Violent Eyes
by Michael Bracken

I sat in a rented Ford, scanning the neighborhood. The weed-choked yards, the screen doors hanging crookedly on
their hinges, the rusted automobiles propped on cinder blocks along the parking strip had attracted me because emotions always ran at the surface in people who lived on the edge.

My concentration skipped from house to house, mind to mind as I scanned down one side of the street and up the
other. Within minutes I located a depressed housewife with a screaming baby and too many loads of laundry to do. She shook the kid, yelling at it. I felt her frustration. She hated the baby; hated the baby's father; hated the laundry
she did for the neighbors.

I stopped scanning and focused. Then I twisted the emotion inside her, amplified the level of hatred past rationality, and felt adrenalin surge as she pounded the baby's face into the dirty plaster wall. Finally the baby ceased its relentless crying.

I pulled back slowly, savoring the last moments of contact. The adrenalin had begun to wash away, replaced by a
sense of accomplishment; she did not yet comprehend what she had done.

"Mister?" A small hand shook my shoulder. "Are you okay, mister?"

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. My vision blurred and my head hurt. I turned slowly. A boy in a faded
blue t-shirt stared at me.

"Do you need help?"

"I'm okay." I licked my lips.

Hot, muggy weather gripped St. Louis. All four of the car's windows had been rolled down so the thin breeze could
reach me while I scanned. It hadn't been enough: my back was plastered to the vinyl seat, the sweat-soaked fabric of my shirt sandwiched in between. Scanning and the heat had drained me.

"Are you sure?" the boy insisted. "You don't look so good."

I leaned forward and started the car. "I'm fine," I insisted. I dropped the car into gear and slowly pulled from the curb. Half a block behind me, seen only in my rear-view mirror, a pudgy young woman came screaming from one of the ramshackle bungalows. She carried something limp in her arms. The boy turned toward her. I turned on the radio.

~~~~~

At the hotel I changed clothes, leaving my shirt and my jeans in the shower to dry. Then I phoned room service,
ordered a bottle of Jim Beam, and sat alone in the room steadying my nerves.

Scanning is physically demanding. Often I return disorientated, unsure of where I am. When possible, I give myself time to adjust. The boy had interrupted me, thrown off my concentration, and my hands had shaken violently all
the way to the hotel.

I savored the Jim Beam when it arrived. A frequent companion, it temporarily washed away the after-effects, drowned some of the memories.

I'd first noticed my ability to scan as a toddler. Standing close to certain people, I'd felt their emotions. I'd known when they were happy and when they were sad; I'd known when they were afraid and when they were courageous;
I'd known when they were overcome by any emotion at all. But I didn't realize then that I was different. I didn't realize
it until I reached thirteen. A bully who hated everyone and everything picked me for his punching bag. Too small to
fight, too scared to run, I suffered his blows, but I also felt his hatred and wanted to know from where it came. I
scanned, not realizing I was scanning, fine tuning into his mind because it was so close. I found the place inside where the hatred festered and I twisted it--twisted it like the volume control on a television set.

He turned away and ran blindly into the grill of an oncoming Edsel.

I watched, our contact broken when he'd stepped away, and then I fainted. I woke in my bed. The doctor encouraged
my parents to keep me home until I recovered from the trauma of watching a friend die.

I began to experiment after that, entering minds at random. I tried for distance, length of stay, most number of minds visited in a short time. I entered specific minds, twisting emotions with the little bit of control I then had. When my grandmother died of cancer she was happier than she had ever been; when the next-door-neighbor boy dissected his
mother's French poodle with a carving knife, he'd never been more vengeful.

As I grew older, my abilities increased, within the limitations I'd discovered as a teenager. I could enter a mind and twist the emotion I found, make it more intense or make it disappear. Then I stayed for the ride, seeing where it went, leaving when it finished. Before long, the rosy glow of love and the warm embrace of pleasure no longer provided excitement. I strove for the thrill of mainlining adrenalin or orgasm without end, the edge of humanity where animal instinct dominates.

I could never read minds, could not control someone, could not make him say or do what I desired. I could only twist his emotions and hang my shirts to dry afterward.

~~~~~

I stared at the glass in my hand, realized I'd drained it, and pushed myself out of the chair. I straightened my tie before leaving the hotel room, then headed to a sales meeting I had scheduled.

