Peripheral Visions: Tally Ho

"Peripheral Visions: You sense them from the corner of your eye or in the soft blur of darkest shadows. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late."

Tally Ho

"This looks bad," Maxine said.

State Education Secretary Rut Raskin frowned. "Only for the leftists," he told her.

"No, Mr. Raskin, it looks bad for you."

"It's not my fault the woke mob is using this tragedy to score political points."

"They don't have to," Maxine said, her tone of voice unforgiving. Raskin looked at her threateningly: He was not used to anyone, much less a woman, contradicting him.

Maxine wasn't impressed by his glare. She held her phone up to emphasize her point.

The video had begun playing over again: A group of teenagers in a high school bathroom beating a lone victim. Two of the assailants had baseball bats. Another swung a tire iron. Their taunts and laughter were loud, but so were the victim's cries and the sounds of breaking bones. Then one of the baseball bats came down in a savage swing and a wet crunch cut off the victim's terrified screams.

The group laughed and danced around the body. The body was a blur, a dark form surrounded by a halo of blood on the bathroom's white floor. The devastated head came into focus for a split second here and there – staring eyes, white flesh of an annihilated brain oozing from a smashed skull.

One kid turned toward the phone and yelled, "This is what patriots do when the sexual socialists come to town!"

"Ring any bells?" Maxine asked. "He's quoting you. If the 'woke mob' is scoring points, it's because you dropped the ball."

Raskin looked to the side, annoyed.

"This was the twelfth student death in ten days," Maxine continued, her voice quiet but filling the otherwise empty conference room.

"Twelfth? I thought there were only – "

"Keep up, goddammit! Twelve kids," Maxine practically shouted. "Ten days. Under your leadership as State Education Secretary. And the numbers aren't the worst part. What kind of little psycho stands there filming while a student is beaten to death by teen thugs with baseball bats?"

"Don't you try to pin this on me," Raskin told her.

"You've already pinned yourself by doubling down on your stunts," Maxine said. "This is gonna bury us. Between this video, and kid who got beaten to death by the football team last week, and the school shooting on Tuesday – "

"None of that is my fault," Raskin told her.

"We're talking about public opinion here, not whose fault it is," Maxine told him. "This is a story no one needs to spin: A state education official makes deals with school boards, principals, and lawmakers to implement laws and policies that single out queer children – and especially trans kids. And this" – she shook her phone at him, the video still playing on repeat. " – is the result."

"I won't apologize for doing my job," Raskin told her heatedly. "We have to make our schools safe from gender ideology and all that other garbage."

"See, this is where you're not listening," Maxine told him. "The schools are clearly not safe since you took office. And something else you don't seem to grasp: These are children. Some parents take it seriously when you talk about 'letting kids be kids' and protecting them from 'divisive concepts'."

"Then they're fools," Raskin snapped.

"That's a debate for another day," Maxine told him bluntly. She had a small stack of accordion-style file organizers tucked between her chest and her elbow. She shifted the stack into her hands and waved them at him like Moses holding up the Ten Commandments. "Right now, I'm concerned with the how you've made the state government look."

"Governor Albantree gave his full approval – "

"Governor Albantree didn't know you were going to unleash a bloodbath in our schools."

"Yeah, it's tragic and everything, but – "

"Mr, Raskin, you just don't know how to listen," Maxine cut him off. "I am a PR person. I know what I'm talking about. You, on the other hand, don't have a single credential as an educator, much less a public relations specialist. Governo Albantree and his entire administration are getting slammed because of your fuckups."

"I'm doing the best thing for this state and for our children," Raskin argued, his face red and features twisted with growing fury.

"The best thing for our children? Are you high?" Maxine asked, her voice rising again.

"And I didn't even..." Raskin almost told Maxine that the Traditional Morality Council had provided him with the playbook he'd been following, but he cut himself off, realizing he wouldn't do himself any favors that way.

Maxine started to turn away from him, disgust written in her demeanor. Then she spun back toward him again, suddenly seeming changed: Her posture was different, the air around her charged with something new.

Then Raskin saw her face. It wasn't Maxine looking at him; she had transformed. Her skin was now dead white, her features heavy and male. Most disturbing were her eyes... eyes that had changed with lightning swiftness from dark brown to fiery gold, a feral yellow; radiant, her eyes seemed to burn with an infernal light...

"You're in a hell of a spot, Raskin," Maxine said, her voice now low and gravelly, as male as her face had become.

"What the fuck is this?" Raskin said, taking a step back.

Maxine glided forward, as if chasing after him. "This is accountability calling. This is the bad news that you've rung up a big bill and the debt is coming due."

"What the... what are you – " Raskin put his arms up, shielding his face as Maxine seemed to fly at him suddenly, a brutal grin stretching across her face like the leer of a skeleton...

"What the hell is wrong with you, man?" Maxine's voice demanded.

It was abrasive, hectoring, accusing... it was Maxine's own voice, not that of whatever fury she had become a moment before.

Raskin dropped his arms, confused.

