The MeToo Serial Killer

Prologue

There is nothing more powerful than being the one who decides how a story ends. There is nothing more exciting than knowing I am the one who brought that ending about. And there is nothing more satisfying to a man like me than when the story that ends belongs to one of the women who stood up and pointed a finger. Watching them go quiet was like looking into nirvana. It gave meaning to my life. I had a purpose now. Did those uppity ladies really think they were going to take over the world? Did they really think they deserved equal pay? When I looked at the Me-Too movement, all I saw were women rising up from all over the country, marching straight toward me. I was waiting for them. I was their ending.

Part 1

It was so loud, and it was crashing all around us. You could see the dents it was causing all over the place. It shattered and hurt more than one person. It cut everything in its way. The movement was fierce and fast, only to come to an abrupt halt. It was me, after all, the one to fight back.

The future arrived in October of 2017. They called it the "Weinstein effect," and it was something I would never forget. That October, a long line of women came forward with accusations against Harvey Weinstein. Harvey was fired from his own company and thrown out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. By the end of the month, something like seventy women had made allegations against him. Those allegations lit the fuse on the so-called Me-Too movement. Weinstein wasn't the only one caught up in it. Powerful men were taken down across many professions. Some of my favorite actors and news anchors were finished almost overnight. In my mind, that could not stand. I needed to do something. I wanted to fight back.

I grew up in an era when men were men, or at least that is what we told ourselves. The guys I came up with had a joke for every occasion, and every one of those jokes ended with a woman back in the kitchen where they thought she belonged. Why did the woman cross the road? Nobody in my crowd could ever get past the question of what she was doing out of the kitchen in the first place. That was the world I came from. Now women were going to rise up from their stations and be a problem for men? I didn't think so. At least, not without a response. I don't know how things got so out of whack in America. The idea that women deserved respect in the workplace, or equal pay, seemed to me like an attack on everything I had been raised to believe. In my office they were there to answer the phones, fetch the coffee, and run my errands, and that was it. They had their place. Their purpose was not to take down the biggest movie mogul in Hollywood or any of the other fine gentlemen in other industries. When this war on men was over, they would never get the upper hand over us. Not ever. Not while I was alive.

Chapter Two

My name is Cornelius Galvin. I am the owner and CEO of an information technology firm on the Space Coast of Florida. Here we live in the aerospace and technology sector. NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin are just a few of the companies and government agencies that make up the Space Coast. It was from this very spot that we launched men (not women) to the Moon, flew the Space Shuttle program, and are now reaching for Mars.

This part of Florida is a world unto itself. It is an affluent part of the state. We have Cocoa Beach, Merritt Island, and Cape Canaveral all in one geographic area. It is shaped like a rectangle, and within that space lies a world that includes the beaches, the port, and two rivers. We have everything we need inside that rectangle. Some of the best restaurants, seafood, and bars Florida has to offer make up the world I move through. On the weekends the beaches are lined with sunbathers in bikinis as far as the eye can see, more sunscreen and swimwear than most people in the Midwest have ever dreamed of. Every weekend I would walk between their beach chairs and blankets, convinced every one of them was hoping I'd stop and say hello. I just knew they were. I was tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, built like a Greek god, or so I told the mirror every morning. Life on the beach was the place to be, or at least it was until the Me-Too movement came along. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start from when I first moved to the Space Coast.

I did not grow up on the Space Coast; I grew up in South Florida. I moved here ten years ago. My wife, Claire, grew up here, and she wanted to return home to her stomping grounds. So we moved here to start a new life. We arrived at our new house on a hot August morning. It was a quaint little neighborhood close to the ocean. The moving crew started unloading the truck, and we started unpacking our stuff. It didn't take long before the laborers were done, and we stood in the middle of our new home buried in boxes and furniture.

Little by little, the neighbors came around to introduce themselves. The guy and his wife from next door were very forthcoming. They immediately told us that if we ever needed any weed, we should just knock and they would help us out. I thought that was quite friendly for a brand-new neighborly relationship.

The man's name was Spider. At least that was the only name he ever gave me. He explained that he used to be a roadie for some of the famous rock and roll bands we all knew. He traveled with the bands for most of his life until he was hurt on the job and ended up on disability. It was quite a bunch of information for the first day, but hey, this was our new neighborhood, and we went with the flow.

He took me next door to his home, where he showed me that his house was a shrine to hard rock. He had KISS dolls displayed everywhere, still in their original boxes, unopened. He had countless bootleg tapes of every band I have ever loved. The man had a full-blown museum of hard rock, and it covered every inch of his house with memorabilia from some of rock's most momentous bands. There was a drumhead signed by a drummer whose name I'm not allowed to repeat, and a guitar pick framed like it was the Hope Diamond. Spider was covered in tattoos and had long black hair. His wife, Tina, wore jeans all the time and old concert T-shirts, just like the headbanging gals I grew up with. They both reminded me of a lot of guys and girls I knew in the 1980s, but somehow it all had an air to it, as if they were living in a time capsule and wouldn't be breaking out anytime soon. They didn't even own a computer, so it really did feel like I had walked back in time when I entered their home.

Spider warned me not to talk to the lady across the street because she was a government informant. I asked how he knew, and he said that not long before we moved in, her house was descended upon by the federal government. They had to cut out parts of her roof to dismantle the meth lab she was running inside. I was blown away, because this was my first day in the new house and it looked like a great neighborhood. It certainly did not fit the idea of an out-of-control meth lab. He said the government shut down the entire road in and out for days cleaning up the mess. I asked how that made her an informant, and he said she was out of jail a couple of weeks later, the charges were dropped, and she never went to prison. I looked him in the eyes and said, "Yep, she's a snitch."

I started to wonder what kind of neighborhood my wife had found us. Tina handed me an already baked pie as a housewarming gift, and Spider handed me a big fat joint. I don't know how he knew we smoked pot, but I was liking my new neighbor for sure. I returned to my house shortly after. My wife looked famished, so we decided to go out to eat. Claire has long, beautiful black and gray hair that goes all the way down her back, and she has never in her life turned down a good meal, which is one of the things I love about her. I suggested a pizza pie, but she was not in the mood.

There was a restaurant close to our new home called Doggs, and I drove us over there to get some dinner. As we pulled into the driveway of the restaurant, we noticed tons of cop cars filling the parking lot. Every one of them was a K-9 unit, and they had all left their cars running with the air conditioning on and the dogs inside. I guessed this was a cop hangout, and particularly a hangout for cops with dogs.

