The Ballad of Black Tom

by Victor LaValle

good hustler isn’t curious. A good hustler only wants his pay.

Give people what they expect and you can take from them all that you need.

He had, in fact, expected to be paid to play for one evening because that’s exactly what the man promised three days earlier. But a wealthy man’s reality is remade at will.

Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.

comfort can be a cage,

What was indifference compared to malice?

“You want to see what more there is.” Malone nodded once, almost ashamed. “Yes, I do.” Robert Suydam sighed. “It is the way of men like us. We must know, even if it dooms us.”

“I bear a hell within me,” Black Tom growled. “And finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.” “You’re a monster, then,” Malone said. “I was made one.”

I’ll take Cthulhu over you devils any day.

there are questions you don’t ask if you want to avoid being pulled into a court case later.

“Every time I was around them, they acted like I was a monster. So I said goddamnit, I’ll be the worst monster you ever saw!”

“The seas will rise and our cities will be swallowed by the oceans,” Black Tom said. “The air will grow so hot we won’t be able to breathe. The world will be remade for Him, and His kind. That white man was afraid of indifference; well, now he’s going to find out what it’s like.

“I wish I’d been more like my father,” Black Tom said. “He didn’t have much, but he never lost his soul.”