quinley tucker

by nick nelson

quinley tucker was an ordinary person. or so it seemed. he had a job, which occupied his time five or six days a week, at various hours, on a staggered schedule. sometimes at a desk in an office, more often visiting various places in the city, and sometimes even outside the city. he kept careful track of the mileage of his company vehicle he traveled in, as the company was notoriously strict on this matter. he kept the vehicle in as close to perfect condition as he could, sometimes even spending a little of his own money on it, as the company was very suspicious of their employees scamming them in this regard. he had a room in a downtown apartment complex with over 20,000 units. he seemed like a perfectly normal person. but what nobody knew was the contents of his dreams and fantasies. he had the most terrible, violent, disgusting, unspeakable, loathsome, unforgivable fantasies of any human who ever lived. the so-called worst humans who ever lived - caligula, nero, gilles de rais, henry viii, vlad the impaler, christopher columbus, the marquis de sade, hitler, donald trump, mitch mcconnell. would have turned from him in disgust if they could have seen the continuous movie running inside his head. quinley never made any attempt to record his fantasies in any way, either on paper or digitally, or to confide them to a psychiatrist or priest or any other human. the fantasies flooded his brain throughout the day, at his desk at the office, in the company vehicle, and during his polite and smiling interactions with the company’s customers and contractors, and they especially tortured him at night in his room, when he was alone and unobserved. finally they overwhelmed him and his brain burst and he died. after a couple of weeks, the company managed to contact a half sister who lived in kansas, whom quinley had never met, and she arranged to have his body cremated. his dreams died with him. who knows how many like him may walk the streets and drive the roads of the earth?