuality, technically he was in fact a real doctor. He had actually achieved his doctorate through a series of correspondence classes from a not-very-well respected community college. In botany. That he could scarcely identify a rose when he saw one should give some idea as to the credibility of the degree-granting institution.

To anyone who didn’t know him, and that was becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon lately, he would not have appeared to be anything out of the ordinary. To the untrained eye, he would appear to be nothing more than a bald man in his late 50s or early 60s with thick black-rimmed glasses which, one could imagine, were used chiefly to decipher today’s Wall Street Journal or perhaps the current issue of Reader’s Digest. And when it was his goal to not be noticed that is exactly how he behaved; watching at a distance while appearing to be buried in a newspaper or a novel. But when he wanted to shrug off the image of normalcy; when he wanted to let the unfortunate individual before him know that he was to be taken seriously, he need only perform the simplest of actions. He would smile. And if you were standing before him when he did, you felt physically transformed. A second before you might have thought you were speaking with a feeble, middle-aged man on the brink of senility, but all delusions of that simply melted away in an instant. It wasn’t that he did anything particularly unusual when he smiled, it was all in the quiet but absolute confidence that was portrayed.

And perhaps the most frightening aspect of this confidence was how justified it was. When The Doctor decided that he required something, he did whatever was necessary to obtain it. He didn’t waste his time or energy getting angry or planning elaborate vendettas – such petty emotions were beneath him. Obstacles were to be overcome, not stressed over. The words cold and calculating were never more apt, even if they inevitably fell short of truly encapsulating the true essence of the man.

He also had little interest in celebrating his victories, namely because he didn’t see them that way. Each was merely a stepping stone; one small part of the master plan. From his earliest days knocking over liquor stores and gas stations, to the multi-million dollar operations he now routinely pulled off (effortlessly, it seemed), it had all been building to something. Everyone around him seemed to sense this too, even if they could only guess what the end-game was. It simply wasn’t possible to operate with this much efficiency and calm amidst the chaotic and turbulent criminal world unless you knew exactly what you were doing, and exactly how to do it. It’s what made him perhaps the most intriguing criminal mastermind in the world, and certainly is what made him the most feared.

Chapter 3
Terry Graham, aka Captain Invincible, looked out the window nervously and brought the cigarette to his mouth, inhaling sharply. He needed to quit, he told himself for perhaps the thousandth time. Not for his health; his superhuman body was impervious to the harmful affects of tobacco. It was just that it was such a bad example to set for the kids. That’s what his friends kept telling him, anyway.

“Superheroes don’t smoke, Terry. It’s just not natural.”

That always gave him a chuckle. He was a man blessed with the strength of at least a hundred men. Hell, maybe even a thousand; his limits hadn’t ever been sufficiently tested. He also possessed lightning quick reflexes, x-ray vision, was impervious to fire, and on the rare occasion when he had been unable to dodge a bullet intended for him, they had stung with all the force of a small piece of hail before bouncing harmlessly to the ground. Yet despite all this, it was his smoking that was “not natural”. He had been intending to quit for years now, but had basically settled into the routine of only smoking in private, when the faces of the oh-so-impressionable young children were nowhere to be found. He tended to smoke more when he was nervous. And he was VERY nervous tonight.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Megan cooed to him as she put her arms around his shoulders.

“Nothing, Meg, just work stuff.” He lied, unsuccessfully attempting to derail the line of inquiry.

“It’s that business with the Doctor, isn’t it?” She continued, as she laid her head against his back. He could feel her blonde hair against his neck, and could smell her perfume. God, she smelled good today, and it was very distracting. He pulled away and turned to face her.

“Yes it is, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” He said, trying at the same time to convince both himself and her and failing at both.

“Of course you can handle it, dear. You can handle anything.” She tried to reassure him as she moved in closer again.

“I know that. It’s just that it’s different this time. He’s different, somehow. This plan of his is not like anything else he’s tried before, and it scares me. I don’t like surprises.”

“Well, talk to me then. We can work it out together.” She was in his arms now, with her head against his chest. He could see where this was going. Not that he was terribly upset that it was going there. He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

“OK. But not now. Later.” She looked up at him, and he kissed her passionately. Slowly, they made there way over to the bed without breaking, and made love for hours.

