One-Eyed Jack Read online

  Eva was silent for a few seconds before she spoke.

  “Sleep well, Jonathan,” she said and hung up.

  8

  Conrad/Username: One-EyedJack

  Conrad looked at the pill bottle on his nightstand. It would be so easy. The only light in his room came from a flickering bulb in the overhead fixture that threatened to go out any second. It created somewhat of a horror movie effect.

  But he didn’t feel any fear. All he felt was exhaustion. His body felt weary and seemed as if it were glued to the cruddy mattress he was on. He could feel a poky spot where the springs had worn through. He scratched his back on it and then turned on his side in despair, staring at the amber prescription bottle less than a foot away at eye level on his nightstand.

  He just couldn’t take anymore.

  Although he was only nineteen, he was certain that he was destined to become a Wizard—a thirty-year-old virgin.

  Maybe if his mother hadn’t left, things would be different. But when she abandoned her family years ago, he knew he didn’t stand a chance. In the back of his mind, he felt like she had truly loved him. He had hazy memories of her cooing over him and singing to him. But his father had said she was a delicate woman who had some mental health issues. He said she ran away because she was afraid. She didn’t think she was fit to be his mother. But he also felt her disappearance had ruined his life. She would’ve been the first woman to show him what real love was.

  The only mirror in his dad’s small house was in the bathroom and was covered by a sheet of black poster board. If he accidentally caught a glimpse of himself in a storefront window or by way of some other reflection, he quickly turned away or squinted so he couldn’t see.

  He’d already spent too many years staring at his features, analyzing them, wondering if plastic surgery could fix him. He wondered why he’d been born with a deformity that made his face slump on one side. The final horror was when some boys threw empty bottles at him and one shattered sending a shard of glass into his eye on that same side. The doctors ended up having to remove it.

  Maybe if his mother had stayed around, she would have paid for a glass eye. But his father didn’t care that there was a disgusting gaping hole there. The doctor took pity on him and sent him home with a black patch. It triggered a flurry of ridicule from his classmates.

  He put up with it for several years, eating lunch in empty classrooms, slinking into class at the last minute and sitting in the back row. But the stares he received in the halls were finally too much. He dropped out of high school when he was seventeen and got a job in a kitchen, washing dishes where the public would never see him. His father had paid off the house years before, and the two of them lived there like ships passing in the night, never really speaking unless they had to. It was easy because his dad worked nights and slept all day. When his dad died, he stayed in the small house, got a job at a factory at night, and just paid the utility bills that still came in his father’s name.

  His job had insurance, so he was able to go to the doctor and get a prescription for depression and anxiety. He’d just picked up a refill. It was a lot of pills. He looked at the amber plastic bottle again. It was probably enough to kill him. Sure, it was enough.

  But he wasn’t sure he wanted to die. He was just so damn lonely. He closed his eyes. He thought about the one girlfriend he’d had in his life. Melinda. They’d dated for two weeks. But she cheated on him. It crushed him. It was then he realized he was an “incel.”

  One night when he was weeping about Melinda’s betrayal, he came across a forum on Reddit about men with “subhuman” looks who didn’t stand a chance in hell of having sex with a woman.

  He’d found his home. He dug deeper and discovered a website where people like him could vent. It was a bit controversial. After one member had posted a manifesto before he raped a woman and was arrested, Google banned it from its searches.

  But if you were on Reddit, you could easily find it.

  At first, he loved that there was a website online that was completely uncensored. No politically correct bullshit. Anything went. He raged and vented with the rest of them and established a reputation as an influencer. He became a guru. When someone posted a question, others would say, “Ask the One-Eyed Jack.” He realized his greatest strength wasn’t in ripping on others, but in supporting and encouraging his fellow incels who felt hopeless.

  When the owner of the site got married, he asked the One-Eyed Jack if he wanted to buy it. Conrad took out a second mortgage on the small house and walked away the proud owner of Incel Nation and $100,000 in debt.

  Soon, he felt like a king in that small online world.

  He had finally found his tribe. He was respected.

  He still wouldn’t ever get laid, but he was much less lonely.

  Then one day on Reddit, he saw a link to a website for a Chicago doctor who did amazing surgeries on incels, making them look more like Chads. If only he hadn’t taken out that second mortgage for the website, he could have used that money to fix his eye and face. Maybe. His deformity was pretty severe. One half of his face was normal, maybe even handsome. The other? Completely and utterly fucked up.

  On Dr. Frank’s site, he saw posts by a guy who seemed really interesting and intelligent. He was really charismatic. Apparently, he’d grown the fan site from 20,000 to 40,000 in a month by his activity there. That’s when the One-Eyed Jack made the mistake of inviting ChadHater to his own forum. That’s the day his whole life changed. Even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.

  ChadHater took over.

  Things had gone steadily downhill from there. The One-Eyed Jack had lost his status. Nobody cared what he posted anymore. They all responded to ChadHater’s posts.

  And when ChadHater started talking mass shooting, they egged him on.

  It was a disaster.

