Lionsuit

Chapter Four

 
     An hour or so later and the fake print was complete. Marcus applied it to his finger and pressed down on the scanner. He held his breath as the lock screen displayed its swirling loading circle. It finally blinked off to make way for a cheerful, “Welcome back, Selwick!”, broadcast in white font over rolling green hills. The background and message faded away with Marcus’s sigh of relief to reveal Selwick’s actual desktop.
     His apps were arranged neatly. Social media, YouTube and Twitch were positioned in the top row, succeeded by tools like Word and Adobe software. Below the practical apps were an assortment of videogames and personal folders. What struck Marcus most though was the wallpaper. A renaissance painting clashed dramatically with its modern trappings. St. George, clad in armor, shoving a lance into a roaring dragon’s throat as a woman placidly looked on. The image elicited a gut reaction of confusion in its connection to Selwick’s personality, but he quickly decided that perhaps this was just a uniquely pretentious example of Selwick’s not insignificant ego, which the musical entertainer had learned to temper early on in his public career.
     Marcus opened a window in Chrome. Selwick’s bookmarked pages ran across the entire underside of the search bar. The first was YouTube, naturally, followed by Twitch, Patreon, and a string of analytical sites carefully curated to provide the widest possible view of his revenue, the trends behind it, and the buzz around his existence. All of this was familiar to Marcus; he doubted there was a successful personality on the planet who lacked this professional obsession with numbers and perception, aside from those blazing trends whose rise to stardom reflected the ultimate futility of any attempt to predict the world’s latest interest.
     Marcus opened Selwick’s YouTube, thanking God that the password autofilled in. There were several private videos in his catalogue, some being past mistakes removed as damage-control; a few others were unrecognized, unreleased music videos that Selwick lost the opportunity to publish. Marcus felt brief elation at this find, but guilt swiftly tempered him. He didn’t feel guilt at the prospect of scavenging his friend’s legacy; any number of excuses anchored around the world’s right to enjoy his final works and how Selwick would’ve wanted this could assuage those feelings. Instead, his guilt stemmed from his priorities. This house and Selwick’s last days were deeply disturbed, and he had a personal obligation to uncover the story behind it. Selwick was keeping secrets; there was no way around that conclusion, and Marcus couldn’t waste time searching for genuineness in public outings.
     He closed Chrome and opened File Explorer. His first visit went to the pictures folder. Most of its occupants were consistent with Selwick’s earlier occupational focus, beginning with pieces of fanart and professionally commissioned work paid for entirely through exposure. Marcus scrolled down through a block of assorted screenshots and came to a folder custom-sorted to the bottom of the page, simply titled “Private”. In no way one to care about such labels in any context, he opened it immediately.
     The folder contained subfolders, enough to leak off the page. Each appeared to be labeled with a date, going back as far as late 2016 and as soon as a month prior in August. He opened the first folder, felt his heart lurch at the thumbnails of the assorted images within, and then clicked on the first one to view its full horror.
     The latex catsuit was occupied. Whomever wore it lay on the rigid wooden floor of the sound studio, cast in red light by its oppressive walls. Strands of long blond hair poked out the suit’s hood, the only visible identifier he could discern aside from their height and body shape. The unknown woman lay with her hands bound behind her back and a red ball gag in her mouth. In the suit’s reflective surface, Marcus could see a figure poised over them, hunched to their camera. He did not need to posit more than one guess as to who it was.
     Marcus sifted through the subfolder’s other images. The poses changed but the occupant stayed limp on the floor. Some of the last ones even featured the cameraman—Selwick—pressing his foot onto various parts of her body.
     Marcus’s discomfort at these images stemmed more from Selwick’s involvement with them than an inherent condemnation of fetishes. As a modern individual, he was a tried-and-true believer in respecting the private depravity of consenting adults, not that he held a particularly solid idea of what consent entailed. Regardless, he wanted to cling to that maxim here, to believe Selwick was just a secret weirdo, but there was an undeniably raw air of exploitation in these photos.
     Marcus’s fears only proved more valid as he looked at the other dates in the folder. At first, he was glad that the second date seemed to feature the same woman, perhaps a sign of a long-term relationship, but that was dashed by the third entry. Not only were different women featured as the photos progressed, with some returning later or leaving entirely, but the violence increased as well. More tools were used, more force was exerted, and the physical displays of pain grew more prominent. Marcus could do no better for his humanity than to vomit in his mouth and finally admit that Selwick was a predator.
     In a supreme display of cosmic irony, Marcus was more prepared than most to confront an intimate betrayal of this nature. Faux journalists such as himself never lacked a steady flow of misconduct and maliciousness to smelt into views and likes. The grimy underside of the YouTube community rose to light and ebbed away just as much as the wider MeToo movement. Millennials and zoomers playing celebrity were just as likely to attract monsters into their ranks as aging millionaires and billionaires playing oligarch. There was such a prevalence in these discoveries of abused fans and colleagues that their discussion often devolved into bargaining for small comforts.
