Peripheral Visions: Conscience

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Conscience

State Representative Virginia Thorngrove woke with a start, the empty cut crystal glass falling from her fingers and onto the carpeted floor. Something wasn't right...

Groggy, she swung her legs off the comfortable couch where she had been curled up with her glass of scotch watching the news. How long had she been sleeping? She bent forward, picked up the glass, and set it on the table. The news had been on when she'd fallen asleep. Now the television was quiet, its flat screen dark. It was the sudden cessation of TV voices that had woken her up.

Had she turned it off?

Virginia tried to recall what she'd been doing. Watching the news... drinking her usual glass of scotch... there had been a late-breaking report about the suicide of some guy in West Texas who ran a harassment site called Common Communion. Despite its innocuous name, the site routinely deployed legions of trolls to harass and doxx its targets – everyone from journalists to TV producers making "liberal" shows to teen influencers on social media. The group had supposedly driven a number of its targets to suicide through its harassment campaigns, including the head of a group advocating for better educational access for blind children.

Virginia hadn't cared about any of that. But then a report had come on about that little girl who had killed herself with her father's gun. Virginia had sighed to herself: Here they went again. Virginia had introduced a bill earlier that week making it a crime for schools to acknowledge sexuality or race in either the curricula or classroom discussions. The girl had lived in Virginia's state. Unsurprisingly, given the liberal media's hit job, hateful, slanderous messages had besieged her social media accounts. The police had promised to arrest those responsible, but Virginia smoldered to think that she was being held to blame.

The news called the suicide victim by a female name... Tammy something. Tammy Wiseman, that was it. The news showed her stricken parents... her bereaved mother, her angry father... and then a clip of Virginia herself speaking at a media conference about her bill.

A heckler had yelled a question: Did the bill also make it a crime for race or sexuality to be addressed on the playground or the football field? For example, in the form of bullying and slurs?

Virginia had fumed at that. Inappropriate as the heckler's own bullying was, of course the liberal media would leave that moment in its clip.

The heckler's jibes were a distraction from the real work Virginia and her colleagues wanted to accomplish, but they had created enough attention that more senior members of the party caucus had cautioned Virginia against pressing too hard or too soon for her next piece of legislation: A bill that would make it a felony for doctors to treat children with hormones to bolster the delusion that a boy could be a girl, or a girl could be a boy. The bill also would make it a felony for parents to allow children to use different pronouns or wear clothing that defied God's plan for the two natural genders. And, the bill would make it a felony for teachers to express support or sympathy for gays or trans people, whether or not they were in the classroom.

Possessed by a sense of mission, Virginia had ignored the advice and introduced the bill the previous day.

The governor had immediately promised to sign the bill when it landed on his desk. It should have been a high point for Virginia – there were whispers of a presidential campaign in a few years – but then that child had killed herself and the media had pounced. The news that evening had been full of insinuations. The TV reporters made it seem like Virginia was personally responsible for the tragedy. More than one harassing social media message had declared that Virginia had "blood on her hand."

It was ruining her moment.

Watching the news reports, Virginia had grown enraged. She had downed her scotch in a single swallow. She had gotten up, poured herself more scotch, then returned to the couch seething. It hadn't been her fault; nothing had been her fault. The schools indoctrinated children. It was no wonder children got confused, even killed themselves. But trust the fake news media to point the finger at the defenders of reliable traditional values, people who wanted to live in a decent society again, any time some mixed up little girl killed herself with...

Virginia shook her head. Not little girl, she told herself. Boy. He was a boy playing dress-up, giving in to peer pressure and the leftist media. A little boy who... who...

Had killed herself using her father's gun.

Killed himself, Virginia corrected herself. He was a boy...

"Really?" a voice asked. "How would you know? Do you live her life? Do you think her thoughts, or feel her feelings?"

Virginia screamed. It was a short, terrified scream that faded in her throat as she turned her head and saw the man standing across the room.

Virginia instinctively clamped down on her panic and regained her composure. Her heart hammered, but her voice was level as she demanded, "What are you doing here?"