  The one thing he knew was that he had to stop ChadHater’s plan.

  He was the only one who knew about it who thought it was fucked up. Everyone else was cheering ChadHater on—even the man who claimed to be a Miami-Dade deputy sheriff and another member who said he was a cop in Florida somewhere.

  The clock ticked loudly across the room. He glanced at it in despair. He had to get up in three hours to go work at the factory. He tried to avoid conversation at work. Except with his boss, Ellie. She was about his age. When she hired him, she extended her hand to shake his. It was the first time he’d touched another person in years. She always made a point to say hello to him and even asked him how he was doing. He was head over heels in love with her. He tried not to stare when she passed, but he always watched her out of the corner of his eye.

  She was unfailingly nice to him, but he knew she would never go out with him. She often stopped to check on his work, and it seemed like she sometimes talked to him longer than some others. But never as long as she stopped to chat with that one Chad—the Jersey guy with the good hair and perfect jaw and white teeth. She always lingered longer to check on his work. She leaned in toward him, and her voice got a different tone to it. And she giggled. She thought everything that fucking Chad said was funny. She obviously wanted to fuck him. Maybe she even was fucking him. It filled him with a toxic mix of fury and despair.

  He would never, ever kill anyone, but if he were ever to pull an ER, he’d bring a gun into work and kill that fucking Chad first.

  No. He couldn’t kill anyone.

  Except himself.

  He sat up in bed and reached for the bottle of pills. He was pouring them into his cupped palm when his phone dinged. He glanced at it.

  It was a notification. Someone had responded to his Queen of Spades message.

  9

  As soon as she got off the phone with Jonathan, Eva immediately got online and started researching Molly Freeman. The girl had given her full name when Eva asked during lunch. The deeper Eva dug, the more the young woman was everything she seemed.

  Eva was pleased to see one arrest—for protesting police violence.r />
  This young woman wasn’t afraid to bend the rules a little bit for something she believed in. Any doubts she had that the young woman would flake dissipated.

  And any concern Eva had that the part she’d asked her to play would scar the young woman also evaporated. Molly was a tough young woman who could handle it without any problem.

  Satisfied, Eva downed two coffees from the room’s coffee maker before she changed into workout gear and headed down to the hotel gym.

  It was still before four a.m., so the gym was deserted. She’d use the empty space to complete her Navy Seal workout. It involved six sets of thirty pushups, six sets of thirty sit-ups, and three sets of ten pullups.

  Her upper body strength was good but not great, so she sweated and grunted through the pullups, glad to be in an empty gym where she could let loose with the sounds of her exertion. She always did those first because they were the toughest part of her routine.

  After her workout, she usually liked to swim for thirty-five minutes, but the hotel pool outside was not a lap pool. Instead, she hit the stationary bike for a half hour as a warm up for her run.

  By the time she was done, the sun was peeking through clouds on the eastern horizon, and the beach was dotted with some early strollers and joggers. She laced up her running shoes and ran three miles down the beach and back.

  When she returned to the hotel lobby, walking in red-faced and sweating and feeling like a million bucks, she passed a flurry of scantily clad women teetering on stilettos heading out for the day even though it wasn’t yet eight o’clock.

  She heard one of them mentioning a photo shoot.

  The words made her heart pound. Hopefully Jonathan had reached the One-Eyed Jack. Everything needed to be in place. They were running out of time.

  The three events were all this weekend. Only two days away.

  10

  Conrad/Username: One-EyedJack

  Holy moly! The Queen of Spades was coming to his place. To his small house. In a few hours.

  He whooped loudly before running around frantically, shoving clothing into closets and dishes into the dishwasher and empty food containers into the trash. He flung open the windows and even the front door and then sprayed some crappy air freshener he’d bought on clearance throughout his place.

  In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and ran a comb through his hair, realizing that having a black sheet of poster board over his mirror might seem bizarre-o to non-incels, but he didn’t care. It would remain. All the confidence he was feeling right now would disappear if he did something stupid like looking in a mirror.

  Besides, as soon as they met him and saw his face, they’d understand why the mirror was covered.

  As he stood in the bathroom he was overcome by a massive wave of dizziness and nausea. What the hell was he doing? He was going to fake raping a woman—some actress the Queen had found—on video? It was the worst idea he’d ever heard in his life. He could never lay a hand on a woman against her consent. This was absurd. He had never gone past third base with a woman in his life.

  He started to sweat and felt so ill, he leaned over the bathroom sink and gripped the counter until his knuckles turned white. This was bad. So bad.

  He closed his eyes. He would call her and tell her he couldn’t do it. There was no way he could pretend to kiss a girl, much less pretend to rape her. He felt the contents of his stomach, last night’s frozen pizza, churning.

  He was able to lean over and get most of it in the toilet. When he vomited until he was retching bile, he stood back up and turned on the taps to the sink. After he’d washed his face and brushed his teeth again, he threw back his shoulders and steeled himself for the task at hand.