It took the rest of the afternoon to convince the president of a typesetting company to invest a quarter million dollars and bring his composing room equipment up to current industry standards. It didn't matter that what he bought would be obsolete the next day, what mattered was that I had his signature on a contract when I finally left the building.

When I had the chance, I scanned all the minds in a room before I entered, toning down the negative emotions and amplifying the positive ones. I didn't often have the chance: scanning with pinpoint accuracy took too much effort, too much sweat, and too much concentration, to do well under the watchful eye of even the least efficient secretary. I'd tried once, early in my career, only to return from scanning to find myself lying on a reception room floor with two paramedics hovering over me, preparing to take me to the hospital. After that I sometimes slipped into the men's room, found a stall, and did a quick blanket scan of everyone within a short range, twisting the positive emotions up to full volume, hoping I caught my target in the scan.

Since the sales meeting had gone well, I celebrated by treating myself to a lobster dinner, an adventure movie, and
a quiet drink in the hotel bar before going up to my room for the night.

I stripped and lay in bed staring at the ceiling, seeing the whorls of paint and the tiny shadows they cast. I wasn't
tired: the adrenalin rush of the afternoon, and the ego-boosting accomplishment of another signed contract, kept
my mind racing. I took a deep breath, tried to concentrate, and finally began scanning the hotel. I whipped through the lobby and the first floor, flitting from mind to mind, quickly dismissing the sleeping and unguarded. I found her on the third floor. Alone.

She lay in a bathtub of warm water and bubbles. She'd had too many meetings and too many after-dinner drinks. She
felt relaxed, warm, and sexy. I entered her slowly, feeling her surround me.

She missed someone and she thought of him. I toyed with her desire, amplified it. She massaged herself with a warm washcloth, rubbing it under her heavy breasts and across her thick nipples. They grew hard and painfully tight.

Her hand strayed lower, down her abdomen and through the thick mat of her pubic hair to the outer lips of her vagina.
She stroked them gently, pushed her finger between them, and found the hard knot of her clitoris. She spread her legs wider, sliding lower in the tub.

I felt warmth spread through her as she massaged herself, felt the electrical tingles as she began to come in the bathtub, felt the pain as her hips bucked up and down against the porcelain tub. Bubbles spilled onto the tile floor.

Orgasm overwhelmed her, swept her into ecstasy, rippled through her body like never before. She fought against
unconsciousness as I grabbed the orgasm and twisted it beyond the breaking point.

Then I pulled away quickly; returned to my room to find myself bathed in sweat, my abdomen covered with semen, my own lungs gasping for air. I waited until my heart stopped pounding before pushing myself off the bed. Then I stumbled into the bathroom and stood under the icy needles of a cold shower.

I slept restlessly that night, spinning in the lumpy double bed and twisting the cotton top sheet around my thick legs. An hour after I'd given up all hope of sleep, I sat behind the wheel of the rented Ford. My plane to Chicago wasn't scheduled to leave Lambert Field until early afternoon; I had all morning to kill.

At first I drove aimlessly through the downtown streets west of the hotel. Then, as the sun rose behind the Gateway
Arch, I found myself on Broadway, headed south toward the brewery. Downtown disappeared as I crossed under Highway 40 and entered Soulard. I turned at the Soulard Farmers Market, the Ford's steering wheel jerking under my hands as I drove west on the cobblestones. In the market, farmers unloaded produce, preparing their stalls for the day. I didn't stop to watch.

There's a dead zone between Soulard and Lafayette Square, a section of the city only a few blocks wide where
the urban pioneers and their rehabbing fad had not dared to venture. I'd driven through it almost every time I visited
St. Louis. This time I drove through, circled around, and brought the car to a halt.

Across the street from where I sat, the abandoned City Hospital loomed over the Malcolm Bliss Mental Health Center. Something special existed inside Malcolm Bliss, something I could not find on the street, something I had never dared to explore before.

I licked my lips as I stared at the building. Then slowly, tentatively, I scanned the people entering Malcolm Bliss. I skipped through the nurses and doctors, raced through the aides and orderlies, accelerated through the janitors and cooks and maintenance staff. They weren't what I wanted.