     “At least they’re not a pedophile” or “At least there was no physical contact” were the most common culprits. Marcus found himself hoping for the former in this case, although he had no way of proving that wasn’t a possibility. As he glared at the collage of images, a salient observation reached him. All the photos were taken in the sound studio. Why would Selwick do that if he wasn’t recording audio or video to go alongside his sordid visuals?
     Marcus opened up Selwick’s audio editing software and attempted to open a previously recorded clip. The library that greeted him in the file explorer was far too immense to sift through, but he had an unfortunate idea on how to narrow the results. He searched the first date from the pictures’ labels and immediately found a corresponding audio file.
     He played it. The software’s interface sent a vertical line across the screen, skimming over a mirrored mountain range of volume. The audio was screaming, pure and stifled pain sustained over several minutes with whimpering gasps in between and the sound of savage, blunt impacts. The vomit didn’t stay in his mouth this time. A quarter got on the edge of the desk and the rest he managed to direct into the wastebin underneath.
     A slew of searches confirmed the presence of corresponding audio files for each collage, yet Marcus did not open them. This was a job for the police, he thought. Or at least he could push the burden of handling it off on them. Their seeming incompetence investigating this house before shouldn’t matter with this overwhelming display of perversion.
     Two things prevented him from running away. First, that his investigation of Selwick’s death was far from over. The person who wore the suit now remained a mystery, even if this produced a slew of people with grudges to bear against Selwick. His suicide could either be their work or the work of a guilty conscious. However, Marcus’s second reason was far more important. Selwick was still his friend. That fact created disgust and anger, but so too did Marcus keenly realize that the second he let this story break, it would be out of his hands forever.
     Accusers would pop up, some credible, others not. Those who Selwick hurt would be pushed toward revealing stories they might not want to and would be harassed regardless of the evidence they provided. Selwick could be demonized in an instant or absolved through his death. Conspiracies would arise concerning him and anyone remotely connected to Selwick. Allegations of complicity would be thrown around as well, and Marcus could only be certain in his own level of innocence.
     Letting this story into the void was a Pandora’s Box without hope. Marcus opened the search bar back up for audio files and sorted it by date. Selwick, from what he could tell, had continued his work steadily between instances of debauchery. The gap between his last instance and the present day didn’t surpass its predecessors, yet Marcus noticed an odd break in Selwick’s musical work. The audio files labeled as drafts and projects cut off a little more than a week prior to his death and were replaced by a series of strange entries titled “EncounterLog” accompanied by ascending numbers.
     Marcus played entry number one. Selwick’s persuasively rich voice entered his ears worn and withdrawn, probably recorded on his inferior streaming mic.
     “… I shouldn’t even do this … Whatever, it’s not like it can hurt. I, um, I’m recording this for posterity, I guess.  So I can refer to it in case—shit, why am I bothering to say this? … So, I was attacked, I think. I was in bed; I’d just woken up, and … No, that’s not right, I was woken up by this dripping on my face. My eyes open and there’s this fucking thing sitting on my chest, but it doesn’t feel like it, like the weight is there, until I wake up. The lights are obviously off, but even then, it’s just a shape hunched like a monkey on my chest. No hair, no clothes, just a humanoid shadow. I don’t even say anything, I can’t, because I’m terrified, but it sees me awake up, at least I-I think it did, and it jumps off the bed without a sound. By the time I get, the thing’s just gone. Door was locked, I check every corner of the house, but it’s just gone. And I …”
     Selwick’s pause was protracted. Marcus heard him rhythmically tap the desk with his fingers.
     “It has to be a dream, right? That’s the only thing that makes sense, right? But I can still feel that wetness on my face and that weight on my chest … So, like any good nightmare, I’m recording it before the memory fades, that’s it.”
     The recording abruptly ended. Marcus’s brow furrowed in response to this new, strange revelation. Selwick didn’t recognize the latex catsuit. Did that mean it wasn’t what the intruder was wearing, or simply that he wasn’t capable of connecting them in the moment? Either way the log confirmed that whomever it was had been antagonizing him before his death. Marcus deeply sympathized with the uncertainty in Selwick’s voice. The intruder seemed to purposefully be acting outside the bounds of logic, making them question their sanity to torment them.
     Marcus played the next log, timestamped just three days later.
     “So I saw it again. This time in broad daylight. I’m in the kitchen, making dinner, playing music … I’m just standing at the island, cutting carrots or some shit, and I hear a breathing sound mixed in with the song. I turn it off as soon as I notice, but the breathing keeps going, if anything it gets louder, like its inside my ears. I look in the hallway; there’s nothing there. I look in the living room, still nothing, But then as I’m turning around, I glance out the window, and it’s just sitting in the lawn, staring at me, everything but its shoulders and head hidden by the grass. The breathing just keeps getting louder, and it’s … heaving. Like I can see its chest rise and fall, but of course, the second I open the door, it’s gone and the breathing stops. And I can’t go out into the yard to look for it because I left … because it would be too dangerous. I still think this is a dream. I want it to be, at least. If it’s not, then there’s something out there that can get into my home, into my fucking bed, without me even knowing … I checked my whole house. Nothing was out of place, nothing upstairs, nothing private.”