The man smiled. "I'm doing what I do."

"And what's that? Who the hell are you?"

The man tilted his head, looking at her as if curious as to what sort of creature she might be. "Maybe I'm that poor girls' big brother, come for a reckoning. Or maybe it's simpler than that... and more inescapable. You can think of me as your conscience."

"You're not anyone's conscience," Virginia told him. "You're a housebreaker. I'll give you two seconds to get the fuck out, or you'll be looking at a very, very long time in jail."

The man smiled at her. "I don't think so," he said.

He was a sturdy-looking young man. He somehow looked like he'd been raised on a farm. He had strawberry blond hair, freckles, a handsome, smiling mouth. He looked familiar, but Virginia couldn't place him.

"You know what they do to good-looking young men like you in jail?" Virginia asked in a nasty tone of voice.

"I know what people like you do to little girls like Tammy. I know what people like you do to people like me. And it's pretty much the same thing. Only, you get paid to do it."

Now she recognized him. He'd gone to her college. She'd taken part in the social media onslaught that had ended with his suicide. Something else the liberal news channels had tried to blame her for during her first run for office. They even found a photo of the celebration she and some others had enjoyed at a brew pub the night after his roommate had found his body...

What was his name again? Chester?

The man looked at her, smiling, contempt in his eyes. "Or was it Charles?" he asked. "C for Chester, C for Charles, C for Who Cares?" His lips curved into something sharper than a smile. "C for Conscience."

"I have a gun," she warned him.

"Oh, Mary," the man said in a bored, exaggerated drawl. "Please. Everyone has a gun. I have a gun." He reached out toward her and she saw there was a snug little weapon in his hand. "In fact, it's your gun," the man added.

Was it hers? Was she about to become one of those victims the anti-gun people always talked about – the woman killed by her own firearm?

Virginia's fear intensified. "Oh my god!" she cried, her voice filled with terror despite herself. "What do you want? Why are you here?"

"I'm here to tell you to do the honorable thing." The man dropped the gun on the floor; the heavy thud of the gun on the carpet commingled with his voice and echoes in her ears. Virginia shut her eyes, waiting for the bullet...

Nothing happened. There was silence, stillness. Virginia opened her eyes and saw that she was alone in the room. But it hadn't been a dream; the television as still off, and the gun was still on the floor...

"Why can't you just be the little boy we want you to be?" a new voice demanded.

Virginia looked toward the sound of her voice and light suddenly blinded her. She squinted, realizing that sunlight was pouring through the window.

Sunlight?

There was no window on that wise of the room – just a wall between the living room and the kitchen...

A shadow in the shape of a man blotted out the light, and Virginia looked up see his face. Was it the same man who had been here a moment ago?

No. It was an older man, a balding man with dark hair and dark, furious eyes.

"I want you to think for one minute about your life, our lives, what you're doing to us," the man said.

Virginia was about to tell him, as she had told the other man, to get the hell out of her house, but then she heard a child's voice... heard it in her own ears, felt it in her own throat:

"Daddy, I can't change it! I can't help it! This is who I am!"

"The hell you are!" the man shouted, looming over her.

Virginia realized she was standing, and no longer on the couch, as she took a step back.

"And don't you walk away from me, young man!" the man shouted, leaning in, leaning down.

Virginia realized she was much shorter than she had been a moment ago. Looking up at the man, she realized that she was the size of a child.

Hearing the voice continue to plead, hearing it in her own ears and feeling it in her own head, she realized that she was a child.

"I won't tell you again, Thomas," the man shouted. "Take off that goddamned dress and put on some proper clothes. Some boys' clothes!"

The man turned and walked away. He slammed a door behind him.

Virginia took in the sight of the room she was in. There was an unmade bed with blue blankets; there was a dresser; a baseball bat leaned against the wall in the corner. She didn't get more of a look than that because she suddenly found herself rushing toward the bed, then throwing herself on the pillow and sobbing.