I wiped a sheen of perspiration off my forehead. Then I looked at my fingers, saw the sweat glisten, and felt a shiver race down my spine.

I went in.

At first I found only blanks, minds where no emotion existed. They held nothing I could grasp, nothing to amplify. I skittered away.

I found others lethargic; dull, dim-witted people unable to care for themselves and barely able to cultivate emotion. What emotions they did have simple on/off switches, unlike the complex volume controls I usually found. As I hurried from one mind to the next--quickly finding each emotional center, judging it, finding it lacking, and moving on--I raced through a mind that stopped me. The man's mind was jumbled, out of control, the emotions skewing up and down. I twisted an emotion as high as it went and tried to hold it there.

It slipped from my grasp.

I waited. Anger came up on its own, tainted with hatred and bits of emotions I couldn't identify.

He opened his eyes and stared at the broad back of a nurse. Glare from the white uniform irritated his eyes; slobber dripped silently onto his chest. When the nurse turned around, he grabbed her throat in one hand and tried to choke her. Ebony skin bulged between his pale fingers. The nurse batted his hand away with one thick black fist. "Ain't gonna take no more of that," she said. "Ain't gonna take no more."

He shoved himself off the bed and leapt at her. The nurse outweighed him by a hundred and fifty pounds and she easily threw him back on the bed.

His emotions turned to mush. Anger disappeared. He lay quietly.

"That's better," she said. She smiled at him, her yellow teeth peeking between her thick lips.

I pulled away from the man in the bed. He was too small, too weak, with emotions too hard to control. I slid through the nurse's mind. I left her with no alteration and scanned down the hall.

~~~~~

I collided with another mind.

It held broken glass and barbed wire, sharp needles, razors, butcher knives. It held napalm and acid slowly burning eyes from their sockets. It held flaming crosses and black men with broken necks swinging from tree limbs. It held Jews and the smell of flesh-burning ovens. It held Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and John Wayne Gacy. It held hatred,
fear, anger, and loathing, all amplified past rationality. It was all there before I arrived and it blew me back to the
car.

Sweat stung my eyes and I tried to wipe it away. My arms shook so violently I couldn't lift them. I gulped stale air.
My heart palpitated. My head felt about to explode. I'd bitten my tongue and I tasted blood.

Somewhere inside Malcolm Bliss existed a mind already far past anything I'd ever experienced. Somewhere inside
Malcolm Bliss existed the kind of mind I'd sought for years, never able to find it.

The lonely woman on the third floor of the hotel had been a small diversion, giving a moment's pleasure. The pudgy young housewife with the laundry and the baby had been like a cheap carnival ride: the thrill only lasted a minute.
I'd been looking for more: like a drug addict seeking a bigger dose each time he needed a fix, I had searched for
something I couldn't get.

Somewhere inside Malcolm Bliss was what I'd been seeking: the ultimate thrill ride, a mind already pushed to the limits. I'd found it, and I feared it, and it really didn't matter because the body was securely restrained. I sat and stared at the building for a long, long time. Then I started the Ford and drove to the hotel to pack.


I spent a week in Chicago before they put me back on the road. I visited the student newspaper at the University of
Iowa, then went east to a printing company in Springfield, Illinois. By the time I returned to St. Louis I'd sold another half million dollars worth of typesetting equipment and I'd spent at least a dozen sleepless nights thinking of what I'd found inside Malcolm Bliss.

During that month of travel, I'd looked for something similar in the towns and cities I visited. I'd come close only twice, once in a holdover cell in the Madison County jail and once in the English department of a small university. Both minds were borderline but only one was dangerous on its own.

A few hours after unpacking my bags in St. Louis, I sat in a rented Chevrolet across the street from Malcolm Bliss.
I quickly found the mind I wanted, tuned into it, and waited.

The emotions ran at full volume, relentless and unwavering. I felt them, trying to understand how they'd gotten that way, why they stayed that way, and what I could do to another mind to make it the same.

She lay in her bed staring upward while I waded through the emotional cesspool. Rage at full volume: she hated everything and everyone and hated the fact that she lay confined to her bed.

A wide black face interrupted her view of the ceiling.

"You doing all right today, Miss Emma?" asked the nurse I'd seen before. "You sure do have the most violent eyes, yes ma'am."

Miss Emma said nothing. I grabbed hatred, tried to twist the volume control, and found it broken at full volume. Her emotions flickered as if she'd recognized the intrusion. Then nuclear holocaust erupted; a million bloated Ethiopians exploded like ruptured pimples; crosses burned on the lawns of black families across America while ebony children cried and white men laughed.

The nurse grabbed Miss Emma's shoulders and easily rolled her onto her side to stare at the window. Miss Emma's
body--a husk of use only to keep the brain alive--lay paralyzed. Self-pity swam through oceans of gasoline, walked
through the fires of hell, burned the death of Auschwitz. It didn't matter to me then. Only understanding mattered.

I felt as if I'd met the beast of Revelation. When I finally withdrew, my head tingled with thousands of tiny electrical jolts. The feeling didn't leave until I'd killed half a bottle of Jim Beam.