  Deep down inside, he knew that somehow, for some reason, he’d been born for this task—to stop dozens of murders. He swallowed back the last remnant of fear and horror and gave himself a pep talk. “This is what you are here for, Conrad.”

  As he said it, he was astonished to recall a memory of being a young man in the doctor’s office after he’d lost his eye. A female nurse had come in to sit with him while the doctor was out talking to his parents in the lobby.

  He was sobbing and wanted to rip off the bandage. He felt helpless and frustrated and incredibly scared and sad. He’d already been a freak before he’d lost the eye, now he had accelerated to Super Freak.

  The nurse caught him weeping when she opened the door.

  “Time to take your vitals,” she said.

  This nurse was much younger than the older gray-haired nurse who had been there earlier. She was also small. Like not much bigger than him. And she had really thick glasses that made it hard to see her eyes. But she had a smile that took him off guard. He’d seen his neighbor, Tommy’s mother smile at Tommy that way when he’d handed her a bouquet of flowers he’d picked.

  This nurse wore a little dress and sweater. She looked like a doll she was so tiny.

  Once she was in the room, instead of reaching for the thermometer or blood pressure cuff, she heaved herself up on the exam table beside him. They both sat facing the wall with the picture of the exotic birds, side by side, with their legs hanging down from the table.

  He was a little nervous, so he swung his legs. His heart was racing. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but for some reason he was not upset by it. He found the nurse’s presence comforting.

  Finally, she spoke.

  “Rough break,” she said. “You already have had quite a time of it in your few short years, haven’t you?”

  His embarrassment at being caught crying like a baby had effectively stopped the tears instantly when she opened the door, but his eyes welled with tears again at her words. He squeezed his eyelids shut so they wouldn’t drip out. He didn’t want to seem like a big cry baby.

  Because he didn’t risk speaking, he simply nodded, staring at his knees.

  “Do you believe in God?” she asked.

  He shook his head furiously and swung his legs even harder. He’d stopped believing in God the first time he’d looked in a mirror and realized he looked like a freak.

  “Okay,” the nurse said, and he could tell she meant it and wasn’t judging him for it like his mother would have. “Do you believe that everybody on this earth is different, unique?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. His words were snurgly and sounded congested from crying.

  “Well, I do,” the nurse said. “You know what else I believe?”

  He didn’t respond, but he realized he was calmer and was listening and waiting for what she would say next. He’d stopped swinging his legs and was biting his lip lightly.

  “I believe in angels. And I believe in the angel who told me to come into your room.”

  Six-year-old Conrad turned and looked at the nurse, thinking she was cuckoo and maybe he shouldn’t be talking to her at all. But when he saw her face, those feelings disappeared. She was smiling and looking off somewhere, in her own world. Instead of thinking she was a crazy lady, Conrad suddenly felt like he was in the presence of something calmer and more peaceful than he’d ever experienced before.

  She didn’t look at him as she continued to speak.

  “This angel told me that the boy in Room Twenty-eight is going to do something incredible in this life—something that is so big and powerful and wonderful that when he has long left this world, people will still think of him in admiration.”

  Upon hearing her words, Conrad could barely breathe. It was the single most terrifying thing he’d ever heard in his life. When she finished speaking, the nurse turned to him. “Thank you.”

  And with that she leaped down from the exam table and walked out.

  Conrad sat there with his mouth open, stunned and shaken.

  Before he could recover, the door opened and a doctor, his parents, and the gray-haired nurse came in.

  “Time to take your vitals, sport,” the nurse said.

  He stared blankly at her. She misread him and said, “It won’t hurt. I promise.�
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  “Where’s the nurse with the big glasses?” he asked.

  He looked at his parents and the doctor. They exchanged a look, and the nurse said, “Let’s not worry about that.”

  Now, so many years later, that poignant moment rushed back to him.

  This was it.

  This must have been what that nurse meant.

  For a few years after, he’d thought about what she’d said in his darkest moments, but eventually he came to the conclusion that she was crazy and had somehow snuck into the hospital to fuck with his head. Or worse, that he’d imagined the whole thing.

  Now, though, he had utter confidence in his memory.

  It had happened.

  And this was what she had meant.

  Stopping ChadHater was his destiny.

  “It is my destiny,” he said.

  Saying the words out loud gave them power. He nodded his own head in agreement. He also allowed himself to think the dark thoughts he’d been suppressing. This is also your chance to make up for the vile hatred you allowed on Incel Nation. The entire forum is your responsibility. You may not have encouraged the hatred, but by passively letting it occur, you condoned it. This is on you. And that means it’s on you to stop it.

  11

  Eva glanced down at the address. The house was a small brown one surrounded by similar houses in a track of suburban homes in a neighborhood called Miami Gardens that didn’t look very garden-like. When they had first pulled off the main highway, Molly had sat up and looked around.

  “You know this area?” Eva asked.

  “Yeah. My house isn’t far from here”

  A few miles later they sat parked in front of the guy’s house. It could use a new roof and windows and a paint job, but it didn’t seem like it was falling apart. It appeared lived in. Instead of grass there were wildflowers that were untended and overgrown.