I wrote this for an English class when I was in high school. It was before the Columbine school shooting and all of the other well-publicized school shootings. If I had written this and submitted it after Columbine I likely would have been flagged as a potential school shooter and hauled in by police or even the FBI. But, as I said, I wrote it before all that craziness. So ... what happened? I received an "A" for the paper and wound up with an "A" in the class. Apparently, my teacher focused more on the writing quality or narrative coherence than on content. It's not great, but for a high school student it's pretty good. Without further ado:
...
A man in a gray flannel suit walked up to an old woman in a red jumpsuit and laughed in her face. The old woman, startled, began to cry. The man in the suit pulled a switchblade from his pocket and stabbed the old woman. She grunted and slumped to the ground. Crowds walked by the two on the busy New York City street as if nothing had happened. The man in the gray flannel suit knelt next to the dying old woman and smiled kindly at her before slashing her throat with his knife.
The man in the suit, Bernie Snodgrass, picked up the dead woman and carried her to a nearby mailbox and stuffed her inside it. Bernie looked at the legs sticking out of the mailbox and laughed. Still, the crowds passed as if nothing had happened. Bernie shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
For Bernie this was not an unusual incident. For many years he had been killing people in his efforts to eliminate overpopulation in New York City.
As he continued walking down the street, a young hoodlum jumped out from an alley waving a small club at Bernie. He demanded money. Bernie gave him what little he had, although reluctantly. The young punk, dissatisfied with the amount, snarled at Bernie and swung his club. Bernie was hit in the midsection, doubled over, and then fell to his knees. The angry youth swung his club again and cracked the side of Bernie’s face, shattering his cheekbone and rendering him unconscious.
Bernie woke hours later. After several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to get to his feet. He slowly made his way to a nearby convenience store. He sought help from a young clerk. The clerk looked at Bernie without sympathy and told him to get out of the store. Bernie, in intense pain and barely thinking coherently, reacted with fury and lunged across the counter and cut the man’s face with his switchblade. The clerk stumbled backward and Bernie slithered over the counter wildly swinging his knife. He sliced the man’s chest and stomach. The clerk fell to the floor but tried to crawl away. Bernie jumped on top of him and stabbed him repeatedly in his upper back and neck until the life drained out of him.
The customers in the store all fled to the exit. Bernie picked himself off the floor, his pain returning now that his adrenaline was dropping. He saw a telephone on the counter and picked up the receiver. He slumped to the floor before he could dial. He laid on his back looking at the ceiling and soon blacked out.
Bernie woke up in a hospital bed. He couldn’t see out of one eye because it was bandaged. He felt pain in his face, but not as intense. He otherwise felt numb and figured he must have been given morphine. Bernie remembered he killed the clerk at the store. While he was happy he had taken another step in the fight against overpopulation, he realized he had to get out of the hospital. He felt sure that he would go to prison if he stayed. He tried to get up but was too weak.
A nurse and a police officer came into the room. The nurse checked Bernie’s vitals and said something to the policeman. The nurse left the room and the officer pulled up a chair next to Bernie’s bed. He asked Bernie if he could answer a few questions about what happened at the convenience store. Bernie drifted off shortly thereafter. The police officer left the room disgusted.
Bernie woke a few hours later. AA nurse came into his room with a tray of medicine and other items. She put them on a table next to the bed. Bernie saw a syringe and grabbed it. The nurse screamed. The police officer ran into the room and squeezed past the nurse to get at Bernie, not knowing he had a syringe in his hand. Bernie plunged the needle into the policeman’s neck and broke it off at the base. The officer stumbled backward, gasping and gurgling. He crashed to the floor and the nurse, panicked, cowered in a corner.
Bernie felt much better and got out of bed. He grabbed the policeman’s gun and ran out of the room toward an elevator. He went to the first floor lobby and ran out of the building in his hospital gown. He searched for a getaway car in the parking lot. He spotted a young couple getting out of a car. The man was helping his wife, who was pregnant, get out of the car. Bernie aimed the gun at the man’s head and told him to get away from the car.
The man, startled, instinctively covered his wife to protect her. Bernie, thinking the man may have been trying to get a gun, shot him in the head and killed him. The woman screamed as she cradled her husband’s lifeless body in her lap. Bernie pulled the man from her and grabbed her by the hair. He yanked her from the car and slammed her head into the hood. He repeated the action several times until she stopped screaming and slumped to the ground.
Bernie went back to the man and rummaged through his pockets for the car keys. Bernie heard sirens. He realized he was not going to be able to escape. He was filled with sadness and was on the brink of despair. He briefly thought of all his accomplishments. He knew there would be only one last person to kill in his quest to solve the overpopulation problem. Bernie opened his mouth, stuck the barrel of the gun inside, and pulled the trigger.
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