She heard someone come into the room; felt the weight of someone sitting on the bed next to her. "Now, honey," a woman's voice said. "Big boys don't cry."

"I'm not a boy!" she heard and felt he child's voice respond. "I'm a girl. A girl!"

"But you know that's not true, honey. You have boy parts."

"They don't belong to me. They shouldn't be there. That's not who I am. That's not who I'm supposed to be!"

"Of course you are," the woman said.

"You don't listen to me. What do you know? You don't know anything!"

"I know you're my son and I love you very much. Sweetie, whatever you're going through, wherever you got this idea, we can help you..."

Virginia found herself sitting up and looking at the woman. She recognized the woman from the television news; it was the mother of that dead child, the boy who had shot himself.

"If you want to help me, then help me," she heard the child's voice say. "But you're not helping me. You're hurting me!"

Virginia found herself falling into the woman's arms, sobbing uncontrollably; she felt the woman hold her, stroke her back.

Then she was in her own living room again, sitting on the couch, staring at the gun on the floor.

"That was one of her most painful, scarring memories," the man said.

"You're back?" Virginia asked.

"I never left. I've always been here. You ignored me as you committed one sin after another, one atrocity after another... but you won't ignore me anymore." The man pointed to the gun on the floor. "There's a way to redeem yourself, to take responsibility for the harm you've caused. Which is to say, there's a way out."

"A way out of what?" Virginia asked.

Suddenly, she was in another room – a cold room. She was sitting on an examination table while a man in a white doctor's jacket leaned in close to examine her.

"I want my mom," she heard the child's voice say.

"She and your dad are in the other room," the doctor said. "They don't want to be here. They asked me to look you over. They asked me to test you."

"No, they didn't," the child's voice said.

"You need to take the rest of your clothes off," the doctor said.

"I won't!"

"Yes, you will. I need to look at your boy parts. I need to see if they work right. I need to find out why you think you're a little girl."

There was something horrible about the doctor's smile. Virginia knew for a certainty what was about to happen. She began to hope and to pray that she would suddenly be in her living room again. She didn't want to go through this...

"You better leave me alone!" the child's voice screamed, and the small, frail arms struck out at the doctor.

The doctor simply grabbed her hands in one of his own large, strong hands, and pinned them together. Then he leaned in close, the weight of his body and his breath and his evil intentions crushing her. "I'm a doctor. You have to respect me and do what I say. And anyway..." His teeth glinted, too close to her face, blurring, catching the light with chips of hard whiteness that were somehow the worst part of the whole hideous nightmare. "I have permission."

Virginia didn't simply flicker away to her own living room. She didn't simply escape back into their own life. She was trapped in that moment, trapped with the screaming, struggling child – trapped when the struggles stopped and the fear of punishment paralyzed her; trapped when the conflict between what the doctor was doing and saying and what she knew deep inside herself, that this was wrong, left her feeling unmoored from reality...

The doctor did disgusting things, said disgusting things, told her things that weren't true:

"You deserve this. You need this."

"You like this..."

"This is our little secret!"

Those words seemed to roar and fill her body and her mind. Virginia gasped, and then... only then... was she back in her own living room. The man was looking down at her, his smile now replaced with a tight line of pressed lips.

"Why are you doing this?" Virginia cried out.

"Me? I did nothing. But you... you. What that child suffered was because of you. Politicians who echo slanderous messages designed to inflame, preachers who call down hate. People who give permission – yes, permission! – to the monsters, and then sit back smiling, letting the monsters do their dirty work... your dirty work."

"I would never!"

"You did!" the man screamed at her, and his eyes seemed to light up with a searing yellow fire. "You did!" He pointed again at the gun on the floor. "But there's a way to pay for the sins you've committed, the blood you've spilled, the horror you've visited on others. A way to end their suffering... and yours."

"Fuck you!" Virginia screamed.

She found herself sitting in a classroom, her ears ringing with the force of her outburst. She realized all the other students were looking at her as a teacher stood smirking down at her.