~~~~~

I spent the next week in meetings with two potential clients. The hours between meetings I watched people. I scanned minds in the Central West End and in Forest Park. I scanned minds in Soulard and in Clayton. I scanned minds on the Hill and on the Riverfront.

I was parked at an apartment complex when I saw him: big, with broad shoulders and thick, muscular arms; pale
brown hair curled around his ears; and violent eyes. He walked past the car without seeing me. My head tingled as I tuned into him, quickly finding his emotional center. He seethed.

He stormed up the stairs to a second floor apartment, shoved the door open, and slammed it shut behind him. Glass
doors rattled on a gun cabinet as he crashed through the apartment to the bedroom.

"They fired me," he said to the woman on the bed. "What the fuck did I ever do to them?"

The pale blonde lay mute, staring up at him. She held the covers to her neck.

"Tell me," he yelled. "What did I ever do?"

He grabbed the covers and jerked them off the bed. She wore only a black teddy.

"And what the hell are you doing in bed at two in the afternoon?"

"John, I--"

The front door of the apartment opened, then closed quietly. A male voice called, "Barbara?"

John stepped toward the night stand, pulled open the single drawer, reached in, and came away with his fist wrapped around a .38.

A young man stepped into the bedroom, his shirt half off, his arms caught in the sleeves.

John hesitated.

I twisted.

John pulled the trigger. The young man's chest exploded and he slumped against the door frame.

John spun back to his wife. Her mouth moved, but she didn't speak. He grabbed her hair and pulled her to her feet. She struggled. He backhanded her with the barrel of the revolver. A long streak of blood appeared on her cheek.
She put her hands to her face. Blood oozed between her fingers. John pulled the teddy off her, discarding the wisp
of blackness under his feet. He shoved her against the wall and pressed the .38 into her crotch. He squeezed the
trigger. She screamed and doubled over. He pressed the barrel of the revolver against her temple and squeezed the
trigger again. Her head erupted in a fountain of blood. Her body spasmed as it fell to the floor.

John stepped over his wife's body. He crossed the room. He kicked over the body in the doorway, then stepped on the dead man's face, crushing nasal cartilage.

In the living room, John unlocked his gun case. He reloaded .38, picked out a rifle and a shotgun, and loaded them. Then he stuffed his pockets full of ammunition, slung the rifle over his shoulder, stuffed the .38 into the waistband of his jeans, and headed out of the apartment and down the stairs with the shotgun in his hand.

An elderly woman shuffled out of a downstairs apartment, squinted at him through her bifocals, and said, "What was
all that noise upstairs?"

John rammed the butt of the shotgun into her false teeth. A tiny Pekingese ran out of the old woman's apartment
and yapped at his heels. He kicked it into the wall of the apartment building, breaking its neck.

Sirens wailed in the distance. John turned toward the sound and saw the rented Chevrolet where I sat. He dismissed me. Through his eyes I appeared to have passed out: my head lolled back on the seat, my face gleamed with sweat. He walked past the Chevrolet, across the parking lot to a pickup truck.

He slid the rifle onto the seat, then climbed in. The sirens grew louder. The truck's engine roared to life. John dropped the truck into gear, then propped the barrel of the shotgun on the driver's door, only an inch of it showing through the open window.