Chapter 4 (A Brief Aside)
This is probably a good time to mention the inherent difficulties involved with the sex lives of superheroes, particularly those, like Terry, who have been blessed with superhuman strength. With men in general, maintaining control during sex is always a dicey proposition, but with superheroes it is absolutely essential if massive injuries are to be avoided. As a point in fact, during Terry’s first sexual encounter he had momentarily got lost in the emotion of the moment, thrusted just a tad too hard, and consequently shattered the pelvis of his unfortunate partner in three places. The proceedings had ended rather abruptly then and not only was he not afforded the opportunity to redeem himself, he barely missed getting hit by a rather scathing assault lawsuit. Since that day he had always taken the utmost care to place the well being of his partner ahead of his own pleasure, with the end result being that although he still enjoyed the sexual act very much, he would have to admit that he had never really been completely fulfilled in his entire life.

And the problems were just as bad when he attempted a “solo flight”. During his early teen years, when he was just discovering the joy of artificial stimulation, one night he had gotten a hold of some particularly explicit material and had decided he was going to just let himself go and see what happened. The result of his orgasm can only be likened to a torpedo that caused such structural damage to his parents’ house that it eventually had to be condemned. As a result of both of those experiments gone awry, Terry had long ago accepted the fact that lack of sexual fulfillment was just going to have to be one of the few downsides to being a superhuman.

Just something to think about.

Evil Genius (Part 2)

Chapter 1

It was just after 9 A.M. on a sunny May morning when a large white van pulled up outside the First National Bank of Chicago. In a flash, five armed men in ski masks leapt out the back and inside the lobby. One of them raised his semi-automatic into the air and fired a burst at the ceiling.

“Everybody get down!” He shouted. This command was unnecessary, as it turned out, since everyone had done precisely that as soon as the shots were fired.

“Nobody does anything stupid and nobody gets hurt.” He continued, well aware of how clichéd his speech was. Some things become clichés for a reason. He waved his gun in a menacing fashion and motioned to the tellers behind the counter.

“All of you; out in front with the rest. Anybody who trips the silent alarm gets a bullet between the eyes.”

The terrified employees filed out with their hands in the air. The rest of the armed men went around the lobby to disable any cameras that were visible. They were aware that undoubtedly there would be hidden cameras as well, but it still seemed prudent to at least destroy whatever was in sight. Plus, wrecking things was fun.

Once the employees and customers were secured on the ground, the men nodded to each other. One man began emptying out the cash drawers at each teller station while two others continued to patrol the lobby; their guns trained on the hostages, ready to unload at the first sign of movement. The remaining two headed off downstairs, where the vault was located. As they descended and began to sift through the various tools and explosives they were carrying in tote bags, they looked up and noticed with equal parts confusion and excitement that the vault door was already open. They paused briefly to process this unforeseen turn of events, but only long enough to notice the 3 by 3 by 3 cubed palette of $100 bills that was visible at the vault’s rear. With the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, the 2 criminals rushed headlong into the vault. They barely had time to appreciate the perfume of the thousands of crisp bills in front of them when the vault door suddenly slammed shut behind them.

Upstairs, the 3 criminals heard the crash of the vault, but mistook it for the sound of the door being blown open. It wasn’t until after they had finished collecting the contents of the cash drawers that they realized the 2 men in the vault hadn’t checked in.

“Echo one, come in” the man said into his walkie-talkie. He paused and listened. One second. Three seconds. Five seconds. Static was the only response.

“Echo one, what’s your status. Come back.”

Nothing.

“Shit”

He motioned towards another of the men.

“Bravo, get down there and find out what the problem is.”

The other man nodded and headed towards the downstairs steps and disappeared from view.

With all the teller stations bare, the two men had no choice but to wait to hear back from their recently departed cohort. And, as is wont to happen when two men who are in the middle of committing a class B felony have a few moments to themselves for quiet contemplation, they started to get nervous. Very nervous.

The two men walked towards each other and met in the center of the lobby to conference.

