Every Sunday night, Mark and his daughter bonded over a TV show which for single dads is like gold. Mark hated the show, but Annabelle loved it and that was all that mattered.
The Sunday night ritual, starting an hour before each episode, began with delivery. Usually, a Papa John’s Veggie special and six buffalo wings, Mark eating whichever Annabelle wouldn’t depending on her diet and temperament. They had the whole ritual down: napkins, crushed red peppers, lights lowered, credits skipped.
The teaser for this episode showed the main character—a young star the same age as Annabelle— planting drugs in a popular girl’s locker because the popular girl had been flirting with her boyfriend.
The episodes were all the same, equally disturbing, teenage soap operas. Everyone was fucking everyone else, and the characters not in love triangles were so sexually androgynous Mark needed to ask questions to clarify, God forbid. But this was the best it had been in a long time.
When Rebecca, Annabelle’s mom, died; Annabelle disappeared. A thunderstrike that made her retreat into herself, behind the sanctified walls of her bedroom and piles of dirty clothes. Her cave was impenetrable to all forms of human science, including bribery. But Annabelle came out, every Sunday night, and usually didn’t go back until well after the post-show podcast that came on after every episode.
Mark tried to be grateful for little things. But he was pretty sure that was just something people said to cope in the face of impossible hurt. Mostly he had been dropped into an absence that he was unprepared for and embarrassed to be unable to navigate.
He had learned which answers to have ready, for the unavoidable questions:
“Cancer.”
“Two years ago. Diagnosis in February, funeral in September.”
“It was hard, but we had each other.”
If it wasn’t for Anna, Mark admitted to himself some nights, he would’ve disappeared into a fresh twelve pack every morning. It all happened a few months after Mark returned from his second deployment. They had seen a therapist for a little while, but after two sessions they agreed it was growth to stop.
A paper plate of pizza warmed Mark’s lap.
Mark remembered how he was at that age. Nothing like the kids they watched. Mark and his friends got high, they did some shit, but not like this. The episodes kind of disturbed Mark. And whenever a sex scene occurred, always gratuitous, he did his best to ignore it, not at all move or look in any direction lest he evoke some kind of cardinal father/daughter embarrassment.
There was a lot of potential for embarrassment watching The Show. The characters seemed to not do things that caused drama, but trauma. Something about the dialogue always sounded wrong to Mark, not like how people really talked. But the tradeoff was that the Show looked beautiful. The colors and filters were pleasant to watch and Mark could see why everyone liked the Show. The acting was pretty good, too. The actors did what they could with what they were given every week.
The actors inhabited their characters, gave them depth. The baby-faced drug dealer was especially convincing, his mastery of everyday cynicism was rare among spoiled Gen Z actors. Mark wasn’t sure who his daughter had in the way of school friends—she mostly kept that stuff a secret from him—but he thought there was some element of companionship being supplied by the characters on the screen. Maybe that’s what acting was.
Mark’s brain was brought back to the moment by the HBO static buzz. The intro played, a yearbook of images from the characters as students to really sell the point these were the kids at school, then in the same big white letters,
Created By:
Mark Googled the name the first time he saw it. He didn’t know what to expect, maybe some artistic, strung-out refugee with a life like the kind on screen. But Wikipedia said that wasn’t the case.
The Creator’s Dad—the correct title was actually “Showrunner”— was a famous director from the 80’s. Mark had even seen some of his movies, old family favorites that survived the years. The Showrunner’s Dad had also directed a few famous music videos, back when named directors did that sort of thing. When Mark told that to Annabelle, she acted like she didn’t hear him.
They watched two seasons, Mark testified, over three years.
The Show got worse. How it probably went was after one season, closely watched and curated by HBO Execs, the Showrunner was given a blank check. No one wanted to upset the golden goose and tell him no. The writing wasn’t just lazier, it had become cruder. There were less clothes, more drugs; everyone was more compromised.
What began as a show about teenagers possibly trying to relate to the chaos of today had become some kind of parody of itself, everyone needing to OD or have revenge sex, or any other form of weaponized self-harm.
Annabelle seemed to be less and less interested, on her phone more, or even just staring into the nonexistent space in front of the TV, during the episodes. That’s to say there were no signs.
