'The Unclean' by Woody Carsky-Wilson

I

watch evil men do evil things. I'm very thorough and my surveillance operations are as clean as my personal appearance. It's why my employers pay me so well. They don't ask questions. I get results.

The twenty-third of February, nine-thirty local, Mayfield, Ohio. I had tracked Philip Hastings across fifteen states over a period of nine months. That night I followed him down Interstate 64 heading west, took the Grayson exit, and wended my way through the rocky hills of northern Kentucky on highway AA9. He was returning to his house, his wife and young daughter.

In other homes, he'd left a string of young boys and girls, all now dead.

I watched him through the walls with my night viewer as he bent over his sleeping daughter with a smile. With the ultrasensitive device, I could catch a smile and tell you its shade. This night's smile was secretive, excited, wanton. I turned up the volume and breathed slowly through my mouth so I could hear.

"She's old enough to begin," he whispered, kissing her cheek. "And she'll like it. Soon, she won't be able to stop herself."

He did not lie. He was a fisherman of the young. Once he set his hook in their souls, he yanked hard, and there was no removing it.

"Wake up, Sarah." He rubbed her shoulder.

She moaned in her sleep.

He bent closer. "Daddy's got something for you."

"Bastard." I wanted to kill him. With a rifle firing mini-sabots, I could blow out his brain, before he suspected anything was awry. He'd feel a spark inside his head, and then he would fall to the floor, limbs twitching in death.

I have killed before. The job sometimes requires it, but I needed to get his deeds on record. More than mere culpability, I wanted his technique, so my employers could compile a profile and scan for his characteristic nuances in public places around the nation. With such information, we could expunge men like him from the world.

He took her hand, guided it slowly down. Nausea rose in my throat. A few more centimeters and she'd touch it. There'd be no turning back for her. She frowned and awoke, grasping something foreign in her hand.

"Daddy?" Her eyes gleamed white. She was pretty, and only fourteen years old.

"Here's the tool of my trade, hon." He looked about, suspicious. "They think what we're doing is wrong, but it's the most natural thing in the world! Anyway, you have no choice. The seed was in you at birth, waiting for me to help it grow."

She fought him at first, but gradually submitted, and I guess even enjoyed it, judging by her enthusiasm. I watched and did nothing but chronicle the event for an hour, then two, then three. Would he sop every vestige of innocence from her? I changed tapes and sighed with relief when they stopped for the night. Another youth perverted, lost forever.

He told her about the thirty-six perversions.

"Six are obsolete," he said with an air of smug authority.

"Dad, I'm tired. My hand hurts," she complained.

"Okay, honey. Massage your hand. I'll be back tomorrow night."

"Me, too, you son of a bitch." I folded and stored the surveillance equipment after rubbing it down with sterile alcohol wipes. Thirty-six perversions, six obsolete. And he'd be back to teach them all.

* * *

My car drove me off and parked at the Tobaccohol One-Stop. I bought a book, Crime #112 by Newlife Literary Consortium.

Newlife is composed entirely of artificial intelligences. I buy nothing unless Newlife makes it. "Untouched by human hands" implies a product is unsullied by dirt and corruption. Sam turned me on to Newlife. All his army gear was produced by them.

I reclined in my seat and read the book, smiling. Chapter 0. Page 1. The Introduction to the Conflict.

"There was a man who lived alone and acted differently than others. He killed another man because of a vengeance-related pathological condition. Then the legal system deployed a capable law enforcement official to track him down. The crime report follows."

There were pictures and clues. In the entire thirty-seven page novel, there was no ambiguity. I knew the guilty man would come to justice. I knew the legal system would win. The joy lay in unearthing the details, numbers, reports and photos.

I'll buy Crime #113 as soon as it hits the shelves.

* * *

Early next morning, I stopped at a data kiosk, wiped the keyboard with sterile pads, paid, and sent my video feed. After several seconds, I received the response in the chat box.

"Digital footage adequate, but better resolution is required."

"We've got all we need," I tapped out, careful not to tear my thin plastic gloves.

"Require complete case, no surprises. One more night."

"What if he runs?"

"There is nowhere on Earth for him to hide."

I broke the connection, stacked the empty tapes neatly in my bag after dabbing them with antiseptic hospital cleaner, and returned to the car. "Surveillance point by nightfall," I said. "Random city course until then."