"Does the girlyboy have anything more to say?" the teacher asked.

Virginia found herself looking down at her desk and noticed that she was wearing a boy's shirt.

"I said, does the little faggot boy have anything more to say?" the teacher repeated.

"No," the child's voice said faintly.

"No? Why not?"

Suddenly the child's voice was loud and clear. "I don't have anything more to say to you! Now leave me alone!"

"Or what?" The teacher was still smirking.

"Or I'll tell my mom and dad, and..."

"And we'll go to see the principal because you're being disruptive again," the teacher said, grabbing the child's arm and pulling Virginia out of the desk chair. Around her, the children laughed and made fun.

"Why don't you just kill yourself?" one boy sitting near her desk asked, grinning.

"Why don't you kill yourself!" others joined in. Then the whole room seemed to be chanting: "Why don't you kill yourself?"

The teacher dragged Virginia away from her desk, across the room, and out the classroom door. "Well?" the teacher asked as he dragged her up the hall. "Why don't you kill yourself? You think anyone wants you here? Anyone at all?"

Virginia was back in her living room. The man was standing there looking at her. The gun was on the floor.

"Why don't you kill yourself?" the man asked.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Virginia said accusingly.

"Didn't you like it when Chester killed himself? You went out to party with your friends the night he did it."

"I never told him to..."

"Those were literally the words you wrote to him on social media. You and dozens of others. 'Why don't you kill yourself? No one wants you here.' And when he did, you never felt a moment of remorse."

"Of course I did! I was sorry!"

"So sorry you had to have six beers to wash your victory down, and then you gave a blow job to Connor Carson, the guy who made it is mission in life to torment Chester, to drive him to self-destruction."

"I was drunk."

"Oh, I see. You're never at fault, you're just drunk. But a gay kid? A transgender kid? They're the epitome of evil. And they should just kill themselves."

"I never said that! Not to anybody!"

The man's face was twisted in fury for a second time. "Liar!" he snarled, and his voice was like a lion's roar.

She was suddenly back in school. A different school – she knew this somehow. I was two years later and she was in a different school.

And the other kids were jeering at her as she walked by slowly, clutching her schoolbooks to her chest. Virginia realized that she was now wearing a skirt and blouse – clothes that made her feel better, clothes that fit her like boys' clothes never could. Clothes that felt like a shield against the taints and jeers, the raucous laughter and commotion...

A boy stepped forward, stuck his foot out, and tripped her. She fell on her side, clutching the books harder to her chest.

And then the others... it seemed like it was all the others, scores of them... were kicking at her, the toes of their shoes slamming into her legs and back. Virginia heard their laugher and felt their hatred, and she screamed.

The kicking seemed to go on and on.

Then Virginia was on her own couch again. The man was looking at her, his face angry.

"You're going to blame me for that too?" Virginia asked.

"Don't you think you deserve it?"

"I do not," Virginia said defiantly. "I never told anyone to do anything violent."

"You just signaled the slavering predators that it was okay if they did."

"I never wanted any bad thing to happen to any child!" Virginia declared, angry in her own turn. "I protected children!"

"From what? The truth of their own innermost selves?"

"The confusion! The exploitation!"

"Oh, I see. You groomed predators for violence against children in order to protect children. Well, that makes an awful lot of sense. You exploited the pain and vulnerability of transgender kids, repeated every single lie about them that served your purpose, in order to win office and then keep hold of power. All so that those poor kids wouldn't be exploited."

"God made Adam and Eve, not – "

"God made Adam and Eve and Steve and Tammy and everyone else, and all in His image! You think God has gender? You think God has any one singular quality? You think God is a simple binary? You think you can say who or what God is? You think you can speak for God?" Now the man didn't look like a strawberry blond farm boy. Now he looked like a being of flame. He roared in a great column of heat and light, and the orange-white tongues of fury that wrapped around him seemed to form wings on his back.

"Satan!" Virginia cried.

