"The Profiteer" - November 7, 2024
A man is kidnapped and taken to an unknown location, and the reason appears to defy reality...
Every Thursday, Silver Gecko Publishing highlights one of my stories, either a work of short fiction, a novel, or an audiobook. This week’s selection is a sample from the short story “The Profiteer,” available in 13 MORE TURNS, available on Kindle, in paperback, and on audiobook.
The older I get, the more cynical I become. If you watch enough of what happens in the world, it can be punishing to watch innocent people suffer while others profit from that suffering. And there are many ways that suffering turns a profit.
In my Endnotes of 13 MORE TURNS, I say this about “The Profiteer”…
There are a lot of people in this world who preach about being someone who generates jobs and incomes but in reality feeds off the system. If you’re paying attention to what’s happening in the world, you know what I’m talking about. Sadly, I don’t think the reality behind these people who profiteer off of others’ misery is as innocent as the story I tell.
And then there’s that 150-year-old picture of Nicolas Cage as a vampire. It’s these kinds of things that coalesce into a story. My brain is funny that way.
If you like this story, pick up a copy of 13 MORE TURNS on Kindle, in paperback, and on audiobook.
-Kevin Carr
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Illustration by suvajit (@suvajit-83247) from Pixabay
“The Profiteer” by Kevin Carr
It was hot in the box, so hot that Denise felt it would drive her mad. But she knew that she had already tripped into a world of madness. There was nowhere left to go now.
The heat inside the box was not just a result of the intense sunlight outside, continually warming the steel walls. It also came from the two large hardware lights in the back corners. Those things did not just kick off a great degree of light. They also kicked out a surprising amount of heat. Plus, there was no ventilation in the room. Just steel walls, trapping the heat inside. And outside, of course, nothing but more heat.
And then there was Denise herself. She was, in essence, a one-hundred-degree furnace. And whatever sweat managed to evaporate off of her body might cool her off, but it would still raise the ambient temperature of the room. It was basic physics: the law of the conservation of energy. And right now, there was nowhere for that heat to escape.
It only just occurred to Denise that the other body in the room might not even be generating heat. She realized that she did not actually know anything about this creature’s biology. Was it warm-blooded? Cold-blooded? Or did it just use versions of that trait to blend in with its surroundings?
The room itself was long and narrow. Industrial-welded walls blocked them in, not as a means of comfort but rather for storage. Behind Denise, far from the other body that was peacefully sitting in a chair, were what appeared to be two doors. Rather than being opulent structures for a showy home or business, they were basic heavy steel doors, held fast with a latch and bolt.
Between the two hardware lights was a small white sheet hung from the ceiling. Next to Denise was a small table and a laptop, with a projector plugged into it. A soft whir came from both the laptop and the projector. They were turned on and ready to go.
Denise looked over the body in front of her. It appeared to be a man, with a black cloth bag over his head. The man was still dressed in the clothes in which he was taken. They were fancy and slick, a sign of great wealth. The silk suit was barely scuffed, and it still carried a heavy crease in the legs. It was as if the man in these clothes could not get mussed up.
Denise walked slowly across the hot box. She could hear the thing breathing under the bag. Its breath slowed as Denise approached the chair. It knew she was there. Of course it senses me, thought Denise. It’s not human.
Denise reached out and grabbed the corner of the bag, then yanked it off the thing’s head with the force that a magician would use to pull a tablecloth from under a fully-set dining table.
Although Denise knew the thing’s face, it still surprised her. She had seen this face throughout history, as far back as visual depictions exist. Yet she was always taken aback.
Because it looked so human.
The man under the bag had clear olive skin and slicked-back black hair. Even after emerging from this kidnapping cocoon, the resemblance looked impeccable.
The man gasped, and Denise saw the fear in his eyes. But Denise knew fear could be faked… especially by something that knew fear so well.
“Thank god!” the man said suddenly breathing rapidly. “Please help me.”
Denise just stared at him. She expected as much… bargaining, pleading, appealing to her human emotions.
Denise refused to let that work on her.
“Why don’t you help yourself?” Denise asked smugly.
The man looked confused, and he struggled against his restraints, heavy silver cuffs that held his hands to the back of the chair.
“Hard to struggle out of this, no?” Denise asked.
“Please…” the man said meekly. “I have a family.”
“No you don’t,” Denise said.
“Yes, I do,” the man said. “My name is Tito Mortenson. I have a wife and three children –“
“No!” Denise yelled this time, the sound of which caused Tito’s jaw to clamp shut. “No! You don’t!”
