Hello, fair reader.

I had been planning on writing a more light-hearted column than the past two. I figured that between kids getting shot dead next door to me, and the excruciating detail of the futility of my daily life, people might start to get tired of my "downer" columns. Most of the columns have been extremely cynical as of late, so it seemed to be time for something a little more light in tone, maybe even, dare I say it, inspirational.

But after what happened this week . . . FUCK THAT.

---

"I admire what you're doing . . . but fighting against these odds seems more like rage, not courage."

"It's well beyond rage!" -Robert the Bruce and William Wallace, Braveheart



Outside, the dry land burned. The rolling dunes and blowing sands scoured the land clean of life. But inside . . . that was a different story. Inside the two-story condominium, life went on in air-conditioned splendor.

Inside sitting before a huge television screen was a five-year-old boy, eyes wide with awe. For the umpteenth time, he watched the drama of galactic upheaval play itself out before his eager eyes . . . for the umpteenth time, Luke Skywalker braved the Imperial hordes and saved the day.

That night, when the air finally cooled enough to allow people to go outdoors, the young boy lay in the sand, looking up at the stars.

"I'll go there . . . someday . . ." he whispered to himself.

The dream began . . .



Eighteen years later

It had been a long, arduous fight, but finally, FINALLY, it was going to end. After all the setbacks, the missteps, and the disappointments, Kai's long awaited dream was finally going to begin. He was finally going to get to go to college.

So many things had gone wrong over the years. Five years ago, as a senior in high school, he hadn't even been able to afford the application fees for college, much less the actual tuition. So when the Navy recruiter started spouting off about "$30,000 for college, nuclear program, G.I. Bill, Navy College Fund," it had all sounded like such a good idea at the time.

What followed was three years, five months, and thirteen days of sheer agony. Kai knew the true nature of Hell . . . he had lived it.

But that's another story, for another time.

Earlier this year, Kai had finally been able to apply to college for the first time, sending in all the necessary files, letters, and test scores to the University of Washington. But bureaucracy in its purest form struck down his dream yet again when they informed him that he didn't have enough college credit to apply as a transfer student, and they reprocessed his application for entrance as a freshman . . . of course, they waited until May to do so.

The rejection letter he got in June was one of the biggest shocks of Kai's life.

August came, and Kai was living in an entirely different part of the country. This time he had the money and the means to go to college at Southern Illinois University. His application was accepted, and he was finally ready to renew his quest to achieve his dream.

Then Fate, the cruelest bitch of them all, dealt him a crushing blow yet again when Kai and Sabina's roommate moved out with only two weeks' notice. The money that Kai had been extraordinarily careful to set aside for college tuition now had to be used for rent money, electricity, and food. Once again, Kai's hopes remained unfulfilled.

But not this time. Everything was in order, no mistakes had been made, and no hand of Fate would stop him this time. Kai sealed the envelope and put his admissions package into the mailbox, feeling relief and self assurance, knowing that the long, long wait was finally over.

In only nine months, he would be attending the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. And three short years after that, he would finally have what he had spent the past decade preparing for: a bachelor's degree in Astrophysics.

Kai smiled to himself, and awaited the inevitable brightening of his future . . .



Two weeks later . . .

Sitting in front of the T.V., mindlessly playing out the digitized drama of Parasite Eve 2, Kai heard the lid of the mailbox drop outside. He got up, unlocked the door onto the cold, too bright afternoon, and investigated the contents of his mailbox.

Inside was a letter from the University of Illinois. Understandably curious, Kai immediately tore open the envelope and read the letter.

His eyes narrowed more and more with each and every word, and after finishing reading the letter, he immediately let out a window-shaking roar of frustrated rage.

"What is it?" Sabina asked him, concern evident on her face.

"Read it," Kai offered, thrusting the letter at her.

Sabina accepted the letter, reading it while Kai stormed through the house hurling screamed obscenities at the walls.

This is what the letter said:

Dear Kai,
We appreciate your interest in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; however, we do not accept fall transfer or readmission applications until February. It is not until late January that we know at which class levels the various programs can admit new students for the fall semester. It has been our experience that some programs do not have space to admit freshman or sophomore transfers.