     So Selwick was beginning to connect the intruder to his “private” interests. Marcus figured this encounter was behind the makeshift minefield in his yard. He played the next recording, timestamped just the next day.
     The audio began with rough breathing and wincing gasps. “It attacked me. It—they bruised my ribs, I think at least. This f-fucking ice pack is barely helping. I want to record this before I can pass out … Dragged a cabinet against the door, brought my knife up too … Anyway, I was coming home from getting groceries, it’s in the late afternoon. I open the gate and, like last time, they’re just waiting on the porch, but this time they’re hiding. I think. Hard to tell what they were trying to do. I saw them, standing up this time behind one of the pillars, leaning their head out, like some nervous stalker type with a hand wrapped around the pillar. I’m pissed off by this. I’m tired of feeling scared, so I drop my bags and I march up the path, slowly, trying to keep them from running like before. I make it onto the porch, and I … reach out, to grab their hand, slowly. They—instead of running—their leg flies out and swipes mine out from under me. I hit the ground, and they just keep kicking me, in the chest, over and over, w-without making a sound. They ran after a minute or so … There’s no more doubt that they’re wearing rubber. Fuck it, she’s wearing rubber. I can’t hope for better at this point. One of my exes is stalking me. They—”
     Marcus heard Selwick slam the desk before wincing in pain.
     “Wh-What the hell does she want from me?! These people thank you for ‘helping them get through dark places’ with all the other entertainment and support you give them, but then cry ‘victim’ when you ask for something in return! And this bitch knows I can’t call the police, so what can I even do?! … No, I’ll be fine. I’ve dealt with people like her before.”
     Marcus felt like Selwick and him were finally on the same level of ignorance regarding the intruder, yet that connection only brought discomfort. He understood Selwick’s frustrations all too well, having experienced similar thoughts of persecution himself. Of course, those thoughts never went so far as clumsily attempting to justify atrocities, but the core feelings of one who had given his life to the public eye and expected loyalty from a place where none could be found resounded with him.
     There was only one log left, made half a week later. Marcus played it.
     “I figured out who’s doing this to me.” Selwick’s voice wavered between fright and excitement. “I’ve seen her every day since she attacked me, always in the distance, outside of windows, at least once a day. But I can stop this now. It must be Hannah. That little self-righteous p-prick. I told her what would happen if she pulled shit like this. She’s the only one of them who’d be this aggressive. I’m going to contact her as soon as I’m done recording this … Hell, I guess I didn’t even need to record this … But that’s fine. This’ll be over soon, and I can move on with my life.”
     The recording stopped. Marcus could guess how unsuccessful Selwick’s attempts to stop this from happening through “Hannah” were, but she was still more of a lead than he had otherwise. Plus, she could allay or confirm his worst fears about Selwick.
     He figured there were three main paths to find her. Selwick, like most in Marcus’s clique, used Twitter, Discord, and simple texting. Marcus had read enough leaked messages to know that predators usually didn’t stray from their normal platforms. He sifted through the lines of communication he could access from the computer. Thankfully, Selwick was still logged in to most of his accounts, but Marcus was sure—and would soon be proven right—that Hannah wouldn’t use her real name in any profiles. He glanced over messages as far back as the logs extended. Most everything seemed disturbingly professional, despite the kind of man Selwick was. But eventually, Marcus found what he was looking for amongst the sea of sponsorships, collaborations, and negotiations.
     According to her Twitter, Hannah was a college dropout and illustrator by commission who resided in Los Angeles and employed a stylized hippogriff as her avatar. Her conversation with Selwick was heated, to say the least. He hurled accusations at her and she threw condemnations back, both threatening to expose the other, although not in the same way. She denied any intrusion on his property, convincingly asking why she would ever want to go back there. Selwick didn’t let up until the time of his projected death, spending a few intermittent minutes each day posturing about pictures he would never get the chance to leak. The only message afterward was a single declaration from Hannah, on the day his death broke the news, eloquently written, “Have fun choking on smoke in Hell, you fucking cockroach.”
     It occurred to Marcus that getting her to talk to him would be difficult, yet as he glanced back at the continuingly unclaimed shotgun and thought of what the intruder had done to Selwick in their third encounter, he knew he had to try.
  
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     Hannah surprised Marcus. He sent her a blurb of text explaining who he was and the general situation he found himself in. She responded curtly but seemed to want to talk. They managed to arrange a meetup in a public place, the diner Marcus was currently sitting in, for both of their benefit, given that Marcus couldn’t rule out Selwick’s suspicion of her.
     Hannah entered the lackadaisical restaurant. Marcus knew it was her from the cognizant glare she fixed his public face with upon scanning the interior. Her eyes were green, and a braid of auburn hair hung over her right shoulder. She wore an orange bomber jacket, slacks, gloves, and a solid-black facemask with twin, round filters.
     Hannah strode over to Marcus’s booth and slid into the opposite seat. The light of the dusk sky dully shone on the ruby edge of her glasses as they silently stared at each other.