Maxine stared at him, her ordinary self once more. "You'd better get ready. You're due at the Faux News studio in less than an hour. Get yourself cleaned up – you look like you've been up all night. You look like the incompetent moron you are."

Raskin gaped at her.

"Whatever you do, put a better spin on this than the same old tired shit," she told him. "Show some empathy. Show a little damn humanity, or at least do a better job of imitating people who have a soul."

Maxine turned away again, and this time she walked out the conference room door.

*** *** ***

Raskin walked toward his office, the shock of Maxine's abrupt transformation wearing off. He had been startled by her aggressive manner, he told himself. He'd exaggerated how strange and menacing she looked...

Resentment flooded him as he recalled her words to him. "Bitch," he muttered. "Where does she get off? Just another deep state agent of chaos..."

Of course there were going to be some deaths, Raskin thought. Eight of the twelve students who had died in the last two weeks were suicides, but the media were fixating on the sensational nature of the beating deaths... the one in the video, another in a schoolyard last week, and a third that had taken place in a boys' locker room.

All of that could be managed. But the shooting... that was going to be hard to put behind them.

The freedom-killing anti-gun lobby had lost no time in turning the young triggerman, thirteen-year-old Andy Happenstring, into a poster boy for unhinged mass murderers everywhere.

"How did the briefing with Maxine go?" Raskin's secretary, Janice Blasmund, asked as he walked into his office.

Raskin shook his head with a growl.

"That woman is plain uppity if you ask me," Janice said.

Raskin couldn't help noticing her tight red shirt. The cut and texture of the cloth flattered Janice tremendously. Raskin allowed himself to stare appreciatively for a few seconds.

"Let's talk about the Andy Happenstring thing," Janice, in full professional mode. "That's the thing you have to focus on this morning. They're gonna want to talk about it."

"Faux is friendly, they won't press," Raskin said.

"Dream on. There's so much blood in the water that not even Faux is gonna give you a pass," Janice said.

"Yeah, okay, so what are the talking points?"

"All right, since Maxine clearly didn't do her job... We were gonna label the Happenstring kid as trans – "

"Good plan," Raskin nodded. "That one always works."

" – but his family got ahead of us," Janice continued, "and put out a statement about how he was 'all boy' and 'a fine young man' – and they made his birth certificate public, showing him to be, how do they put it these days, assigned male at birth."

"Damn," Raskin said, closing his eyes against still more bad news.

"The family had his football coach at a press conference telling stories about what a fine young man he was, blah-da-blah-da-blah. Trying to paint him a trans isn't gonna work. But," Janice added, "we're looking into whether or not we can depict him as a furry."

"As a what?" Raskin asked. He wasn't familiar with that letter of the woke mob's alphabet.

"You know... a kid who identifies as a cat," Janice told him.

"A cat?" How, Raskin asked himself, did anyone "identify" as a cat? And what the hell did that have to do with anything?

"Jesus, Rut, do you live under a rock?" Janice snapped. She visibly calmed herself, then said, "Okay, we'll try to go over this later. Right now, you better be sure you're ready for the Faux News thing. Who are you talking to? Rich Convoloy? Trixie Tunker?"

"Trixie," Raskin said.

"Good," Janice nodded. "Who else have they got?"

"They're going to have Talia Talltale on the show, as well."

"Video call?" Janice asked.

"No, in person. She flew in early this morning. She's doing some talks at Clifton Christian College this week."

Janice reached over and fussed with his collar and tie. "Have you been pulling at your shirt again? You look sweaty. And your hair, what a mess..."

"It's fine, Janice, someone will do that at the studio."

Janice kept fussing. Finally giving up, she said, "Okay, so, this Happenstring kid. What's your plan?"

"He's a leftist operative," Raskin said, reverting to his usual line. "It was a false flag operation."

"Even better," Janice corrected him, "the whole thing is a hoax. It never happened. For that matter, none of these killings and suicides happened. And especially not last night's suicide."

"Last night? What now?"

"You really need to keep up with morning briefings," Janice told him.

"That's what this is supposed to be!"

"Okay," Janice sighed. "News broke overnight that some intersex kid killed himself. Herself. Whatever. And her mother won't shut up about how the kid was a 'love baby,' how she could have terminated the pregnancy but chose not to... "

"Oh, Christ," Raskin sighed. More details he hadn't heard about.

"Brave intersex kid driven to suicide by bullies emboldened by state education chief's bigoted policies," Janice said.

"I... what?" Raskin looked at her in shock, appalled by the tsunami of words.

"I'm quoting a headline from The Horn," Janice told him. "And that's the headline they are gonna want to talk about at Faux, you wait and see."

Raskin shook his head. Janice was right; the headlines were writing themselves. The tabloids would show no loyalty, and the paparazzi were going to be lying in wait. There was no way he was going to be able to take a cab to the Faux News studio. "Can I get a driver?" he asked.

"They are watching us real close, now," Janice warned. "State official? Public servant under a governor who campaigned on cutting state employee the perks? We aren't even supposed to have a driver anymore."