We will hold your application until late January. If the program to which you applied is not open at your class level, you will be notified at that time. We advise you to wait until January 15 to request that official transcripts be sent from all schools attended; your admission evaluation must be based on transcripts which include grades from the current fall term.

Please feel free to contact members of our staff in the meantiime if we may be of assistance to you.

"God-fucking-dammit!" Kai bellowed. "I didn't fucking apply as a TRANSFER student! This is the same bullshit that went down earlier this year with fucking University of Washington! That's why I applied as a freshman this time. I'm not going through that shit again."

"Well," Sabina replied, "Just call them up and talk to them. Get it straightened out."

"I will," Kai growled. "I'm gonna do it right fucking NOW." He stormed off to the phone, tearing the receiver from the cradle and preparing to dial.

The small, tinny voice of logic intruded upon his raging, animalistic emotions just then, and he slammed the receiver back into the cradle. "FUCK! It's fucking SATURDAY! I've got to wait two days before I can fix this shit!"

"Calm down," Sabina soothed. "Just call them on Monday. I'm sure it'll be all right."

"Right," Kai intoned, not convinced at all. He could already feel his future falling out from under him yet again . . .



Monday

"All right," Kai muttered, exhaling in preparation. "Time to get this shit straightened out."

He strode to the phone with all the purpose of an executioner. Picking up the phone, he carefully dialed the endless stream of digits that would put him in touch with these people who were attempting to block his future.

The receiver picked up, and a machine voice began having a thoroughly one-sided conversation with him. Irritated, Kai pushed numbers until a human being began talking to him just long enough to say, "Please hold."

Kai stood in the kitchen, rocking back and forth in time to the Muzak rendition of a Huey Lewis and the News song, waiting . . . waiting . . .

Finally, Huey Lewis fucked off and the conversation began in earnest. Kai explained his situation to the woman on the other end of the phone. He told her the content of the letter. He told her that he was applying as a freshman, not as a transfer student, and he had indicated as much on his application.

And the grinding wheel of bureaucracy rolled over him yet again.

The woman told him that to be considered for freshman admission, an applicant could have no more than twelve hours of college credit. Kai had eighteen hours. BUT (and this is the REAL kick in the balls, ladies and gentlemen!) in order to be admitted as a transfer student, he had to have at least SIXTY hours of college credit.

The reality set in to Kai with all the grace of a sledgehammer blow to the sternum. "So, basically what you're saying is that I can't attend your college at all."

"Yes, that's about it," the woman replied.

Futility . . . pain . . . hatred . . . homicidal rage . . . ultimate sorrow . . . all these things and more set in upon Kai's soul.

"Let me talk to your supervisor," Kai moaned.

Huey Lewis returned in all his Muzak glory.

Another woman answered the phone, coincidentally enough the same woman who had sent Kai the letter that had started this whole thing. For the next half an hour, Kai fought a futile battle against this mindless, bureaucratic drone of a human being, whose slave-like devotion to inexplicably fucked up rules had doomed Kai to an eternity of unfulfilled dreams and dashed hopes.

At one point, nearly in tears, Kai screamed at her, "I don't CARE about my other college credits. IGNORE them if you want, all I want is to get into the damned college! I'll worry about whether or not the credits carry over LATER!"

"I can't do that," the woman replied emotionlessly.

His self control on the edge of disintegration, Kai pressed on even in the face of impossible odds. "You're telling me," he began, voice beginning to break, "that I can graduate in the top ten percent of my class, go to college full time my senior year of high school and carry a 3.5 grade point average, get a 750 verbal and 640 math score on the SAT, serve my country for almost three and a half years as a technician for a NUCLEAR REACTOR, be a military veteran and a resident of this state, and STILL NOT GET INTO COLLEGE?!?"

Sabina walked into the kitchen and put her arms around him. Kai summoned every bit of emotional fortitude he had left to him . . . he would NOT cry while he was on the phone with this woman. He would fucking NOT.

"All I can tell you is to wait for January to come, and make a case to the Dean of Admissions. But I'll tell you that last year he didn't make any exceptions, and I wouldn't expect him to do it this year, either."