Tito looked up at her, pleading with his eyes.
“Don’t bother playing,” Denise said. “I know who you are.”
“I told you,” Tito said, collecting himself. “I’m just a businessman.”
“Wrong again,” Denise said. “You’re not just a businessman.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tito said.
Denise pressed a key on the laptop. The white screen came to life with a picture of Tito, only this one was virtually unrecognizable from the man who sat across from her in the hot box. The Tito on the screen had a mullet and a week’s growth of his beard. His eyes were glazed over, and his face was much fatter. Even his nose seemed less angular and his cheekbones less pronounced. He also looked stoned out of his mind.
“Tito Mortenson did not start out as a businessman, successful or otherwise,” Denise said. “In fact, he was a disaster when it came to business.”
Denise pressed a key on the laptop, and the picture changed. Now it was a list of companies – from mail-order food and presumably high-end liquor to discount college classes and online dating programs. Each one was accompanied by the word “FAILED” next to a date.
“The real Tito Mortenson inherited millions of dollars from his father, who was a successful businessman. And he squandered those millions on one failed business idea after another,” Denise continued. She then pressed the laptop key again, and a graph suddenly appeared, clearly showing a dollar value plummeting.
“The real Tito Mortenson,” Denise said, “was such a failure at business that he went bankrupt a staggering six times. In fact, his net worth crumbled so quickly after inheriting his money that it would have been a better investment to put the cash in a mattress with no interest whatsoever… and have moths eat through eighty percent of it.”
Tito did not argue with Denise. He just stared at her, studying her.
“Until three years ago,” Denise said as she advanced the slides. The graph was back, but this time, there was a huge spike three years ago, leading to a meteoric rise in profits.
“Suddenly, three years ago,” she continued, “your businesses went from failing enterprises to huge profit cash cows. Some have speculated that your family just introduced you to the right people to change the direction of your businesses. In the hands of the right Russian oligarch, your personal portfolio could grow considerably. Investments in war-torn regions, selling steel and construction services. Drilling for oil in third-world countries with a sweetheart deal under the dictator regime. A couple pharmaceutical companies that jacked up their prices on life-saving medication. Even stateside, you got a more-than-competitive edge.”
“I grew up,” the thing said to Denise. But she shrugged it off.
“Not exactly,” she said. “But you did change.” She pointed to the section of the graph right before the profits started skyrocketing.
“March of three years ago,” Denise said, “was when the businesses changed. Oddly enough, that coincides with a near-fatal jet-skiing accident in the Great Barrier Reef. You took out thirty yards of ancient coral deposits in that failed stunt attempt.”
“Coming that close to death can make you reevaluate how you’re living your life,” the thing said.
Denise shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s more than that. You didn’t just reevaluate your life. You lost it.”
The Slick Man that Denise accused of pretending to be Tito Mortenson furrowed his brow and looked at Denise, confused.
Denise advanced the slide again. The face on the screen looked more like the man before her than the previous one. The narrow nose, the olive complexion, the devilish look in the eyes. All of this pointed to the thing that shared the space in the container right now.
“You changed everything,” Denise said. “You didn’t just change your business. You changed your look. You changed your face. You changed your body. And you changed your core as an individual. No longer were you concerned with yacht parties with supermodels in Ibiza. You became a tycoon. Virtually overnight.”
The Slick Man vehemently shook his head. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “It’s easy to grab pictures off of some gossip website and act like a change happened overnight. But even in your mad slideshow, change happens gradually.”
Now it was Denise’s turn to shake her head, but the Slick Man continued to talk. “You acknowledge that the jet skiing accident was nearly fatal. Well, it was worse than the press reported. I had to undergo major facial reconstruction. They tried to make me look like I did before, but nobody’s perfect. It was a wake-up call for me. I changed my life –from how I did business to how I handled my personal life. This is the way things happen in real life, not in your little fantasy.”
Denise advanced the slide. What came on the screen was enough to make the Slick Man stop talking.
No longer were they looking at a graph of business profits from recent years. No longer were they looking at a picture of Tito Mortenson from his mullet days.
The picture on the screen showed a jungle, with a group of soldiers lined up, posing. The image had enough grain and color saturation to read as being decades old. At the end of the line of soldiers was the commander… a man who looked curiously like the Slick Man pretending to be Tito Mortenson.