We started to walk toward the front door of the restaurant when every single dog in every police car went nuts. They all started barking and scratching at the windows, trying to get out. That is when I realized I still had the joint in my pocket. It was like a scene from Stephen King's Cujo. In the middle of this mad hatter's dog convention, I realized the dogs were looking directly at me and no one else. Every cop inside saw the whole thing through the restaurant windows as we walked in the door.

We got a booth in the bar section and asked for some menus. The restaurant had mostly hot dogs, thus the name Doggs. They also had a chicken-nugget-like thing they called the "Scooby Snack," and you could order your level of hot sauce with it. Both of us ordered the Scooby Snack, which under the circumstances felt a little on the nose.

I excused myself to use the restroom. Inside the men's room were three urinals. There was a huge uniformed cop using the one on the left. The center urinal and the one on the right were unoccupied. I took the one farthest from the cop. As I was going about my business, I could feel the police officer staring at me. I still had the joint in my pocket, and I knew that was why those dogs could not stop barking. He finished and went to the sink to wash his hands, his gun hanging from his hip. Before I could finish, the officer said to me, "Hey, don't I know you?"

I was caught off guard and said, "I don't think so. We just moved to the area."

He asked me from where, and I told him South Florida. He said, "Goodbye," and left me in the bathroom all alone. I stared into the mirror and realized beads of sweat were running down my face. I threw water on my face and studied my reflection, wondering how strange that was. Could he smell the marijuana in my pocket? I returned to our table for dinner.

Our server came over, a cheerful blonde with a name tag that said Krystal, and I asked her if this was a restaurant for people with dogs. She laughed and said no, but the K-9 cops loved it and always came here. She told us there was a retirement party going on that day and they would be here all night. Claire had no idea what was going on or any of the issues I was dealing with from the restroom.

I made a second trip to the john, and this time I took the stall so I could have a little privacy and not be caught off guard again. I threw the joint in the toilet and flushed it. I watched the water go around in circles as it disappeared down the drain. I walked out of the bathroom, paid the tab, and we left. As we walked to the car, the dogs were completely silent. Not a single bark. I drove home shaking my head. I did not need to get arrested on my first day on the Space Coast.

Chapter Three

The next morning was mostly unpacking and setting up the electronics and computers around the house. Somehow, the Xbox died and got what is called "The Red Ring of Death," where a circle of red lights comes on and nothing else works. Claire found a computer shop on Craigslist that handled Xboxes, and I got directions to the place. I left her behind unpacking and drove to the shop. It was in a nondescript strip mall that was almost entirely empty. I walked into a little room and stood at the counter, waiting for someone to pop out from the back.

I stood there for a while, and no one showed up. They had one of those bells you ring to let them know someone is there, so I rang it and waited. More time went by, and still no one came out. The front door was open, and the hours posted on the door said they were open for business. I almost left, but something on the wall behind the cash register caught my eye. It was a sign that said: I LOVE WOMEN WITH LITTLE FEET.

I found it to be the strangest of things. I leaned over the counter to read the small print under it, and that is when I saw the monitors behind the counter. Two of them showed a back room where a heavyset man sat on a couch with his pants rolled up to his knees and both feet soaking in a bubbling foot spa. A tiny woman with short dark hair knelt in front of him with a pumice stone, working on his heels like she was sanding a boat. Suddenly, I heard a long, happy moan coming from the back.

I walked toward the hall and peeked my head around the corner, and sure enough, there he was on the couch, a man in the middle of the pedicure of his life. He saw me and waved me over with one finger. I walked down the hall into the room. The little woman looked up, smiled, and pointed at the empty foot spa next to him.

"Sit," the man said. "First time's free. My wife has the hands of an angel."

I am not a man who says no to free things. I sat down, rolled up my pants, and stuck my feet in the warm water. The woman started on my feet while still buffing his. The man looked at me and asked if I liked little feet too, and he pointed at his wife's feet, which were in fact the smallest adult feet I have ever seen. I just smiled and nodded. Apparently, he met her at a shoe store in Orlando when she was looking for a size four and they were all sold out. He called it fate. His name was Vinnie, and his wife was named Mai, and she was the only one in the shop who actually knew how to fix anything.

Vinnie conducted business with me the whole time, with his feet in the water. He asked why I was there and asked questions about my Xbox. I explained "The Red Ring of Death" while Mai scraped a decade of Florida sand off my heels. I could not believe the great luck I was having. Somehow, I had stumbled upon the greatest computer shop of all time.

Just as Mai was reaching for the cuticle clippers, there was a commotion out front. On one of the monitors in the back room, I could see two men holding guns standing in the middle of the storefront. We yanked our feet out of the water. Vinnie said to Mai and me, "Follow me," and started to climb a ladder up to the attic. Barefoot and dripping, we all climbed into a crawlspace and followed him along the cobweb-filled attic that ran over all the other storefronts in the plaza.

I asked him who the guys with the guns were. He explained that a client had hired him to set up surveillance equipment in a house, and come to find out, it was not the client's house. The real owners were not happy about cameras all over their home. He said they were drug dealers and we had to get away. I could not believe my luck. One freaking minute I'm getting a spa treatment, and the next minute I'm crawling through a dusty attic for my life with wet feet. We stopped over an abandoned Cuban restaurant and dropped down into it. The place was nasty, as if someone had just walked away one day and left everything behind. The smell was unbearable.

We were able to get outside to the parking lot, get into our cars, and drive away before anyone noticed we were gone. My heart was pounding. I realized I had left our Xbox there, along with my shoes and socks, but I was not going back for them now. I kept driving around until I was convinced no one was following me. I did not want to bring any angry drug dealers back to my new home.

As I pulled into the driveway of my new house, Claire was outside talking to two young men holding pamphlets. As I walked up barefoot, she said, "These nice young men would like to talk to us about Satan and how he is leaving secret messages on the radio for our youth."

I stood there completely stunned. I was already having a crazy day. They introduced themselves and told me they lived catty-corner across the street. One of them shook my hand and asked me if I was saved. I told him we were not religious people, and he told me Jesus saves regardless. I explained that we were not into zombie worship and that we worshiped at the altar of reason and logic. He looked confused and asked me what I meant by zombie worship. I asked him, "Don't you worship a zombie?"

He said, "Zombie? I don't understand."

I asked him if he was waiting for a two-thousand-year-old Jewish man to wake up, come back to life, and judge the living and the dead. He just stood there, completely vexed. I told him I do not believe in zombies, and we certainly do not worship any of them. The men started creeping backward down my yard, telling me I was going to go to hell and burn there. He said the only way to heaven was through Jesus Christ, and I asked him if heaven had all the tacos you could eat. I told him I did not want to go unless I could have all the tacos I could eat. Both men turned around and ran back to their house.

Spider walked up from next door and said, "I see you met our friendly neighborhood fundamentalists." Then he looked down. "Where are your shoes?"

