Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

Still, she has seen more than her share of hard times. And when they had been lined up for Barry to take his pick, she had prayed that one of the other girls would strike his fancy. In spite of her efforts to hide, or perhaps, because of them, Barry is drawn to her. Selene is of a definite type — light skin, hair so blond it is almost white and impossibly pale blue eyes. To some men she is irresistible. Barry is one of these men.

She sees no spark of intelligence or mercy in his face. In fact, from the way he looks, Selene can’t figure out why he’s not drooling. When he wrapped his awkward arms around her, she had feared the worse. But he had been gentle. Gentle, inexperienced and — most amazingly of all — tender. She would not have been surprised to learn that she had taken the man-child’s virginity.

As they moved beneath the sheets, in spite of the tenderness, she could feel his pain. There were oh so many ways to wrong the flesh. And Selene knew that each of these wrongs left a mark. The damaged always recognize one another. She would have known Barry’s pain even at the bottom of a dark ocean. When they joined the impossibly dense cords of muscle in his back writhed beneath her fingertips.

Hours later, the door to Selene’s room opens and clean light floods in. Selene gasps. Silhouetted in the doorway is a tall figure. Her pupils contract and adjust to the flood of light. Edwin enters the room.

Barry does not wake. Topper peeks out from behind Edwin’s knee and says, “You see? I told you! I knew it would work. It was beauty killed the beast!” Topper’s eyes linger on Selene. He loves women with that fresh from the bed look.

Selene looks away. She can remember being with him, even if Topper has forgotten. Some girls liked the little man. They thought he was cute or funny. But when Selene had touched him, she had felt anger crawling around underneath his skin. For weeks after she had nightmares of the anger breaking free and swarming into her body.

But Topper’s anger is nothing compared to the tall one. He isn’t hot with anger. He is cold. So very cold. Without really knowing why, she leans over and covers Barry with her arms. “Please don’t hurt him,” she says to Edwin, “He didn’t mean to do it.”

Edwin looks at her with surprise. As if noticing, for the first time, that someone else is in the room. “Mean to do it? I’m not sure he means to do anything in the conventional sense. As for hurting him, I wouldn’t know how. Not physically at least. And I’m sure I wouldn’t know why. His talents are far too valuable to me.” Selene doesn’t like the way Edwin speaks. In his words she hears reasons, reasons, reasons, but no emotion. She realizes, that if he can come up with a reason, he can do anything. There is no mercy in him. No warmth. Just cold.

Edwin turns and gestures to the people standing outside the room. They enter reluctantly. “Dress him.” Edwin commands.

“But, but, but...,” says the designer.

“We have a contract,” Edwin says, “a contract you do not wish to break.”

It takes three people to lift the Cromoglodon and slip a shirt of unique fabric over his head. The material is completely black and clings like Spandex. It looks like an ordinary athletic T-shirt, but it is much, much more. Next, come the pants, the same material, but loose, like warm-up pants. And finally, a tight skull cap with the letters CRO in heavy gothic letters across the front.

Selene had feared the worst when she had seen Edwin in the door way, but clothes? What is going on? She doesn’t understand at all.

“Now,” says Edwin, to a man holding a tablet computer, “turn it on.” The man taps the screen, Selene becomes scared again. She doesn’t like any of this. She wishes she could hide between the mattresses. Why doesn’t Barry wake up? Maybe that would make things worse.

Selene jumps when the garments make a high-pitched whine. “Can I go?” asks Selene.

“No,” says Edwin, not bothering to look at her. “We may need you.”

“Oh yes,” says Topper, “She is exceptionally talented.”

Barry’s shirt changes from black to white and back again. A flurry of images and logos tear across the fabric. A diagnostic runs on the pants and hat. The images sweep outward to glowing white and then condense into a white dot in the center of his chest. The white dot bounces around the limits of the fabric like a pixel ball in a game of pong.

“Is that all you came here for? Tuh, tuh, tuh to make him into a television?” Selene asks.

“Yes,” says Edwin. He turns and leaves the room.

From the hallway, Selene hears Topper ask, “Hey, Edwin what’s the C R O stand for?”

“Cromoglodon,” says Edwin, naming the awful thing he has just made.

Over the next few months, the Cromoglodon remains relatively calm. He destroys a few vehicles and breaks a few windows. He also tears down a statue of a Civil War general, but since nobody remembers who the statue commemorates, only the pigeons are put out.

In an unusual spasm of sensibility, law enforcement agencies are given a standing order to leave the Cromoglodon alone. Under no circumstances are they to attempt to apprehend him. Yes, he is bad. But he is so bad, that attempting to catch him will only mean more pain and destruction. So the Feds claim jurisdiction and do nothing.

But this does not mean that Cromoglodon’s life is peaceful. He has created new movements in the herd. Inexplicably, the Cromoglodon is hot. Hotter even than the heroes that have tried to stop him. Magazines pay top dollar to paparazzi daring enough to get a shot of the Cromoglodon in action. When a photographer captures an image of Barry tearing a tour bus in half over his head, t-shirts are printed with the caption, “Who says the big city isn’t friendly!”

The media has a field day. And why wouldn’t they? It’s been a slow news summer and the Cromoglodon is a ratings dream. The fearsome creature just keeps on giving. First, he’s disaster news, then he becomes human interest and finally he crosses over into fashion and style. He is a hit. It becomes impossible to have a first-rate party without the Cromoglodon in attendance. And if he wrecks the joint (as he does, twice) it only serves to give new meaning to the term smashing success.

When two news anchors are horribly injured trying to interview the Cromoglodon their ratings shoot through the roof. Talk shows resound with questions like:

“How do you pronounce Cromoglodon?”

“What does it mean?”

“Why doesn’t he have a spokesperson?”

“Do you know who’s he dating?”

In this strange summer it seems the world has lost sense of itself. And story after story is spoon-fed to lazy reporters and venial news directors by a well-oiled public relations machine. A machine that is designed, assembled and financed (through a dizzyingly complex structure of front companies) by none other than Edwin Windsor.

An op-ed piece in a major newspaper describes the Cromoglodon as “A superhero for the post-modern age. The ultimate deconstructionist.” Another ‘thoughtful’ journalist writes, “Who cares that he doesn’t have a concern about outdated conventions of mortality? He is a symbol to all the oppressed and disenfranchised. Striking at the system itself – the only hero strong enough to combat the real villain, instead of acting as a repressive extension of an oppressive consumer culture.”

And when the frenzy reaches its height, Edwin strikes. But strike is too severe a word for what Edwin does. Edwin taps precisely and with great effect. It all starts with a left turn.

“This isn’t the way to my hotel,” says the passenger. In the front seat of the town car, an Armenian kid pulls his chauffeur cap lower on his forehead.