The doors closed, the car lifted and skimmed the ground, its fans whirring. It moved with the grace of a shark. Thirty-six perversions, six obsolete. That left thirty exercises he would teach his young, but now sullied, daughter.

To erase the memory, I picked lint from the crevices between the seats and scraped bubblegum from under the dash, hidden behind the black plastic shield that covered the electronics. Rental cars are deceptive. They look clean at first glance, but dig hard enough and the filth is there! I cleaned the windows with the static-free wipes in my bag. It wasn't perfect -- streaks remained -- but it was better than before.

That night I approached closer to the house on a side street and polarized the windows. As soon as the sky darkened, the city lights illuminated the neighborhood. I spotted him.

He strolled the sidewalk as though he were a normal human being and not a child predator. I knew what his black overcoat concealed.

Meeting his daughter in her room, he exposed the "tool of his trade". She took it in hand, bringing it to her lips and lightly pressing her tongue to the tip.

I turned away.

But no, my employers needed the footage, so I watched without acting on my impulses, feeling ashamed. I had once felt ashamed when I was younger and my older brother Sam screamed at me.


"Dirt!" all over your clothes, plebe! Dirt!" He yanked me by my ear, dragged me over to the washing machine, stripped me and jammed my clothes in its open mouth. "We are neither poor nor dirty! If West Point taught me nothing else, it taught me how to be clean. Our kind do not sleep in the dirt."

He scrubbed me top to bottom until my raw flesh vibrated with pain. He taught me a valuable lesson. I must always be on my guard against dirt, corruption and human weakness.

I like to think I've done Sam proud.

That night the subhuman scum named Philip Hastings would not let his daughter rest until six in the morning. God help the poor child, she had stamina! I used all my tapes, placed them neatly in the bag and left, feeling queasy. She'd shown a hearty appetite for every new perversion he taught her.

* * *

At the data kiosk that afternoon, my employers approved the new footage and fed my account. They paid me every three days and I always used part of the money to buy a crisp new white shirt straight off the shelf. It was my most pleasurable of rituals.

"Tonight," they said.

"Yes," I agreed, a sudden thrill jolting my nerves and lifting my spirits.

* * *

He came to her, and I was ready. In my pocket sat a hypo applicator for administering vaccine to children. It was painless and quick, but the small bottle in the base of the handle did not carry the usual stuff. Rather, it was a vaccine for the moral filth that infected our society, a standard law enforcement drug, quite safe. All police stations carried the antidote.

Strapped to my leg was a folded straight razor, and that had its function, too.

I opened the car door and crept to the rear of the house. My Newlife covert operator's wristwatch scanned the e-lock, buzzing. The door clicked open and I entered a small kitchen.

There were other ways I had to enter a house, but I preferred not to use them. They invariably involved scraping against window sills, slithering down chimneys, doing things that brought me into contact with too much dirt. Sam had raised our family out of the dirt we had suffered for generations. I will not speak of my father's disgustingly unsanitary bed, but I will say it would never be my bed.

Red stains marred the surface of the kitchen's range -- someone had been cooking spaghetti sauce -- and I realized the wife was as guilty of dirt as the husband. Slovenly hog! No wonder she couldn't protect her daughter.

The stairs lay past the kitchen and I ascended them, careful to remain silent. At the top, I paused, looking around. To the left was a closed door, the daughter's room. I held the vaccine gun in my right hand and touched the knob with my gloved left. Counting to three, I opened the door and rushed through.

The girl sat on her bed, scribbling in a notebook.

"Where is he?!" I hissed. I kept my voice low to prevent her mother from hearing. From the corners of my mouth, my teeth were beginning to poke through.

The girl said nothing, only stared at my face and scribbled.

"Stop that!" I ordered, but she scribbled faster.

Setting the vaccine gun on the table, I withdrew my razor, flicking it open with a snick. I would slit her throat ear to ear like the others and leave her in the pervert's wake like flotsam. Some of the blood I could save in a plastic baggie, freezing it and drinking later in peace after I used the home medicomp to scan for impurities. Every time I blamed such a death on Hastings, it was the complete truth. My hands did the cutting, but his mind had introduced the poison which made the cutting necessary. No one blames a surgeon for cutting out cancer. No one could blame me.

