Murder! (this story has nothing to do with volcanos)
It was two o'clock in the morning again. Same bright lights, same crappy music, same aisle upon aisle of consumer goodness.
They stay open all night, in case people get hungry and get sick of take-out. Even Pizza Pizza closes. Not the grocery store. At 2am the all-night grocery stores are the hungry man's friend.
But I wasn't hungry for anything they were selling- I was looking for someone to murder.
It was just an experiment, really. I've never killed anyone before- but I was walking the other day and just happened to be going the same way as a woman and her child. Normally I would pass them by and continue on my way, but I had just been reading a book about serial killers, and I was in the mood for a stalk. I followed them all the way to their apartment. She kept looking back at me like I was going to rape her the whole time. It kind of offended me. She didn't know I was thinking about murdering her; she was passing a superficial judgement. Thou shalt not judge. Something like that. I bet a religious serial killer would've done her and her stupid kid, and then quoted something like that. Something biblical.
I'm not religious. Just a product of a godless multinational corporate economy. A society in which we're taught we are special and unique, only to leave school and find out that we're all the same, we just see things differently. Like billions of processors with slightly different results, because the data differs geologically. Like a big fucking computer, with a bunch of programs running into each other and crashing. A computer infected with a VIRUS, that is slowly eating away at all the hardware, and killing the mainframe.
To me, it's scientific. Murder is the anti-virus. Bush did it in Iraq. He saw a virus and wiped it out. He doesn't understand he's a virus himself, though. Hopefully some day, some other virus wipes him out.
If every single person on the planet murdered ONE person in their lives, we'd be extinct; the virus would be gone. But not everybody has what it takes. You have to be a very powerful person to be able to get some real kills- really hurt the viruses- but every little bit counts.
I've settled on just one. Just one kill. To say I did it. To understand what it's like. To understand why. After this, I'll travel abroad and settle in some remote part of the globe. But before I reboot my life, I've got the crash this one. So I'll become a murderer, for one night. I'll murder a stranger, to murder my life as I know it.
I'm in the bread section. I'm looking at a croissant. She brushed past my back and I turned my head. It was her- I knew it was her. She had long dark blonde hair, lips that pouted, and a sporty trench coat around a lovely figure... but her eyes... They were glazed over with that sheepish indifference of the North American Worker Bees. She wasn't aware of the world- of the virus- of reality. I knew it was her. It had to be her.
She makes a go for the cash-out, and I slowly follow. I quickly grab a can of peas off the shelf and stand behind her in line. She stares ahead rigidly, nervously. I wonder if perhaps I emit some sort of repellant which creeps out women. They always seem to know when I'm up to no good. She turns her head to look at the magazines. They're not sure who's baby it is, and Burt Reynolds was caught naked in a sheep pen. All lies, of course. All fuelled by money. Unlike me. I'm fuelled by passion.
I look at what groceries she's gotten: Loaf of bread, one litre of milk, plastic bag with a celerey stalk, another plastic bag with 5 golden delicious apples, some diet cream cheese, and some crackers. How dull. The cashier, a tall and lanky woman with a crooked eye and toothy smile, began scanning her groceries. A tasteless and routine interaction between two viral programs. Beep, scan, move on. My victim trots towards the doors. I hand the can of peas to the cashier and tell her they've gone bad.
She heads down the side of the store and I walk quick, to gain pace. Timing is everything- there's an alley up ahead... I reach in my jacket pocket, to make sure my weapon is still there. It is. I had decided on efficiency and gone with a switchblade. My plan was to come from behind and slit the juggular, making sure to sever the vocal chords. I learnt that from 24.
I closed the gap- she's only a few paces away. A rush of blood surges into my head, and my hands begin to quiver. It's getting hard to walk- my knees are giving out. I fiddle with the blade in my pocket and quickly scan the mostly empty street one last time...
Out of nowhere, the streets light up. Everything is orange. What's going on? The ground shakes and the pressure in the air drops. My victim falls; I peer into the distance. The horizon in on fire- a mushroom cloud is growing. A warm wind begins to wash over my face. We've been nuked.
Someone beat me to the punch.
Who? Does it matter? Really, no. Especially not when you're NEAR the bomb.
I knew it was only a matter of minutes until the shockwave would hit, so I pulled my switchblade and jumped on top of the girl, slashing at any exposed skin. She screamed, but was too in shock to put up a real fight. I couldn't get to her throat, so I never did sever her vocal chords. She screamed and screamed, and I kept hacking until we got hit by the radioactive blast, and then everything went away.
There's no heaven or hell. There's no coming back, once you've been deleted, but if you don't delete the viruses, the system crashes. We all get deleted eventually.