There was one episode, Mark remembered watching with her. He played over the night several hundreds of times in his head. One of the girls in the show had a history of sexual assault and OD’d. There were several flashbacks. Anna seemed annoyed, but not more than other times. The episode left Mark with an unsettled feeling, like there was something wrong about what they had just seen, though he wasn’t sure if he had the authority to say so.
The next afternoon, Mark got a call from the guidance counselor. They found her in the school bathroom.
Mark dropped to his knees.
He didn’t believe it at first, he was convinced they had the wrong parent, there was a horrible mistake. She didn’t even do drugs. He could hear the naivete in his own voice. He refused to believe it and, when he finally did, fought hard against the instinct to do something rash.
They reviewed footage at the school and police brought students in for questioning and eventually they found what was discovered to be Fentanyl, and the male student who sold it to her. It wasn’t his first offense. That made it worse, to Mark.
It was in the newspapers. Relatives sent Mark links to grief podcasts with kind messages that Mark sometimes read. There was a trial for the dealer. Mark gave a survivor impact statement at sentencing.
He felt stripped of his dignity, forced into the dusty suit in his closet and waiting on a wooden bench outside the lettered courtroom to bear his pain for everyone. Beg them to “do what was right.” The dealer went to prison. Mark felt powerless.
A few survivors’ groups called, asked if he wanted to be some kind of spokesperson, talk at schools. Mark told the groups he never wanted to set foot in another school again.
In his worst hours, Mark asked: Was it intentional or an accident?
Well, they explained to Mark, no one could know and that sort of endless questioning doesn’t help anyone. Mark didn’t ask them the other questions he asked himself; he didn’t think it was fair.
Then, Mark didn’t do anything. He woke up, he drank, he watched TV, he drank, he went to bed. He didn’t know how long he lived like that. Days gave way to entire weeks. Mark told himself he must deserve this for other things he did. He didn’t bother with the VA.
When Mark was deployed, there wasn’t time to feel anything. He paid attention to the details, made sure he didn’t fuck up, got the job done. He didn’t know what to do now. Eventually, when going to the store was too much trouble, Mark stopped drinking.
Maybe it was natural that Mark ended up on the internet.
Long nights alone, trying not to succumb to the terrible thoughts, TV paid advertising was too bleak.
Mark found message boards. About grief, about the Show. Not just fans of the Show, but zealots feeling owed something, if not just consistency. People who liked it so much they hated it.
When he saw his daughter’s name, he froze in his chair, feeling exposed. Someone mentioned her as a fan, it seemed like a friend from school or at least a student who knew her, and how the show was possibly affecting people, even her.
Mark sobbed for a long time, until he could feel his nose buzzing. It shocked him how much raw emotion, if not liquid, he contained.
And Mark saw the hate. Blocks of text that built walls of hate. All the threads about how bad the show was, for itself and for society, how inappropriately it depicted people not just in these situations but of this age and generation. The people who the show was about, and for, felt attacked by it.
And by watering the seed of his loss, it grew in Mark. Why would someone make something so wicked? So morally flawed? Wasn’t there a duty to the world, as one of its storytellers, to protect those who needed the most protecting? Doctors had to take an oath, why didn’t artists?
Mark started researching the Showrunner. This felt like drinking would’ve. He saw accusations, not just of being creatively bankrupt and morally unsound, but criminally depraved. The Showrunner had made a movie between seasons that had tanked, Mark heard about it: full of young adult sex and drugs, like he was a depraved trailer park child, not the son of an Oscar winner.
So many viewers felt without control, like Mark, victim to what was on TV and kept hostage from a truth they weren’t being told: that they were okay. Their lives were okay and everyone felt the same as them. A little anxious, a little uncertain, a little worried, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by realizing you weren’t that different from anyone else. None of us were suspended in a constant bad voiceover with surreal lighting.
Mark felt so far from anything resembling a functional member of society, like such an outsider, that he could only take a journey travelled by no one else. Maybe if he had reactivated Facebook and made a long-winded post, or reached out to a cousin a few hours away, he’d have found some tether back to the living. But how far can someone wander from the village before the duty is on the village to go out and get him?
