None of the others knew exactly what she meant, but a hit list sounded good, it was a welcome diversion from the last days of the endlessly long, dull summer. And then they all sat alone with their thoughts and recalled moments they wished to forget. That they’d suppressed, so that they could grind them into dust when they were old enough to. They thought of loneliness and humiliation. About being fucked on stinking mattresses, beat up, they thought about death and helplessness.

Peter wrote down his mother, the Russian, and Sergej, the Pole who had raped him. Hannah noted Doctor Brown, her mother’s murderer. And Thome Percy. Developer of the site Dream Island.

And Don jotted down Walter, her mother’s former boyfriend.

Then they didn’t know what to do next. They were suddenly no longer cool, young, and strong. They were children who actually just wanted to cry. And knew that nobody would comfort them.

“I’m waiting.”

Said

THOME

INTELLIGENCE: average

POTENTIAL FOR AGGRESSION: high

ETHNICITY: pink

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: asexual or perhaps homosexual

FETISH: sniffing athletic shoes

POLITICAL CLASSIFIABILITY: right-wing conservative. But also doesn’t really matter

HEALTH RISKS: high blood pressure. Fatty liver

It was the time when his mother was still alive. His real mother. Mother—Motherrrrr!—

Mother didn’t answer. It was midday, she was probably lying on her George III sofa. Thome hated that piece of furniture, with its brocade cover darkened at head height by the grease of his mother’s hair. Thome’s mother considered frequent hair washing a hobby of the newly wealthy and the lower class. Her hair was always matted down on the back of her head. It was the color of her faded cashmere sweater. If she wasn’t lying on the sofa she was perhaps outside with the dogs. Those filthy creatures that looked as if they’d had their legs sawed off. Good hunting dogs who, on their sawed-off legs, hunted other animals to death. The hunt, a displacement of the lust to kill people on the turf of the Scottish Highlands. Mother knew a thing or two about that. About killing, scorn, scones, and alcohol. In the community where Thome’s family home stood, there was nothing but drunks. Amazing, eh? That the country’s upper crust consisted of a giant cirrhotic liver, that alcohol wielded the scepter in this manicured bougainvillea-covered development. Owing to a bit of a stalker quirk, Thome knew what every resident did at every second. He knew them naked, knew what they ate, how they voted, knew their influence in politics, knew which weapons they stored where, which sexual proclivities they harbored, he knew how long their orgasms lasted. Already at a young age Thome laid the foundation for his later passion: observing people. And pondered how he could hurt them.