"Yeah, like we'd ever let that go," Raskin said.

"Still." Janice looked him over and then sighed. "Yeah," she said, "it's for the best. Bill's on duty. I'll have him meet you in the underground parking."

*** *** ***

It took a long time for the elevator to arrive. As the doors opened, Raskin realized why: There was a delivery man in the elevator, leaning against a hand truck. There were no parcels, so he must be returning to the lobby after having made his deliveries.

They locked eyes for a moment and the delivery man smiled vaguely, wearily. Then a change seemed to come over him: He was no longer leaning on the hand truck but standing up straight and tall... taller than Raskin, who looked at the delivery guy with a twist of fear in his gut. There was something diabolical, something frightening about the delivery man that had not been there a moment ago.

Part of it was his smile. It was the ferociously toothy grin of a predator with cornered prey. Raskin stared at him with a feeling of deep dread.

"Making America great today?" the deliveryman asked.

"What?"

"Come on, Mr. Raskin, don't you recognize your own message? The only thing we need to do to take our country back again is kill enough kids. Simple, right?"

His dread forgotten, Raskin was about to unleash an angry retort when the delivery man's eyes lit up. They became golden, luminous... piercing X ray eyes...

As he had done with Maxine, Raskin took a step back.

The face into which the demonic eyes were set changed, as well: Dead white skin gathered itself into a different face, a familiar face...

"I see into your soul," the deliveryman told him in the same low, gravelly voice he'd heard coming from Maxine. "And an abyss looks back at me. An endless dark of cowardice and cruelty."

The elevator doors opened, and Raskin plunged out of the elevator and into the lobby in a panic. Crashing into a group of people, he went down in a pile along with several others. People cursed at him. He rolled on his back, then fought to get to his feet despite his heavy, unresponsive body.

The delivery man was suddenly standing over him, offering a hand to help him up. "You okay?" he asked.

Raskin squinted, stared. The deliveryman looked entirely normal: Hazel eyes, mild and inoffensive. Raskin slapped the man's hand away. "I'm fine," he said, clambering to his feet with an effort.

The deliveryman shrugged and turned to a woman who was still trying to get up.

"My knee," she was moaning.

More trouble Raskin didn't need to stick around for. Glancing back, he saw the elevator was starting to close. Fighting his own heaviness, he sprinted back to the elevator and jammed a hand between the doors, which opened up again. Raskin stepped inside.

"Hey!" a man who was leaning over the injured woman shouted at him. "You get back here, you!"

The elevator door closed and Raskin felt himself drop, sinking from the lobby toward the parking garage. He shut his eyes, seeking a moment's refuge from the day's madness.

Her knee, eh?, Raskin thought. She was just another lazy, litigious peon looking for a chance at a payout. Raskin wondered why people didn't stick to the lawsuits that recent laws made available to them: Men in women's bathrooms, women in other states getting abortions, libraries anywhere in the world carrying copies of "Gay Boy Benny." Raskin would have thought people would be going nuts and suing each other left and right over these existential threats to civilization, especially for a legally guaranteed award of at least $12,000.

He heard the elevator doors rumble open. He ventured into the parking garage, looking around for Bill the driver.

"Mr. Raskin? Is everything okay?" Bill asked from behind him. Raskin jumped.

"Bill," Raskin said, turning toward him. "You startled me."

"Sorry." Bill looked him over. Raskin realized he had broken into a sweat, and he was rumpled from the spill he'd taken in the lobby.

"Everything is fine..." Raskin told him, watching in apprehension for Bill's face to change, for his eyes to glow...

Which was exactly what happened a split second later.

"Fine? Of course it is," Bill said, his face dead white, his eyes flickering with Hell's own flames. "Teachers are telling their gay students that they shouldn't even exist. Librarians who try to create a space where anyone is welcome are accused and convicted of sex crimes. And all while you – you, with not a single teaching credential – teach children to kill!"

Raskin tried to run. Bill grabbed him with supernatural speed and strength, then slammed him against the garage wall. "But never mind, all is right with the world," Bill growled. "Your daughter is being watched by three men with unsavory thoughts in mind. Your son is beginning to realize that he feels like a girl inside, and he's crying because he knows that daddy will hate him. Your wife just found a phone number scribbled in a woman's handwriting on the back of a coffee shop receipt... oh, and the woman's name is Mona. Nice."

Raskin's mouth was parched. His throat was dry. His lungs felt like sandpaper. "Who are you?" he managed to rasp,

"Who am I? Who do you think?" Bill... or the thing that Bill had become... regarded Raskin with disgust. "I'm the thing that's chasing you that you can't tell anyone about. I'm what bullies see when they stare drunkenly into the mirror. I'm your own dread, your own ugliness, your own terror. I'm the one you answer to when you think you no longer have to answer to anybody. I'm the goddamn angel of death."

"You're going to kill me?" Raskin asked, feeling his own face go pale.

