The Ignored (18 page)

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

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

I could kill Stewart and no one would notice.

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

I could kill Stewart and no one would notice.

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

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

No, it wasn’t.

I wanted to kill him.

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

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

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

But I did want to.

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

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

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

But that didn’t happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I knew that that was where I would kill him.

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

That was the plan.

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

I set a date: January 30.

Thursday.

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

I think, subconsciously, I wanted to get caught.

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

It was already after eight before I left the house.

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

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

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

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

But I wanted Stewart to get hurt.

I wanted him dead.

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

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

The bathroom door opened.

My heart was pounding, whether from excitement or fear I couldn’t tell.
The sound seemed extraordinarily loud in my head and I wondered if Stewart could
hear it.

Footsteps crossed the tile floor toward the stalls.

What if it wasn’t even Stewart? What if it was someone else and they
opened the door of my stall and saw me there, a deranged clown with a knife?
What would I do? What could I do?

The footsteps stopped outside my stall.

The metal door was pulled open.

It was Stewart.

For a split second, his face registered surprise. Then I stabbed him.
The knife did not slide easily into his body. It hit muscle and rib and it was
tough going, and I pulled it out and pushed it in again, only this time with
more of a thrusting motion. I guess the shock must’ve worn off then because he
started to scream. I shoved my left hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, but
even without the screams the loud, rough sounds of our struggle echoed in the
empty bathroom. He was pressed against the side of the stall, and he was kicking
and fighting and trying desperately to get away. There was blood everywhere,
flowing, spurting, on him, on me. A kick connected with my right knee and almost
brought me down. His fist hit the side of my head. I realized instantly that I’d
made a mistake, but it was too late to turn back now, and I continued to stab.

It didn’t feel good, the way I’d thought it would. I didn’t feel
satisfied, didn’t feel as if justice was being served. I felt like what I was. A
cold-blooded killer. In my plans, in my fantasies, this had been the payoff
scene of a movie, and I’d been cheering the hero—me—as he finally meted
out retribution to the villain. But in reality it was not that way. It was
brutal and messy and ugly: he trying furiously to save his life, me no longer
wanting to kill him but fully committed to that course of action and unable to
stop.

He fell, hitting his head on the bottom edge of the metal door and
causing a new geyser of blood to gush forth from his forehead. He was dying, but
not quickly and not without a struggle, and I was being hurt. If he had been
quicker or I had been slower, he would have knocked the knife out of my hand or
wrestled it away from me and that would have been the end.

He punched me in the balls and I tripped backward, but I fell onto the
toilet, and I lunged forward and stabbed him in the face.

His body convulsed crazily for a few seconds, then was still.

I withdrew my knife from his nose. It was followed by a wave of blood
and some sickly gray clumpy stuff that washed over my shoes.

How was I going to explain all this to the costume rental shop? I
thought stupidly.

I stood, pulled off some toilet paper, and wiped the blood from the
knife. I stepped over Stewart’s body and closed the stall door behind me. His
head and one arm were sticking out from underneath the side of the stall, his
hand practically touching the edge of the adjacent urinal, but I didn’t care.
There was no way I could hide the body at this point or even remotely disguise
what had happened.

I felt nothing. No guilt, no fear, no panic, no exhilaration. Nothing. I
realized that I was probably suffering from some kind of shock, but I didn’t
feel like I was suffering from shock. I seemed to be thinking clearly, my mind
functioning normally.

It had not happened the way I’d thought it would happen, but I decided
to stick with my original plan. I walked out of the bathroom and down the hall
to the elevator. I walked through the lobby and outside, but by the time I
started looking around for my car I had already passed it. I was on the sidewalk
and looking at cars parked on the street. I guess I was more in shock than I
thought.

It hit me then.

I started trembling, and I dropped the knife. I could no longer see
because of the tears in my eyes. I could still feel the knife stabbing through
muscle and hitting bone, could still feel my hand over his mouth as he bled and
drooled all over me and tried desperately to escape. Would I ever be able to
erase those images and sensations from my consciousness?

I walked slowly and dazedly down the sidewalk. I probably would have
felt foolish had I thought about the way I was dressed, but right now my
appearance was the last thing on my mind.

I had killed a man. I had taken a human life.

I realized that I knew nothing about Stewart’s existence away from work.
Was he married? Did he have a family? Would there be a young son and daughter
waiting at a house with a white picket fence for their father to come home for
dinner? I felt guilty, horrible, and within me was a black blank feeling that
went far beyond depression. The strength and will I’d felt at the moment of the
murder was gone, replaced by a tired, lethargic despair.

What had I done?

Behind me, on the street, I heard sirens.

Police.

“Bob!”

I turned around at the sound of my name.

And saw the sharp-eyed man running toward me across the sidewalk.

I had a momentary sensation of panic, a quickflash feeling of fear, but
though I wanted to run, I did not. I turned fully, faced the man.

He slowed as he approached, grinning at me. “You killed him, didn’t
you?”

I tried to keep my face innocently neutral, tried not to let the alarm
show on my face. “Who?”

“Your boss.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do, Bob. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t. And how do you know my name?”

He laughed, but strangely enough there didn’t seem to be any
maliciousness in the laugh. “Come on. You know I’ve been following you, and you
know why.”

“No, I don’t know why.”

“You’ve passed the initiation ceremony. You’re in.”

The fear returned. I suddenly wished I hadn’t dropped the knife. “In?”

“You’re one of us.”

It was like I’d suddenly figured out how to do a complicated math
problem that had been frustrating me. I knew what he was. “You’re Ignored,” I
said.

He nodded. “But I prefer to call myself a terrorist. A Terrorist for the
Common Man.”

I felt strange, unlike I’d ever felt before, and I didn’t know if the
feeling was good or bad. “Are… are there more of you?”

He laughed again. “Oh, yes. There are more of us.” He stressed the word
“us.”

“But—”

“We want you to join us.” He moved forward, next to me. “You’re free
now. You’ve cut off your ties to their world. You’re part of our world now. You
never were one of them, but you thought you had to play by their rules. Now you
know you don’t. No one knows you; no one will remember you. You can do what you
want.” His sharp eyes focused on mine. “We’ve all done the same thing. We’ve all
done what you’ve done, I offed my boss and
his
boss. I thought I was all
alone then, but… well, I found out that I wasn’t. I found others. And I
decided that we should band together. When I saw you that first time, at South
Coast Plaza, I knew you were one of us, too. But I could tell that you were
still searching. You hadn’t found yourself yet. So I waited for you.”