The Ignored

their job, because he was above them in the corporate hierarchy. Banks paid attention to him because Banks was responsible for the whole division and had to keep close tabs on what everyone was doing, particularly the department heads.

But no one else was aware of his existence.

Maybe that was why Stewart disliked me so much. He saw in me the things he hated most about himself. Odds were that he didn’t even know he was Ignored. He was sheltered by his position and probably wasn’t aware of the fact that no one outside of our department paid any attention to him at all.

The thought occurred to me that I could kill him and no one would notice.

I instantly tried to take the thought back, tried to pretend I hadn’t had it. But it was there in my mind, defying my attempts to erase it even as I desperately tried to think of something else. I don’t know to whom I was denying this thought. Myself, perhaps. Or God — if He or She was listening in on my mind and monitoring the morality of my random ideas and notions. It wasn’t just a random notion, though. And as I tried not to think about it and only thought about it more, I realized that while I wanted to find the idea horrifying and completely repugnant, it actually seemed… attractive.

I could kill Stewart and no one would notice.

I thought of the man stealing Coors from the 7-Eleven and not getting caught.

I could kill Stewart and no one would notice.

I was not a murderer. I owned no guns. Killing went against everything I’d ever been taught or believed in.

But the idea of doing away with Stewart had a definite appeal. I would never really go through with it, of course. It was just a fantasy, a daydream —

No, it wasn’t.

I wanted to kill him.

I began thinking about it logically. Was Stewart truly Ignored? Or was he just kind of a boring guy who wasn’t very popular? Could I be certain that if I killed him I would get away with it?

It didn’t matter if he was Ignored. I was Ignored. People might notice that he was dead, but they wouldn’t know that I was the killer. I could murder him in his office and walk down the hallway, go down the elevator, and pass through the lobby all covered with blood and no one would pay any attention to me at all.

The programmers left the break room and I was alone, standing in the center of the room, surrounded by the humming refrigerator and the vending machines. Things were moving too fast. This wasn’t who I was. I wasn’t a criminal. I didn’t kill people. I shouldn’t even want to kill people.

But I did want to.

And, as I stood there, I knew that I would do it.

Twenty

On the day of the murder I went to work in a clown suit.

I don’t know what possessed me to go to that extreme. Maybe, subconsciously, I wanted to be found out and stopped, prevented from going through with it. Maybe I wanted someone to force me to do what I knew I should do and couldn’t.

But that didn’t happen.

There’d been fewer preparations necessary than I’d expected. As the days passed and the certainty grew within me that I was going to kill Stewart, I started to formulate a plan. At first, I thought I’d have to learn all of the of the exits and entrances within the building, the location of each fire alarm, the exact shift hours of each downstairs security guard, but I soon realized that it would not be that complicated. I was not robbing Fort Knox here. And I was practically invisible already. All I really had to do was get in, do it, and get out.

The major problem would be Stewart himself. I was not invisible to him — he saw me — and he was in a hell of a lot better shape than I was. He could kick my ass with one hand tied behind his back.

And if he knew what I was — what we were — he could kill me and get away with it. No one would know. And no one would care.

I’d have to have the element of surprise on my side.

I followed him about for a few days, trying to learn his patterns, his routine, hoping I could figure out from this how, and where, I could most effectively strike at him. I was sneaky about it, not obvious. Since no one ever noticed where I went or what I did, I staked out a corner by the programmers’ section where I could keep an eye on Stewart’s office. I watched him come and go for two days, and was gratified to learn that his habits were very regular, his daily routine practically set in stone. From there, I moved to the main hallway, making sure I was walking down the hallway at the times he left his office so that I would be able to see where he went and what he did.

He went into the bathroom each day after lunch, at approximately one-fifteen, and he stayed in there a good ten minutes.

I knew that that was where I would kill him.

It was the perfect spot, the bathroom. He would be vulnerable and unsuspecting, and I would have the element of surprise. If I could catch him while his pants were down it would be even better, because he would be partially incapacitated: he wouldn’t be able to kick me or run away.

That was the plan.

It was simple and to the point, and I knew that that was why it would work.

I set a date: January 30.

Thursday.

On January 30, I woke up early and put on my clown clothes. The clothes had been a last-minute decision. I’d stopped by a costume rental shop on my way home the night before. I’d pretended to myself that it was a disguise, but I knew that was bullshit. In a business environment, a clown suit was not an effective disguise, it was a red flag. And I’d paid for the rental with my Visa card. There was a record of this. There was a paper trail. Evidence.

I think, subconsciously, I wanted to get caught.

I took my time painting my face with the greasepaint supplied by the costume shop, making sure I covered every inch of skin with white, making sure the red smiling mouth was perfectly painted on, making sure the nose was precisely in place.

It was already after eight before I left the house.

Next to me, on the passenger seat of the car, was the carving knife I’d taken from the kitchen.

It was like I was someone else, like I was in a movie and watching myself secondhand. I drove to Automated Interface, parked way the hell out in God’s country, walked through the rows of cars to the building, walked through the lobby, took the elevator upstairs, and went into my office. I carried the knife all the way, holding it out in front of me, practically advertising what I intended to do, making no effort to hide it, but no one stopped me, no one saw me.

I sat at my desk, unmoving, the knife in front of me, until one o’clock.

At five after, I stood, walked down the hallway to the bathroom, went into the first stall. I’d expected to be nervous, but I was not. My hands were neither sweaty nor shaking, and I was calm as I sat down on the toilet. This was the time to back out. Nothing had happened. I could call it off right now and no one would know. No one would get hurt.

But I wanted Stewart to get hurt.

I wanted him dead.

I made a deal with myself. If he walked into my stall, I would kill him. If he walked into one of the other stalls, I would call the whole thing off now and forever.

I grasped the knife tighter. Now I was starting to sweat. My mouth was dry, and I licked my lips, trying to generate some saliva.

The bathroom door opened.