The Renfield Syndrome by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 34

Before classes began, Caspian would ordinarily keep himself hidden away from the eyes of those who saw fit to constantly judge him. But now he was hunting them, and walking through the hallways, he paid close attention to their faces. He looked for any signs of anger, the smirk of arrogance, or the giggle amongst friends as they glanced at him. He saw most of them as children obsessed with themselves and getting what they wanted, sometimes at someone else’s expense. Now, he was hunting for the one person who stood out as the thing that made him nauseous with anger—the person society would be better off without. So far, there was no one, and at the sound of the bell, everyone suddenly migrated to their homerooms, where they would wait for their first class of the day.

Caspian followed the herd and, splitting off from the throng, walked to classroom 102 where he took his usual seat. On the first day of class, everyone was assigned their seat in alphabetical order. It was supposed to make things easier on the teacher, but Caspian didn’t see any sense in it. People should be able to just walk in and sit wherever they want without the hammer of authority pounding them into submission. After roughly twenty minutes, the first period bell rang, and again everyone migrated into the hallway on their way to their class. For Caspian, it was English. It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak English. After all, he had been born and raised in an English-speaking country, so it could safely be assumed that he could speak the language. But it wasn’t just usage—there was reading. Why he needed to read Shakespeare was anyone’s guess. Maybe the educational system saw the necessity to make certain students become cultured, and literature was an effective means of achieving that.

Feeling the call of nature, Caspian raised his hand, and receiving the necessary permission, left the classroom and headed for the men’s room. On the way he heard a fierce bellowing from down the hall, and stopping just outside the door of another classroom, he stood and listened.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” an angry voice screamed. It was one of the school’s math teachers. He didn’t know her name as he took his math class with a different teacher. He stood continuing to listen as the teacher’s voice escalated. “You’re supposed to be graduating soon, and by the looks of it, half of you are going to have your asses planted in those seats next year. And do you why? Because you’re a bunch of fucking losers.”

Just then a young girl bolted from the door in tears and ran down the hall in the direction of the ladies's room. She was so emotional that she failed to notice Caspian standing nearby. But until she returned, he stood assessing the teacher’s behavior and quickly determined that some people shouldn’t so much as think about teaching. This teacher was certainly doing more harm than good, and the voice in his head suddenly spoke up.

“This one.”

Caspian silently agreed. He knew how he would dispatch her; the question was how to find her and what to do afterward. Getting rid of someone who is nothing more than a waste of skin takes time and planning, and if one has time, one can plan.

Caspian continued on to the men’s room, and after he was finished, he returned to class. As the ideas were still fresh in his mind, he sat at his desk and began writing notes until he realized that if he were caught, the notes could be discovered and used against him. He would, instead, rely on memory, never putting pen to paper, and risk incriminating himself. He was intelligent enough that he believed he could stay a step ahead of any investigating authorities while he culled the herd of those whose actions forced him to remove them from the world. It was then that he realized how much he hated people and was happy to be the instrument of judgment for an indifferent God. It wasn’t that he believed in such things, but on the off chance there was something people called God, Caspian would continue to do what this God was either unwilling or incapable of doing—to eliminate evil from the world. He knew he couldn’t rid the world of every vicious person but would be satisfied with only the few he ran into—those he saw as truly loathsome, abusive, and inconsiderate. Now, if we were to find this monster, he needed information, and the internet seemed to be the best tool by which to accomplish this.

The end of the school day finally arrived, and as luck would have it, Caspian’s last class let out at the back of the school near the teacher’s parking lot. It had occurred to him that if he simply waited, he might see this teacher leave the building. Should this be the case, he could follow her only a short distance, and as she approached her car, he would write down her license plate number. This information would be highly useful in locating her address. From there, it was simply a matter of seeing what her habits were, especially on weekdays. Her workdays would be highly predictable, and it was this that might hopefully lead him to the only chance he required. The rest was locked away in the monster’s cage—waiting.