It is absolutely frightening to know that so many of my favourite heinous villains described in literature, have their equally shocking counterparts liberally scattered across the annals of our world’s history… And boy, have these fictitious nasty-pieces-of-work contributed to the richness and depth of writing within so many stories spanning the centuries.
The Rosario
Let’s take a peek at a few of my favourite ghastly villains – of both sexes – that exude overbearing power, are completely twisted human beings, and when they are sparring with their nemesis or some poor individual, they contribute enormously to the strength of a story and the satisfaction and enjoyment of a reader. Their characters may be depraved, cruel, petrifying, scary, or shocking, but they may also have a slice of disturbing high intelligence, lucidity or suave politeness and civility, which can add to the total unnerving of their victims and add greatly to a story’s intensity.
To begin my brief encounter with evil, let’s start with Cathy Ames from East of Eden. The writer, Steinbeck, typifies her in his book as a “psychic monster” in possession of a “malformed soul”; what a great collection of words to describe a character that has a thin, but convincing coating of beauty, delicacy and charm, before dropping to the bottom of depravity as she motors through the chapters manipulating and destroying people – she kills her parents and poisons and eventually murders Faye, a whorehouse madam. She even tries to use a knitting needle on herself to perform an abortion.
A charming personality…
Now, my second delightful lady – created by Stephen King – Annie Wilkes formerly a nurse, who after rescuing writer Paul Sheldon from a car accident, doesn’t take him to hospital even though he has two broken legs. She adores his romance novels and “keeps” him at her house, being his “number one fan”, and eventually confesses love for him. However, because she is livid that he’d killed off her favourite character, Misery, she inflicts cruel mind and physical abuse on Sheldon. Knowing Annie is totally unhinged and mentally up the creek, he furtively discovers she is a pretty good serial killer, having polished off her neighbours, her father, a hitchhiker and a student. She continued her killing spree with a couple of hospital patients, plus eleven young children.
Unfortunately for Sheldon, Annie discovers that he has found out about her misdemeanours and punishes him by breaking his ankles with a sledgehammer. Then, if that wasn’t sufficient pain to satisfy her thirst for revenge, she severs a foot with an axe and stops it bleeding with a blowtorch. Her murderous finale is to slay a state trooper thrusting a wooden cross into him, and for good luck, cutting him to shreds with a lawnmower.
Obviously, this is a delightful nurse to avoid…
Finally, I must include into this short encounter with evil, the shameful, unbalanced and cold-hearted villain of my new contemporary mystery thriller novel “The Rosario” – the intelligent, upper-middleclass and suave Englishman, Xavier Nathanial Sinclair. He is an unhinged character, whose behaviour is psychotic in the extreme. The 59-year-old dresses in a sophisticated wardrobe of expensive European clothes and can play being civil and charming to whoever he chooses to display his best behaviour. However, underneath his shallow coating of civility, he is absolutely obnoxious, continually rude, openly racist, a fully-paid-up sexist, a dangerous sexual predator, and quite happy to cause extreme pain to people that cross him. His main occupation is being an illegal arms dealer, with absolutely no conscience about how he is destroying innocent peoples’ lives and the peace of countries. His ‘hobby’ is amassing artefacts connected with the Tudor times, and he will scour the world to satisfy his pathological desire, even if it means stealing, torturing, kidnapping or murdering innocent people along the way.
There we are – a short visit to evil… but remember this… villains in fiction have their counterparts walking amongst us!
The Rosario by Peter Sissons is available now. www.petersissonsauthor.com