     “I don’t know how to start something like this,” Marcus admitted.
     “You’re the ‘reporter’,” Hannah pointed out. “You want to know if I’ve been running around your dead pervert friend’s house in a gimp suit.”
     “Th-That’s part of it.”
     A waiter came over and asked what Hannah wanted. She ordered a coffee and an omelet and returned to the conversation without skipping a beat. “No. As I told Selwick, I haven’t gone near him or his dungeon since he raped me.”
     “Then do you have any idea who would?”
     “I knew I wasn’t the only one he assaulted, but I never spoke to any of the others. And besides, there’s no reason to assume this person was abused by him. I’m sure Selwick had people with a justified grudge against him besides us.”
     “How do you explain the suit then?”
     “I don’t know, but neither do you, and it’s insulting to imply what it feels like you’re implying,” Hannah responded with unhidden bitterness, tapping the side of her coffee mug with her nails.
     “How is it insulting? I’m not defending him; I’m just trying to find out if he really killed himself and get this person to leave his house.”
     “It’s insulting because you’re implying that Selwick traumatized someone into wearing his fetish gear and roaming around his house acting like an animal. You’re taking dehumanization to a whole new level, and you’re saying this person is your most pressing concern because, what? They might have killed a piece of human garbage and now they’re preventing you from enjoying your inheritance. Boo fucking hoo.”
     “I-I’m not—” The waiter returned with Hannah’s meal. She stared at Marcus, nonplussed, as he pursed his lips, waiting for the intrusion to subside. “… His mother asked me to investigate his death. I know he became an awful person and did awful things to you, but he was still a human being and deserves to be treated that way.”
     Hannah laughed and the smirk it produced on her face hung there like a bad aftertaste. “You fucking people … I thought you might be better than that argument, given that your job, on paper at least, is to keep your ‘community’ accountable.”
     “I’m not— … I don’t understand.”
     “I’m saying that I’m tired of hearing the same bullshit defenses and platitudes when online celebrities are caught being just as abusive and greedy as their elders. One of you is accused of rape or screams a slur and the first call is to remember their humanity, to decry the act of attacking them because they’re a ‘human being’ too. I’m sick of it. It’s absolute nonsense. Of course they’re a human being! Has that humanity protected anyone but the people who already have power? Tell me Marcus, when in the history of the planet have terrible things not been done by human beings? Why am I being told to consider what odyssey of childhood trauma turned Selwick into what he was when all he could be concerned with was using me as an object to pump endorphins to his brain one more time?”
     Marcus’s thumb kept moving around the inside of his hand, a nervous habit from his youth, so he tucked both arms below the table. He wanted to say Hannah was wrong, or rather, he wanted her to be wrong, but Marcus could hear the trappings of truth in her words, precisely because he could remember himself in his videos decrying harassment of the accused in the same way she was saying. “… We say those things because of the times where accusations are wrong. It might be rare, but it happens. People get death threats for sneezing in the wrong direction nowadays, and you can’t just say it’s okay to attack people because you decide they deserve it.”
     “So we just defer it to the authorities? Have police and judges really proven themselves to be any better at dispensing justice? I’ll remember to have respect for a higher authority the next time I watch a protester beaten to the ground and teargassed for a photoshoot. I’m not trying to say that an accusation means guilt. But both the accused and the accusers receive those threats you’re talking about. The difference is that one side has a platform, loyal fans, and money behind them, and they use those advantages to peddle vapid deflections while the accusers only have proof that will never be quite enough for some people to believe them.”
     “The accusers aren’t the one in the spotlight. You can destroy a person’s life with accusations, turn the whole world against them with tailored words.”
     Hannah rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m talking about. You throw theoretics at the wall to distract from the fact that someone was motivated enough to put themselves out into the world, at risk, to say the things they said. When they leak your horny text messages with them, you cry about the importance of privacy. When the people turn on you without this mythical concept of one hundred percent proven evidence, you call it cancel culture. And when you can’t explain why they would accuse you of these things, you use the same examples of mental instability that probably made them a target in the first place to discredit them.
     “I’m sure you, and the rest of the community that Selwick was a part of, believe, genuinely, that you’re better, more moral, than the kind of celebrity that you’re replacing. You have these personal connections with your fans, you’re in their demographics, you constantly give them content that they can directly enjoy. The truth is, that’s all correct, but it’s also what makes you dangerous. Selwick knew how to manipulate me. He knew what power he had and how to use it. He also knew when to act vulnerable and when to threaten me. You’re just naïve if you don’t think catering to such a large audience didn’t help prepare him for that.”
     Marcus, a frown plastered on his face, sighed out his anxiety and pushed his pride aside. “I’m not going to say you’re completely wrong. You aren’t. But even if everything you’re saying is true, I don’t know what I, in all my privileged self-centeredness, am meant to do in this situation.”
     Hannah smiled, less harshly than before. “To your credit, you’ve already impressed me just by listening to what I have to say. But about this person you think is patrolling Selwick’s house, if they really were abused by him, because yes that is possible, they need to be helped, not treated like a freak.”