The knife that had been poised over his chest for the past half an hour at long last slid silently into his heart. The tears began to flow of their own will, and the dam within him was within seconds of bursting.

"All right, well, I've got to get off the phone now. Thank you for your help," Kai blurted, and slammed the phone down.

Kai's spirit crumpled like a styrofoam cup, and he collapsed into Sabina's waiting embrace. The only sound he could hear was the shattering of his hopes, and the slamming finality with which he had been doomed to a lifetime of mediocrity.

"Fucking bullshit . . . fucking bullshit," he sobbed. A river of tears drowned his dreams forever.

The future was dead.



September, 2001

Janet stared sullenly at the pile of registration forms sitting on her desk. These were the times she really hated her job. Sometimes she wished she could be something MORE than just a secretary . . . but at least the pay was decent.

The phone rang. Many phones had been ringing all day, most from students late in getting their registration submitted and too lazy to come into the office in person. Janet picked up the phone and brusquely told the drunk frat boy at the other end of the line that he would have to come into the office tomorrow to get his registration questions answered.

Damned kids. That was the part of the job she hated most- dealing with all these idiot frat kids, the goth wannabe's, the trashy-looking sorority girls . . . she hated them all.

As Janet sat bemoaning her fate, watching the clock, waiting for the end of the day that would come in half an hour, outside a large yellow Chevrolet Impala pulled up and parked right outside the door . . .

Janet began flipping through the registration forms again, holding at arm's length a form that had coffee spilled on it; at least, she HOPED it was coffee.

Suddenly, the front door to the Admissions and Records Office flew open, and a young man strode into the building, looking around the place, seeming to note and record everything.

She sat back in her chair and sighed. Great, another one, she thought. This one was wearing a full-length black trenchcoat, black military pants, a black t-shirt, black leather gloves, black leather boots that laced up just below his knees, and had long, blonde hair well past his shoulders.

As the man got closer, Janet began to feel a sense of foreboding that got more and more intense as he approached. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as he closed the gap between them, and found it impossible to look into his eyes; she had gotten one brief glimpse of intensely green eyes, emptied of anything resembling sympathy or remorse, with black pupils boring into her like gun turrets.

When the heavy footsteps finally reached her desk, she looked up at last. Some animal part of her told her to run, but her conscious mind overrided her instincts. It's just another goth wannabe wanting to complain about his registration, she thought.

The green eyes regarded her emotionlessly.

Somehow, she summoned up the courage to ask him, "May I help you?"

The stranger's face moved then, morphing from its former impassivity into a wry grin that was somehow even more terrifying than the blank stare.

"No," he said in a voice empty of life, "no one can help me."

Janet wrinkled her brow in confusion.

He continued to stare at her. "Where is the Dean of Admissions?" he demanded flatly, his tone indicating that he would not be denied the answer to his question.

Janet felt compelled to answer, though she didn't know why or how. "He's in his office. Second to last door from the end of the hall."

"Thank you," he replied. "Sleep," he suggested to her.

Janet's eyes rolled up in her head, and she collapsed unconscious onto her desk.

He looked out at the rest of the office, at the other secretaries and counsellors who had observed this exchange. "Sleep," he told them, and within two seconds he was the only conscious human being left standing anywhere in the building . . . with the exception of the Dean of Admissions, tucked away in his office at the end of the hall.

He threw open the folds of his trenchcoat, withdrawing a Mossberg Model 500 twelve-gauge shotgun. He jacked a round into the chamber and made his way down the hall.

The Dean was standing in front of his desk practicing his golf putt with a pocket putter when his door was kicked hard enough to make it fly off of its hinges. In walked a malevolent, shotgun wielding psychopath, bearing straight down on him, and- were his eyes GLOWING?

He began to run for his phone, but it exploded into plastic shards an instant before the deafening report of the twelve-gauge.

"Help! HEEEEELLLLP!" he cried to the door, backing up against the rear wall of his office.

The man continued walking up to the Dean, jacking another round into the twelve-gauge without breaking stride.

