“Words.”
“Words?”
Alain nodded. “Oui.” He looked to Dez, who emptied out the plastic bag on to the counter as if he’d asked her to do it. Tyler heard metal clanking. Dez rustled around somewhere behind him for several seconds before walking into view holding what looked like a metal X-Acto knife. His mother used one very much like it for crafting back in Wisconsin.
Boy, do I miss Wisconsin.
The knife had a razor-sharp, pointed blade at one end and a metal, pencil-sized body.
Tyler eyeballed Dez in her leather pants. She didn’t look like the crafting sort.
“What’s that for?”
“Eet’s how she’s going to write ze words on your body.”
“On my body?”
“Oui. We start with the thigh, no? No one will see that in your modest American swimming trunks. But next we move to your—what do you sink? Stomach? Back? Forehead?”
Tyler shook his head. “Whoa, wait, you can’t cut my face—I’m an actor—My face is my life.” Even in his rising panic, Tyler knew it was the douchiest thing he’d ever said in his life.
“Zen maybe you pay me een two days and we spare ze face?”
Tyler’s head began to buzz with a high-pitched wail he couldn’t identify.
Am I making that whine? Or does fear have a sound?
“How can I get you money tied to a chair?”
Alain shrugged. “I will let you make some phone calls.”
“Phone calls? Who am I going to call? My parents don’t have that kind of money. I...I...”
Tyler found it hard to breathe. Spittle flew from his lips as he stammered, searching for the words to pull him from his nightmare.
“I’ll pay, but I need—”
“What do you sink we should write first?”
Alain acted as if Tyler wasn’t writhing in front of him. Tyler sobbed so hard he saw tears shoot from his face, as if his eyes were little cannons. If he wasn’t so panicked, he’d think it was funny.
Clearly, Alain didn’t respond to panic. He had to calm down.
Baseball. Sure, think about baseball. Breathe. Think about the Brewers...ohmygod I’m going to die...
Alain looked at Dez, searching for an answer. “What do you sink?”
Dez put a finger to her chin in a cartoonish gesture of deep thought. “Hm. That’s a good question. We could carve cheater?”
Tyler nearly fainted. Why did she have to say carve?
Alain shook his head. “No, I don’t seenk so. Zat would imply he cheated at cards, don’t you sink? Clearly he didn’t cheat, or he’d already be dead.”
Dez laughed. “True. Welcher?”
Alain pointed at her. “Zat’s a good one.”
Tyler jerked forward, straining against his bonds. “Are you people insane? You can’t carve words into me. I’m a star!”
Alain didn’t look at him. “How about I don’t pay my debts?”
Tyler did his best to speak through his racking sobs, words spitting in staccato bursts. “That’s a… freaking…sentence...that’s four words...no, five—”
Alain finally faced him. “At least I used a contraction for do not, or eet would be six.”
“Ooh, how about deadbeat?” offered Dez.
Tyler’s attention whipped to the woman holding the craft knife. “Stop sounding so excited. Stop it. Both of you, I get it. You made your point.”
Alain nodded. “Oui. I like that best. Deadbeat it is.”
Dez raised the blade. “The thigh?”
“Oui.”
Tyler shook his head so hard the chair rocked. “No, no, no, no. Bum. What about bum? Bum’s a good word.”
Dez pushed up the left leg of his shorts and he wailed like a siren, unable to stop.
“I didn’t get my phone call!”
Chapter Seven
So many chances.
No more.
No more coddling.
Rune could remember the first time he realized his very presence improved the people around him.
Somewhere around 900 A.D. in what was now Norway. He’d inspired a thief to return a cloth-wrapped package of salted fish to a vendor. It hadn’t been hard, and that first time, it had made him feel good.
That feeling hadn’t lasted.
He remembered one inferior person after the next thriving thanks to his strange ability to offer them hope, courage, patience, inspiration...whatever it was they needed.
After watching undeserving men and women misuse their newfound inner fortitude, he realized the awful truth.
People didn’t deserve his help.
He was throwing off the natural order.
In 1864, Herbert Spencer first used the phrase survival of the fittest. Of course, Darwin, quoting Spencer five years later in On the Origin of the Species, would get credit for the phrase in history.
In that case, it was survival of the more widely published.
Rune chuckled to himself. History only remembered the winners. Many of them horrible people, in truth. Some of which, he’d given a leg up.
Not any more.
He stared at Parasol Pictures’ front gate, tapping on the steering wheel of Fiona’s Lexus with his index finger.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Rune realized the truth behind survival of the fittest long before Spencer or Darwin’s grandparents were even born. Survival of the fittest had become a sort of religion for him, and his faith was strong enough to change his very being. Weak people began to grow weaker around him. Soon, he could tempt the muddle-minded into doing anything. A few words in the right ear...very few had the moral and mental fortitude to withstand a pull towards an easier path.
Very few.
He was like the Wizard of Oz, if the Wizard had given the Scarecrow a brain, only to watch him use it to build a nuclear bomb.
Idiots. All of them.
Rune had found his calling. Using their own weakness against them, he would rid the world of all its stupid, vicious vermin.
But his plans had progressed slowly. He was only one man, and he’d suffered some setbacks of his own.
First, his own daughter had rebelled and ran away.
Then Ryft