"Yes!" The tower of flame seemed to be pointing at her. "Yes! Satan! You name yourself, you killer! You liar! You thief of happiness and life!"

Then the heat and light were gone. Virginia found herself walking along a street. If was afternoon, and yet the world seemed dark as midnight. She approached a house and then entered it. She knew she lived here with her family, but it felt like she was in a strange and hostile country. Her family seemed like strangers... they loved her, they resented her. They had started to try to understand her, they were taking her to a different doctor now... a doctor who listened, who treated her kindly... her father even stood up to the principal at her new school, and her mother told her not to look at the messages of hate that found their way to her online. And yet, they all regarded her as an Other, as something foreign that didn't belong with them. They all regretted her.

The child paused in the doorway to the living room. Virginia saw a television, saw her own face; heard her own words as she made a statement about the bill she'd introduced:

"...will protect our children from inculcation into the gender deviance the Democrats want to turn into the norm..."

The child's body turned away, walked up a hallway to bedroom that was not her own. Opened a closet. Dragged a chair from a vanity table across the room, then stood on the chair to reach high up to a lockbox... a lockbox that wasn't locked... She set the box down, opened it, drew a gun from the box...

And Virginia was in her own living room, sliding off the couch and onto her knees, crawling toward the gun that lay black and gleaming on the carpet; she picked it up, turned it in her hands...

It wasn't her gun. It was the gun from the lockbox that the child's parents had hidden on a high shelf in the closet.

She held the gun in her hands and wished only for the torment, the accusations, the hatred to end...

"There's more than one way out of this," the man told her, looking down at her, his words sounding muffled and far away, like they were being spoken under water. "But you will refuse all the others. Reform yourself, redeem yourself, repent for the harm you've caused... or take yourself out of the world if you don't have the strength of character to stop causing so much suffering and anguish, if your pride won't let you put your lust for power and status aside."

Virginia looked longingly at the gun, then her yearning turned to fury. She looked up at the man. "You can go to hell!" she snapped.

"Yes," the man told her. "Yes. That's where we are. And that's where we'll stay as long as you choose to be a charlatan and a liar."

***

Joe Venatovich shucked off his jacket and hung it on the peg by the door. He kicked off his shoes and loosened his necktie as he walked into the depths of the sprawling apartment. The television was on, tuned as it always was to Faux News. Joe heard the nasal nattering of some commentator railing about the happenings of the day.

"...Alabama state senator Virginia Thorngrove found dead in her home this morning," an accusing, theatrical voice was saying. "Is anyone shocked to hear that Rep. Thorngrove was an upstanding conservative, a credit to her sex, and a beacon of common sense? The lamestream media says police suspect suicide. I don't believe that and neither do you. I want to know who did it. What brain-dead moral zombie libtard murdered that innocent woman?"

Joe dropped into his easy chair, too exhausted to look for the remote and turn off the noise. But his work wasn't yet finished: He sighed, thinking about the briefcase he'd left by the door. It was full of the kind of draft legislation lobbyists like him carried around these days. Faith Warrior Council had no less than four new pieces of legislation fully prepared for its lobbyists to present to lawmakers around the country. Three of them meticulously stripped protections away from gay couples and women. Their upshot was pretty clear: Outlaw marriage for queers, and outlaw contraception, including the most aggravating contraception of all: A woman telling a man "No." Joe didn't know why they needed three bills for such simple legislation, especially existing state laws already addressed half of what was in the bills. But the bigwigs at Faith Warrior Council wanted three bills for the price of one: Empty calories disguised as red meat.

Then there was the fourth draft bill, which the Faith Warrior Council people regarded as the most pressing: A bill that made it a crime to give any sort of medical or moral support to transgender children. Personally, Joe thought there were more pressing questions to focus on, especially with the Supreme Court showing a willingness to hear challenges to laws upholding workers' rights. The bill about trans kids would get anxious parents and religious zealots to the polls, but it wouldn't help roll back the forty-hour work week or minimum wage laws. Who cared which bathroom some fourth grader was using? The country needed economic reform, and that could only happen from the bottom up.

