Stranded starfish have no place to hide Still waiting for the swollen Easter tide There's no point in direction We cannot even choose a side. - Peter Gabriel, "Here Comes the Flood" It was a lovely April day, and I had just finished a great night's sleep after drowning an autistic kid in the creek just back of his house. About the time his eyes were rolling up into his head, I pulled his head back and told him I'd let him go if he could name one, just ONE, of the Wonders of the Ancient World. He didn't surprise me. They never do. As I took my morning constitutional through the city streets, I passed a Down's Syndrome teenager ambling to God Knows Where. I casually thumbed a tab out of my shirt pocket, broke it, and held it under his nose as I walked by. He crumbled a couple of steps later. Cyanide. Great for those spur-of-the-moment killings. No one stopped me. No one noticed me. They never do. My name's Bob. I'm a vigilante. I kill retards. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Other vigilantes go after gangs. I kill retards. Others of my kind crack down on drugs or pimping. I kill retards. Some crusaders take on organized crime, dirty politics, or falsified nutritional labeling. I kill retards. A few individuals I know of go after televangelist. I kill retards. ----------------------------------------------------------------- My first target today was the First Presbyterian Church Van. Brake job. The First Prezzers were making a run today to take a bunch of Spina Bifida kids to some kinda camp. I knew the route. The one big downhill ran past the old rock quarry. I rigged the brakes so they'd go out after five or six seconds of sustained pressure, which should do it. Even if Joe Samaritan pumped the brakes a million times on his route, he wouldn't have to really lean on them hard and long until he was where I wanted him to be. I know some of you are gonna try and tell me that the Bifida kids ain't retards; that they just have some kinda back problem. Save it. I've seen 'em. Retards. ------------------------------------------------------------------ My first kill was in High School. Stevie Moore was the biggest kid in the 10th grade. He was also a retard. I don't know what kind - this was before I payed attention. All I knew was he was damned annoying. We walked home the same way, and he was always trying to talk to me. No matter what I said back, he'd say "Whuttya mean by that?". Not so bad, huh? Try it every single damn schoolday of every single damn year. Try it three hundred times. We were cutting through the woods off Rose street when he said it for the tenth time that trip and I finally had to off and hit him. Pam! Square in the face. It felt so good, I did it again. And again. Then he fell down, so it only seemed natural to start kicking him. I guess I worked his head over too hard because he kinda stopped breathing. I washed my hands and boots with the hose behind my house, and went in to watch Gilligan's Island. They found Stevie a couple days later. Cops asked me about it, and I told him I had seen him wandering over that way after school. Stevie was always wandering somewhere. They didn't suspect me or anything. They never do. At school, a couple of the All-State pantywaist team said how awful it was, and a few girls cried. Most of the school didn't seem to care, and a few guys said that at least his parents didn't have the burden any longer. Everyone seemed pretty cool with the idea of Stevie being gone for good. It made me start thinking... ------------------------------------------------------------------ I cleaned up at a gas station after my work on the van and took a taxi to the Denny's near United Cerebral Palsy. I walked over to UCP, keeping an eye out for any retards I might ice on my way over. You never know when you might get lucky. I cut through the storage facility on the other side of the center, and found a good hiding spot near some picnic tables. Sure enough, sooner or later a group came out that way. A couple of adults (they always need someone to help the REAL gimps) and about a half dozen kids. I call 'em kids, they were anywhere from 8 to 18. They all had that same duller-than-Goober-Pyle look on their faces, though. You can't tell me a kid with CP ain't a retard. I've looked in their eyes. Retard. I pulled out my silenced .38 and took out the two attendants. I hate to do that sometimes, but hell, these feebs were wasting their lives anyway. As I walked over, one of the kids starting screaming in some kinda language without consonants so I had to put a bullet in her throat. My piece coughed a little when I did her. I was gonna need a new silencer after this. I strolled up to the group. I casually said "Hello, I'm Bob. I kill retards. I'm going to start snapping necks now, but if anyone can tell give me a SINGLE quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes before I get to them, they get to live". I then took each bobbing head into my my arms, looked into their eyes, and twisted. The fat one took three tries. One of the kids started drooling something at me as a grabbed him, and I think I even made out a mangling of the word "justice". Not good enough, retard. Better luck