The Dean began running to one side of the office, trying to get around this inexplicable monster, desperately striving for the safety of the door, the DOOR!

A black blur followed behind him, impossibly fast, and mercilessly whacked him across the back of the skull with the butt of the shotgun. The blow itself had no sound for the Dean; one second, he was running for his life, then a powerful "blip" sensation, then he was on the ground, unable to move, his ears ringing and his head spinning.

A booted foot worked under his ample belly and rolled the Dean over onto his back. Standing above him, utterly terrifying to behold, was the insane young man with shotgun trained a mere fourteen inches from his face, poised and ready to fire.

Thousands of images and feelings burst through the Dean's mind just then, images from his life seeming to swim up out of nowhere. At the end of it all was the man standing over him, and that was when the Dean realized that this was it. He was going to die.

"Why?" the Dean implored his executioner, voice slurring through the haze of his concussion.

The trenchcoated assassin paused. "I had a dream, once," he began. "I had this dream for eighteen long, long years, and everything I did, everything I WAS, all went to realize that dream. I sacrificed many things over my life. I didn't have a childhood like most people. I didn't get to fuck around and have fun like other people my age, because I had a dream. I did everything I could, did everything right, made no mistakes. I sacrificed what should have been the best years of my life, vainly hoping for a better future.

"All the sacrifices, all the effort, all the longing, the hoping . . . it was all for nothing. And I have you, and people like you, to thank for it.

"So now, I have a new dream," he went on. "For the rest of my days, I will find people like you, people so mindlessly devoted to bureaucracy that they fail to see or even care how their arbitrary rules ruin the lives of people like me. And I will seek out the people who have opportunities handed to them and who senselessly squander them, opportunities that people like me would gladly kill for but never get. I will hunt them down, and I will kill them all. Starting with you."

He let the Dean live just long enough to let this soliloquy sink in, then he pulled the trigger.

Kai stood over what was left of the Dean, pondering. Off in the distance, he heard the atonal strains of Limp Bizkit. Walking over to the window, he pulled back the curtains and looked outside, trying to discern the source of the sound.

It was there . . . fraternity row.

Kai put his shotgun back under his coat and walked out to his car.



This was Dave's fifth year in college, and the party never stopped! The electric grind of the stereo beat out a rhythm that sent young bodies writhing with unrestrained sexuality. Everywhere he looked, there was beer to be drunk, pot to be smoked, and the women . . . ahhh, the women! They were everywhere!

The frat house was crammed to capacity with half-drunken partygoers. A smoky haze of marijuana fumes provided a dusky halo to everything, and alcohol fumes permeated the house.

Dave was a typical member of the frat- he'd gotten into the university on an athletic scholarship, had coasted through his first three years with a 1.0 average, then had his scholarship withdrawn due to "poor academic performance and lack of initiative." Fortunately, Mom and Dad had been able to bail him out with the Dean, but they still had to pay his way from now on. Dad was PISSED when he found out he couldn't afford another BMW because he had to pay for college tuition instead!

Meanwhile, the beer flowed like water, and the party went on. Who wanted to study stupid shit when there was so much FUN to be had?

Dave's friend Kevin started yelling at him, straining his vocal cords to be heard over the triple-decibel shrieking of Kid Rock. Grunts, screams, and hand signals all conveyed one simple idea, which Dave finally managed to understand after a few failed attempts. And the message was: BEER BONG!

He nodded vigorously and snatched up the various custom-made bits of machinery that were to assist him in downing as much alcohol as possible in as short a time as possible. Essentially, the "bong" was a funnel with a length of rubber hose at one end . . . over said funnel were perched four caterwauling frat kids, each with a bottle of liquor poised over the funnel. Dave took the opposite end of the hose in his mouth and waited for the inevitable downpour, while three dozen enraptured partygoers chanted "Chug, chug, CHUG!!!"

Dave was only able to chug for a few seconds before giving up the hose with a spray of alcohol that doused his nearby friends. He shook his head roughly from side to side and whooped with joy, throwing his arms over his head triumphantly and trying his damnedest to retain his balance.