     “C’mon, they attacked him, tried to attack me too. Selwick was so afraid of them he shut himself in with broken discs buried in his yard to keep them away.”
     Hannah grimaced, then wiped the expression away to regard Marcus with a front of apathy. “Marcus, those discs weren’t there for your intruder. After he … Selwick put those there to hurt us. They cut my feet when I ran, put a scar as long as my finger on my side when I tripped … The real threat by any metric worth a damn is still Selwick.”
     “He’s de—”, Marcus gagged on his words from disgust at himself and Selwick, “… What’s your reasoning?”
     “He may be dead, but he never got caught. The world will spend years fondly remembering a monster as a tragic figure. You might think there’s no practical harm in that, but ask yourself if you can really say that’s not setting a harmful example. Whenever these scandals happen, it almost invariably comes out that people around them knew something was wrong. I believe you when you say you didn’t, but what message is the tale of Selwick sending at this point, to the people who stood by and the other perverts in your club? What will it send to his other victims now that he’s being idolized even more?”
     “Why did you never accuse him yourself?”, Marcus asked, purposefully softening his tone.
     Hannah sighed and frowned. “As much as I might like otherwise, I’m a ‘human being’ too. It’d be one thing if I was only putting myself in the line of fire, but there’s the other women to consider and the safety of those around me.”
     “But I’m in a better position,” Marcus interjected with his arms crossed, staring at the tabletop. “I have the evidence to prove what he did, and I can keep the names of his victims secret so they can come forward when, or if, they want to. I’ll still be harassed, but it comes with the job, the job that should also come with the responsibility of exposing people like this … Is that about what you were going to say?”
     “More or less,” she replied, shrugging. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
     “I’m not sure yet,” Marcus took out his wallet. “I still want to talk to his mother first.” He stood up and put enough cash on the table for his drink and Hannah’s untouched eggs and coffee.
     “I’m not going to criticize you for that,” she replied, sticking a fork into her meal. “But I hope you remember what I’ve said. These situations have patterns.”
     Marcus nodded and exited the diner, filled with a rare sense of confidence in his next step.
   
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     Marcus sat at Selwick’s computer, the webcam’s cover pulled aside and the File Explorer open before him. He had arranged all the proof of Selwick’s predation into a single folder, at least all the proof he had found so far. The computer’s clock read eight p.m., so Marcus knew he was out of time. He rose from his seat.
     By the time he’d walked down the stairs, the doorbell had already rung. He strode directly to it, his shoes having remained on his feet since he left the diner, a sign of his unwillingness to become any more intimate with Selwick’s life. He pulled the door aside and revealed Tamsin Raubner and a tall, muscular gentleman in a black suit with a crew cut topping his cylindrical head.
     “Hello Marcus, this is my driver,” Tamsin said before walking into the house without waiting for a response. The driver nodded silently to Marcus as he followed her, failing to allay his anxiety at the broken assumption that this would be a private conversation.
     Marcus led them up to the bedroom, but he stopped outside the door and turned around to look exclusively at Tamsin.
     “So, you understand what I said in my texts?”
     The old woman sighed, “Yes I do. You have uncovered something about the conditions of my son’s death. But you say it’s disturbing, so I have to see it myself. Presumably, you’re worried about me denying that my son could do whatever he did in this situation.”
     “M-More or less.”
     Tamsin pursed her lips and straightened her posture. “I assure you I’m not going to be surprised by whatever debasement Selwick got up to in his ‘independent’ years.”
     “… Okay. He raped and assaulted multiple women.”
     Tamsin’s mouth twitched, but no other reaction tainted her statuesque image. “Oh. That is a bit more than I expected … Why do you think my son did such horrible things?”
     “Recordings and communications on his computer. Matching … paraphernalia … in the house. And I spoke to one of his victims.” Marcus opened the door to the bedroom and pointed at the computer. “I compiled what I found on there. The stuff at the top is mostly texts he sent, marginally less upsetting than the recordings, which I arranged at the bottom. Obviously, you don’t have to look at anything if—”
     Tamsin walked straight past him and sat herself before the computer without a word. “Who was the woman you spoke to?”, she placidly asked as she read through her son’s manipulations and threats.
     “Her name is … anonymous. Unless she decides otherwise.”
     “Hrm”, Tamsin grunted as she continued to scroll. Marcus could tell from the doorway that she was entering the portion of the evidence containing photos. He glanced behind himself at the driver, who was idly leaning against the railing, watching them both.
     “… About how Selwick died, I think you were right to be suspicious. Someone has been creeping around his home. I’ve seen them once, he saw them several times, one of which they attacked him. They’re wearing a suit similar to what Selwick owned too.”
     “And you think this person murdered Selwick?”
     “It’s possible that they were involved. But the way they’ve acted makes me think they aren’t in complete control of their actions. I think they need mental help.”
     “I see.” Low audio began to spill from the computer as Tamsin played her son’s recordings. “Putting aside what happened to Selwick, what are you planning to do with all this evidence?”
     “I … understand that you might not want me to, but I feel obligated to report this. At least to the police.”
