THE ASSASSIN

I am a loner. When I was in grade school I had two or three friends that were quiet types like me. In high school kids got meaner. They disliked the way I avoided them, I guess. I was wary of them. They punched me, tried to knock me over just to show me how tough they were. Their toughness was a fraud because it was the group that gave them courage. On their own they would give me dirty looks but they avoided me. I was really good in mathematics which gave me the reputation of a nerd and isolated me to where I sat alone at a lunch table and read my i-phone to pretend that I liked being alone.

Over the years of sudden fear, anger bordering on hatred for those oafs, and certain times of feeling inferior, although I knew I was smarter really as I told myself repeatedly, I retreated into myself. Those boys who shouted at me, called me names, cuffed me when I wasn’t looking became a mob I despised. As I grew wiser in my late teens I saw the crowds at political rallies on television as a fiercer form of the mob of bullies who had tormented me and embarrassed me because I felt weak. Mindless is what I called them. Worshippers of foolish people whom they called leaders. All of them were a threat to reason.

To give me comfort, some sense of protecting myself and a feeling of strength, I borrowed my father’s rifle and joined the rifle club near my home town. I became a fairly good shot on the range. I used to picture one of my bullies, see his face and plug it with a bullet. After graduating from college, I took a job as dietician in a retirement home as a stop gap until I could figure out what I wanted in life. From the cleaners to the nursing aides and even the residents there were arguments over politics with a venom that disturbed me. I began watching political rallies of Republicans because that is what my father told me to vote for. I saw the man who social media on my i-phone called a ‘shit-disturber.” He looked like a giant reproduction of any one of the guys who loved to bully me. He boasted about how strong, how smart and how rich he was just like one of my tormentors. I hated the way he told his worshippers to beat up reporters and hecklers and belittled the disadvantaged and the poor with foul language that I recognized from my high school years. 

I had a course or two in political science so I knew when this buffoon was lying, which was most of the time, and how he fooled his listeners who swelled into millions and how he became president and acted like a mafia don. I was amazed how Republicans who had denounced him had converted to fervid supporters and sold their souls to this bully. And how they praised him after he led his mobs to attack the Capitol to kill the Congressmen. When he cursed the courts which tried to prosecute him for his crimes, and the corrupt judges he appointed made decisions that excused him for those crimes, and he declared he would become a dictator if elected and take violent revenge on his “enemies,” the honest men who had stood up to his bullying, I saw that his hold over the weak was becoming irreversible, dangerous to the country. It was as if the bullies I had known had taken control and were destroying the law, the constitution, everything good and fair. And no one was doing anything to stop him, except for a weak old man who lost his train of thought and embarrassed us as our president. He encouraged the genocide of Palestinians by murderers with the weapons he gave them. He was just a quieter side of the bully. 

On the rifle range I saw the bully’s face replacing the faces of bullies I had known. I swore to myself that if I ever had the chance to kill him I would, although that seemed unlikely. When I heard that the bully was holding a rally in Pennsylvania not far from where I lived, I had my chance. I could take my revenge on all those years of humiliation.

I scouted the surroundings to the bleachers on which the rally was to be held. I picked a spot on the roof of a building that was well within the distance to the bleacher that my rifle could shoot. I drove home to pick up my rifle and ammunition. I loved the feel of my rifle. I loved the strength it gave me. 

Thousands waited for my target. Some waved signs like silly geese. I walked around waiting for the time he was to speak. I carried my rifle as if I was part of the security. When I heard the cries and clapping from the crowds, I slipped along the side of the building I had chosen. I climbed to the roof. I was nervous but determined. No police seemed to notice me, at least not until the guys who had seen me began yelling to them. I sighted my rifle at the target trying to get a clear shot but other heads got in the way. A policeman was trying to hoist himself onto the roof when I pointed my rifle at him and he dropped down giving me a moment. I got off a few shots and saw that one at least hit the bully. Then the back of my head exploded.

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“Well, guys, what do you think? All but the last paragraph was found on the back seat of his car. Sergeant Quick added it, sort of to give it completion.” Chief Bulwer looked ruefully at his two subordinates.

“You read it pretty good,” Detective Orr smiled. “And the last bit showed real imagination but it has to be cut ‘cause it looks like we concocted the whole damn thing.”

“Cut the whole damn thing,” Sergeant Main growled. “The kid will look like a martyr when the real martyr is the wounded former president. The Secret Service is in enough trouble as it is.”

“You’re right. We’ll scrap it,” Chief Bulwer sighed with relief. “Besides Mr. Trump is going to be our next president and the public does not need all this stupid guff about him.”

Sergeant Main laughed. “That kid was one fucking weirdo if I ever saw one.”