I started laughing and said, "It's a long story. But yes, I have met them."

Claire went back into the house, and Spider asked me how I liked the joint he gave me. I told him I had accidentally dropped it into a toilet at a restaurant and never got to try it. He looked at me and said, "You didn't want to reach down and pull it out of the bowl, did you?" We both started to laugh. I said, "No, I did not."

He told me there was plenty more where that came from, and I bought a quarter-ounce bag of pot from him. When I went back inside, Claire asked me how it went with the Xbox. I looked down at her and said, "I'm sorry. They weren't able to fix it." I told her it was completely shot and we would have to buy another one. She walked away cursing "The Red Ring of Death." She never did ask about the shoes. To this day, I have the softest heels on the Space Coast.

Chapter Four

One of the very first things we like to do when we move to a new place is find a bagel place with decent bagels and lox. The key to any good neighborhood is a place with good bagels, another with great pizza pie, and lastly, you must have quality Chinese food. Without all of that, you might as well live in a cave in Afghanistan. That morning we tried a place called Moe's Bagels, and we nailed the bagel part of our quest. This was a quality bagel place that even made potato knishes.

As we sat down for breakfast, Claire announced that she had a surprise. She had bought tickets for an eco-tour down the Banana River, and we needed to leave right now to get there before the boat left. She said it was like an African safari, but on the water. It sounded like a great idea. This would give us a chance to explore the rivers and see all the beautiful homes along the way. It also provided an educational opportunity to learn about the native animals and plant life. Claire cared about stuff like that, so I went along with it. She always has some animal show on our TV.

We made it to the boat dock in time and presented the tickets she had printed out online. An older guy in his sixties was skippering the boat, and he looked like Roy Scheider in the movie Jaws. His name was Skip, which I assumed was a job title until he told me it was on his birth certificate. The rest of us aboard were elderly tourists who had come to Brevard County to see the ships at the port, enjoy Cocoa Beach, and maybe catch a show at the King Center for the Performing Arts. The locals owned their own boats and did not need a tour of the river on this gigantic water taxi.

As the boat left the dock, a young woman on the microphone started to explain the eco-tour and described everything we were going to see. She looked like Demi Moore in her glory days and knew everything there is to know about the Indian River Lagoon. She rattled off facts about the animals and plant life we would see as we traveled down the river. That morning the river was stirring with wildlife, and even the guides were blown away by how many manatees we saw. The guide said every creature in the lagoon seemed to be out on a date that day. The dolphins that followed the boat down the river were jumping in and out of the water. It seemed as if the wildlife along the river had gotten together and collectively put on the greatest of shows. I must admit, I was impressed.

Miles down the river and deep into the tour, one of the kids on the boat announced loudly that he had to go to the bathroom. He was a whiny little kid in a Spider-Man cap who had been kicking my seat since the dock. We were sitting up front, so the skipper heard the boy's bladder cry. He told everyone that he lived not too far from where we were and that we could pull up to his house so the boy could use his restroom. I couldn't believe this kid was changing the trajectory of the whole tour, but then Skip told the whole boat that his wife was cooking a giant pot of chili that day and we could all come in and enjoy a bowl. Suddenly the kid was my favorite person on the boat.

We pulled up behind his house on the river and docked. One by one, everyone got off the boat and walked up a hill toward the house. Skip led us through his screened-in back porch, past his pool, and through the sliding glass doors into the house. As we all walked in, all you could hear was the crowd collectively gasp. From the Florida room, we heard the skipper yell, "That is my wife!"

Right there on the floor in front of the fireplace was his wife, Darlene, in a gold sequined leotard and a headband, in the middle of filming a dance video with three young guys in their twenties from the pool-cleaning company. They had a phone on a tripod, a ring light, and a disco ball hanging from the ceiling fan, and they were halfway through a routine to "It's Raining Men." Skip's wife was right in the middle of a split. Immediately, a couple of the older ladies grabbed the young kid and walked him back outside to use the poolside bathroom before he could be traumatized by the choreography.

The pool boys grabbed their phone and their ring light, and Darlene, who looked like Debra Winger in the present day, grabbed her sequined jacket, and they all started to jet. They took off running out the front door, and Skip went after them in a full sprint, shouting that he had paid good money for that disco ball. We all just stood around, completely stunned. Then the laughter started, and the whole crowd just cracked up. We laughed so hard we started to cry. One of the old ladies said she was going to follow Darlene's account.

We all sat around waiting for the skipper to come back, but he never did. As we sat there in his home, all of us started to smell the chili we had been promised. I walked into the kitchen, and sure enough, there was a big pot of chili cooking away, giving off a great aroma. I told everyone to grab a seat on the back porch around the pool, and Claire and I would serve everyone a bowl while we waited for the poor skipper or his dancing wife to return. We went through his kitchen looking for bowls and spoons. After the meal, they still never came back, so we all called cabs and returned to our cars.

Claire said it was the best eco-tour she had ever been on. I guess, in the end, she got her safari after all. We saw manatees, dolphins, and one rare sequined Darlene in her natural habitat.

Chapter Five

I did not know the Me-Too movement was on the way. I had no idea at the time how dramatically the world was going to change. We were settling in on the Space Coast and getting to know the area. One day Claire scheduled a day to drive around with a realtor and look at some homes for sale. She just could not shake the fact that there had been a meth lab across the street. She wanted to see if we could find another neighborhood. That afternoon we bounced from one nice home on the river to another.

On the way home in the car, Claire pulled a little book out of her purse. I asked her what it was, and she said that when she used the bathroom at the last house, she was being nosy and found a diary in the cabinet written by the boy who used to live there. She started reading it while we drove. About halfway home, she told me the diary had a treasure map in it. According to the diary, X marked the spot in the backyard of that house, by the birdbath.

I wondered aloud what kind of treasure it was, and Claire said all the book kept calling it was "Mommy's precious treasure." I asked her what she thought that meant, and she said whatever it was, it must be something big for him to bury it in the yard and draw a treasure map. When we got home, Claire could not drop the subject or her curiosity about what was buried in that backyard. She begged me to go back there when it got dark and dig it up. I told her I couldn't just walk up to some house in the dark, go around to the backyard, and start digging. I said I'd either get shot or someone would see me and call the cops.

She said, "Not if you approach it from the river."

I asked her how I would do that, since we did not own a boat. She told me to go rent one. I couldn't believe my ears. My wife really wanted me to go see what was buried there. We went around and around over this until she broke me down and I agreed to go check it out.