     Tamsin snorted, “Far be it from me to stand in the way of your obligation,” yet from over her shoulder, Marcus saw her exit out of a recording, right click the file, and press the option to delete it.
     “Tamsin! You can’t do that.” Marcus stepped into the bedroom. The driver put a hand on his shoulder which Marcus shook off. He continued his path toward her before the driver swooped around him and shoved him into the wall, pinning him there with his elbow. “Wh-What the fuck are you—?”
     “Stay. Calm,” the driver grunted. His elbow kept pressure on Marcus’s chest, but he took no further action as Marcus squirmed in place.
     Tamsin continued to delete files, going through the folder methodically to erase evidence.
     “You can’t erase what he did just by deleting some files!”
     Tamsin deleted the last folder and emptied the computer’s recycle bin. “And what makes you think that’s my goal? My son was a piece of shit despite everything I gave him. What he did exceeded my expectations, but that changes nothing.”
     “This is just a coverup? Can’t stand to let people know how much you failed as a parent?”
     Tamsin rolled her eyes. Marcus watched her slip an ancient flash drive from her pocket and plug it into the PC. She began downloading Selwick’s unfinished music projects onto the black plastic shard. “I’m protecting an investment, Marcus. You might be young, but I expected you to be less naïve than this. You want to make my son pay for what he did? Wring him dry.”
     Marcus remembered his own desire to exploit Selwick’s worth, but shame told him not to let that become a point of sympathy for Tamsin. She was nothing like the grieving mother he wanted her to be, just another devourer as uncaring as Gus and as exploitative as her son. “What he did will leak eventually, it always does, and then all you’ll be is the one who protected him.”
     Tamsin stood up from the computer, having picked its corpse dry by initiating a factory reset. “That’s a flawed assumption, a paradox. People see scandals and wonder why people ever think they can get away with it, when the obvious answer is that you’ll never hear about the countless examples of people who really did get away with it all. You can’t really be that stupid. John, let him down.”
     The driver released the pressure. Marcus dropped from his tiptoes to his feet, rubbing his shoulder and glaring at an indifferent John.
     “But you’re right that a leaking boat like this can’t be plugged by deleting some files. Which is why I want to make a deal. Put aside this need to get a hollow justice on a dead man. Help me erase any remaining evidence on your property, which you will naturally retain. Tell me what you know about Selwick’s exes and receive a generous cut of the profits we make by releasing this post-mortem album as a result. Who knows, maybe they’ll find their pockets heavier too by the end of it.”
     Marcus opened his mouth to respond, but Tamsin silenced him with a single raised finger.
     “I neither need nor want you to respond now. It benefits both of us if you mull this over, come to terms with the fact that what I just said is the right thing to do. Because the alternative is a pointless crusade that results in me publicly defaming you, suing you into oblivion, and ends with the public seeing you as the one trying to profit off a dead man by stirring up controversy to build your name recognition. Are we clear?”
     Marcus, brimming with anger he rarely experienced but now felt at the indignance of how thoroughly Tamsin had humiliated him, glared at the driver and muttered, “Crystal.”
     Tamsin smiled. “Then I’ll hear back from you by … let’s say midnight the day after tomorrow.” She flicked her head at the driver, “Let’s go.”
     The pair began to move out of the bedroom, leaving Marcus there, stunned by betrayal, but he managed to squeeze out a shrill protest before they exited. “What about the intruder? Did you ever really care about knowing how Selwick died?! Why’d you ask me to investigate him if this was always your plan?”
     Tamsin stopped in the doorway and put her palm to her face in mock exasperation. “Oh how devious of me, how conniving. Come on Marcus, I know you’re not so dramatic. I got the feeling when I first saw you; you know to avoid conflict, that appeasement is worth more than pride. All I was trying to do by asking you to investigate Selwick’s death was to get me in this house, with John here, so I could collect my son’s unfinished work. Giving you something to investigate was supposed to delay you cashing in on the goldmine yourself. Whatever you found, I would ask—or be conveniently invited—to come over to see the evidence. As I said, I expected Selwick to have his feet in some nonsense like this, his stupidity just went above and beyond.”
     She went to leave again, but Marcus’s deepening disappointment forced him to plead one last time. “If Selwick killed himself, after doing all this, and then he gives the house containing all the evidence to condemn him to me, whose job it is expose people like him. Don’t you think it’s at least possible that he would want us to tell the world what he did?”
     Tamsin snorted in plain, unabated disgust. “No. I know that’s not what he wanted, because my son didn’t kill himself. Not intentionally, at least. He died with one hand on a noose and the other touching himself. He was an embarrassment to the end, and it cost me any grief I could feel for him and a heaping pile of cash at that so those grubby police officers would declare his death a suicide instead on an accident.”
     “Y-You’re saying he choked to death while—”
     “Autoerotic asphyxiation, as if that clinical name could make it any less repulsive … My son shamed himself more than you ever could. Leave it there.”
