“Thanks for agreeing to come over,” Kelly Oubre said as he led James Harden through the entryway of his modest Phoenix apartment. “I know we’re enemies on the court, but I hope we can be friends off it.”
“Your business plan intrigues me,” James said. “The money I couldn’t care less about. But more exposure for my brand is always a good thing.”
Kelly smiled, and while the smile seemed friendly on the outside, there was something sinister about it as well. A voice inside his brain was murmuring unintelligible things. “I’m glad we see eye-to-eye. Let me show you my studio.”
Kelly had approached James after the game with a proposal: James would appear on Kelly’s fledgling You-Tube channel, called Wave Papi’s Man-Overs. The combination of expert hair-styling and fashion tips from Kelly and the NBA superstardom of James would doubtlessly create a viral hit that would become the gold standard in male-oriented personal care videos on YouTube. Kelly would rake in the advertising dollars while James would reach an entirely new demographic of young adult males interested in style but not necessarily interested in sports.
“Nice cameras,” James entered as they walked into the home office that had been converted into a production studio.
“Yeah, I just splurged on new equipment,” Kelly said. “No more shooting video on my phone.” He led James to a chair that was situated in front of the cameras, motioning him to sit down. Kelly sat down in a nearby chair that was also on-camera. “We’ll just start by interviewing you about your beard and your current beard-care tips, and then after that I’ll trim it up a little bit.”
James looked slightly shocked at the announcement of this plan. “You ain’t touching my beard.”
“Just a little, I promise,” Kelly reassured his fellow NBA player. “Trust me, I know how much image matters to today’s crop of NBA fans. I’m Wave Papi, remember? We might be on different teams in real life, but in this room, we’re on the same team.” That dark voice in his mind was still whispering things that didn’t quite fully break through into his consciousness.
Kelly’s words seemed to relax James. “Alright. I trust you. But just a little bit.”
The interview went well, with some lighthearted banter between the two men. When Kelly got out a small pair of scissors, James tensed up a little bit, then remembered Kelly’s reassurances.
“Hang on, I’ve got a spritz bottle in the kitchen to help tame that thing,” Kelly joked as he got up. He walked into his kitchen and grabbed the small bottle of water off the counter, but as he did so, he noticed something strange: a sledgehammer leaning against the refrigerator. He was sure that he didn’t own a sledgehammer. Had James brought it in? No, he would have noticed if his visitor had been carrying something like that.
“You could kill him now…it would be so easy…” the voice in Kelly’s mind said. In a trance, Kelly walked over to the weapon and picked it up in his hand. It had a nice weight to it. It felt…right.
“Kill him…kill him…” the voice continued.
Forgetting all about the bottle of spritzer, Kelly took the hammer’s handle in both hands and walked silently back to the studio. James was facing away from the door, looking at something on his phone.
Kelly’s vision momentarily blacked out when the next command came at him with such force that it blocked out every other thought in his head. “NOW! DO IT NOW!!!!”
Without pausing to reconsider, Kelly swung the weapon directly at the side of James’ head. One hit was all it took. As James lay there, bloody and unmoving, Kelly’s vision turned inward. There was nothing but a spreading blackness there, a kind of soul-rot corrupting his inner self. Hideous laughter that was not his own filled his ears.