"No. You're going to kill you," Bill told him, his golden eyes growing brighter. "Or else watch as, one by one, everyone you pretend to care about dies."

"What?"

"It will happen," Bill assured him. "Muggings, car crashes, drive-by shootings – a litany of accidents and incidents, wrong place and wrong time. And, of course, suicide will play a part. Which, by the way, is your only other way out."

"I – I have to kill myself?"

"Either that or take out twelve of your compatriots – people as rotten as you are," Bill told him, his voice venomous. "The online hate mongers you cozy up to. The Nazis you curry favor with. The bigots wearing badges who see a gay kid or a Black kid getting roughed up and then arrest him for 'disturbing the peace'."

"I... " Raskin gasped, feeling like he might faint. Then he made sense of what Bill was saying. "You want me to do what?"

"You heard me," Bill grinned. His pale face suddenly looked like a skull: High cheekbones, sunken eyes... "The price for your hate and folly is due to be paid, and the tally can only be settled with your life... or the lives of twelve of your hideous colleagues, one for each of the children you wantonly murdered."

"But... but we didn't..."

"Oh, you didn't? Bill snarled, his eyes boring into Raskin's. "You didn't, you groomer of psychopaths?"

Raskin wanted to stare back, make a show of defiance, but he couldn't. Deep within himself he knew Bill was right. He had given killers permission to kill. He had driven vulnerable kids to despair and self-destruction. That made him as guilty as any assassin.

"Make up your mind quickly!" Bill urged, and Raskin's eyes snapped up to meet the fiery golden glare once more. "Every time somebody dies because of your campaign of hate, it adds to the tally. A dozen of your friends is the cost right now. In a moment it could be thirteen. By tomorrow it could be eighteen or twenty-four. You'd best get busy before the blood price rises. There's a tally, Mr. Raskin – so, tally ho!""

Raskin squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head to the side. He felt Bill's hands relax, release him. Then he heard Bill's voice – his usual soft voice, not the growling demonic voice of the golden-eyed man.

"You okay?" Bill asked him. "You ready to go?"

*** *** ***

Raskin sought to calm himself on the ride to the television studio. If this was an attack from the woke mob, he couldn't figure out how they were doing it. Maybe someone had spiked his coffee with ketamine, or LSD, or some other left-wing party drug?

His head in a whirl, Raskin submitted to the ministrations of small team of hair and makeup people. Someone brought him a nicer suit jacket than the one he'd arrived in. Someone else made a joke about "rubes who dress like they're going to a square dance."

Raskin was too preoccupied to take offense, even though he knew the barb was at his expense. He still wasn't used to the costume drama he was expected to put on all day, every day. He'd been a custodian at a sports arena when a social media influencer happened to capture him at a Theopublican rally, shaking his fist and screaming along with everyone else. Somehow, that clip had gone viral; people talked about the T-shirt he had been wearing, a shirt emblazoned with the number 88, and they talked about the fervor in his face, the look in his eyes. The lefties called him a mail-order sociopath, but his fellow patriots loved him. He'd been approached to appear on podcasts and crudely-made political "talk shows" that no one watched, and yet someone must have been watching because he suddenly found himself on the campaign team of an up-and-coming right-wing candidate for governor named Aloysius Albentree. When Albentree trounced Desdemona Philips, his mealy-mouthed Democrat rival for the office, he rewarded Raskin with the office of State Education Secretary, even though Raskin had never graduated high school.

"Who needs a degree to teach our kids right from wrong?" Albentree had smiled, and Raskin had repeated the line to the press.

The world came back into focus as Raskin heard those same words spoken. He looked up at Trixie Tunker, a blonde woman in a suit that was both no-nonsense and come-hither. He was sitting next to Talia Talltale, who was barely even looking his way, but rather keeping track of which of the studio's three cameras was live at any given moment. They were all gathered around a news desk that was more like a conference table – a glass-topped table through which Raskin could see Trixie's legs, which were long and shapely and fully exposed thanks to her short pencil skirt.

More to the point, thanks to the table's architecture, viewers at home could see her legs, too.

"Those were your words when you accepted the position of State Education Secretary," Trixie was saying. "How do you feel about those words now?"

"I... well, I haven't changed my position," Raskin said. "We need to keep schools safe. We need to be sure they are inclusive of white children with conservative values. We've been shut out of the conversation long enough, and it's time our voices were heard."

"One of your first actions was to establish the Library Supervisory Board," Trixie said, "and give it power over every book-lending entity in the state – not just school libraries, but public libraries, too. You appointed Talia Talltale as the head of that board, even though Ms. Talltale lives in another state and has no experience or training in how to run a library, and, like yourself, no college degree."

"My degree comes from the school of hard knocks," Talltale declared.

Trixie smiled coldly at her, not pleased with the interruption. "That was a controversial appointment, and critics say that statements from Ms. Talltale have prompted the presence of armed vigilantes who rifle through library collections, removing books and terrorizing staffers."