I knew I'd get blood on my gloved hands, and maybe my shirt, but that's okay. I would be lancing a societal boil, and a little pus was therefore acceptable, even noble. My fangs were fully extruded now, but I controlled their passion. Passion is dirt. Dirt is evil. I would have neither.

I approached, but she did not cry out. Her hand jerked its way across that piece of paper and her eyes bored into my own, and why, oh why was she not afraid?

A shadow moved.

"No!" I tried to whirl, but it was too late.

"Hello, fangs." Bzzt.

I froze. Every nerve was still alive, but I could not move. My mouth hung half open, my eyes were wide, the razor lay gripped in my hand and I was at Hastings' mercy.

He walked around to stand in front of me, still holding my vaccine gun.

"Christine, keep writing. Go for the emotional impact. Tell your reader about the pain and surprise in his eyes, the terrible muscle lock. Remember that no man thinks himself a villain, so be fair when you appraise him. Show compassion, but don't flinch from the harsh details. He is a vampire, who does monstrous things for his own twisted reasons."

She nodded. Scribble, scribble.

I pushed as hard as I could against the drug, but not a single voluntary muscle moved. My heart beat and blood coursed through my arteries. I found I could move my eyes, focusing slowly. I rejoiced in that meager pleasure.

"Christine, here is today's lesson," lectured Hastings, pacing the floor. "It's about how they barred humans from writing literature. Not vampires. I guess they're just along for the ride." He stopped, glared at me, then continued pacing. "In the last century, we were going liberal with copyrighting, but the pendulum swung back hard." He pointed to me, and I would have spat, but couldn't even do that. "People with no talent clambered to copyright the few original thoughts they had, and the AI's helped them."

How dare he? If it weren't for the AI's we'd be back in the dirt, wallowing in chaos, sleeping in coffins!

"They followed a simple strategy, generating and copyrighting billions of random sentence combinations. A year later, they scanned a couple newly published target books, found many accidental copyright violations, and sued the authors and publishers. They repeated this farce during hundreds of cases. Faced with paralyzing fines, writers dropped to the wayside like flies."

He took a deep breath. "Ready for a pop quiz?"

Christine nodded.

"How many basic plots are there?"

"Thirty-six, depending on which reference book you use."

The perversions! He was admitting to it all in public, the felon.

"And how plots are now obsolete?"

"Six. They're mostly Greek drama plots, like that guy who married his mom."

"Oedipus, yes. And of the remaining plots that writers like to use, I think one of them will never go out of style. I'll illustrate."


He turned and planted his knee into my groin. Spikes of pain exploded in my stomach, expanding into my chest and ricocheting like a pinball, tearing at my insides. I dribbled puke down the front of my shirt. My new, immaculate shirt! I'd bought and laundered it yesterday. Now it was stained, stinking, filthy dirty. I tried to recoil, but could not. Vampires are not immune to pain. We are flesh and blood creatures.


Hastings drew close, his unwanted breath on my face. "You murdered my young proteges, but you haven't killed me or my daughter, and you did not kill the dream. The dream will never die!" He spat in my face.


This new insult dripped down my skin as I tried to escape. I would have ripped off my skin and thrown it away were that possible.


"Men like me will beat your consortium. We'll reclaim the rights that were stolen," he continued. "I'll call the police and send photos of you to the press. I'll activate the network of others who work underground against the AI's and there will be a reckoning. We'll light the fires of the world against this injustice!"


A woman's voice called out from another room. "Christine, what's that noise?"


"Nothing, mother!" responded Christine. "It's a cop show on TV. I'll turn it off."


She placed the tool of her father's trade, a ballpoint pen, into her shirt pocket. Then she and her father departed. Even though they were both writers -- god, what a hateful word! -- I begged them in tortured silence to remove the nastiness from my face and shirt. But they couldn't hear my pleas. No one could.


It was late morning before Hastings' wife found me. The police arrived shortly


after and gave me the antidote. I'd been frozen for ten hours. Longer than eternity.


* * *


I like it here. There are no distractions. The nurses give me food and I watch the walls. My fangs do not grow, because... just because.


I think about plots, lint, bubblegum and antiseptic spray.


There are only thirty-six plots in the world. That's what the bad girl said. Six are obsolete. That's what she told her evil father. Of the thirty active plots, one will never go out of style. My groin throbs in remembered pain as I think of it, crying out to the nurse for another sedative.


Revenge.


??

***

 

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