Something metallic sailed through the window, hit the floor of the crowded living room, then half bounced, half rolled through the partying kids to stop nearly at Dave's feet. He had no idea what the thing was, nor did anyone standing near him, and they had just enough time to wonder what it could be before the rocket propelled grenade exploded, filling the house with cleansing fire.

Standing outside the house, an AR-15 assault rifle with an underbarrel-mounted M-203 grenade launcher resting on his shoulder, was Kai, who watched with satisfaction as the windows of the house atomized and blew out into the street. Flames shot out of the emptied sockets of the windows, and those few frat kids "lucky" enough not to be annihilated by the explosion began to stumble out into the afternoon light through the black, choking smoke of the burning house.

Kai picked them off one by one as they fell choking and coughing from the doors and windows. Within a matter of seconds, the only things left alive within a hundred yards were Kai and the grass.

As calmly and methodically as a stalking panther, Kai put another grenade into the rifle, walking to the next house over. He took careful aim at the front door (through which the pseudomusical sounds of Britney Spears could be heard) and launched a grenade into the house. It too exploded, and three frat kids stumbled out of the incinerated living room, one of them with Budweiser still defiantly clutched in his hand.

Kai took aim at the first kid and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell against the firing pin, driving it into the cap of the bullet. The violent percussive force of the cap ignited the primer, which in turn ignited the propellant. Hot, expanding gasses propelled the hollow-pointed, 5.56 millimeter ball of lead through the barrel at a velocity of over 2000 feet per second. Rifling of the barrel imparted a spin to the bullet, increasing its stability and range. Part of the gas expelled by the bullet was redirected back through the rifle, driving the firing assembly back against the spring. Compressed spring pressure drove the firing assembly back forward, jacking another round into the chamber automatically. The fired bullet travelled out of the end of the barrel, covering the distance between the assault rifle and the frat kid's forehead in less than a tenth of a second. The bullet passed through his cranium, and its hollow point began to deform drastically, tissue resistance causing the bullet to spread to almost twice its nominal caliber. The bullet traced a haphazard route through the left temporal lobe, the corpus collosum, the parietal lobe, and exited through the left occipital lobe of the brain, blowing out half the kid's skull as it exited through the back of the head due to the sudden change of pressure inside the skull cavity.

Before the process was fully finished, and before the first frat kid had finished dying, Kai had already taken aim at the second kid and pulled the trigger again. And again with the third.

Kai walked up to the next house and withdrew a black katana sword from behind his shoulder, dropping the spent rifle to the ground. He walked up to the front door (Limp Bizkit from this one) and kicked it in roughly, revealing two dozen drunken college kids cavorting about in a maddening display of wasted sexual energy.

Kai moved through them like a wheat thresher, each practiced swing of his sword resulting in a hewn limb, a severed extremity, a gutted abdomen, a decapitated head. Blood showered from torn aortas, pierced lungs, and shredded internal organs. Screams of death and dying wrapped him in an embrace of pure animalistic violence, and neither Kai nor the screams stopped until every last one of them lay dead on the stained carpet.

Standing amid slashed and shredded corpses, spilled intestines, protruding bones, and pools of free-standing blood, Kai sheathed his sword and silently departed the house.

Kai began walking back toward his Impala. A campus police car drove up, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The wind carried the sounds of many more police cars headed this way.

Kai made a subtle movement with his hand as the car approached, and the policeman drove right by without even glancing at him. The cop got out of his patrol car, staring at the carnage of the two gutted and flaming frat houses and the bodies of frat kids strewn everywhere like broken dolls. Walking over to one of the grisly bodies, seeing what was left of its abdomen after being pierced by three rifle bullets, the cop suddenly doubled over and lost his lunch on the lawn.

Kai shrugged and picked up his rifle, walking up to his car and getting in. He turned the ignition, and the 350 cubic inch engine roared to life.

The stereo blared forth with its own message, strangely fitting to the insane tableau outside the car:

Head like a hole, black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control
Bow down before the one you serve,
You're going to get what you deserve . . .

Kai shifted into gear and drove off. There were so many more places in the world in need of cleansing, and today had just been the beginning . . .





Ahhh. Now I feel better!