Chapter 1

(Introduction)

The idea of our anthropological and sociological world being less important than other fields, especially science, had been noticed by the author in his 19 years in college  and 15 colleges. This Novel challenges those ideals, and brings anthropology and sociology to the forefront. He attempts to show how it could be important and why, and where it can take us if we let it. The storyline is fictional, but the point will be real.

The man who was short opened the door to the cab of his sixteen wheeler, grabbed the metal bar on the side, and heaved himself to the ground. At 5’1”, he was often overlooked by people, and when he was young, he was bullied relentlessly.

There were no stores in nearby towns for people as short as him, and he shopped where he could find his size, which usually involved inferior clothes at children’s stores. He tugged at his shirt to loosen and lower it. These damn clothes are always too tight. I can never breathe in them. My clothes are itchy, too. I prefer cotton. Almost all the children’s clothing he could find was a polyester mix. He hated polyester mixes, or polyester anything. He often found his sweat beading up between his clothes and himself, especially when he sat down.

Then there was the sex. There was none. All the women he knew wanted tall people to date.

Then there were the people. He hated people. Most of them rarely saw him as a human, he decided. As a child he was bullied all the time, stuffed into lockers, duffle bags, and any place he would fit.

As he grew up, he found himself terribly lonely. He tended to blend into the background. Furthermore, he felt almost no-one spoke to him.  Eventually, he learned to rely only on himself. 

In reality, it was the other way around. He just rarely bothered to connect with anyone. He had countless chances to meet people, and even date women. But people annoyed him, and he’d rather be alone

It was five years ago when he had enough. The bullying, the mocking, the loneliness, and the lack of sex.

He bought a sixteen wheeler just because he was told he would have a hard time driving one, and he started wearing four inch platforms just to look taller, which made a clip clop sound when he walked. He was tired of the hell he decided he had to go though just because of his size. 

He had the hardest time understanding that it wasn’t just his size, but it was him. He was creating  his own problem. When he went to a psychiatrist as a child, he was told that if he started hurting people, he may never stop. So he promised himself he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He would never hit anyone, or even fight back. Instead he was tortured as a kid. 

Eventually he got tired of the whole thing. He wasn’t going to be picked on anymore. After five years, when I earn the money, I will get surgery to make myself taller, he told himself. I am tired of being a short person.

After 2 years of making these changes, and nothing changing, he began hiring women to sleep with him… literally. He wanted to feel the warmth of their bodies next to his own. He didn’t actually have sex with them. He just slept with them naked. He was lonely and disconnected from reality, and if the world wouldn’t let him connect, he would do it, himself. 

He went from city to city, allowing himself to do this one time a month, but on different days so as to not make himself too obvious. He never had sex with them… he just needed their warmth. He wasn’t sure if this was legal, so he kept it quiet, and snuck around doing it. 

But after doing this for a year or so, it wasn’t enough. He started having sex with sex workers. 

Something was still missing. He needed something more. He started killing them after he slept with them, and then hiding their bodies. This way, no-one would ever find out. Besides, he was enjoying the hiding of them more than the killing them. It became a game to him. He felt empowered in knowing that he was getting away with killing so many people, ad hiding their bodies.

Eventually, still it wasn’t enough.

He bought a van to make the transport for his next plan easy for his next idea. He needed it to be easy for him to drag people into his car with his height being what it was. He needed the space to transport them without outsiders seeing inside his car.  

He started working out several hours a day, adding any healthy supplements, and some illegal ones, to bulk himself up. He spent an hour a day running the best he could, outdoors. He worked out constantly. His body ached from working out.  

He became hardened from everything, life, working out, and hurting people. He had forgotten what it meant to have empathy and to be human. All he wanted was to feel connected in the beginning, but eventually, he made the opposite happen.

His skin became tough from the sun. As he worked out, he focused on all his larger muscles, and then his smaller ones. After a time, he was captivating the attention of attractive women, but he wasn’t interested in sex or connecting any more. He had become angry and bitter. The world had left him behind before, and now, it would pay. He barely saw anyone as equals anymore,  just memories of the past.

After a year of constant working out, he hunted down the people who tormented him in high school, and knocked them out with a dart gun, one at a time. He pulled them into his van, and drove far into the county where no-one could hear or see them, tied them up together in small groups with zip ties, and waited.

When they awoke, he poured gasoline on them, lit it, watched them burn alive, and listened to them cry. He especially loved the crying. It seemed to make his pain go away for a few minutes. But soon, he would need to hear more pain. Watching others out of control is what he loved the most, and the more each person tormented him before, the worse he would take that control away from them, and for a longer period of time before burning the person. 

Sometimes he would pull out that person’s teeth. Sometimes, with the use of pliers, the finger nails. Once he used the pliers to bend the fingers backwards, and then saw them off, one by one, after using a zip tie before to cut the circulation off of each one so they wouldn’t bleed out. 

After a few hours, he would always pour gasoline on the person, light him or her on fire, and drive away. A day later he would return to hide the evidence. That was also his favorite part… finding ways to get away with it. The better and sneakier he was, the more in control and satisfied he felt. He loved the control. He never had it before, and he wanted as much as he could get now.

He would always kill in bulk, four or five people at a time, depending on his choice of torture. This way, they could listen to each other scream. He particularly liked that. 

 The man who was short always watched the other people burn for a couple of minutes before leaving. The heat from their bodies was almost too much for him to bare. He then often took a step closer to them as they burned so he could feel the burn of the heat, himself. He wanted to feel their pain. Just want to hear it. He didn’t want to forget why he was doing this. His rough, patchy skin played with the light of the flames, and over time became tougher from the heat, and he would often not shower, making his skin full of soot and grime, and his smell made him hard to be around.  He listened to the squeals and screams, and tried to imagine needing to make those squeals, himself. He learned to hate them for the squeals, which made him hate them more.

Sometimes, he didn’t bother with his past bullies. He hunted down their families and friends, and killed them all, just to spite them, and then he would have them live alone, just as he had to now. Eventually, when those people made new friends, he would hunt them down and kill them, too. He wanted to make sure his bullies were never happy.

All in all, he must have killed more than a hundred people over a two year period. He took joy in each occurrence of working out ways of not getting caught. He became a master in killing. He considered it his art. He even bought a scrapbook and started taking pictures of them burning.

Eventually, he got a call from a man. 

“So you are the man starting these fires in the woods.”

How did he know this? He balked. How did he get my number? This is a burner phone. The man who was short said nothing at first, trying to think of what to say next. He was sure he left nothing behind. He was sure he wasn’t getting caught. “No.”

“It wasn’t a question. Now listen up.”

The short man stayed silent.

“We would like to hire you.”

The short man rubbed his lip. “We?”

“We are called The Changest Group. But for you, that is not relevant.

“What do you want from me?”

“We want you to kill someone. You will be paid well. We will call you again with more, soon.” 

The short man heard a click on his phone, and the other man was gone.