Setting the bone back down, he twists just enough that I see a hint of a smile play on his lips. So odd and rare, I almost wonder if I’m mistaken. “Sadism.”
Sadism? Christ, he thinks I’m out cutting up bunnies in the yard with those knives?
“This isn’t what it loo--”
“For years, I thought your mother had gotten her claws into you and turned you into some pansy pianist. I thought maybe you’d blow my theories out of the water. Turns out, you have the gene, after all.”
“Gene?” I thought sadism was learned.
After casually crossing the room, he comes to a stop in front of the wall of weapons and runs his fingers through the braided cords of a whip there. “I’m guessing your fancy education never taught you much about behavior epigenetics. It was something I became fascinated with at an early age. How the trauma that my grandfather suffered could be passed down generations, altering the genes of his offspring. That is the purpose of our group. Evolutionary biology.”
“I’m not following.”
“I’m talking about your predisposition for inflicting pain on others. It has become part of your genetic makeup.”
Brows lowering with a frown, I don’t bother to say aloud that I’m still lost in his explanation, because I know my father to be a man of little patience. One who’d belittle me as simple and slow.
“Our group seeks to explain--”
“Group? What group?”
“We call ourselves Schadenfreude. We are a collective. Generations of those dedicated to studying the epigenetics of sadism. The evolution of dominance and survival.” From his pocket, he tugs out a cigar and lights the end of it, while my mind reels in a poor attempt to keep up. “It began with your Great-Grandfather Dane. There was a time, before all of this.” He gestures to our surroundings. “After the Great Depression. When he was so poor, he couldn’t afford to feed himself, or his family. At the time, he was working for the New England Fishing Company in Gloucester. Profitability was low, and fleets were reduced during the war, to be used as naval trawlers for mine sweeps. Men were out of work.” In the pause that follows, he puffs on his cigar, staring back at me. “Starvation makes a man do desperate things. Irrational things. There were whispers through the neighborhood of two Germans. At the time, they claimed to have worked in a factory during the war. It would later be determined that these men were actually Nazi physicians, war criminals who fled Germany to avoid persecution. But I digress. Their study was the effects of sadism on future generations. The concept of DNA had recently been discovered and eugenics was huge. Heredity was fascinating to the Nazis, in particular.”
I slide my gaze toward the dentist chair, my chest cold with the thoughts of what he intends to do. If the point of this story is to prepare me for tortures that he intends to carry out on me.
“These men offered a large sum of money to essentially torture your great-grandfather for a period of time. Their theory was that the trauma suffered would alter his behaviors and produce future offspring with sadistic tendencies.”
“How? If he was the one who was tortured?”
“That’s the nature of Schadenfreude. Part of his torture was witnessing the torture of others. In time, his empathy began to shift. Of course, the Germans rewarded this behavior. It’s not to say their experiments weren’t founded in some personal motivations, you know. And at the end of it, he had enough money to purchase his own fishing boat, start his own company. Build the foundations of what we are today. But the psychological effects of what he suffered never left him, and so he maintained a sort of friendship with the Germans. And it wasn’t long before he began to partake in the study himself.”
“He tortured innocent people?”
“Those who were poor, or required some sort of favor he could fulfill. It was mutually beneficial, as many went on to become successful themselves. That’s the nature of this study. Sadism is a genetically superior trait. And the idea of our collective is to feed what starves us. My grandfather would soon find, over time, the mind’s hunger is far more powerful than that of the stomach.”
Lowering my gaze from his fails to shield me from the scrutiny burning in his eyes. I’ve no doubt he’s watching for my reaction, waiting for me to tell him those knives were hidden under my bed for the same reason. That I’m some fucked-up result of my great-grandfather.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the experiment continues, Lucian.”
“I’m not like that. I don’t …. I’m not out to hurt people.”
“Not yet. As I said, it began with something simple for me. Bones. It wasn’t long before I was collecting my own.”
My gaze snaps to his, the cold tickle in my chest exploding with panic. “You’ve killed?”
“The purpose of Schadenfreude isn’t to kill, but a man doesn’t amass this much power without making enemies. If you knew how many times someone plotted to kill me, your mother, you, I suspect you’d never leave this home. Fortunately for me, I am genetically equipped to eliminate what threatens my survival.”
His words snake beneath my skin, absorbing deep inside my own bones, as the curtain of my life yanks back to expose the harrowing reality I’ve failed to see.
“You would kill, if someone threatened what you love, wouldn’t you?”
I’ve never thought of it. Do I, or have I, loved anything so much in my life? So much I would kill for it?
“Why did you bring me down here?”
“Because it’s time you know your place in this family. In Schadenfreude. There will be expectations in this role. Things you can’t elect to ignore.”
“Like what? Torturing innocent people?”
“Those people will come to you someday. You will not seek them out. They’ll hear whispers of us, and they will come in desperation. They will give themselves over to you for a chance to have the life you live.”
“And if I don’t want to help them?”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”
I frown back at him, studying his eyes for any sign of amusement, or humor, but my gaze is met with the same austerity I’ve come to know from him.
“The men who make up Schadenfreude are some of the most powerful people in the world. You will come to know secrets that would destroy them. And therefore, they would destroy you. You will do the same. Protect our collective. Preserve generations of study. To observe the effects of environment on genetics. Your genetic makeup is changed, based on what happened to your great-grandfather. And it’ll be interesting to see how it manifests in future generations.”
“You said those men were Nazis. Why would I protect, or preserve, anything to do with them? Why would you?”
“This isn’t about them. They were eventually found out by the group, and let’s just say, it was a quiet matter of two individuals being consumed by their work. Poetic justice, I suppose.”
In not so many words, the Germans were tortured and murdered for their lies.
“It still doesn’t make it right. So you … you create generations of people who enjoy hurting others? How does that make the world a better place?”
Chuckling, he flicks the ash of his cigar and puffs on it again. “The world is filled with sadists and masochists. You either find pleasure in doling pain, or receiving it.”