What shocked Mark the most was how easy it was to find the Showrunner. It was harder to figure out what it was the Showrunner actually did. Mark learned how TV worked. Not the tubes and airwaves, but the sausage and who made it— mostly grads from Harvard, NYU, the top film schools. Like all paramilitaries, there was a clear hierarchy. Mark learned the levels of assistants and producers. How a Co-Producer compared to a Supervising Producer. He wondered if any of them knew how to change a tire, or gut a fish.
Mark emptied his savings. He loaded up his truck with his camping gear, his tools, and most of what was in his safe. It was a blur, like a child’s memory of vacation. One minute you’re in your old bed, and the next you’re driving toward Disneyland.
There was no plan.
Mark thought he just wanted to talk to the Showrunner. Maybe he just wanted to know, firsthand, that these people weren’t bad. Maybe they didn’t know the influence they had on impressionable minds, that it was negligence and not malice.
Mark stayed at a motel, like everyone else who gets to Los Angeles without a plan. A pay-up-front place on Sunset he was pretty sure was filled with hookers. He didn’t mind. They were probably the least duplicitous people in the city.
Shortly after Mark set his bags on the floor of his room, he had found the production company that made the Show and applied for a job doing security. It was as simple as an online application with a fake name.
At the interview, they talked briefly about his service. The office manager was impressed by his two tours. The only part that wasn’t a lie. No one checked references, no one checked addresses. This really was the city of dreams.
The production company’s offices were in a pre-gentrified part of East LA. Protected by tall, spiked fences that hid the flat dentist-looking building from view of the sidewalk. Outside were rows of tents, where dozens of commuters stumbled past the unhoused poor on their way to the bus. Glistening Teslas and BMWs pulled up to the offices’ gates and waited anxiously to be able to park inside the lot it was Mark’s job to watch.
A polo, khakis, and sunglasses. They had gotten threats at the office and asked if Mark had a CCW. They didn’t check that either. Even if the arrangement was temporary, Mark couldn’t help but always be paying attention, head on a swivel, like a switch he couldn’t turn off. It wasn’t Jalalabad, but it wasn’t Beverly Hills.
The Showrunner was never on property so the entire company was run through the co-President, an Asian woman who went by “Z.” She had a shaved head and only wore cargo pants. One day, Mark wore an old Carhartt cap that she complimented with a “hell yeah.” Since then, Mark was revered by all of them. As far as Mark could tell, all of the hiring went through her to “curate a certain vibe.”
The first week, Mark got the lay of the land. He watched young, well-dressed people show up half an hour late with Starbucks, smiling with teeth so white they looked blue. It seemed like no one ever worked. They ate breakfast, then snacked, then went to lunch and occasionally had meetings about God knows what. They got high on the rooftop patio and passed scripts back and forth that had no reasons for existence besides being written by some award-winners kid. Mark floated above the water, not among them, but observing the invertebrate.
A shining black Tesla pulled into the parking lot at 11:30 on a Thursday afternoon.
The Showrunner was skinny, dressed in overpriced couture that made him look unclean. Designer holes and stains, he even smelled a little sour up close as he passed Mark. Mark gave his usual wave and nod, but the Showrunner completely ignored him, eyes straight down. Yeah, this was him.
The next time that Tesla pulled in, a few days later, Mark was ready.
When the Showrunner went in for a meeting, Mark patrolled the lot like he always did, head held high with permissioned authority. It was like he was invisible.
Mark went to the Tesla, near one of the patented gapped panels, and dropped an AirTag into the casing. Then, he went to the Security Room and reset the video footage for the parking lot that day. He signed a sheet in a folder saying he checked the auto-backups. The auto-backups had been full for over a year.
From the AirTag, Mark was able to get an address in Santa Monica.
Mark drove toward the ocean, late one night, past working-class grocery stores until the streets became numbered. Santa Monica felt insulated— not exactly enemy territory, but something hostile.
Mark turned into the neighborhood the AirTag was in, a place with parking limitations and luxury vehicles up and down the street. Dogs or babies were walked in $1500 strollers by their stay-at-home mothers or, more commonly, Mexican nannies. Mark found the house, within twenty feet.
An ocean breeze rolled through the air, feeling as unwelcoming to Mark as a language he didn’t speak. The Showrunner’s House was an eyesore among the bungalows. The entire lot was surrounded by a slatted metal “security” fence built behind the hedges.