But Joe was just a lobbyist, not a policymaker. He went where they told him to go; he spun what they told him to spin; he sold what they told him to sell. He got lawmakers on board for whatever three-hour tour Faith Council Warrior wanted to take the country on.

The news show commentator had moved on to a different story. "True to form, the president is politicizing the death of that twelve-year-old tomboy in Arkansas."

Joe shifted uncomfortably. He'd read about that... some girl who dressed like a boy and wanted to be called Aaron...

"Now, don't get me wrong. I understand why she wanted to be a boy. Who doesn't? I thank God every day I wasn't born a woman. But then again, I could never have been born a woman. God intended me to be a man, just like he intended that girl to be a girl, and not some pretend version of a boy..."

The voice stopped abruptly. Joe, who had started dozing, jerked awake. A woman was standing in his living room, staring at him with an intent expression.

Joe stared at her. Was it Ginny? She had the same green eyes and auburn hair as Ginny; she had the same heart-shaped face and languorous mouth. He's had her fried a few days ago after she tried to lodge a complaint against him for "workplace sexual harassment." Feminazi doublespeak of the most treacherous sort! Joe had no idea how a real woman could object to the caresses of an appreciative man. If God intended anything, it was for women to submit and men to conquer.

"How did you get in here?" Joe asked. "What the hell do you think you're doing Still trying to entrap me?"

The woman grinned a slow, knowing grin that seemed to say she knew all about his tactics and she had no time for them. "Why not just fess up to the truth, Joe? You're a rapist. What's what real men do, isn't it? Respect, consent... children... all of that's for sheep and suckers."

"What are you – "

"And speaking of children, it doesn't bother you one bit if the laws you lobby for drive kids to kill themselves. Like that boy in the papers today. The eleven-year-old who hanged himself."

"You better get the hell outta here, before I give you something you can really cry over," Joe snarled, struggling against gravity and his own heavy paunch to get out of the easy chair. "I don't know what you think you're doing, Ginny, but I have a gun, and I will defend my home."

"This gun?" Ginny was suddenly holding a black, snub-nosed revolver. Startled, Joe sank back in the chair.

"You want it? Take it." Ginny tossed the gun at him – but it wasn't a gun that landed in his lap. It was a coil of rope.

"That's right, Joe. That poor young boy made a noose and put his own neck into it. Why? Because even a child can see how people like you are winding the law like a rope around the necks of your victims. Did you get the details, Joe? He hanged himself in his mother's sewing room. That's where she found him – dead. She blames you, Joe. So do I."

"That girl who was dressing up like a boy? What do I care? Who do you think you are coming in here and – "

"Me?" the woman asked, her voice becoming a soul-shaking shriek. "I am the sister of all those who are singled out, blamed, lied about, and murdered. I am the sister of all your victims, Joe. You... and those like you."

"I'm warning you, Ginny!"

The shriek became a laugh. "I'm not Ginny, Joe. I only look like her because she's another one of your victims. No, Joe. I'm your conscience. Or, more accurately, I am Conscience in and of itself... capital C Conscience. Where have I been all this time? I've been right here, Joe. Right here. And now you've spilled enough blood that you can no longer escape its rising tide... or the consequences of your own actions..."

Suddenly Joe was in a tiny, dingy kitchen. A man was holding him down, leaning his full body weight onto him with one arm while the other arm was busy... Joe realized the man had a pair of scissors in his hand and was cutting. The scissors chewed through his clothes... boy's clothes, Joe realized. The man was screaming at him, and it was hard to make out what he was saying at first. Then Joe began to piece the words together.

"...show you... gonna wear clothes fit for a little lady... that's what you are. Think you're a boy? You just need some education. Some encouragement. I'll show you what a man really is, what a young woman really is..."

And he heard a child's voice as it shrilled through his head, tore through his throat with the force of a scream: "Daddy! No!"

"You're gonna apologize!" the man shouted, drowning out the child's voice. "Apologize to this family! You're gonna give us our honor back!"

