Mind of the Metamorph

She was looking at me strangely at this point, and I asked why. "Because you're talking crazy now, you know that, right?" she said.

"Not at all, I'm telepathic...humor me on this a moment. I'll show you shortly."

I discovered in short order that I was in over my head as soon as I entered Angela's mind. I'm not really certain I can describe it very well to someone who can't do what I do. It was like being caught in a riptide that doesn't know where it wants to go, pulling in at least two different directions at the same time. I'm not entirely certain where the organic brain and the immaterial soul coincide, and I'm even less certain how the mechanics of a multiple personality works in regards to the soul itself. I mean, it's not like a soul can fracture. It has no material parts...

But I digress...that's the problem with having a philosophy degree, I suppose. Anyway, I encountered several strains of where the alternate personalities lie. The first one I encountered was a personality around the age of five... or at least that what was she sounded like from the shrieking. And the process dragged on from there.

Before I continue, I should probably go through the mechanics of the thing. To put it simply, I had to go through Angela's entire brain circuitry to pick out the memories I needed, both emotional and actual. In the cases of the emotional memories—the fear, the pain—they ran parallel to the memories of the actual events, like a soundtrack on a video. I literally lifted them out like I was splicing out a piece of bad film. For the memories of the events, I essentially degraded the memory file. The memories were all still there when I was done, but all memories fade with time, and I had made sure that these memories were like a copied and recopied VHS tape. If you record something over and over, the tape quality degrades badly.

That is what happened after I was done. However, what I had experienced changed things. As I said, some waves and emissions leak out of the brain naturally, like getting snippets of other radio stations while going along the dial. When I started, I was content to let my collection of data disperse in a similar fashion, a kind of telepathic littering, I suppose.

And then I reached the first memory.

The first memory was of James Belloc and Angela. One day, when she was being harassed and bullied by some of the other students, James told them to back off. James took Angela, crying, into his office, on the pretense to get her calmed down. Once the door was closed, James struck her, flinging insults at her, and then proceeded to rape her. She was worthless, she deserved it, she had it coming...pick your villain cliché, the bastard used it.

That was the least of the memories. There were various and sundry objects involved later. There were beatings, pictures taken...There was an incident that stood out.

He tortured her once. A long, long time. He said he would stop if she screamed. And she did. It was very long and very loud, and souls in Hell have nothing on that scream.

Then he laughed and said "I lied," and it got much...much...worse.

And when he was done, he told her that, and I quote, "It would be simpler if you killed yourself. Your parents want you to do it, you know, because you're a pain, and an annoyance. But they have no idea how to do it without getting into trouble. You'd save them the trouble of killing you themselves. There'd be one less problem for them, since you're such a crybaby, making their lives difficult. I heard your father say that he wished you'd cut yourself until you bleed so you stop breathing."

That done, James dragged her out before the others, still naked and bleeding and crying, and said, again I quote, "You're all being punished because of her. She didn't cooperate, so my father gets to take one of you away now."

At that moment, Father, my plans changed. That was the moment I experienced everything. Years of abuse covered and felt in moments. The experience was so intense, I literally started bleeding from ruptured capillaries, and my hemorrhoids experienced similar problems.

However, unlike Angela at the time, I'm not a six year old, I've had my own psychological torments. And, my months as a telepath had given me so many mental calluses that I could handle this particular hotplate without gloves.

And that wasn't the worst part of her life. That came later, with the condemnations, and the lies. The general population of that Brooklyn neighborhood said that the cops coerced the children with bribes, made up stories for the kids to tell in exchange for, I don't know, a Nintendo or a Sega or something. They were blamed for the monster's work.

And as for James, it was "Oh, the poor dear boy, he's the real victim, his father must have abused him. Those children must have lied about him. It's not his fault."

I discovered that not even that supposition was true...I'll explain that in a moment.

But then and there, I came to the conclusion it was time for the lies to stop. Mr. James Belloc was a liar, a rapist, and with all the moral fiber of Jack the Ripper. His defenders were amoral monsters who are so ignorant of the facts of the case it had far surpassed criminal negligence. Belloc played the card of victim hood while he was in jail, and after he got out, an entire community bought into it, creating its own variety of evil.

James was wrapped in a cocoon of defenders and advocates who supported the delusion that he was worth something. And for almost twenty years, this freak got away with it.

Once upon a time, Father, I believed in the death penalty.

For creatures like James, it's too quick.

However, destruction takes on many forms, as does justice.

I knew James Belloc was in a prison at that point, whether he liked it or not, and he had made it. Yes, he was out of jail after serving a measly five-year sentence, but he was still in a cage. Prison bars aren't necessary for a prison, Father. This was a prison he condemned himself to. He would tell himself lies that he's worth something, yet he only had that sense of worth by first dominating children, then by manipulating people already inclined to believe him.

