Who Is Paul Botterman?

A/N

The current form of the story is a draft. Done as cleanly as possible. There are some things that will be changed, fixed, expanded upon, and moved around later. All feedback is welcome!

The story resolves around a kid who is introduced to a man who ends up being not so much a good person. The initial idea behind the story was to write something grounded to reality, since my first two novels were heavily supernatural. In terms of the situations and dialogue throughout, some of these topics are based on my own experiences as well as others that I have witnessed, having seen more than my share of domestic violence cases as well as having researched the topic heavily since then. 

The character of Paul Botterman was based on a man I had known as a teenager. This man had been classified by myself and friends as a 'weirdo'. The guy's speaking was broken with his Ers spoken in AHs, and very uneducated except he threw in odd choices for words such as whilst instead of while. After a few years and several conversations, this man told us some wild shit that even a 90s kid didn't sit well with. Most of his ideas were outdated even then, from his view on the roles of women and children to what makes up a man. Having worked in construction, he claimed that building a house made him a genius, on top of being able to hunt without the use of weapons and being able to capture and kill animals with his bare hands easily. One day, while sitting around with the friends who had been around to know the guy enough, we all started talking about what-ifs. At the time, we joked about what if this guy was a serial killer. Or what if this guy turned out to be a rapist? Considering the man had been alone the entirety of the three years, we were aware of his existence and seemingly without friends or much human contact. It all seemed to fit. It all seemed a bit funny to a bunch of fucked up teenagers. Until one day we saw the house where he lived was swarming with cops. They asked us a few questions. We answered what we could. But listening to the adults around us, we learned that the man wasn't the quiet, unsophisticated type we came to see as harmless. Instead, finding out the man had been a sexual predator who had been the prime suspect in several cases of sexual assault of a violent nature. I won't go into much detail about it than that. 

But what has always haunted me since then has been this: The man disappeared and, to my knowledge, was never captured for the crimes he was accused of. I listened a little further in those days. While I consider most of that gossip exactly that, my parents and others claimed he had been wanted, not only in the city we lived in at the time but also in several states. So, later in life, I always thought about it which became the title of this novel. Who was that man? Who was he really? 

And as far as Zyzzx Road? You'll have to thank Stephen King's Revival and Aurthur Machen's The Great God Pan for that. These were the final components that made this already horrifying tale into the nightmare it evolved into. Thank you for making it this far. And I hope you stick around for what is to come.