“Danang Province, Vietnam, 1968,” Denise said. “Commander Steven Ruttlidge and his platoon saw some of the bloodiest and most horrible moments of the war. Atrocities upon atrocities. Villages burned. Women and children raped. The only bigger war crime than the ones committed on the ground was the way things were covered up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Slick Man said. However, a slight stammer in his voice told Denise that he had struck a nerve.
Denise grinned. She advanced the slides again.
This time, the image was replaced by another group of soldiers, only this shot looked even older than the Vietnam one by about 20 years. In the center of the group, squatting in the tall grass, was Tito Mortenson again. Well, almost Tito Mortenson. The man in the picture looked like a different version of Tito Mortenson, as if his face had been mapped onto another person’s.
“Yongsan, Korea, 1950,” Denise said. “You were just a grunt then, in a different army, experiencing the carnage first-hand. During your service, your platoon saw more than their fair share of combat, and as happened years later in Vietnam, there were atrocities. However, a few of your fellow soldiers couldn’t stomach what you did, and their reports nearly got you court martialed. But you disappeared from custody before anything could be done.”
“This is ridiculous,” the Slick Man said, submitting to anger. “These are coincidental images. Or you have a basic working knowledge of Photoshop and made your own slate of evidence.”
“I assure you that these images are authentic,” Denise replied.
“Even if they are, they mean nothing,” the Slick Man spat. “I once saw a picture on the internet of a man from the Civil War who looks like Nicolas Cage. That doesn’t make him a vampire.”
Denise advanced the slides. The next spot showed a group of men standing next to Adolf Hitler. Tito Mortenson was easily seen at the dictator’s right hand.
“In World War II, you found a way into Hitler’s inner circle,” Denise said, but before any rebuttal, she advanced the slides. Denise continued to describe what they both saw on the screen: “In World War I, you were a commander for the British in the horrors of trench warfare.”
Next slide: “The American Civil War, in the horrific Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. Somehow you had a medical degree for that one, overseeing hundreds of starving soldiers.”
Next slide: “Going as far back as the Crusades, your uncanny face appears throughout history. Here as a soldier in Hittin defending his homeland from the King’s invaders.”
The carving from the Crusades was hard to refute. It was the same face they had been looking at over the years. The resemblance was uncanny.
Denise started walking towards the Slick Man. “And you didn’t stop when this new century came in,” she said, then advanced the slide. “You got creative, I’ll say. Hot dog vendor outside of the World Trade Center in 2001.”
Next slide: “Government contractor in Iraq in the reconstruction of Gulf War II.”
Next slide: “Concierge at a hotel in Banda Aceh on the eve of the Boxing Day Tsunamis of 2004.”
Next slide: “Somehow finding your way into the sheriff’s department just before a half-dozen school shootings.”
The Slick Man tried to smile gently. “I’m just a man,” he said. “You’re mistaken.”
Denise shook her head and wiped a thick layer of sweat from her forehead. She smiled and made a tsk tsk tsk sound.
“Do you know what day today is?” Denise asked.
The Slick Man looked at her quizzically, and Denise saw the man’s eyes searching. His perfect hairstyle held in place as he cocked his head to think.
“Well?” Denise asked.
“The last thing I remember,” the Slick Man said, “was having dinner in Budapest. I went to the bathroom, and then things went black.”
“Yeah,” Denise said. “That’s where I took you.”
“But my security always checks the bathroom first,” the Slick Man said softly.
Denise grinned. “They did. But only the men’s room. The women’s restroom shares the same pipes. Sometimes it’s easier to go through a wall rather than through the door.”
Denise stepped closer to the Slick Man, rubbing her sweat in her fingers. “What day?”
“That was on Saturday night, so that makes this… Sssss…?”
Denise shook her head. “Wrong!” she yelled, causing the Slick Man to jump slightly. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Tuesday…” the Slick Man said thoughtfully. Then he furrowed his brow again and appeared to try thinking it through.
“It’s the salt,” Denise said. “Seems to disorient you. That’s how I knew you weren’t human as soon as I took you. Something about the salt I had you buried in these past three days that put you in a passive state.”
“Three days…” the Slick Man said thoughtfully, looking around.
“That’s right,” Denise said. “You have been under my control for three whole days. And in that time, you haven’t eaten a scrap of food, nor touched a drop of water.”
Denise then reached forward and touched the Slick Man’s forehead. She shook her head as she felt the thing’s olive skin. “It is more than 120 degrees in here. As you can see, I am covered in sweat. Yet, you don’t even have a glisten on your forehead. And your skin is cool to the touch even. Now, tell me: what kind of creature can do that? Because that’s not human.”…