I decided to rent a kayak so nobody would hear the engine of a boat approaching. I could paddle right up to the backyard, get out of the kayak, and dig around the birdbath that sat under a tree. If the next-door neighbors did not see me, I figured I could probably pull this off. So we hatched our plan and used Google Maps to figure out which house was the right one, approaching it from the river and not the road. Once I turned the kayak down this one canal, it would be the sixth house on the left.

I rented the kayak, waited for it to get dark, and dropped it in the river from a public boat ramp. I had to paddle a little over two miles before I got to the canal I needed to turn down. As I approached, I counted the homes until I got to the sixth one. I pulled the kayak onto the grass and started walking in the dark up the slope toward the birdbath under the tree. I had a hand shovel, and I got on my knees and started digging around the birdbath. I was digging all around when my shovel hit a metal box and made a huge clang.

From the next yard, I heard a man yell out, "Hey! Who is over there?"

I quickly dug out the box. It was about the size of a cigar box, and it was taped shut with what felt like duct tape. I grabbed it and started making my way back to the river. I heard the neighbor shout to his wife to let the dogs out, and I started to run. I jumped in the kayak, pushed off the bank, and paddled as fast as I could.

As my kayak disappeared into the darkness, I could hear what sounded like at least three dogs barking like crazy. Dogs, I was learning, did not like me on the Space Coast. I made my way back to the boat ramp, hoping the cops were not there waiting for me. I pulled up to the dock, got out of the water, and tied the kayak to the top of my Cadillac Escalade.

I got behind the steering wheel and drove off with my heart pounding. I placed the box on the passenger seat next to me. I could not believe what was happening. I felt like I was in some movie. Not only did we find a treasure map, but the freaking thing was real. I found the "X marks the spot" place, and I actually found something there. I was getting more and more excited, wondering what was in the box. What was Mommy's precious treasure? Gold coins? Diamonds? Jimmy Hoffa? I would not open it without my wife. She was going to wig out when I brought this home.

Right as I was getting ready to turn down the road toward our subdivision, a cop car pulled up behind me and turned on its lights. I completely freaked out and started to sweat. I pulled the SUV over and slid the box under my seat in a way that hopefully the cop could not see. He walked up to my window and asked me if I knew why he pulled me over. I kept thinking about the box, the neighbor with the dogs, and whether I had left any evidence behind.

The cop told me he pulled me over because my kayak was about to fall off my roof. He said I had tied it down poorly. I thanked him, got out of the SUV, and retied the kayak properly. The cop drove away, and I was shaking from head to toe. I got back in the Cadillac, drove home, and walked through the front door to find Claire pacing back and forth in the living room, waiting for me.

I handed her the box and said this was what was buried in that yard. She ran to get a knife to cut the tape. Once the seal was broken, we looked at each other, and then Claire slowly opened the box. We both just stared down into it. She placed it on the coffee table, and we sat on the couch staring at it. I could not believe my eyes.

Inside the box was a framed, autographed eight-by-ten glossy of Richard Simmons in a sequined tank top and his famous red-and-white striped shorts. It was signed, "To Linda, Keep Sweatin'! XOXO Richard." The glass was covered in faded lipstick kisses. Under the photo was a VHS copy of Sweatin' to the Oldies, worn almost clear from being played, and a tiny pair of his sweatbands, folded like the American flag.

We looked at each other and said aloud, "Mommy's precious treasure."

Claire put the photo on our mantel. It is still there. Every once in a while, I swear his eyes follow me around the room.

Chapter Six

Right before the Me-Too movement hit, I found a seminar on Merritt Island for people who wanted to learn about the history of the gaming world. I am not in any way a gamer, but I love the old games. I grew up with Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and others. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find an old video game I used to play called Defender. Most people have never heard of the game unless they are my age, and even some of those barely remember it. I figured that maybe someone at this computer gig would know where I could find it. I drove to an old warehouse complex where the gig was being held and walked inside.

When I walked in, I had to give the guy behind the desk some money and sign in. Further into the warehouse, I saw a few rows of desks with people sitting at them wearing helmet-like contraptions on their heads. The helmets were not wireless; they were connected to computers on the desks. No one even noticed I had walked in, because they were all submerged in whatever they were seeing through the helmets. I sat down at one of the desks and put a helmet on. I was completely amazed by the images coming through it.

Inside the virtual world was some American city, and in that city, cartoon women were running from men in helmets who were chasing them with glowing laser blasters. Whenever a blast hit one of the women, she blinked out in a puff of pixels, and a score popped up over the shooter's head. I pulled the helmet off and looked around the room. Everyone at those desks was having the time of his life, zapping cartoon women for points. I put the helmet back on.

Inside the game, I bent down and picked up a blaster that appeared on the ground in front of me. Cartoon women ran past me asking for help while the other helmet guys chased them. It was like a cartoon, but it also had a very real look and feel to it. I could feel my heart race and my pulse go up. I aimed at one of the guys chasing the women and fired, and every blaster-toting helmet dude in the virtual world stopped and looked toward me. One of them yelled, asking me what the heck I was doing. I just pulled the trigger again and zapped him. All the others stopped chasing the women and came after me. What I did not realize at the time was that if you got zapped in the virtual world, your time on the machine was up and you had to leave. I found all of that out, and more, afterward.

I lasted about five minutes being chased around town by the other helmet guys until they got me, and my whole helmet just went black. I got up and walked out of the building, where I saw a bunch of guys sitting on a bench drinking Red Bull. One of them waved me over, and when I walked up, they asked me what I was doing shooting the guys. He said the women were supposed to be the targets. They told me the whole thing they were paying for was the chance to zap women for points.

I told them I wished we could do it in real life, and everyone started hooting and hollering in agreement. I had broken their rule. To stay in the virtual world for the whole time they paid for, the agreement was never to zap one another and only go after the women. I explained it was my first time and I did not understand what this was, but I would never do it again. Now I had a place I could go to blow off steam.

I started to walk away toward my SUV. About halfway to my car, I stopped, turned around, and walked back to the bench. I asked if anyone knew where I could find Defender, the old video game I was looking for. The young punks just looked at me with blank stares, and one of them asked, "What the heck is Defender?"

I drove home that day thinking two things. The first was that the world was full of angry men. The second was that a generation that had never heard of Defender could not be trusted with anything.

Chapter Seven

Life on the Space Coast was going just fine until the Me-Too movement exploded across the country. My first realization that it was spreading was at work. One of my employees, a smart, curvy woman with shoulder-length red hair named Beth, started acting up. For years, Beth had picked up my dry cleaning, fetched my lunch, walked my wife's anniversary gifts to the jewelry counter, and laughed at every one of my jokes, even the bad ones, and especially the bad ones. One afternoon I called her into my office to pick up my double-shot caramel macchiato, extra whip, something that was very common, and she told me no.