“Shit man, I don’t like this. We’ve already been here too long.”

“Relax; we’re still on schedule. Everything’s going to be fine.” The other man replied. Even as he spoke, he was acutely aware that he was trying to reassure himself at least as much as the other man.

“Get Bravo on the line. See what the hold up . . .” He broke off suddenly. A noise in the distance. An unmistakable and terrifyingly shrill noise. The one noise above all others they preyed they wouldn’t have to hear today. Sirens.

“Oh fuck! Go see how close they are!”

The men split up, with one heading towards the front window and the other heading towards the stairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, he screamed down: “

Echo one, Bravo we’ve been made. We’ve got to move now!”

The sirens were getting louder now. The man whirled around. “Charlie, how much time have we…”

But the other man wasn’t there anymore.

“What the hell. Charlie where the hell are you?” No response. “Charlie, if you fuckin’ bailed on me I swear I will rip your goddamn nuts off!”

Getting desperate now, he screamed into the walkie-talkie.

“Echo one, Bravo, Charlie somebody talk to me goddamn it!”

Static again.

Where the fuck could they all be? This momentary curiosity was replaced almost at once by the stark realization that wherever they were, it meant that he was now all alone. The thought hit him like ice-cold water at the base of his neck. He was standing in the middle of a bank lobby with a handful of stolen money as the cops were closing in. And he was all alone.

Suddenly, he heard a voice. A deep, booming voice that didn’t so much speak as much as emanate from the air all around him.

“Feeling a little lonely?”

The man whirled around, trying to track the source, but it was useless. The speaker, whoever he was, seemed to be everywhere all at once.

“Don’t worry; you’ll be making lots of new friends where you’re going.”

The man’s breathing quickened and he started shaking.

“Wh-wh-what the h-h-ell is going on here?” Trying to sound tough and failing miserably. “Show yourself, c-coward.”

“Alright, if you insist” the voice cheerfully replied. In front of the man a chiseled vision of steel and grey descended slowly from the ceiling. The man knew him. Everyone knew him. Captain Invincible.

“We gonna do this the easy way or the hard way?”

The man responded by opening fire from his semi-automatic. But even before he could press his finger to the trigger, the man in front of him seemed to lose physical form and become a blur of blue. Only when the clip was empty did his shape return. Not so much as a scratch was on him as he walked up to the now hysterical man.

“Ah; the easy way”

Outside, the police arrived on the scene just in time to see a man in a ski mask suddenly explode through the glass window and land on his back in the middle of the street. As the dust settled, Captain Invincible could be seen emerging through the now-shattered glass. He headed straight towards the Chief.

“Sorry about that. Meant to whip him through the revolving doors. Looks like my aim’s a little off. As usual, I’ll transfer you funds to pay for the damages. You’ll find 2 others unconscious just outside the vault and 2 more inside it.”

The Chief couldn’t help but smile. “Man, Invincible we’ve got to get you a cell phone. One of the tellers tripped the alarm but we wouldn’t have bothered if we’d have known you were already on the scene.”

“Yeah, well I enjoy the incapacitation but I prefer pickup to delivery so it’s good you’re here.”

The chief smiled again, but Captain Invincible noted a hint of fear behind the smile.

“Something wrong Chief?”

The smile melted away from the chief’s face and he inhaled deeply and nodded.

“I think you’d better come back to the station with me so I can explain. It’s the Doctor, and it’s not good.”

Evil Genius (Part 1)

OK, so here we go. I won't usually post introductions, but wanted to this first time because the Prologue is a bit on the darker side. Just keep in mind that it's going to be a comedy (albeit a dark comedy) so please view the violence to follow in the comic book style that is is intended.

Prologue
Two Years Ago
“Repent! Repent sinners for the end of the world is near!”

The preacher stood in the middle of the park with one hand on the bullhorn and the other on his Bible. He turned slowly from side to side to engage the people as they walked towards and then away from him. A few paused to listen and every once in a while one stayed to argue, but most just ignored him and walked on by.

“The day of reckoning is at hand, children of God. Do not be lost when the time comes. Jesus loves you, but if you turn your back on him today, he will not recognize you when you stand before him in judgement.”