     Tamsin and the driver exited Selwick’s home. Marcus watched them go from the top of the steps, white-knuckling the railing. When they were finally out of the gate, he exhaled a profound amount of stress. He walked down the stairs and then up the opposing wing.
     Marcus opened the door to the guest room. He sat, almost falling into, the chair in front of his computer. It flickered to life at his touch. He navigated to a browser window, then to his email, and then to the litany of messages he had sent to himself from Selwick’s email address, each with a copy of a different file from the folder Tamsin deleted.
     Marcus was not a fool. He wanted Tamsin’s request to be genuine, but Hannah’s views awoke the cynic in him. Even if Tamsin was genuinely looking out for Selwick, there had been a chance she would delete the files to protect him. This way, even if she had wiped his computer as well, or smashed any flash drive he used to duplicate the data, he could always retrieve it from the cloud. 
     As Marcus went through to download each file, he remembered his secondary failsafe. He slipped his phone out of his pocket and paused the record button. Even if it was muffled and of questionable legal merit, it was better than nothing. He had set Selwick’s webcam up to record their conversation as well, but Tamsin’s scorched earth approach to scavenging the computer unwittingly foiled that plan.
     Still, Marcus possessed both the evidence to condemn Selwick and proof of the meddling in his death. If he threw all of it at the internet, along with the personal explanation of his involvement in its uncovering that he’d already recorded, he was confident that the initial upswell of engagement with the scandal would be favorable toward him.
     Yet Tamsin’s threats were not hollow. The fact remained that going after a dead man would earn him no favors, and Tamsin was almost certainly more legally savvy than him. She was a corporate veteran with sympathy cards galore versus an independent tabloid Youtuber. He could get crushed just like she said if he played his hand poorly.
     And plus, she had rekindled his doubts in the necessity of revealing Selwick’s crimes. It was undeniable that he would be spreading a net negative into the world, spoiling the enjoyment of those people who were healthily consuming Selwick’s content. If holding him accountable and preventing him from doing more harm were flimsy arguments at best, what justification did he really have? But against his doubts, Hannah’s beliefs were still salient.
     Marcus pushed his chair away from the computer and stooped forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on the tent his hands formed. He thought of things as a cost-benefit analysis, a T-chart erected in his mental state. As he sorted potential outcomes into opposing sides in a scientific fashion unsuited to an intensely unscientific situation, a low noise disturbed the closed room’s tranquil atmosphere.
     It was a brief squeaking noise, like a balloon being scraped. Marcus turned around to face the door. He thought it was the product of frayed nerves until he noticed the shadow hovering under the door frame. He stood up and froze, realizing that whatever was beyond the door might not know he was inside. The obvious candidates were the intruder or someone in Tamsin’s camp. Marcus reached out to lock the door but cursed as he recalled that Selwick’s psychopathic home design meant the room had no lock.
     The shadow outside the room shifted, and he heard it tap the outside of the door three times, an even second between them. Marcus lamented that he’d returned his crazed neighbor’s shotgun to the other side of his gate. The tapping repeated. Marcus put his foot against the door, and frantically leaned around to close out of the open windows on the computer and shut it off.
     When he pirouetted back around, the door was still closed, yet underneath it, the shadow had grown. Fingers extended from the darkness, first resembling a flat continuation of the shadow, but then gaining mass as the fingers enlarged into hands. Next, the arms entered the room, and Marcus realized that what he was seeing wasn’t a supernatural shadow, but a dark, translucent mass squeezing its way into the room. Its forelimbs thickened to humanoid proportions, reaching into the air toward a petrified Marcus, before then slamming their palms into the wooden floor, scraping it with their rubbery surface.
     The creature began to drag itself inside from there, beginning with a head that inflated from a flaccid disk of rubber to an eyeless ball. Its arms’ shape shifted constantly the whole time. Even Marcus’s short-circuiting brain could identify that this was the intruder that had vexed him and Selwick. A latex suit indeed formed its skin, but whatever occupied that unadorned costume did not factor into the realm of logic or reason.
     Its torso entered like a worm being birthed from under a tire, expanding into a cylinder that grotesquely arced its back as the creature’s face rubbed against the floor. It flattened and compressed to produce the stability of a ribcage and hips. Each leg wiggled through the gap in a similarly serpentine fashion before snapping into the form of jointed limbs.
     Its whole body was now in the bedroom, hands, head, knees, and feet bunched together touching the floor. Marcus reached out to the huddled creature to confirm his insanity, but it defied him the chance, surging upward to shove its face within inches of his, while still dodging his hand. He winced, expecting it to attack him or at least release another of its banshee shrieks, but it did neither. Its blank sheen stared at him, reflecting his own stupidly surprised expression. From this intimate distance, Marcus could for the first time see through its exterior and found that its contents were a kind of amorphous mass pressing against the suit to force it to have structure. The creature slinked away from him in the next moment, sitting on the floor with their legs bent to the sides and their arms parallel pillars.
     Marcus looked down at the creature, which looked right back at him, with an unfathomable level of disturbed mental grappling. In a day full of mentally taxing revelations, whatever this thing was blew past them and straight through the fabric of his assumed reality. It shouldn’t and couldn’t exist, yet he anchored his remaining faculties in the lack of aggression it was showing him.