Mark was dressed like a lawn guy. Big-brimmed hat, sunglasses, dark-brown tan. No one would look twice at his hidden face, no one would question the leather gloves. He parked his truck in an alleyway, between actual gardeners at one property and contractors inspecting another.
Mark stopped at the property line. The deafening motors of lawn equipment roared nearby. There was no one watching, this was his last moment to back down and walk away. Mark had asked himself many times before this if he was crazy. He didn’t feel crazy. He tried to look at it from other points of view. Every time, he got to the same conclusion. There were conversations he had with himself at night. He had had them before, but there was no one left to bring him back now. Mark pulled the bandana from around his neck, over his face, Caesar crossing the Rubicon. He was up and over the fence in three steps.
Mark stayed away from the front door, which Ring camera owners seemed to think was the only point of access to their homes. They never considered an unlocked window with removable screen or, in this case, a side door with no deadbolt leading into the garage.
The garage was empty, Tesla somewhere in West Hollywood according to Mark’s last refresh. There was an expensive Schwinn against the wall and some unused camping equipment stacked in the corner. Nothing especially strange or bizarre. No tools. The door to the house was unlocked. Mark’s research told him there was no security system which was a little surprising but not really.
The house was attractive, but unpleasant. Only a few framed photographs, strategically placed, separated this place from being the soulless AirBnB it was meant to be. A childhood photo of the Showrunner with an old couple in a staged studio arrangement may as well have come with the house. A sofa that looked like it was filled with something soft and expensive. Mark continued through a kitchen that hummed silently, all kinds of expensive gadgets sitting unused. He thought of all the rotting produce inside the fridge.
Mark took out the gun tucked into his waistband. He didn’t expect to use it, but didn’t want to be without. He went through the house, praying that he would find some resolving piece of evidence that confirmed he was a madman. That this gnawing feeling inside his brain and gut were the result of some kind of imbalance and not a greater truth. Please, just to find something.
Mark continued through the house, down the hallway, checking doors. He found a guest bathroom, slightly used. Next to it was a locked door. He bumped his shoulder into it but it didn’t budge. He’d come back. Mark was patient continuing into the guest bedroom, not moving too fast, not letting the adrenaline take over the observation.
He was in a half-crouch, checking the sheets, when he heard the mechanical gate slide open.
Mark ducked down. Without touching the blinds, Mark peeked through a crack:
A dark minivan with a few dents pulled in.
Mark checked his phone, seeing the Showrunner’s Tesla somewhere in traffic on the 10, miles away. Was this a girlfriend? Mother? Boyfriend? Mark watched the minivan closely— for all he knew it could be the carpet cleaners. But there were no signs, no advertisements, just a white van pulling into the driveway like it belonged there.
The garage door, remotely opened, rumbled through the whole house. A young woman in a hoodie and sweatpants climbed out from behind the wheel. Mark waited to see if she was alone. She wasn’t as young as his Anna would’ve been, but not much older. Her hair was long, tied back. Probably mid-20s, not yet aging from a diet of vapes and caffeinated drinks. Mark saw a gun tucked into her leg holster.
What happened next, Mark didn’t think about either. He set up behind a half-open door, so she’d have to pass him as she came in the house. The front door opened and the Girl’s quick steps told Mark she knew where she was, this place as familiar as her own home. She moved on auto-pilot, toward the bathroom.
“Hands up!”
Mark didn’t expect the sound of his voice, as he stepped into view. His daughter always said he sounded like a cop when he was angry.
The Girl froze.
“Turn around.”
She turned around slowly, seeming to feel Mark’s pistol pointed at her, like she was used to anticipating deadly violence. Mark looked fully into her face. She stared back flatly, looking at the gun and past it, uncaring, at Mark’s identity. Her skin was rough, pock-marked.
Surprising both of them, she reached down, probably much slower than she had hoped, the pistol in her leg holster so far away. Mark squeezed his trigger, twice in total. She died quietly, like there was some kind of dignity or peace to be found in not struggling.
The gate outside had finished sliding shut as Mark stepped over the Girl and went to the van. No one had come out with the girl, but Mark felt like there was something waiting for him inside The key was beeping in the steering column, so Mark took it out and used it to open the locked, black-windowed back door.