After that, his only satisfaction came from hoodwinking people into thinking that he might be a variety of human being. "Oh, look at me, I'm a free man now, but I didn't do all those horrible things. Poor me...suckers."

It was time someone held up a mirror to him. Someone he couldn't frighten, intimidate, manipulate or persuade. Maybe there was some justice in that he had put himself in a cage of his own design. And vengeance is a privilege only reserved for God alone.

But we can always try for a better, a more perfect justice on Earth, can't we, Father?

What did I do? Heh, heh, heh. Well, Father, have you ever had rage that you had, but didn't use? I do. I have rage that I store away in the back of my head, just waiting for a chance to be used. I did just that with the memories from Angela's head...I took those emotional memories, copied those memories of sensation, and I stored them in an isolated part of my head.

Then I went hunting through Brooklyn. I "happened" to walk the streets Belloc walked. And, "mysteriously," I happened to bump into him. James stopped in front of me, and for some strange reason, he just started screaming. For no reason whatsoever.

All I said to him was "Squeal. Squeal like the pig you are. Sooo-eeee, pig."

At least, that's what everyone else saw.

What actually happened was I had yanked his wires, almost literally. The frontal lobe is where the personality lay—basically, the active mind. At the back of the head is the occipital lobe for vision, by the ears are the temporal lobes for hearing, and the frontal lobe is where it all comes together. I disconnected the frontal lobe from everything else, and moved the flow of his other memories, his other experiences, out of reach. I basically locked the person of James Belloc into his frontal lobe. The body could see everything and hear everything, but there wasn't any active sensory input reaching James.

James was busy, you see.

I had taken all of Angela's memories from my mind and transplanted them into James Belloc. Not only the high-quality visuals, but the full Technicolor of physical and emotional pain and agony from Angela's entire life that had come from Belloc and his father.

It gets better.

I had paid visits to some of his other victims, as many as I could find before I did this. Unfortunately, I could never manage to sort out the memories, so he experienced the torture, continual rapes and humiliation of a dozen different boys and girls—all at once. Silly me. I suppose I shouldn't have neglected such a detail. That was careless.

But then again...To put it in a physical, mechanical term—I plugged all of the memories into the input sockets of his mind and set them on a loop...so he has time to study all of the incidents in agonizing detail. He has all the time in the world. Assuming he doesn't just become totally insane, one of these days, he should be able to recognize that he is his own tormentor.

Then, at that point, I'm reasonably certain that he WILL go insane.

James Belloc is, as of now, in a hospital bed, and he only screams when he's awake, and he's almost always sedated. He disturbs the other patients...

The best part is, Father, to be forgiven by God, he needs to be truly sorry for the sins he has committed, and to resolve never to do it again. And trust me, he enjoyed the satisfaction of not only having brutally tortured and raped all of those children, he enjoyed the fools of Brooklyn who let him walk around as a free, "falsely accused", man.

And now, he can't be forgiven, because to be forgiven, he has to ask for forgiveness, to be remorseful. But now, the only thoughts in his head are eternal flashbacks of his own crimes, where he is the victim. He can't focus on anything else. He can't fracture his own psyche and run and hide from the pain, I made sure of it. There is no reprieve from his torment, and if we're right, and there is a Hell for malevolence like him, even death will not end his suffering.

Why do I think he's going to Hell? Well, Dante's Hell has a place for both child molesters and another for people who despaired, and a place for those who made them despair. James Belloc tortured those children, and he tried to destroy them. He failed in his quest of destruction. I didn't fail in mine. I made sure that son of a bitch is good and bloody damned.

What if he wakes up? Ha! That's a good one, Father. I spend an hour every weekend visiting him in the hospital. For some reason, none of their terminal or ICU patients need morphine any longer. I walk through there on my way to visit Belloc—and I give James all of their pain, too.

According to Franz Kafka, the story of Gregor Samsa—the one who turned into a cockroach—was a tale of isolation, and difference. The punch line is that his family locked him in a room one day and they let him starve to death. They just stopped feeding him. And so, isolated from his own family by his differences, he died alone.

I turned into something different the day in the restaurant with Jennifer, and it had the opposite effect. I could literally be open to the entire human race. I was so free from the limitations of isolation I can't even begin to tell you. I am so interconnected with my fellow man that I've only begun to give you a taste of it. I convinced Jennifer that she is loved, and removed my professor's pain.

There is a dark side to that, and I found it in Angela's mind. Thus far, I've done my best to dispel the darkness. Angela is well now—one person in one body. She's even dating. She'll never forget, not unless I lifted it all from her mind, and leaving that kind of gap might do more harm than good.

So, bless me, Father... have I sinned?