     “D-Do you understand me?”, he asked.
     It raised a hand from the floor. The fingers unnaturally contorted to point at the space between his feet.
     Marcus, considering this a partial confirmation, first pointed at the same spot. The being did not respond, so he lowered himself to the floor. It retracted its finger. “What are you?”
     The creature tilted its head back, staring at the ceiling, and then gripped its upper chest with both hands, stretching the rubber forward. Between its grip, Marcus saw that there was a cluster of puncture marks identical to the ones marring Selwick’s suit. Through the window they provided, the mass giving the creature structure was revealed to be innumerable clumps of muscle, cartilage, and nerve, coursing throughout the suit, knitting together to create rudimentary organs.
     “I still don’t—”, Marcus wiped a cold sheet of sweat from his forehead, “I understand even less.”
     The creature looked down, almost in confusion, still holding its chest. It then let go and slowly stood up. Even when standing in a humanoid posture, its constantly shifting frame made the figure deeply unnatural, which was only heightened when it began to amble toward the bed. It stopped between Marcus, the computer, the bed, and the nightstand.
     The latex creature extended an arm, which became more like a tendril, to the computer, turning it on. The tendril held there, but its head turned toward Marcus expectantly.
     Marcus opened a window of recent downloads. “You’re looking for this? What Selwick did?”
     The creature kept staring at him, unperturbed.
     “You weren’t looking for it because you already knew?”
     The tendril retracted, and they extended their other arm toward the bed.
     “You already knew because you were a victim?”
     Not only did the tendril retract, but they gave a mechanical nod as well.
     “Okay. I-I still don’t understand what you are.”
     The being regarded Marcus blankly.
     “Can you type your name on the computer?”
     The being shook their head as they looked around the room. Their gaze settled on the nightstand. They approached it, pulling the bottom drawer out of the frame and fishing around the resultant cavity until they produced a long, thin kitchen knife with a band of tape hanging off the handle.
     Marcus’s heart went into overdrive as he watched the being point the weapon at him. “I-I-I—”
     The being flipped the knife around and thrust it into the holes on their chest, one after the other, convulsing each time they did so. When they pulled the knife away from their body, Marcus noticed the dried blood that had already encased the blade as well as the stream of blood and sweat that the being was deliberately pumping out of their punctured chest.
     “He stabbed you?”, Marcus asked before realizing in horror the true implications of this question, “He killed you.”
     The ghost returned Marcus’s mortified stare with a quizzical head tilt.
     “Do you even know?”
     Their body ungulated in the facsimile of a shrug as they let the knife fall to the floor.
     “You don’t even know who you were, do you?”
     The amorphous ghost, with their flesh and rubber body, lightly touched the holes in their chest as if searching for an answer that would never arrive. They then stared at the computer and the open downloads window.
     Marcus followed their eyeless gaze. Selwick may have once been just another perverted celebrity, but Marcus couldn’t ignore what he had grown into given time and a lack of accountability. Selwick’s perversion developed into violation and destruction. He was already a murderer, and Marcus had no doubt he would have continued toward more murders, if he hadn’t already. At least one person had died and might never be found, especially if the police remained apathetic to Selwick’s crimes.
     The existence of the ghost naturally created a slew of questions in Marcus’s secular mind, but foremost was a simple comparison. Why did Selwick’s victim leave behind this vestige when Selwick himself appeared to be gone without a trace? Clearly there was nothing moral about it; he could hardly imagine the ghost existing in a state outside existential and physical pain. Even if Selwick was in a form of Hell, there was no conceivable reason that someone he killed out of perversion should suffer or create a being that suffered because of his sins.
     Marcus’s conclusion echoed an idea in Hannah’s beliefs: He shouldn’t trust in the judgement of a higher authority. The reasons behind the ghost existing as they did were not relevant to what someone in his position should be doing, to what he should have done a long time ago.
     Marcus walked to the computer. The ghost watched him idly. He silently began to cobble together a video that would expose Selwick for the pathetic person he was. Editing the video was a natural, smooth process which blended time together. At some point, toward the end, when the editing was done and all he had left was to upload the video to the internet, Marcus felt a rubbery hand tap his shoulder for a second.
     He paused, and then clicked the upload button. When he turned his chair around, unwilling to agonize over the slowly filling upload bar, the ghost was already gone and probably had been for some time. Marcus realized with grim realism that while this was likely the end of his career, at least in its current state, there would always be more people like Selwick. His was an exceptional case in more ways than one, but in too many others it was all too typical.
     Marcus wouldn’t sell the house, but soon he would resolve never to set foot in it again. His relationship with Carol would never recover from the damage he inflicted on it. He would never meet face to face with Gus, Tamsin, or Hannah ever again. And no matter what the world concluded about him, Selwick, unlike everyone he hurt, would not leave the public consciousness for years.

「This is a work of fiction. Any references to real places, real people, or historical events are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.」

Copyright © 2021 Matthew Cammarano
All rights reserved.