Inside, Mark was met with two young Asian girls inside metal-barred cages. The girls stared at him, vacant faces, not responding to any of his soft-spoken questions. Mark fumbled with the keys in his hand, needing to find the right one, impossible to stop tears building from the fear of what he was confronted with.
Mark helped the girls crawl out, shushing them even though they weren’t making any sounds, telling them they were okay now. They stood there, not speaking, while Mark wept on the pebble-lined driveway.
No one monitored the cameras at the Santa Monica police station.
There were several video domes, tiny and foreboding, up and down the street, but when Mark pulled around in the same minivan that he emptied an hour ago to drop off the girls, there was no rush to arrest him. He nudged the girls out the passenger door, each holding a piece of paper saying, “HELP ME.”
Mark had wanted to walk the girls into the station, find the desk sergeant, make sure they got the attention they needed. But he couldn’t be sure the Showrunner would be properly implicated, that it wouldn’t just keep happening. He was running out of time.
Mark checked his mirrors for several blocks, preparing for police cars to whip around the corner, lights on, but they never did. Mark wanted some kind of proof of justice all the way until he pulled into an alley in Venice and lit the minivan on fire. He jogged a few blocks along the beach, occasionally diverting into neighborhoods, finally hearing distant sirens after about twenty minutes.
Mark was out of breath when he made it back to the Showrunner’s House.
He checked his phone and saw the Showrunner’s Tesla twenty minutes away. Mark moved the Girl’s body out of sight, but he worried if there were some unknown signs the delivery had gone awry. He’d just have to risk it.
Mark waited in the hallway next to the door for what felt like hours. He needed to make sure the Showrunner was alone coming in, wasn’t FaceTiming someone. Mark heard the gate slide open, and the garage open and close.
From his vantage, Mark saw the Showrunner, alone, dump his keys and phone on the counter. A resigned sigh of the sterilized air. Ideal setup. In a few steps, Mark was on him. Mark moved fast, but he knew the Showrunner was an Ivy Leaguer, had no muscle memory to draw from. Mark threw him to the ground. He was like a foam doll, how much his resistance meant. Mark zip-tied the Showrunner’s hands and feet together, ignoring any whimpering with heavy duct tape across the mouth, careful to leave tiny gaps for the nose.
Mark dragged the Showrunner down a carpeted hallway.
“Which one’s yours?” Mark’s question surprised the Showrunner, asked while Mark stopped at doors, kicking them in. The Showrunner tried to crawl away, but mostly stumbled over his own feet, falling into the wall. Mark pulled him back and kicked him in the knee. He screamed through the tape; he wasn’t going anywhere.
Mark stopped in the bathroom and submerged the Showrunner’s cell phone in the toilet tank. What missed plans had already tipped off friends something might be wrong? What assistants were sending worried messages or emails?
At the end of the hall, the last door Mark opened was the Master Bedroom. A window, covered with blackout curtains, hid the large room in darkness. Stacks of books took claim over parts of the floor and filled a lounge chair. Messy sheets on some kind of water-cooled mattress.
Mark looked in the attached bathroom, where he tied the Showrunner with thick cord to the walk-in shower. He weakly struggled and now smelled like urine. Mark pummeled the Showrunner for a while, far beyond what might be fair to a handcuffed human, but when Mark was out of breath and his arms were on fire and this man whose tape had come off was begging to God for relief, Mark thought of his daughter and got more tape.
Mark checked the bedroom. He threw off everything from the bookshelves along the wall, rows of important books propped up next to ornate, metal awards. Mark heard thumping from the tub. That was fine. Silence would be the giveaway of something wrong, not to be expected until the Showrunner’s strength broke in around twenty minutes. That’s when Mark would go back in on him again.
Mark tore the rest of the bedroom apart. No surface, crevice, or pillow was too sacred to not get ripped open. He pulled the soft, silk sheets to tatters, as if what he was looking for could hide in 600-thread count. Then he found it.
There was a metal safe, hidden at the bottom of the closet, Mark only saw it because the light happened to catch a cut in the carpet. He pulled back a flap to reveal a keypad. Whatever was inside here, the Showrunner did not want to be seen, carved into the cement foundation.