*Note: This is a short horror story in character form. I don't actually think like this!
They stay open all night, in case people get hungry and get sick of take-out. Even Pizza Pizza closes. Not the grocery store. At 2am the all-night grocery stores are the hungry man's friend.
But I wasn't hungry for anything they were selling- I was looking for someone to murder.
It was just an experiment, really. I've never killed anyone before- but I was walking the other day and just happened to be going the same way as a woman and her child. Normally I would pass them by and continue on my way, but I had just been reading a book about serial killers, and I was in the mood for a stalk. I followed them all the way to their apartment. She kept looking back at me like I was going to rape her the whole time. It kind of offended me. She didn't know I was thinking about murdering her; she was passing a superficial judgement. Thou shalt not judge. Something like that. I bet a religious serial killer would've done her and her stupid kid, and then quoted something like that. Something biblical.
I'm not religious. Just a product of a godless multinational corporate economy. A society in which we're taught we are special and unique, only to leave school and find out that we're all the same, we just see things differently. Like billions of processors with slightly different results, because the data differs geologically. Like a big fucking computer, with a bunch of programs running into each other and crashing. A computer infected with a VIRUS, that is slowly eating away at all the hardware, and killing the mainframe.
To me, it's scientific. Murder is the anti-virus. Bush did it in Iraq. He saw a virus and wiped it out. He doesn't understand he's a virus himself, though. Hopefully some day, some other virus wipes him out.
If every single person on the planet murdered ONE person in their lives, we'd be extinct; the virus would be gone. But not everybody has what it takes. You have to be a very powerful person to be able to get some real kills- really hurt the viruses- but every little bit counts.
I've settled on just one. Just one kill. To say I did it. To understand what it's like. To understand why. After this, I'll travel abroad and settle in some remote part of the globe. But before I reboot my life, I've got the crash this one. So I'll become a murderer, for one night. I'll murder a stranger, to murder my life as I know it.
I'm in the bread section. I'm looking at a croissant. She brushed past my back and I turned my head. It was her- I knew it was her. She had long dark blonde hair, lips that pouted, and a sporty trench coat around a lovely figure... but her eyes... They were glazed over with that sheepish indifference of the North American Worker Bees. She wasn't aware of the world- of the virus- of reality. I knew it was her. It had to be her.
She makes a go for the cash-out, and I slowly follow. I quickly grab a can of peas off the shelf and stand behind her in line. She stares ahead rigidly, nervously. I wonder if perhaps I emit some sort of repellant which creeps out women. They always seem to know when I'm up to no good. She turns her head to look at the magazines. They're not sure who's baby it is, and Burt Reynolds was caught naked in a sheep pen. All lies, of course. All fuelled by money. Unlike me. I'm fuelled by passion.
I look at what groceries she's gotten: Loaf of bread, one litre of milk, plastic bag with a celerey stalk, another plastic bag with 5 golden delicious apples, some diet cream cheese, and some crackers. How dull. The cashier, a tall and lanky woman with a crooked eye and toothy smile, began scanning her groceries. A tasteless and routine interaction between two viral programs. Beep, scan, move on. My victim trots towards the doors. I hand the can of peas to the cashier and tell her they've gone bad.
She heads down the side of the store and I walk quick, to gain pace. Timing is everything- there's an alley up ahead... I reach in my jacket pocket, to make sure my weapon is still there. It is. I had decided on efficiency and gone with a switchblade. My plan was to come from behind and slit the juggular, making sure to sever the vocal chords. I learnt that from 24.
I closed the gap- she's only a few paces away. A rush of blood surges into my head, and my hands begin to quiver. It's getting hard to walk- my knees are giving out. I fiddle with the blade in my pocket and quickly scan the mostly empty street one last time...
Out of nowhere, the streets light up. Everything is orange. What's going on? The ground shakes and the pressure in the air drops. My victim falls; I peer into the distance. The horizon in on fire- a mushroom cloud is growing. A warm wind begins to wash over my face. We've been nuked.
Someone beat me to the punch.
Who? Does it matter? Really, no. Especially not when you're NEAR the bomb.
I knew it was only a matter of minutes until the shockwave would hit, so I pulled my switchblade and jumped on top of the girl, slashing at any exposed skin. She screamed, but was too in shock to put up a real fight. I couldn't get to her throat, so I never did sever her vocal chords. She screamed and screamed, and I kept hacking until we got hit by the radioactive blast, and then everything went away.
There's no heaven or hell. There's no coming back, once you've been deleted, but if you don't delete the viruses, the system crashes. We all get deleted eventually.
*Note: This is a short horror story in character form. I don't actually think like this!