by Maeva Wunn
A flash of lightning. A rumble of thunder. The villain twirls his mustache on a dark and stormy night…
Rarely are things so cut and dried. In Records of the Hightower Massacre, the bad guys range from menacing to well-meaning. Behind the closed doors of the Hightower Course Correction Center (HC3), volunteers are subjected to varieties of re-education and torture to correct them to the cisgender, heterosexual ideal that is held in such high regard by the powers that be in AMCONS (American Midwestern Confederacy of Order and Natural Salvation). The volunteers become known as sojourners, and today we’re going to introduce some of the bad guys that put our sojourners through the ringer.
Our main protagonists, Ash and Aubrey, first encounter HC3 at a job fair. Dan Forsythe, the epitome of business not casual, picks them out of the crowd for a personal sales pitch. He’s proper but friendly, saying all the right things with just the right amount of humor and pathos. He really wants them to sign on the dotted line. Ash and Aubrey are taken in by his carefully crafted persona and his promise of a safe and secure future.
It doesn’t take long for our sojourners to meet the self-righteous and shrill Harrison and Claudia Stout, a married couple who step on stage to welcome the recruits to HC3. They only have smiles and cheerful words, showcasing their perfect marriage and gender representation. Everything they do is to help their charges live better lives, and they have no doubt they’re on the right side.
Working directly with the sojourners are the RM’s (Role Models) – Ty Mercer for those deemed male and Christina Winestock for those deemed female. Their motivations are more muddied than the Stouts, and our good guys wonder if Ty and Christina could be convinced to help them. But any attempt at collaboration would surely be quashed by the likes of Marco, one of the guards who gets a little too involved in HC3’s curriculum.
Overseeing the organized chaos is Samson Cash, the Chef de Projet, as he likes to be called, and his ever-present but silent companion that our sojourners dub The Cook. These two menacing figures seem to be in charge of everything and aren’t afraid to throw their weight around, literally and figuratively. Their intimidating presence is always felt by the sojourners, and whether they believe their own propaganda ceases to matter in the face of their actions.
Writing bad guys can be a lot of fun, though I must admit it’s hard using them to inflict suffering on protagonists we’ve come to care for. But it takes both sides and the spectrum in between to make a good story. Why don’t you join them and see what happens… https://amz.run/9MTc
About the Author
Maeva Wunn is a bisexual, non-binary, neurodivergent writer of poetry and prose, crafter, history buff, and music enthusiast living with chronic illnesses. They have been writing poetry since childhood. They spent most of their life in Atlanta, Georgia and moved to the Midwest after meeting their spouse. They currently reside in Iowa with their spouse and cats.