Mark didn’t waste any time. He went to his truck, where he had a thermal lance under blankets in the back. Mark went back in the house, hearing the Showrunner struggle.
He went to the bathroom, to the tub where the Showrunner was tied. Mark leaned down close, and explained he was going to get the safe open and show the whole world what was inside.
To see the fear in the Showrunner’s eyes, the instant animal reaction, you’d think he didn’t have several broken bones. Even though he was tied up, he threw his entire body at Mark, crazed, deranged, simultaneously pleading through his tape.
It took six hours to open the safe. When the metal door finally gave way, Mark killed the torch and looked inside. First, there was money. Tidy stacks, tens of thousands. Mark ignored that.
Then, a small stack of papers, they looked legal. Beneath them, Mark found a keyring. He pocketed it.
Then, Mark found a USB drive. He didn’t touch that. And beside it was a stack of disposable Polaroids.
Mark only saw the one on top. A young girl staring at the camera, in a sari, sitting on the ground. Mark felt a shiver go up his spine.
Mark went to the bathroom and used as many parts of himself—impulsively swinging knees and elbows—to inflict damage to the Showrunner’s already dead body. Mark didn’t know when exactly he had died. It must’ve been recently; the body was still warm. Mark had foolishly expected the interaction to end on his terms, even if those were uncertain to him. The Showrunner had, in his own cowardly way, escaped.
Mark felt exhausted.
He didn’t want to run, there was never any point to running. So, he called 911. The squad car was there in twenty minutes. Two officers, guns drawn, found Mark on his knees, hands in the air, house behind him with the door open for all to see inside.
The trial was part of the national consciousness.
“Revenge Dad”
The YouTubers covered it, every major news network mentioned it. They made comparisons to movies and TV shows. They even made memes. A picture of Mark, in his suit, next to his lawyer, started circulating. Mark wondered if the emotional callousness covered the issues at hand. Viewership of the Show actually increased for a short time.
When the trial started, social media went crazy. Mark only saw brief glimpses, he neither knew nor cared if he was getting fair coverage.
Mark was held downtown in LA County Jail. His story spread through the cell block, people came up to confirm, and after they did, they gave him as much of a wide berth as you can get in overcrowded conditions; a form of respect. They didn’t make any comparisons to movie or TV stars, they just told Mark he was a good dad.
The Judge was an old goat. He put away a string of mafia bosses in the 90s, then cartel kingpins in the 2000s, using his judges’ natural solipsistic attitude to be a paragon of justice. He never married, saying he didn’t want to jeopardize someone else with his decisions. The Prosecutor had years of experience, but was under fire in the media for not recusing himself after it was previously discovered he received a donation from the Showrunner’s Dad for his failed State Rep campaign.
The shame didn’t stop the Showrunner’s Dad from showing up at the trial almost daily, trying to maintain some sort of victim narrative. Public opinion was that every day he was there he was tarnishing his reputation. He was conveniently absent the day evidence of the caged girls was introduced.
CourtTV reporters said it might be surprisingly hard to convict Mark. They mentioned the fact that he had tools in advance, and how dropping the girls off worked for him as much as against him.
“He returned to the house,” the Prosecutor kept repeating, driving the point home for the jury.
“He had this all planned.”
Mark’s attorney suggested Mark testify, but he refused. He had no reason to take the stand. Anything he said would be used against him, he knew that much. Mark’s attorney asked Mark what he thought about having the two Asian girls he saved testify for him. The look Mark gave him meant he didn’t bring it up again.
The deliberation was brief. Guilty. One count of kidnapping, one count of third-degree murder. The Showrunner’s director father clapped in a room of otherwise stunned defeat.
During sentencing, there was some social media movements in corners of the internet. #FreeMark #Justice4Mark. There were no tears spilled for dead nepo babies. The entire thing took a life of its own, there were talks about a TV adaptation. It was unclear if any lessons were learned. But Mark didn’t see himself as a cause, or a martyr, he didn’t really think about himself much at all.
At the moment, Mark was in a prison bus, doing math. He was figuring how many years would be added to his sentence. He had done his research: he was going to the same prison that held the dealer who sold his daughter the fentanyl. Next stop, Victorville.