It had been a pretty slow day, thought the preacher. He wasn’t sure that thus far he had saved anyone. This only spurred him on harder, though. He decided that what was needed was the power of God’s words, rather than his own. He began to quote scripture.

“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night”

Yes this was better, thought the preacher. He always felt the power flowing through him when he recited the Book of Revelations.

“And I stood upon the sand, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.”

Now the preacher could see that he had caught someone’s attention. A man of average build in perhaps his mid to late 50s had paused directly in front of him and was listening intently. This was good; men of his age frequently began to confront their own mortality for the first time. They were ripe for salvation. This really gave the preacher momentum.

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”

Now more than a few people had paused, though whether it was the power of the word or the theatrics of the performance that held their attention is anyone’s guess. And still the middle-aged man stood directly in front of him, his eyes locked intently on the preacher and a small smile beginning to appear on his lips. ‘This man is ready to be saved, and with my help God will save him this day’, the preacher thought as he returned the man’s smile. But he was not ready to abandon the rest of his audience, now that he finally had one.

“And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. And they were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.”

Now he put down the bullhorn and amped up the performance, shouting as loud as he could and thumping the bible for emphasis.

“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. And every deed of every man was recorded in the books, and each was judged according to their work. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And any who’s name was not found in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.”

The preacher paused reverently to allow the words to sink in a moment. Then he looked up at his audience, which numbered only a dozen at the most. In his mind, though, he was speaking to thousands, and they were hanging on his every word. Just as he was about to speak again, the man in front of him put his arm on his shoulder.

“And is your name written in the Book of Life?” he asked.

The preacher beamed as he answered. “God has saved me from death. I am one with Jesus and we shall live forever.”

The man nodded and then turned to face the rest of the crowd.

“This man speaks the truth. The day of reckoning is close at hand. And all of you will be judged!” The man said. The preacher continued to beam; he had reached this man, and he had been saved. Praise Jesus! All at once the man turned back to look at the preacher and suddenly the preacher felt as though his whole body had been submerged in ice water. The man was smiling broadly, but there was no joy in that smile. The man turned again to face the crowd.

“But retribution does not come from God. Oh no, my friends. It comes from me!”

A deep silence now descended on the crowd. Even those that had heard nothing of the preacher’s sermon could sense that something wasn’t quite right, and paused to find out what it was. The preacher was shaking now; he had been unprepared for this sudden outburst of blasphemy. He was searching for the words to use to decry him, when the man turned to face him again. The preacher now understood why the smile had froze him. It wasn’t a lack of joy. It was pure evil.

“And you, sir, are not in my book.”

The blade came out quickly. Impossibly quick, for a man that age. The preacher could not even identify it as a knife before it disappeared into one side of his neck and reappeared on the other.
Now the silence was deafening. People stood in shock, searching their minds for another explanation of what they had just witnessed. Some thinking that it was an elaborate magic stunt; others thinking they were in the midst of some terrible nightmare and that they would wake momentarily. All eyes were fixated on the preacher, who stood with the same look of shock on his face. He took one small step forward and as he did so his head came loose from his body and fell to the ground.

And with that the spell was broken. One woman’s piercing scream gave rise to fifty more, as people began to slowly back away from the grizzly scene before losing all composure and just running and scattering in all directions. And in the middle of the mayhem that he had created, the man stood silently with his eyes closed and breathed deeply. With his arms extended and his palms and face pointing skyward, he basked in the terror that he had created. Every scream was music to his ears, and his every thought centered on how, very soon now, he would be the cause of hundreds of millions of screams just like this. When at last he heard the first of the sirens approaching, he sighed and pulled himself out of his daydream. He had nothing to fear from the police, and indeed the incident with the preacher had only whetted his appetite for blood. He could stay and make a bloody mockery out of the local law enforcement. But there was so much work to be done, and that would only be a distraction. Soon enough, he told himself. The time for blood will come soon enough.

And with that most pleasant thought in his head, Dr. Ivan Destructo smiled and slowly began to walk away. This was shaping up to be a very good day.