Video monitors on the sides of the studio showed what viewers at home were seeing: The illusion of a large screen behind Trixie, Raskin, and Talltale playing a video in which pot-bellied men with florid, bearded faces knocked books off shelves, shoved workers, pointed guns at library patrons, and, in a brief clip, cheered in front of a bonfire of blackening, curling pages.

The montage froze on a final image: A young mother with a tiny boy being confronted by a gun-toting vigilante, books strewn around them and the ransacked library shelves behind them almost empty. The toddler's eyes were round and terrified, fixed on the barrel of the long gun.

"This image has been circulating on social media," Trixie said. "Do you feel that it encapsulates your philosophies?"

"That child is awestruck with admiration at the hero he's unexpectedly meeting, and his mother is grateful for that patriot's service," Talltale declared.

"Some are saying that with images like this flooding the airwaves and the internet, school shootings are inevitable," Trixie added, ignoring Talltale. An image of Andy Happenstring filled the illusory screen behind them on the monitors.

"Now, look – " Raskin began, but then he stopped, confused.

Everything had changed. The bright studio lights had dimmer and taken on a crimson cast. Trixie was no longer speaking, but staring at him silently, a mocking smile on her lips.

"It's always a numbers game, isn't it?" the familiar gravelly voice asked. "What atrocities can you get away with and still win the next election?" Raskin looked around, on the verge of panic, and saw that Talltale was looking at him with the same predatory grin that Bill the driver had flashed earlier. "But now a different numbers game is afoot, and you're wasting time," the deep, gravelly voice added.

Talltale's face had changed: It was pale, deathly pale, and her features had morphed into those of the demon. Its gold, glowing eyes sat in Talltale's transformed face.

"The tally grows!" the demon declared. "Another suicide happened four minutes ago. Jess Talbot, age ten. She had been telling her parents since she was two years old that she was a girl. They didn't believe her. They beat her. She had her birthday two days ago, and instead of a party her family gave her an exorcism, trying to drive out a nonexistent 'gay demon.' They gave her presents, though – lots of boy clothes and a toy fire engine. Jess wanted dolls, and a miniature tea set. When she told her parents that last night, they beat her and locked her in the cellar. She drank bleach a little while ago. Her parents are drinking too, and by the time they sober up and check on her, the body will be cold. Another notch on your belt, Raskin. Another victory for you and the people you run with."

"That's not my fault!" Raskin shouted.

"You still think so? You still think that the weight of your words and actions have no effect? Then why do you say them? You say you want to protect children, but it looks to me that your 'protection' is all about attacking people and taking their rights away from them... their rights, their voices, and their lives. Meantime, who are you sticking up for in your public statements? The killers you gave permission to." The demon laughed. "Who knew murder was an act of protected speech?"

"Who said that? I never said that."

"Oh really? Have you been listening to your own words?"

The monitors began playing, showing a lively discussion between Trixie and her guests. Raskin saw himself on the monitor, saw himself lean forward and declare, "When people call Andy Happenstring a murderer and call him crazy, they're just trying to bury the truth: Andy is a young Christian man who was only trying to speak up for the righteous, God-fearing people of this country who have had enough!"

Raskin shut his eyes tight but could still hear: "Speak up? How?" Trixie asked over Talia Talltale's enthusiastic exclamations of support. "By opening fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding seven others, plus the teacher?"

"Civil discourse has become impossible in this country," Raskin's image declared on the monitor, "so stringent measures is all that's left. If we have to kill some people, then we have to kill some people! If some innocents die, well, that's the war we're in – a war for the soul of the country!"

"And here we are," the gravelly voice said. Raskin opened his eyes and looked at Talltale... or at the demon who possessed her. Its pale face and gold eyes were turned to him with a relentless intensity. The effect was unnatural, like that of a ceramic doll coming to life.

"Oh, but lucky you," the demon said. "Your sister just crashed her car in a road rage incident. Do you hear her screams? She's trapped in burning wreckage, paying the price for your sins! Your debt has fallen back to twelve, Raskin... twelve lives you owe, twelve lives outstanding. Or one life, your own. Are you man enough to give your life for the people you love, for your countrymen, just as you keep telling those Nazi podcasters? Or is all of that just more hot air like everything else you fart from your lying mouth?"

"Shut up!" Raskin screamed, lunging forward. His chair was right next to Talia's; it wasn't much of a stretch to reach her throat. In a frenzy, shouting obscenities and threats, he dragged from her perch and they both fell to the floor, where he continued to rage, to scream, to strangle...

Suddenly, Raskin came back to himself. Looking down at Talia, he saw her lifeless open eyes and her broken neck. Her face was her own again.

"Well done," the demon's voice said from her dead, gaping mouth.

Raskin sprang away from the body, sprawling on his back on the studio's carpeted floor. Then, with a scream, he struggled to his feet and raced across the studio. A man with a clipboard and a headset stepped into his path, and Raskin knocked him aside.

There was a blur of light and dark and shouted voices, and then Raskin was in sunlight. He was on his knees in an alley, vomiting.