I couldn't believe my ears. Not only would she not fetch my coffee, but she asked me for a raise. She complained that her male counterpart, a kid named Kyle who still could not figure out the copier, made more money than she did.

I threw her out of my office and closed the door behind her. I sat down at my desk in utter shock. What the heck was going on in the world was all I could think. I ate an entire sleeve of Oreos out of my desk drawer to relieve my anger.

The next day, she quit her job, and I was contacted by her lawyer about a lawsuit. She was claiming that I had created a hostile work environment. The lawyer explained that this was the Me-Too era and these kinds of lawsuits were popping up all over the nation. He had a file on my desk thick enough to stop a door. It had every off-color joke, every "sweetheart," every coffee run, and every time I had made her stay late to "keep me company." It had dates. It had witnesses. Beth had been taking notes for six years.

Well, I was not going to be a victim of this. If Claire found out what kind of boss I had been, my marriage would be over. There was no way I was going to let that happen or give Beth one red cent. That was the day I knew I had to do something. I was going to become a killer. What I did not know was how proficient I would get. All I knew for sure was that she was not going to wreck my life.

Over time, I had become close with one of the gamer dudes from the virtual world. His name was Jack, and he and I would talk about how great it would be if we could do it for real. I had Jack meet me for some gyros at Zachary's on A1A in Cape Canaveral to hatch a plan. Jack was a tiny little guy with glasses. He wore jeans all the time, flip-flops, and never shaved. I don't think he has ever owned a razor, but he was a cool guy as far as I was concerned. We sat down in a corner booth facing A1A and ordered our gyros and a couple of Greek beers called Mythos.

Over lunch, I brought up the subject of how we could move from the virtual world to the real world and see what kind of rush we would get out of that. To my utter amazement, Jack told me he had a way to do it. He said, "My family owns a crematory, and I work there full time."

I said, "I'm listening."

Jack told me, "At night and on the weekends, I have the whole place to myself. There is a back room we can cover in plastic. Whatever happens in there, the oven takes care of the rest. It would be untraceable."

I asked, "Have you ever done this before?"

His response was, "Just once. My neighbor's dog would not stop barking. It kept me up all night. I couldn't get any sleep, and I was going crazy."

"What did you do?" I asked.

Proudly, he said, "I tossed him in the oven."

I just stared at him. "The oven?"

Jack shrugged. "It got real quiet after that. Best night of sleep I ever had. I'm telling you, I got a rush from it."

I wanted to know, "Can anyone hear what goes on back in that room?"

Jack replied, "No. You can't hear anything back in that room. It's soundproof."

Thinking out loud, I said, "Well, I have a woman who used to work for me who is causing me some serious problems that could affect my marriage. So I know who we can start with."

Jack made it clear. "Remember, it can only be nights or weekends. My father is there Monday through Friday, nine to five."

More excited than ever, I said, "Got it. We are about to start on a great adventure, you and I."

Jack said, "My favorite movie is American Psycho, so I know what I'm getting into. It's something I've dreamed about ever since I saw that movie. It's why I love the virtual world, but over time I built up a tolerance and started to yearn for more. For the real thing."

I agreed and said, "Great movie and a great reference. We will bring American Psycho to the Me-Too movement, and we will be gods! They will get what's coming to them."

Jack and I finished our Greek food, got in our cars, and drove away. I drove home so wound up I could barely sit still. I walked in the door and found Claire in the living room. Without saying a word, I put on "Shout" by the Isley Brothers, grabbed her by the hand, and danced her all the way around the coffee table, past Richard Simmons on the mantel, and into the kitchen. She laughed so hard she had to sit down, and then she asked me what that was all about. I told her I just missed her today, smiled, and walked away.

Chapter Eight

Times were changing even before the Me-Too movement started. Around then, I sat down one night and watched a television interview with a woman who had been famous on the internet for a few short months years earlier. She had done some films she was not proud of, the kind of films you do not mention at Thanksgiving, and the whole world still knew her name. She said she had made almost nothing from it, while other people were still making money off of her name every single day. She talked about the shame, the threats, and how she could not get a normal job because everyone recognized her.

I had opinions about it, of course. I always have opinions. My first thought, being the businessman that I am, was that she should hire a team, take control of her name, and turn the whole thing into a fortune. Leaving that money on the table seemed nuts to me. Shame, in my book, should not cost a person millions of dollars.

Claire walked in halfway through the interview and sat down on the arm of the couch. She watched for a minute, then said, "That poor kid was barely old enough to rent a car. Everybody made money off her except her."

I said, "That's what I'm saying. She should get her cut."

Claire looked at me for a long time and said, "No, Cornelius. That's not what you're saying. You're saying it's her fault for feeling bad."

I did not have a comeback for that. I changed the channel to a Gators game and let it go. But I did think about it. I thought about all the people who looked at that woman and never once saw a person. Then I went right back to thinking about myself, because that is what I did best. In my mind, this Me-Too stuff had gotten out of hand before it even started.

Chapter Nine

It was time to put my plan into action. Beth, the redhead who used to work for me, who was now suing me and threatening my marriage, had to go. She would be my first.

I went and bought an old, nondescript white van with no windows, and I put a huge dog cage in the back of it. I paid cash for the van, gave a fake name, and took the open title from the seller. Giving somebody an open title and not going down to the DMV together to transfer it is nuts, but a lot of people do it. Well, I was never going to register that van in my name. I went down to the mall at night and swapped a dozen different license plates on vehicles in the mall parking lot. By playing musical chairs with the plates, nobody would realize they had someone else's plate. It left nothing but confusion behind, and I kept one of the plates for my van.

Then I went down to Home Depot and bought a plastic tarp big enough to cover the small room in the back of the crematory. The kid at the register asked me if I was painting. I told him, "Something like that." I gave the tarp to Jack and told him to hold on to it until the day we needed it. Now I was set. I had a way to get a woman into the van, drive her to the crematory, and bring her through the back door. The people who wanted to turn all these great men's careers to dust were in for a surprise. Jack and I had plans of our own.

It was Sunday, September 16th, 2018, and the news broke that a woman had come forward in The Washington Post accusing President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, of assaulting her at a party in high school, thirty-six years earlier. To me, this was the most outrageous Me-Too case yet. It was the perfect day to get my revenge started. A glorious day, I thought, on which men would start to fight back.

I knew Beth went to the five o'clock Mass at Our Lady of the Dunes. I always found it ironic that she spent six years running my errands and laughing at my jokes, and then went to church every Sunday to pray about it. I drove through the parking lot before service to see if there were any cameras and whether this would be a good place to grab her.

