Evil Pacifico

Cruelty at any age is a warrant for jail time, but in Pacifico’s case it was just another day at the office. The very atmosphere in the building seemed to be a magnet for wickedness and deceit on that particular week, which didn’t help matters much for Pacifico, who was completely and irrevocably cruel at heart. It was like people were begging him to wave a finger in their faces, trip them up, pull down their pants, spread nasty rumors, spray-paint their cars, and spread toilet paper all over their lawns. It’s like they were practically begging for it. Even when multiple people would tell him things like “what you’re doing isn’t funny” or “you’re really weird” or “don’t you have better things to do”, he would just take that as a sign that they welcomed the entertainment and unpredictable antics. He frequently took the liberty of forming his own perverse interpretations of events and things that people said. He figured that if people were really upset by his frequent antics and cruelty then they would just start to ignore him, but if they were still taking the time and energy to talk to him, then they must be at least partly and positively involved.

The nature of his antics and his cruelties rarely changed or wavered, but they were on an especially high frequency during the Week of the Magnetized Evil. Everyone seemed to notice it. Pacifico himself seemed to notice it. His waxed black mustache was especially curly that week, so that the tips on either end nearly formed perfect circles. The smoke that emanated from his nostrils and mouth after hitting the pipe seemed to be especially steamy and protruding, lingering in the air, so that he resembled a brooding dragon at the top of some godforsaken mountain. The way he walked from one place to another had a certain malevolent hop to it, like there was something sinister attached to both of his heels.

Pacifico liked to alternate between antics and overall cruelty. On a Monday, he would tape a sign reading “Kick Me” on the back of someone’s shirt. On a Tuesday, he would throw someone in the electric chair and turn the knob up to at least an eight, keeping it there for a good five minutes. On a Wednesday, he would swap the hand soap with the hand sanitizer. On a Thursday, he would bring a ticking time bomb and have the team struggle to decide who should hold it before it exploded – a game he liked to call “Role Model Roulette”. On a Friday, he would place a banana peel on the ground and see which ignorant simpleton was the one who would actually slip and fall on their backside in front of everyone.

Pacifico really liked to shake things up as much as he could, keep things fresh. But at the same time keeping things as balanced as possible. He felt the need to feed the two wolves inside him equally – the wolf of antics and the wolf of unbridled evil.

On the week of abnormally excessive magnetized wickedness, he decided to shake things up even more. On a typical work week, he kept it to three days of antics and two days of absolute evil. Alternating days, of course. But the Week of the Magnetized Evil was different. 

On Monday, he killed a person in cold blood, slitting their throat and giving time for them to bleed out there on the ground. On Tuesday, he swapped a person’s name plate on their desk so that instead of saying “Deputy Davis” it said “Deputy Doodoo”. On Wednesday, he gave a child a remote control with two buttons, one button that had a picture of a dog and another that had a picture of a cat, and gave him the opportunity of choosing which animal to kill until the timer ran out and one of the two animals was killed at random. On Thursday, he made a prank call to the in-house cafeteria and pretended to be the President of the United States. On Friday, he dismembered three people who were still alive.

What could be said about such a wild week? A week where the evil days outweighed the somewhat harmless antics?

As for Pacifico, he didn’t really mind one way or the other. He was just responding to what he was told. A paper clip, responding to the unquestionable and irresistible pull of a magnet.