A primitive instinct to flee told him that he had to keep moving. Raskin got to his feet, panting, sweating, disheveled. He walked out of the alley and found himself staring at a busy street. He needed a car... some way to get the hell away from here, to safety...

He saw a cab sitting idle at the curb. He stepped forward in haste and yanked the back door open. "You free?" he called into the vehicle.

"Yes, sir, climb in," an accented voice came back to him.

Raskin needed no more encouragement. He settled into the back of the cab, reflexively giving the driver the address of the building where his office was located.

No, he realized. No, they would be looking for him there... law enforcement. They wouldn't understand. He had to buy time, time to gather evidence, rally supporters...

Raskin stuttered out a new address – that of a friend named Karl, a militia leader he'd gotten friendly with.

"That's not too far," the cabbie said. "Straight up the street for eight blocks."

"That's it," Raskin said, breathless.

The cabbie glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. "It's a nice day for a walk," he said.

Was that comment on the way he smelled? Raskin knew he stank: He smelled of puke and rank sweat. A pulse of rage flashed through him, momentarily easing his terror at the strange things that were happening. It was fine for immigrants to drive cabs, he thought, but a foreigner questioning a loyal American like him?

Raskin was about to tell the man to mind his business when a shudder went through him. The cabbie didn't look like an immigrant; he looked like a pale killer, or the ghost of a killer... his eyes gleamed gold in the mirror as a smile tugged at his lips.

"But a man who just committed murder on national television must be in a hurry," the demon said, the driver's accent giving way to the specter's flat, gravelly tones. "He can't take his time and stroll to his next destination. He can't slow down and enjoy his own life when there are so many other lives to destroy – and the juiciest, most tender lives are those of children."

"Let me out!" Raskin screamed, fumbling with the door. "Let me out!"

"And let you walk back to your den of sin-iquity? That would take you too long," the demon told him. "Three or four children might actually not die today if I don't rush you to your next appointment."

Forgetting he was now a wanted man, Raskin pulled his cell phone out if his pocket and dialed 911. "He's got me in his cab, he's kidnapping me..." Raskin jabbered as the operator answered. Looking in panic back at the rear-view mirror, he suddenly saw that the driver was like any other cabbie – no pale face, no flaming golden eyes...

"Mister, you want to get out of my cab, you only have to say so," the cabbie told him, pulling over. "Please! Please get out of my cab! Don't pull a weapon, just go!"

Raskin began shouting at him, and the immigrant grabbed his CB radio handset. "He's threatening me, he's crazy!" the cabbie screamed into the radio. "Send the police!"

Sensing that the tables had turned, Raskin bolted from the cab and started running. Three blocks later, dizzy, sweating, feeling his heart jumping hard in his chest, he stopped and leaned against a building.

"Christ," he moaned softly to himself between gulps of air. "Sweet Christ, what is happening?"

"Are you okay?" a young woman asked.

Raskin pushed off the building and looked at her.

"Are you having a heart attack?"

"No," Raskin panted, waving her off. "I'm just out of shape..."

"You look terrified," the young woman said. Suddenly, her face was that of the golden-eyed man, and her eyes were boring into him. She was half a foot shorter than he was, yet she seemed to loom above him, staring down with contempt. "You better not linger, the cops are coming," the young woman said in the demon's voice. "And they are gonna think you are bug-nuts crazy. Which, of course, you are – you sadistic piece of child-killing shit!"

Raskin screamed, swung wildly, and struck the woman across the face. Not seeing whether she went down or not, he turned and fled, his heart hammering even harder in his chest. Half a block later he slowed down to walk again, spots flashing before his eyes and his side splitting with pain.

"Young man, are you all right?" an elderly woman asked him.

"No," Raskin almost wept.

The golden-eyed man's face was incongruous with the elderly woman's gray hair, her rouge and lipstick. "What's the matter?" the elderly woman asked in the demon's voice, as Raskin stared in horror. "Oh, I forgot: The sight of a man in drag is enough to make you shit yourself!" the demon laughed, as Raskin's bowels suddenly let loose.

Moaning, stinking, Raskin turned and started back up the street. Between the brief cab ride and his short-lived run, he was only three blocks away from Karl's building, but the walk seemed to take hours. The city went about its business around him, and yet everything seemed still and silent; pedestrians, noise, traffic, all of it seemed to be taking place behind glass, in some separate dimension.

Raskin turned up a side street and walked half a block. Karl lived in a basement apartment. Raskin wouldn't need to walk through a crowded lobby, looking wild and crazed, stinking of shit and rancid sweat. He could enter the safety of Karl's apartment right from the street.

Raskin knocked. Then, when there was no answer, he pounded. "Karl, let me in!" he called.

Finally, a sleepy, complaining voice emanated from the other side of the door: "Fuck you want, man? It's too early for this."

Raskin looked at his wristwatch – an ostentatiously large analogue model that looked expensive. Maybe it was expensive; he had no idea. It had been a gift from The Traditional Morality Council.