To my delight, the parking lot was shaped so I could pull this off without anyone seeing. There were no cameras. I needed to do it on a weekend so we would have the crematory to ourselves. I waited in the van and watched the people arrive for service, and I saw her car pull in late. Everything had already started inside the church, so the lot was empty. Even better, she parked two spots down from my van.

I got out on the passenger side and waited for her to walk past the back of the van. As soon as she did, I grabbed her, opened the back door, put her in the cage, and locked it. She must have been in shock, because strangely enough, she didn't even scream. She looked almost frozen. I walked around the van, got into the driver's seat, and drove away.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, I said, "Hello, Beth!"

She looked up at me from inside the cage. I could see her in the rearview mirror. She yelled, "What the heck, Galvin! What are you doing?"

I asked her, "Did you really think I was going to let you sue me and destroy my marriage?"

Confused, she asked, "Where are you taking me? Let me out of here!"

I asked her, "Did you really think I was going to let you hurt the company I spent years building?"

Beth went nuts. She wailed, "Let me out of here, you son of a gun!"

I pulled the van over in an empty parking lot. It was Sunday, so plenty of businesses were closed. I put the van in park, got out of my seat, and walked to the back of the van.

"Give me your cell phone, Beth," I said. "Give it to me now."

I could see in her eyes that she had just remembered she had her phone, and she started rifling through her purse to call 911. I showed her the Colt .45 on my hip and told her to hand it over. She passed the phone through the bars of the cage. I wiped it down, took out the SIM card, and threw the phone into some bushes along the edge of the property. About a mile down the road, I threw the SIM card out the window.

I called Jack and told him I had her and to meet me at the spot and get everything ready like we had talked about. As soon as I said it, Beth started screaming. Jack could hear her through the phone, and he got excited knowing it was all real. He said he would have everything ready.

Beth kept asking me what was going on. I told her I was taking her someplace where she was going to sign an NDA, a nondisclosure agreement, stating that she could not say a word about me, my company, or anything else. I explained that once she signed it, she could never sue me. I wanted her to think there was a way out at the end. I figured she would cooperate more if she thought that was all this was about.

I told her, "You women across this nation think you're going to take down every powerful man and every boss with this Me-Too thing. I'm here to tell you, not all of us are going to lie down for it. You're not going to ruin my life."

Beth begged, "I'll sign the papers now. Just let me go!"

I said, "You'll sign them when we get there. And you'll smile when you do it."

Beth went quiet, and I could see in her eyes she was trying to come up with a plan to escape. She did not say another word the rest of the way.

I pulled up to the back door of the crematory and backed the van up to it. When I opened the back door, Beth sat in the cage looking very nervous. She was practically shaking. I unlocked the cage, and Jack was standing there waiting for us. We walked her inside.

Jack had already laid the plastic tarp down over nearly the whole room. The room was small, maybe five hundred square feet. There were shelves along the walls filled with metal cans and jars of chemicals. The walls were painted gray, and there were two chairs and a folding table. One entire wall was nothing but the metal oven. It almost looked like something you would cook a pizza in, but much larger. A pipe ran from the oven to the ceiling and out through the roof, like an old wood stove.

Beth looked at the tarp, then at the oven, and her face went white. She understood.

I put the NDA on the table along with a pen. Beth signed it. Her hand was shaking so badly, her signature looked like a seismograph reading. Jack, who had never seen a legal document up close in his life, read the entire thing out loud, very slowly, including the part about the state of Florida having jurisdiction. Beth started crying.

What happened after that, I'm not going to describe. Some things don't belong on paper. I'll tell you that the oven hummed for a long time that night, and that when it was over, Jack and I stood around the room and you could not tell anything had ever happened there. Beth was gone, and there was nothing left to show she had ever been there.

I asked, smiling, "So, did you like it? Was that fun for you?"

Jack, looking like a new man, said, "I loved it. I can't wait to do this again."

I said my goodbyes. Jack stayed behind to do something to the oven so his dad would not notice anything, and I went home to my wife. I was so wired over what had happened that I couldn't sleep. I cleaned out the garage at two in the morning, alphabetized the spice rack, and reorganized all of Claire's DVDs by color. She found me at dawn asleep in the recliner holding a label maker.

A week later, a little bouquet of white daisies showed up on my office doorstep with no card. I threw them away. The next week, there was another bouquet. I never told Jack.

Chapter Ten

The week after my first murder, the airwaves were slammed with the fight over Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Plenty of people did not believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford or her claim and believed Judge Brett Kavanaugh was not the person who did what she said. In my opinion, you wouldn't have known those voices existed, because anyone who disagreed with the narrative was shut out. If you raised questions, you were crushed under the Me-Too foot, where nuance and process did not exist.

I agreed with what the actor Sean Penn said about it at the time. He said he was suspicious of a movement that gets glommed onto "in great stridency and rage, and without nuance," and that "in most things that are very important, it's really good to just slow down." That was exactly how I felt, though I don't think Sean Penn meant it the way I did.

Everything about the accusation looked suspicious to me. She didn't know exactly where it happened or exactly when. She wanted the FBI to investigate something that happened thirty-six years earlier at a house nobody could name. The red flag for me was that Senator Feinstein had held on to the letter for months and only brought it out when the confirmation was headed for a vote. The whole thing seemed political. The Democrats, I thought, just wanted to delay the vote until after the election. Senator Graham said so at the time, and I agreed with him. In my mind, people were forcing a new norm on all of us, where grown men could have their lives destroyed for something they did, or did not do, as teenagers. My work with Jack was my answer.

The next Sunday, a woman named Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of the judge's, came forward with a story of her own from a college party. Watching the Me-Too movement try to take down this judge made me furious. I felt it was time to look for another one.

The last Thursday in September 2018, the judge and the doctor got their hearing. It was as if the whole country shut down for the day to watch. I took the day off work. It was must-see TV, and it did not disappoint. Dr. Ford went first, speaking softly, and described a summer party when she was fifteen years old. She said a drunken Brett Kavanaugh pushed her onto a bed, held his hand over her mouth, and that she was afraid of what would happen next until she got away. She said it had stayed with her for the rest of her life. I sat on my couch yelling at the TV that she could not remember the address, so how could she remember anything else. Half the country believed her. Half the country believed him. I was firmly in the second half.

Then the judge took his turn, and he came out roaring. He was red-faced and furious. He said the confirmation process had become a national disgrace. He said the Senate had "replaced advice and consent with search and destroy." He said his family and his name had been "totally and permanently destroyed." He called it "a calculated and orchestrated political hit." He said he would never quit. And he said, "I've never sexually assaulted anyone. Not in high school, not in college, not ever."