next life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Why do I do it? Why do you ask, and what gives you the right? You think you work your 40 hours a week and pay your taxes and maybe once a month give some homeless bum a buck and that you're doing your part. Wrong. You're the reason evil flourishes. You're the reason this country is decaying. It's not enough to keep to yourself and stay out of trouble and give $25 once a year for some pitiful food basket. You have to make a difference, or you are part of the problem. Even though I have no cause to reason with you, even though I don't answer to you in the slightest, I'll tell you why. I could go for the gang bangers or the muggers, but their world is built on violence and more violence only makes a circular situation. And sometimes those kids go straight. But a retard ain't gonna suddenly learn to recite Shakespeare or play Chopin on the piano. A retard is a retard. Retards are the casualties of genetic warfare. Not some sick radiation or mutagen thing, just good old randomness. In war, if you wound an enemy, you do better than if you kill them. Somebody has to drag a wounded grunt out of the mud, and them someone has to take care of him. Same thing with retards. They're a drain on society, and they destroy the lives of their parents. When I wipe one out, I not only free them from their miserable existence, I take a tremendous burden off of their unlucky caretakers. I very rarely get thanked for this. Virtue is its own reward. --------------------------------------------------------------------- I stripped off my overcoat and gloves and dumped them in a Salvation Army bin. It was getting on in the afternoon, so I took a bus out to the park and hiked out to a spot where I could look into the quarry. An hour and a half later the van I was waiting for came careening around the curve, doing 80 easy. I zoomed in with my binoculars. The van held, held, barely held the curve and straightened out. I probably imagined this, but I swear I could see the driver's face as he frantically pumped the brakes, and then saw the big yellow curved arrow with the "20 M.P.H." on the sign ahead. He tried to slide outside on the curve and whip the van around, but it just wasn't going to happen. The van shot off the road and into the air above the quarry like a line-drive leaving a baseball bat. It dropped a lot quicker, though. The van dropped out of sight, but I heard the crash. It didn't explode. They never do. That's Hollywood stuff. I made my way down to the site, another innocent and interested bypasser trying to help. I and a few other kindred souls made our way to the wreckage and looked for survivors. There weren't any. One or two of the kids were still moving, and I felt bad about that. If there hadn't been others around I would have freed them from their broken bodies. No one should die in such pain. Still, the sight of the dozen or so children who would no longer cruelly suck away their parents' lives, who would no longer suck on the teat of our goodwill, made my eyes fill up. I crouched amongst the rocks and wept for joy. I am sure those nearby mistook this for sorrow, but there really was no way to explain. I left before the police got there. No one paid much attention, and no one thought to make any note of my appearance or dissapearance. They never do. --------------------------------------------------------------------- I robbed a liquor store that night. I hated to do it, especially when the owner tried to pull a sawed-off on me and I had to pop one of his kneecaps to focus his attention. After I got the money I fed him a couple of his own shells to ease his suffering. I don't mind it when people try to be Heroes. Just don't do it on my watch. I realize I am, in my own way, a leech. Still, I must support the good work I do, and the nature of my service to society precludes taking a steady job or obtaining other gainful employment. I am certain if I could explain to the world what it is I do, there would be more than enough benefactors to support me and a hundred other workers like me. Unfortunately, our laws are designed to protect the weak and stupid, to prevent the wolves from thinning out the herd and keeping our lines strong. I can still hope that someday, we will pass beyond this understanding and my kind of justice will be lauded, even rewarded. I can always dream. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ordinarily I would escape the pressure of my work with a bottle of 151 lifted from said liquor store. However, I had to work overtime tonight, to acheive a grand goal. Stephen Hawking, the most famous retard and the biggest fraud I knew of, was giving a speech at State the next night, and I knew where he was staying. I went to the hotel and paid cash for a room after a little business in the parking lot. I slept the sleep of the just until 3 am. I asked for the non-smoking floor, knowing that's where Stevie boy would be. I brought a briefcase and duffel bag to my room with me. It wouldn't cause a fuss. The clerk wouldn't suspect. They never do. It was the work of a few seconds to use the pick-gun to pop the door. Some hotels were using those new plastic card-keys. Not this one. I eased the door open and snuck in. I can be as quiet as a panther when I need to be. Chloroform took care of sleeping beauty and his assistant, then I went to work on the wheelchair. It took over an hour...I was slowing down, I guess. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, I know Hawking's got like some big chair at some Ivy League place, and he's written like a jillion papers and a dozen books. Yeah, right. I suppose you think that jarhead shot Kennedy, too. Look at the guy. Retard city. If there was a bigger one I've never seen it. I'd like to find the guy who ghost writes his books and programs that Speak 'n Spell thingie for him, and see how much pain it would take to convince his brain that life wasn't worth the hassle, but Mr. H. would have to suffice. There's nothing I hate more than a poser. This would be a sweet one. I get so sick of hearing how some of these retards are smarted than Albert frickin' Einstein, only their muscles are all screwed up or something. Pull the other one. I'm not rocket scientist, but I know retard when I see it, and Hawking was Public Retard Number One. At least until tomorrow, anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't waste any time. I watched from my room as Hawking moved his little motorized chair to his van. I took over the controls as his assistant went into the van to lower whatever stupid elevator thingie got the crip on board. It's amazing how fast you can move 180 pounds of steel and retard (mostly steel, the retard didn't weight much) if you're willing to gear up and burn out the batteries. I ran Hawking down the parking lot and out of sight before you could say Jiminy Cricket. His assistant started to run after the Wheeled Wonder, saw how fast he was rolling, and headed back to the van to try to cut him off at the pass. As soon as the retard-lover hit the driver's seat, I hit the activator on the shaped charge I'd planted there last night. It didn't make much noise. It didn't have to. I ran Mr. I'm-a-Nuclear-Genius up the sidewalk and to a walkway over the interstate. I love the way the government has provided wheelchair access to just about everything they own. I stopped the chair. No one about except a few kids on their way to school. No one wondered why some retard had run his chair up on the walkway and then appeared to have some kind of fit. They never do. This crap makes them too nervous and self-conscious. Does half my work for me. I hit the mike button. "Listen, Mr. Physics. I read your last book. Crap. I walk around some teeny eeny particle one way and it's one thing, then I walk around it another way and it's something else? I may not know a Hueyon from a Deweyon or a Louieon, but I know that's total crap. Your little party is over, you faker. But I'll give you one last chance. Tell me the square root of 17 or I'm gonna drop you into the morning traffic." Stevie starting hitting some buttons on his Speak 'n Spell. I took care of that. I hit a button. It shot sparks and died. "No fair using your little calculator there. Let's have it.". He actually managed to say something, in a pathetic raspy voice "foo un too fi". "SPEAK UP, RETARD!", I screamed into the mike. Well, not TOO loud. No sense raising the suspicions of my neighbords. Amplification is a wonderful thing, though. "ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING!". The response came back "fow....poy....un....too....five". "WRONG!", I sent back with glee, "CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR, RETARD!". I slammed the joystick forward and Hawking shot off down the walkway. I whipped the stick around and he crashed into the chain links right at the spot I had marked with red paint. The links gave (well, I had cut most of them), and Captain Subatomic dropped like a neutron onto the freeway. He may have screamed, or maybe he was trying to rework the problem to see what digit he carried wrong. No matter. Twenty seconds later it looked like some teenager had driven their moped the wrong way down the expressway. You certainly couldn't tell there had been a wheelchair there, let alone one with all the whiz-kid crap Hawking's had. And even the boy himself looked the same as any normal human being, splattered over 100 yards of concrete, hood, and bumper. Dead men don't drool. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Go ahead, call me a monster. I know you want to. Sit there in your air-conditioned room and rave at my insanity before you toddle off to catch your two and a half hours of nightly TV time. Discuss my abberant behaviour with the toadies at the office water cooler. Mutter at your ten-dollar lunches what a sick person I am. I care not. At least I'm not a drone. At least I'm out there in the world, changing it, while you make your money and buy your stereos and magazine and new couches. Unlike you, I have chosen a path and I am running down it as fast as I can. I hold you poor smug souls in the same piteous and disgusted regard you hold me. Enjoy the view. So hate me. Vilify me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- And if you are a retard, fear me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." - S. J. Lec