Raskin thought about the weasel-faced little man who had approached him on the council's behalf. He had handed Raskin a sheaf of papers and instructed him to implement the Council's recommendations with no amendments, no watering down, and no delays. It would be advantageous for everyone, the smug little man told him – Raskin himself most of all.

Well, it's certainly not looking that way, Raskin thought.

"It's an emergency," Raskin called through the door.

"Motherfucker," he heard Karl say, and then he was standing in the open door, blinking at him from the apartment's dark recesses. Two other men materialized in the shadows behind him. "My god, you stink," Karl said.

"It's... it's antifa," Raskin said, knowing the word would grant him access and earn him the help he needed.

*** *** ***

Karl and the two boys he had staying with him – both blond and shirtless, they looked about 19 or 20 – were less interested in hearing an explanation than in hurrying Raskin to the bathroom, where he could shower.

The water pressure was lousy, but the water was hot. Raskin had himself cleaned up in a few minutes. There was a knock at the door as he was drying himself. Karl's skinny arm reached into the bathroom with a stack of clothing and a plastic bag. "Use these," he said.

"What's the bag for?" Raskin asked.

"Are you kidding? For your clothes," Karl responded, slamming the door.

After retrieving his phone, keys, and wallet, Raskin stuffed his clothes into the trash bag. He tied the bag off and left it on the bathroom floor, then presented himself to Karl and the two boys.

"Here," one of the blond youths said, offering him a gun. Raskin noticed that the young man had tattoos swarming his arms, climbing up his neck. He couldn't make out what they were, but he was sure they would reflect the usual right-wing tropes.

"Nice," Karl said, approving of the faded, but clean, shirt he had provided Raskin. It was similar to the one Raskin had worn two years ago to the rally, with "88" emblazoned across the chest in huge letters. Karl's eyes seemed to stick to the letters. Then a strange, unnatural smile spread across his face.

"Sweet Jesus, no," Raskin cried.

The demon laughed as the two teenagers looked on blankly, not moving or responding.

Karl had turned the television on. Or was that an illusion, the way the images on the studio's monitors had been? Raskin felt a sense of déjà vu as he took in what was playing on the TV. It was Faux News, reporting on the events that had unfolded in the television studio a short time before.

"If we have to kill some people, then we have to kill some people!" Raskin saw himself scream, his face red and gleaming with sweat, his eyes wild, his entire affect unhinged. Next to him Talia Talltale seemed to be cheering his words, while Trixie was frowning, looking like she was trying to decide whether to call for security to intervene. "If some innocents die, well, that's the war we're in – a war for the soul of the country!" the recorded image of Raskin screamed.

The image changed to an interview with Trixie Tunker. "It was terrifying," the news anchor was saying, as text crawling across the bottom of the screen declared, "Lunatic attack strikes home here at Faux."

The image switched back to Raskin and Talltale sitting at the desk with Trixie, as Raskin – silently, in slow motion – suddenly lunged at Talltale, whose exuberant smile vanished in an expression of shock as Raskin's hands wrapped around her throat. The two of them disappeared below the bottom of the frame as they toppled off their chairs.

"I could see that he was about to lose it," Trixie said. "I don't know what kind of psy-op the left subjected him to, or what drug they shot him up with, but this was not Rut Raskin, the hero of the American people. This was some kind of nightmare version of him, completely off the rails and raving like a social justice warrior."

"Secretary Raskin has been under enormous pressure, brought entirely by left-wing activists looking to drive him insane," the reporter interviewing Trixie said. "Do you think they finally succeeded? Do you think this murderous attack is the result of the vicious pressure campaign the left targeted him with?"

"Joe," Trixie said solemnly, leaning forward with a look of intense concern on her face, "I don't know. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was..." Suddenly Trixie looked directly into the camera, her face turning white, her features shifting, her eyes igniting with yellow flame. "And if I were Rut Raskin, I would be thinking about how to pay off my debts. Because the interest is coming due... and a lesbian librarian who was burned out of her home over the weekend is considering suicide even now..." Trixie's smile grew wide. "The tally is growing. The price in blood is getting steeper. But lucky Raskin – he can shave down his debt by three right this minute if he gets it together. Tally ho!"

The TV screen went blank. Karl and the two blond teenagers stood there looking at him, perplexed. "Raskin? Are you all right? You froze up there for a minute..."

With a scream, Raskin level the weapon in his hand and fired. Karl fell as a spray of blood spattered the room behind him, catching one of the blond boys across his shirtless torso. The other boy turned and started to run for the door. Raskin pointed the gun at him and fired again, and the boy went down.

"Don't," the third boy begged.

The gun blasted his pleas to silence.

***

Raskin made his way from the city to the suburbs, where the weasel man from The Traditional Morality Council lived. Raskin had been to the man's home several times in the early stages of implementing the Library Supervisory Board and mapping out strategies around which state lawmakers to approach about new "parental rights" laws.

He rode the subway. He took cabs. He boarded a commuter train. Along the way he saw the video from the Faux News studio playing on people's phones, on a screen in the back of the cab, on a TV in a bus station... He would have watched on his phone, except he had left his phone at Karl's, fearing that law enforcement would locate it and track him down.