I stood up in the middle of my living room and screamed, "I'll get them all, Judge!" Claire yelled from the kitchen to ask who I was talking to. I told her it was the TV. She said, "It can't hear you, Cornelius." She had a point, but I did not care.

By the end of October 2018, the Me-Too movement, as far as I was concerned, was even coming for Sleeping Beauty. I read that people were saying the prince kissing Sleeping Beauty while she was asleep was not okay because she never agreed to it. Can you believe that? They went after other fairy tales, too. I half expected them to arrest the Big Bad Wolf for trespassing.

The whole movement seemed completely out of control to me. I was filled with rage. I became rage itself. It was time for more.

Chapter Eleven

The November 2018 midterm elections were coming around, and I came up with an idea for how to find the next one. I had Jack meet me at a popular pizzeria on the beach to talk it over. We sat down for a slice of New York-style pizza that was to die for. "Jack," I said, "I've got an idea on how we find our next one."

I explained, "The first one was easy to find. She worked for me, I knew her, and she was trying to destroy my life. I sat for days thinking about how we could find more without any of it pointing back to us. I figured if we chose women at random, there would be nothing to trace."

I told him the cops had already come to my office to ask about a former employee who had gone missing. Her name was Detective Rhonda Pike, from the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, and she was about five foot two in flats. She had a little notebook and a big smile, and she wrote down every word I said, even the ones I didn't mean to say. She asked if I knew Beth liked daisies. I said I had no idea. She wrote that down too. Still, as far as I could tell, nobody was looking at me or my company.

Jack's response was, "So, what did you come up with? I keep thinking back on that night. I can't wait to do it again."

Since the election was coming up that week, I thought we would use it to our advantage. I would have some magnetic signs made for the van that said "Ride To The Ballot Box," and we would drive the van around town offering free rides to the polls. Only instead of taking them to the voting booth, we would take them to the crematory.

Jack said, "That's brilliant! That could work!"

I told him, "Now, we can't use the cage. They have to think they're going to vote. We'll put real seats in the van, drive them to your place, and tell them it's a polling place too. Once they're inside, we're off to the races."

Jack said, "We've got a week to pull this off. I'll get another tarp. You take care of the van."

We sat and ate the best pizza pie on the Space Coast and finished with cannoli. Then we got in our cars and drove away with our new mission. I could not get the excitement out of my mind. I felt like I was developing an addiction, or at least an addiction to getting away with it.

Earlier in the week, I had pulled the dog cage out of the van and put in some normal seats. I was quite sure nobody would voluntarily get into a van with two seats up front and a dog cage in the back. The sign shop misspelled "Ballot" the first time and printed "Ballet," so for one whole afternoon I was offering free rides to The Nutcracker. I made them fix it.

On Election Day, I drove the van around town looking for our next one. I pulled up to a stop sign when two women knocked on my window and asked if I was the one giving folks rides to the polls. One was in her thirties, maybe early forties, wearing a church hat. The other was a tough old lady with a cane and an "I VOTED IN 1964 AND I'M VOTING NOW" button. I smiled, told them of course, and let them in the van.

On the way, the two of them went on and on about how the Democrats were going to flip Congress and how bad the Republicans were. I agreed with every word to make them comfortable, while inside I was boiling over their political views.

As we pulled up, the younger woman said she knew this place, because one of her family members had been cremated there. I told them the owner was very politically active and had volunteered the building to the county as a polling place. They were thrilled. They could not wait to cast their vote.

The old lady stopped at the door and looked at the sign. Then she looked at me. "Baby," she said, "I've been voting for fifty-four years. I have never once voted in a funeral home."

"It's new this year," I said.

As soon as we went inside, Jack made his move. The rest of that day, I am not going to write down. The two women asked us why. I told them this was about the Me-Too movement. The old lady said, "Mister, we don't know a thing about any Me-Too movement. We don't even know you." The younger one cried. The old woman closed her eyes and prayed to her God, out loud, the whole time. She prayed for her friend. She prayed for her grandkids. And then, I swear to you, she prayed for me and Jack, by name. I have never been so uncomfortable in my life.

When it was over, the oven hummed again, and we cleaned up, and I told Jack I'd see him next time. I got in the van and drove away. I thought about getting pancakes. I was a little hungry. I drove to IHOP. The waitress asked if I had voted yet. I told her I had done my civic duty.

Chapter Twelve

Claire found this story on Facebook and read it to me:

"So, I just got home from work. My dog is lying on the back patio covered in dirt with a rabbit in his mouth. The rabbit's not bloody, just dirty. Now, my neighbor's kids raise these Blue-Ribbon WINNER rabbits. I instantly knew it was one of theirs. So I took the rabbit away from my dog, rushed inside, and washed all the dirt off it before my neighbors could come home.

It was stiff, but I heard some animals play dead when they are AFRAID. I couldn't remember which animals, because I was NERVOUS. I took it and put it back in one of the cages, then ZOOMED back home. NOT 30 minutes later, I hear my neighbors screaming. So I go out and ask them what's wrong. They tell me their rabbit died three days ago and they buried it, but now it's back in the cage."

When Claire read that to me, I could not stop laughing. It was the funniest thing I had heard in years. Whether the story is true or not, I can't help but picture it happening in real life. If it did, I wonder if the neighbor ever came clean about her role in the zombie rabbit. Or did she leave that family and those kids thinking their backyard was some kind of Pet Sematary out of a Stephen King novel?

The one rabbit story I know is true goes like this, and it is the best Easter story I have ever heard.

Jesus, the Resurrection, the Easter Bunny, chocolate, candy, colored eggs, and more. What do you think of when you think of Easter? I think of a story a friend once told me. On Easter Day, a friend of a friend explained on the phone what she called "the Easter from Hell." She was a single mother who lived in the Deep South. She had three young kids, and Easter had something of a secular tradition at her house.

Each year she would fill little plastic shopping carts with Easter baskets, chocolate bunnies, and eggs. She would set the carts outside on the front porch. When the children woke up on Easter morning, they would run into her room asking whether the Easter Bunny had come. She would tell them to go look, and all the kids would go running for the front door to find their Easter surprise.

Well, one Easter started out the same way. The children came running into her room, all excited, asking if the Easter Bunny had come. She told them to go and see. The kids took off like a bat out of hell. She heard them running down the stairs toward the front door. A smile crossed her lips as she waited for the shrieks of joy when they saw their baskets. She heard the door open, and what came next were not shrieks of joy but blood-curdling screams. Complete chaos broke out.

She jumped up, grabbed her robe, and ran down the stairs. When she got to the door, she realized what had happened. Their two dogs had caught a wild rabbit right outside the front door and were fighting over it like a chew toy. The children were screaming because they thought the dogs had gotten the Easter Bunny! They had opened the door at the worst possible moment.