Suddenly the pressure was gone, and Joe was back in his own living room, holding the length of rope in is hand. He looked up at the woman as she stood there glaring at him, her eyes full of accusation.

"Fuck you," Joe barked in anger, confusion, and fear.

The woman who looked like Ginny grinned in a slow, ominous way. "We'll see how long that's your answer. Sooner or later you'll welcome the chance to do the honorable thing. You'll sob with relief to answer for your crimes. Some people have to live whole lifetimes in the skins of their victims before they've had enough, but you? You won't last the night."

The rope hung heavy in Joe's hands. Suddenly he found himself in another place, in another situation, in an agony of abuse. When it ended and he was back in his easy chair, the woman was still there, staring at him.

And then another vision engulfed him... pain, shame, horror...

And she was still there when the nightmare ended.

And she was still there when the next hideous hallucination came to an end, leaving him sweating and shaking.

And she was still there after the next horror, and the next horror, and the next one...

"I'm Conscience, Joe. I will be here until the very end," she told him, as he fingered the rope, and its promise of release, sobbing...

***

Dennis Incubo sat back in his chair, gazing into his monitor with satisfaction. A message window had just popped up from an excited member of Common Communion, announcing that one of their longtime targets had finally killer herself.

"Bitch o.d. with sleeping meds or some," the message read.

Common Communion as one of three harassment sites Dennis ran. It was a lot of work, but that's what it took. If it wasn't platforms dropping or blocking him for weeks or even months at a time (only to quietly let him resume once his latest scandal cooled off), it was antifa hackers doing thier own version of what Dennis and his legions of followers did so well: Doxxing, threatening, targeting friends and family members. Dennis didn't care. None of his family talked to him anyway. Besides, it was too much fun – and too much pure, primal power – to give up, no matter what the cost.

Of course, now that the Justice Department was sniffing around his site, things might get too hot to handle. Dennis had a plan to fake an IP from Iran and pretend he'd moved there. He smiled, thinking of the blog posts he would write about having more religious freedom in Iran than in America. After the next election the DOJ's priorities would change. Dennis wondered who he could contact about being appointed to the DOJ staff. He had dossiers the FBI would kill for – thousands of them compiled on social justice warriors, trans people, teachers...

"Another one down," Dennis congratulated himself, re-reading the message. It had been weeks since the last victory. Dennis clicked through one screen after the next, reading messages, updating himself on the progress of scores of harassment campaigns, his legions of trolls dogging everyone from journalists to TV producers who made liberal shows to teen influencers on social media. Dennis felt a surge of excitement as he saw how the harassment campaign had ratcheted up against the head of an advocacy group for blind children. "I bet she won't take long to erase," Dennis said out loud.

"I bet you won't, either," a voice said.

Dennis jumped and spun around in his chair. There, in the blue light and deep shadows of his computer room, Dennis saw a woman... an old woman. Her glasses glinted, and the curls of her white hair surrounded her face like a cold blue sunburst.

"Granny?" he whispered, terror cold in his veins. It was impossible: He'd pushed her overboard during a family cruise when he was twelve years old. They'd never recovered her body. She was his first victim, the one who proved to Dennis that he had what it took to succeed.

But now she was here... swaddled in a cold blue light like that of the ocean depths...

Granny smiled. "I only look like your grandmother. You can call me that if you like, but in truth, Dennis... in truth I am Conscience..."

"My... my conscience?"

Granny stepped forward, a bottle of pills in her hand. "Not yours, since you have none of your own. No. I am Conscience itself. The difference between men and animals. And it's time for you to answer as a man, Dennis, for the things you've done."

The bottle of pills in her hand caught the light in a blue streaking blur as Granny dropped it at his feet.

Next week we close our eyes and lay back on a therapist's couch for a vision of a different sort, as a man unburdens himself of the secret he's carried all his life. All his stolen life, that is, as he's struggled to come to grips with his "Imposter Syndrome."