The story had grown. There was security footage of him from the lobby of his office building, showing him throw himself into a group of people and then stagger to his feet and hurry away as several men attended to an injured woman lying on the floor. A staticky recording of the panicked cabbie's pleas played over video from the cab's security monitor of Raskin freaking out in the back seat. Another security camera caught him on the street, striking a young woman in the face and racing away as she crumpled to the sidewalk.

And there was video too, after a while, of the bodies of Karl and the two teens being carted out of Karl's basement apartment.

"The suspect is thought to be armed now, and he's clearly dangerous," a young reporter intoned. She was fresher of face than, though not at all unlike, Trixie.

"Better watch your back, Trix," Raskin muttered in a moment of unreal levity. "She's gonna be coming for your job."

*** *** ***

Raskin hoped against hope that the weasel man wouldn't be watching the news – that he'd let Raskin in when he came calling.

But, of course, the weasel man had seen the reports; or, at least, someone had alerted him. In any case, when Raskin rang his doorbell, the weasel man screamed from inside the home, "Go away! I know what you're up to. You've gone crazy! You're a tool of the left!"

Raskin felt like opening fire and wasting his bullets on the man's door in response to those words. But he didn't; he had other places to be....

Except he didn't get there.

Sitting in his jail cell, Raskin thought about how his mistake had been to go after a state lawmaker as his next target. He knew their having worked closely together on a number of bills would mean she'd have security watching over her until he was stopped. But still, somehow, he thought he might have a chance to take her out – her and her lobbyist husband, with whom he had also worked closely.

It didn't help that the demon kept popping up in various guises to taunt him: A train conductor, a barista in a coffee shop. "The tally is mounting!" the demon would grin. "Tally ho!"

If nothing else, Raskin thought, he might have thrown himself at one of the state troopers and committed suicide by cop. Would that have satisfied the forces that were working against him? Would that have canceled out his debt?

As things were, that debt might never be paid. Hate crimes in the state rose sharply as Raskin awaited trial. Victims targeted for being gay or trans ended up in hospitals or in morgues. Meantime, in the prison, various guards and fellow inmates would transform while Raskin was working in the prison laundry, or as he stood in line for dinner, or as he walked in the yard with the other prisoners. The demon kept him up to date. "Two more down after that boat sank; you're making progress!" was the bulletin when his cousin and her boyfriend drowned that July. Or: "Looks like you're three more in debt, buddy," when a killer tossed a live grenade into a gay bar with a scream of, "Groomers!"

No one had to tell Raskin when his brother gunned down his wife and three children before killing himself in what the TV news called a "family annihilation." It was all over the airwaves and impossible to avoid. All the same, one of the other prisoners watching the report turned to him, wearing the demon's white face and staring at him with those feral gold eyes, to comment, "You know what they're saying: It a family of crazies!"

His trial was short and the outcome never in doubt. Facing a life sentence, Raskin contemplated exercising his one remaining option – the one the demon had started calling his "everyone else gets out of jail free card." He went back and forth about it for months, then years. As he vacillated, his extended family and network of friends were whittled down by tragedy, one by one and two by two. Sometimes five or six would die in the same plane crash or building collapse or theater fire. When the civil war broke out, so many died that for a moment he was within two lives – two! – of paying off his karmic tally.

Then a man armed with an AR-15 kicked down the door to a shelter for trans women and murdered everyone inside – 110 people – in a three-hour rampage as the police took their time in responding.

One of his cellmates turned to Raskin on a September evening as he sat dejected on his thin, sagging mattress. "There's no one left," the cellmate said, his radiant gold eyes almost sad.

"What?"

"The last of them just had a date with a rope."

Raskin hung his head and wept.

"A rope like this one," the cellmate said, coiling a rope – an impossible piece of contraband! – around his hands. The cellmate offered the coil to Raskin. "Take it," he said. "Be a man. Pay off what you owe."

"But the tally is at zero," Raskin sobbed.

"Who said? The deal was for you to pay off your tally or face the destruction of your entire family and all your friends. But no one said that you wouldn't still be in debt once you had no friends or family left. You still owe, Raskin, and there's only one way to pay that debt now."

"And if I don't? What then?"

"Ah, well." The demon's face, plastered to his cellmate's head, assumed a vicious expression. "I'd never spoil the fun by ruining the surprise."

Raskin stared all night into the darkness, silent and terrified. A darkness... of cowardice and cruelty. The demon's words echoed in his thoughts and seared his soul. The darkness swelled and swallowed him.

Raskin kept staring and staring in mindless madness. He never blinked until his eyes, empty and lifeless, finally slipped shut at the end of a wasted life.

Next week we look on as summer rolls to an end and a man with a synthetic playmate prepares to put his artificial pal into storage for the winter. This is the way things have always worked between them, but this time there's a problem: The android lover doesn't want to be warehoused like any ordinary "Jack in the Box."