Their shocked little faces were frozen as they stood there, believing they were watching the end of the Easter Bunny. The whole ordeal was out of control. After she finally got the kids calmed down, she had to explain that it wasn't the actual Easter Bunny, just one of his helpers who got a little too close to the dogs. The kids were not convinced. The youngest one did not eat a chocolate bunny for six years.

As for me, I have had rabbits as pets, and I also loved flying down to the Princess Casino in Freeport, Bahamas, and eating the glazed rabbit at their buffet every weekend. Say what you want about dogs and rabbits; our own relationship with these furry creatures is just as mixed up.

The stories did get me thinking, though. I wondered how long we would have the crematory to ourselves. We needed to think about other ways. And for some reason, every time I closed my eyes that week, I saw white daisies.

Chapter Thirteen

I couldn't tell Jack, but I thought it would be better if his father were out of the picture, so we could have the crematory to ourselves and not have to wait for the weekends. What we were doing could no longer be a part-time thing. We needed to be able to do it any day of the week.

I knew Jack's old man took early morning walks along the beach. I followed him for a few mornings and saw that he used the Arthur Avenue beach access in Cape Canaveral. It was perfect, because that beach was secluded and there were no cameras anywhere.

So one morning, I followed him to that road in the van. I waited until he got out of his car and started walking toward the beach. Then I put the van in drive. I'll leave it at that. I drove away and never looked in the rearview mirror.

A couple of days later, I called Jack to talk about the following weekend, and he told me the news. He said, "Galvin, I can't do it this weekend. My father was killed in a hit-and-run. We have his funeral."

I told Jack that was horrible and gave him my condolences. Before we hung up, I said, "Jack, I hate to ask, but what does this mean for the crematory?"

He paused for a few seconds, as if it was the first time he had thought about it, and said, "It's mine now."

A couple of months went by before Jack called again. He told me the estate was settled and that he was now in possession of his father's entire estate, including the crematory. He wanted to meet and told me he had some ideas.

I met Jack at Pacific Rim on Merritt Island. The sushi there was above average, and we took a corner table so we could talk without anyone eavesdropping. We ordered the King Kong Platter and a couple of imported beers, and I sat and listened to Jack's plans for our hobby.

Over dinner, Jack told me he couldn't live without it. He said it was part of him now and that he would never stop. He said there were no restrictions on us anymore, except regular business hours. We could go any night of the week we wanted. He had been keeping up with the latest Me-Too headlines, and he was anxious to get back to work.

Then he slid something across the table. It was a single white daisy. "Somebody left a whole bunch of these at the back door of the crematory," he said. "Every Sunday since September. You know anything about that?"

I told him I didn't. I lied.

There, over some high-end sushi and some quality beer, we cemented our friendship for life. We were not going to stop until the women of this country stopped ruining men's lives and everything went back to normal again. We were going to take back our country one at a time. We were fighting against the "cancel culture" that the Me-Too movement had spawned. We were going to be the ones doing the canceling. It all felt so great. We were powerful. Jack and I were gods. Wise men serving the whims of women would not stand!

We paid the check and walked outside into the warm night air. The parking lot was nearly empty, and the neon from the restaurant sign hummed over our heads. I had driven the van that night. It was parked under a light pole at the far end of the lot, right where I had left it, looking as innocent as a church bus.

Jack was telling me about a new tarp he had found online, the heavy-duty kind, when he stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. He stopped walking too. He was staring at the front of my van.

Something was hanging down from underneath the front bumper. It was a scrap of navy-blue cloth, caught up in the metal, swaying a little in the breeze off the river. I had washed that van twice. I had never once thought to get down on my knees and look underneath it.

Jack walked over, crouched down, and pulled it loose. It was a piece of a windbreaker. On it, in white stitching, was the name of his family's crematory.

"This is my dad's," Jack said quietly. "He wore this every single morning on the beach. My mother gave it to him for Christmas. The police never found it."

He turned the cloth over in his hands. Then he looked at the dent in my bumper. Then he looked at me.

"Galvin," he said. "What did you do?"

I did not say a word. I didn't have to. I watched it land on his face. His father had not been killed by some stranger in a hit-and-run. He had been killed by the man standing in front of him, the man he had just shared a King Kong Platter with, the man he called his friend for life.

"You killed my father," he said. "You killed my father for the oven."

I ran. I jumped in the van, cranked the engine, and peeled out of the parking lot so fast the tires screamed. In my side mirror, I saw Jack running across the lot to his car. A second later, his headlights swung out onto the road behind me.

I flew down the road with my heart pounding out of my chest. Jack was right on my bumper, leaning on his horn, flashing his high beams, screaming things at me through his windshield that I could not hear and did not need to. I ran a red light. He ran it too. I swerved around a pickup truck, and he swerved right behind me. The road went black on both sides. The causeway lights came up fast, and then they were spinning, and the horn was blaring, and the headlights were everywhere at once.

Everything got very loud. Something was crashing all around me. And then, somewhere far away, I heard a beeping sound, slow and steady, like a heartbeat.

Chapter Fourteen

It was so loud, and it was crashing all around us. You could see the dents it was causing all over the place. It shattered and hurt more than one person. It cut everything in its way. The movement was fierce and fast, only to come to an abrupt halt. It was me, after all. It was me, waking up from a coma on September 18th, 2019.

As my eyes started to focus on the hospital room around me, everything was very bright, and figures began to come into focus. It was my wife and my mother standing over me on the left, and my daughter on the right. My wife said I had been in a car accident and I was the only one who survived. Everyone else in the car had died. All my friends were gone. My mother told me the doctor said I had even flatlined and died for a few minutes, but they brought me back. My daughter said I had been in a coma for two weeks.

Everyone was crying for joy and saying what a miracle I was. My wife asked me whether I saw anything when I died. She asked, "Did you see God? Did you see a light?" As I looked at her beautiful face, I realized there was no way I could tell her that I had dreamt I was a serial killer.

A nurse came in to check my monitors. She was a short redhead with a name tag that said BETH. She put a little cup of white daisies on the windowsill and said they had come from the gift shop downstairs, from someone at my office. Then she smiled at me and asked if I needed anything. I told her no, thank you. I don't think I had ever said thank you to a woman named Beth before.

They all looked so happy that I was alive that I just couldn't ruin the mood in the room. How on Earth could I explain that some imaginary guy named Jack helped me make women disappear in an oven? Nope. There was no getting into any of that. In the end, the Me-Too movement followed me all the way into the realm of death. It followed me into the deepest part of my psyche. I think it is time for me to treat women better. Maybe that is the message?

The End

C. Rich