He let the pickup roll forward. As he drove out of the parking lot, a police cruiser came in. One barrel of the shotgun exploded and the cop disintegrated, thousands of tiny blood stains spattering the inside of the cruiser. John pulled the shotgun back inside the pickup as the police cruiser bumped out of control over the curb, crushing the old woman against the apartment building. John smiled. The day had finally begun to go his way. A sense of satisfaction settled tentatively over the top of his other emotions. I let it stay a moment before I brushed it away. I couldn't allow John to be satisfied with what he'd done. There was so much more he was capable of. When the guard at the plant where John had worked wouldn't open the gate, John pumped the other shotgun shell into his chest and crashed his pickup through.

Ahead lay a long grey building surrounded by the asphalt expanse of a half-empty parking lot. The pickup careened off a Toyota and skidded to a stop at the building's entrance. John jumped out of the truck with the shotgun in his hands. He broke it open and replaced the two spent shells. Then he slung the rifle over his shoulder and marched up the marble steps, through the glass doors, and into the building. The receptionist looked up in surprise, her manicured fingers poised above the switchboard. A hint of lust swept through John's mind. I knocked it aside. John slammed a fist into her face, knocking her backward, away from the switchboard. She screamed. He pulled .38 from his waistband and drilled a hole through her forehead with a single shot.

With the shotgun in his left hand and the .38 in his right, John headed down a long hallway. A door on his left jerked open and a bald man stuck his head out. When he saw John, he tried to pull back in. He wasn't fast enough. John
fired the .38 pointblank into the man's face.

Women began screaming. The sound came from behind him. They had discovered the receptionist.

John marched quickly down the hall toward the closed door of the company president's office. No one tried to stop
him. He glanced through open doors as he passed other offices, the corner of his eye noticing a secretary hiding
behind a desk in one, a middle-aged man in a blue suit crouched behind a filing cabinet in another.

He kicked open the door at the end of the hall. The company president sat impassively behind his desk, a telephone receiver pressed to one ear. Color drained from his face.

"I'll call you back," he said slowly. He licked his thick lips. His heavy jowls shook. "Something important has come up."

The company president slowly lowered the receiver.

"I want my job back," John said.

The man behind the desk cleared his throat. "I--"

"I want you to get on your knees and beg me to take my job back."

"I--" The president's face shined with sweat. "Perhaps I was a bit hasty this morning."

John advanced until only an oak desk separated the two men. Outside the building police sirens destroyed the quiet
afternoon.

"Perhaps a mistake was made--"

"A mistake?" John interrupted. "You're damn right there was a mistake. I worked here for ten goddamned years."

"Personnel said there was some problem with attitude."

"Personnel wouldn't know a cunt from a shit-house."

"I...I'm sure they don't. If you would just give me the opportunity to have your file sent in, perhaps we could--"

"Don't fuck with me," John said. "You ain't got the time."

Footsteps reverberated in the hall. A police siren wailed outside the building. John moved to the window to look through a gap in the heavy curtains.

A chair crashed to the floor. John spun around to see the fat man running for the door. He pulled both triggers on
the shotgun. The company president erupted in a shower of blood.

A cop in a flak jacket stepped into the room and leveled a .357. I tried to pull away. The cop squeezed the trigger.
I pulled back with every ounce of strength I had. I needed time. The cop's bullet arrived. The side of John's head
exploded. I felt the impact, the pain, and then I broke free.

As I sat in the rented car, my brain tingled. I tried to catch my breath, wanted to wipe my forehead, lost control of
my bladder. I sat in warm urine, unable to move. My brain burned, my eyes felt the pain of a hundred needles, my body the napalm of a thousand Vietnams, and I tried to scream. I tried to scream for an eternity and when I opened my eyes, I slowly focused on a familiar black face.

"You just like Miss Emma," she said as she rolled me onto my stomach and the hatred of a million souls swelled
within me.

© Michael Bracken
"Violent Eyes" originally appeared in Aberrations, July, 1995.

Michael Bracken is the author of DEADLY CAMPAIGN. EVEN ROSES BLEED, JUST IN TIME FOR LOVE, PSI COPS, and nearly 700 shorter works. His horror stories have appeared in Aberrations, Abrupt Darkness, Fantasy Macabre, Gentleman's Companion, Hustler Fantasies, Max, Midnight, Night Voyages, Score, Shadows Of, Thin Ice, Voluptuous, Weirdbook, and other publications.

April 2000 HofP