Author Games: Red Room

Hunters Seven: Jack DeWalch

Name: Jack DeWalch

Sex: Male

Age: Twenty-six

Physical Appearance: Clean-shaven, he's innocent. He blinks at you with steel-blue eyes, and he turns his head so that he's looking up at you even as he looks through you, and you think he's trying to piece you together in his mind. When he appears this way, you feel like a woman instead of a girl. And he's a man, you know this, but you have the edge. You tousle his hair, dark and loose and stiff with product underneath your fingers, and he laughs and ducks his head away, and you imagine that there's an entire galaxy waiting underneath that immaculate skin, ready for someone to tease it out. You could grab it if you wanted, if you just spent a little more time with him and if he learned to trust you. The thought thrills you. The problem comes when it's been three weeks and he hasn't answered your texts, when you find him outside a dive bar with a cigarette between his lips and a group of people you don't know. The problem comes when he's no longer clean-shaven. He looks at you, and that galaxy glimmers in every aspect of his being; it's the perfection in the sharp bridge of his nose, the slight furrow of his thick eyebrows, the sudden height he gains when he stands and he looks down at you and through you. The problem comes when all of these things are still present and you realize that he never intended for you to have any of them. In that instant, the body ceases to remind you of the galaxy it hides; now it reminds you that you are empty. You turn away before he can see you dissolve.

Personality: (What happens when someone uses a drug for the first time? For a body unused to the substance, it might take a while to kick in.) His appearance draws people into his orbit, but it's not enough to snare them. If he doesn't interact with you one-on-one, you're safe; you'll think that he's a clever man in a group setting, funny but humble, and that people seem to like him an awful lot, but you won't feel that preternatural urge to return. He'll single you out, though, if he finds you fascinating or useful. Then he'll have you. (Receiving drugs for free is dangerous. You'll take them the first time because there's no cost, but then you'll take them again a second and a third time, even if you have to pay, because you'll find yourself paying in worse ways if you don't.) He's an infinite person, and you're a finite person. You've never met an infinite person before; speaking to him is intoxicating, as if you've freed yourself from your finite cage. He's responsive to you, present in ways that finite people can't be, and he'll listen to your opinions in ways that give them worth. He engages with you. He thinks you're fascinating. Now you think that he likes having you around, that you could swim in those infinite waters for your entire life if you play your cards right. You find him again and again, and he enjoys your company more every time he sees you, and the world is wonderful. (The problem comes when you're out of cash.) The problem comes when you've outlived your usefulness. Whatever he saw in you—some spark of the unknown, some way that he might get ahead—has been siphoned out of you, and he has it now. The universe is infinite because it expands, and Jack DeWalch is infinite because he sucks the life from people like you. You can't pay him anymore, and so he disappears, and so you find yourself paying the universe instead, in sleepless nights and empty bottles and prescription medication. You've found your own infinity. The comedown never ends.

Background: He's from a small town in Minnesota. He has a younger sister with some sort of brain abnormality, and he has a mother and father with jobs too mediocre for you to remember. His life began humbly, which seems strange, considering that he fits so well into Atlanta nightlife. But his past adds to his charm. The way he talks about his family makes him seem softer, and you've never met anyone whose affection for their sister runs so deep. Yet you wish you didn't know any of these things. You'd like to forget that Jack is capable of love, that his capacity for caring for family is infinite, because it humanizes someone you'd rather imagine as a beast.

Other: He must be stopped.