Page 96 of Violent Possession

The metal door reverberates through the warehouse space, followed by the muffled sound of their boots moving away. And then, silence.

A dense, saturated silence, broken only by Arthur Penhaligon’s gasping breath and the metronomic beat of an old, failing air compressor somewhere in the building. I use the pause to examine the man: his head hanging at an odd angle, blood running in abstract lines from his eyebrow to his chin, his dress shirt stained dark red and ocher-yellow. His eyes, deep-set and unfocused, only find me after a few seconds.

I pull up a metal chair and sit in front of him, close enough for him to see the color of my eyes.

“Arthur Penhaligon,” I begin, dragging out each syllable, making his name a death sentence delivered with the cordiality of a toast. “Forty-six years old. Convenience store clerk.”

His eyes widen, and the fear shifts from abstract—pain, humiliation, confusion—to aspecificfear: the raw terror of beingknown, of beingdeciphered. There is nothing more unsettling for an ordinary man than to realize his life has been reduced to a dossier.

“You’ve been a model employee. Not a single tardy in three years. No complaints. A man of routine, of rules, of predictability. I like that about you, Arthur.”

His chin trembles. He wants to speak, to protest, but the pain and the recently removed gag prevent him from emitting more than a hoarse groan.

“On Tuesday night,” I continue, “a man with a metal prosthetic on his right arm came in during your shift. He bought cigarettes... and the change seemed high. A lot of bills. How much did he pay, Arthur? Fifty?”

Arthur’s chin trembles. He looks at me, not understanding where this is going, what this is about.

He shakes his head.

“Do your customers do that often, Arthur? Pay with large bills for the change?”

A trickle of blood drips from his chin onto his pants.

“Sometimes,” he says quietly. He’s terrified. Good.

I nod. “But that night... he didn’t take the change, did he?”

Arthur tenses. He doesn’t answer.

“He left over forty dollars for you. He turned around... and went to the back door. You know where this is going, don’t you?”

“I... I-I don’t know anything...”

“Was it the man in the back who asked you to flip the sign, Arthur?”

A twitch in his eyelid. A hit.

But he says nothing.

I sigh.

“Sofia is eight, isn’t she?”

The whole theater of stoicism collapses, his breathing rate doubles, tears cut through the dried blood on his cheeks. He tries to compose himself, but he can’t.

“Her medical records are impressive,” I say. “The chemotherapy, the experimental treatments. The bills must have been... astronomical.”

I take a long pause. The man before me is now in another world, lost between the past of his daughter’s illness and the present of his own physical pain.

“I noticed the larger payments stopped a few months ago. The debt is being paid in smaller installments now. I suppose that’s good news. Is she in remission?”

Arthur sobs. It takes him a moment to answer, but still, he finds a thread of a voice, “She is...”

“I’m happy for her,” I say. “A man would do anything for his daughter. But you understand that if you don’t cooperate, this progress... can be undone in a matter of days, don’t you?”

He looks at me, for the first time, with hatred. A pure, clean hatred, as beautiful as a father’s love.

“Arthur. Who is Seraphim?”