Chapter 11: Chapter 11 – Casualties, Normies, and Innocent Bystanders

Fritz peers up at the singular window of the warehouse, situated near the ceiling. Grimy sunlight creeps through. He stares for a few seconds while he lights his cigarette. He takes a drag and focus returns to him. He turns to face his quarry. A battered, bloody, and bruised school administrator. Late 50’s. Heavy around the middle, with thin, unathletic arms sticking out of the sweat soaked shirtsleeves of a short sleeved button up he’d purchased at Marshalls. His glasses are shattered, but still resting on the bridge of his broken nose. His mostly bald head is shiny with sweat and the half moon of hair he has left on top of his neck at the back of his skull is caked with blood and grime. “So… what you’re telling me—” Fritz’s phone vibrates. He picks it up to look at the caller I.D. “FBI” — he ignores the call and sets it down on a wheeled tool cart, aside a pair of evil looking pliers, which rest next to an assortment of other torture devices: a row of scalpels, a taser, and a serrated knife. 

“— What you’re telling me, is this guy just waltzed into your school— the school you’re supposed to protect… he waltzed in through the door, and started picking off your students like they were sardines in a fucking can and him a Jew behind a deli counter?” 

“Wh-wh-what?” 

“And then he just walked right out, without anyone fucking stopping him, and the police don’t get there until a full minute and a half after he skedaddles. And you’re telling me, he didn’t have no fucking help? No fucking informants, or look outs, or watch dogs? No hide out, and no fat fuck with a big alimony bill and fat slow fingers who might be willing to dial 9-1-1 just a little bit slower if he got wired a certain fee beforehand?” Fritz gets closer and closer to the bald man who is chained to a metal folding chair. 

“N-n-n-no I would never. I-I dialed 9-1-1 as soon as I saw what was happening.” Fritz smacks him hard across the face. The man’s glasses finally give up and fly across the room to scatter on the oil-stained floor. 

“As soon as you saw? How soon was that if you can barely fucking see? Were you watching the security cameras? Would you have told someone else to call or were you just sitting around on your ass?” 

“Really, as soon as I heard- I—” 

Fritz grabs the pliers from the medical tray, ignoring the text notifications and missed calls from the FBI causing his phone to vibrate as he does so. He grabs the back of the man’s head with one hand, like Wilt Chamberlain would palm a basketball, and pulls the bald man’s head backwards on its axis as far as the muscles in his neck will allow. The man cries out in pain. 

“Please— No!” 

“First you said you called when you ‘saw.’ Now, it’s when you ‘heard.’ So which one was it you fucking Judas?” 

The bald man’s jaw works as he tries to talk, but it’s hard with his head pulled so far back. “I-I-I”

Fritz jabs the pliers toward the man’s mouth which shuts reflexively to block the incoming foreign object. Fritz looks deep into his prisoner’s bulging eyes. “If you don’t open up, I am going to dig through your cheeks, mouth, and maxillofacial tissue until I reach tooth. Make this easy on yourself. I should be able to look down your throat and see out your asshole.”

 The administrator tremblingly opens his mouth and the pliers go in. They clamp the right central incisor, then yank upward and out. Unable to stop his own reflex, the man shuts his mouth-hole again and bumps the pliers on their way out. A sickening crack, and 3/4 of his front tooth comes out, glistening and red. Fritz frowns at the cracked tooth between the jaws of the pliers. “I told you to keep your damn mouth open.” He drops the tooth, and jabs the pliers into the bleeding man’s mouth again to survey the damage. “Hmm, yeah, part of the base is still in there. Let’s just round up and call that ‘one.’” 

The bleeding man howls in protest, “Why are you doing this to me?” 

Fritz smacks him upside the head. “I ask the fucking questions here. Don’t you fucking interrupt me again or I’m taking them nearsighted eyes of yours. That clear?” The man shuts his eyes and trembles silently. “Good. As I was saying, we are counting that cracked tooth of yours as ‘one.’ Every time you lie to me, you are impinging on my ability to get closer to the truth, you are taking my time— so I will take something of yours in return. In this case, your tooth. So keep talking and answer my questions clearly, and quickly, or soon enough, you will realize the human skull doesn’t hold that many teeth.”

“I won’t lie.” 

“Okay, good. Now, that better not be a lie, cut that’ll cost you double, seeing as it would be a systemic lie and would make my job exponentially more difficult. So tell me now, at what time, exactly, did you hear- or see shots, and at what time exactly did you call 9-1-1?” 

The heavyset man in the chair breathes deeply and looks Fritz in the eye. “I do not know exactly what time it was when I heard the shots, nor do I know the exact time it was when I called 9-1-1. It should be recorded on the school phone’s call log, or the 9-1-1 dispatch call log, there should definitely be a record there, so you should check that. But I know it was right before fourth period ended ....” 

Fritz doesn’t respond, so the man adds, “Which was probably around 11:45 AM.” The administrator shuts his mouth and runs his tongue over the sharp surface of his newly chipped tooth, then opens his mouth again to speak, thinks better of it, and shuts it again. 

Fritz stares him down for a moment more. “I caught a catfish one time that looked just like you. Keep this up and you just might make it out of here with most of your teeth.” 

Fritz smiles an alligator smile and crouches down on his haunches, so he’s at eye level with the bleeding man. He situates himself between his prisoner’s bound legs, and rests his arms elbows on them for balance. From behind, it might look like he’s giving a striptease, or preparing to perform oral sex on the prisoner. He dangles the pliers lazily. The tied man stares at him, fear in his eyes but facial muscles bunched into a sheepish grin. “Thank you…. sir.” he adds the ‘sir’ twice, choking it out on his blood and saliva. His mouth keeps filling up with it, faster than he can swallow. He has to let some dribble down his chin for fear of drowning. Fritz chuckles gently. 

“Thank you too, son. Now, the funny thing is, I did check the school’s call log, and it said you placed the call to 9-1-1 at 12:50 PM.” The tied man’s eyes widen with fear. Fritz cocks the pair of pliers back and slams them into the man’s thigh, right above his knee. The man screams. Fritz drives the pliers down into the cartilage around the administrator’s knee cap, squeezes hard, and yanks out chunks of ligament. The man keeps screaming and blood spurts out of the wound in his knee. Fritz jumps to his feet, then slams the pliers into the man’s jaw. He rips out perforated and cracked teeth, then repeats the motion again, and again. Fritz lets the man scream as he takes in some deep breaths to collect himself. 

Below the wavelength of the man’s screams, Fritz hears the low buzzing of his government issued cell phone. “God dammit. These things never shut up, do they?” He sets the pliers down on the tray and picks up the phone with his blood soaked hand. “Hello?” 

On the other line is FBI Director Harris. “Hey what’s going on? We’ve been trying to reach you.” 

Fritz proudly surveys the bleeding man in the chair. “I caught one.” 

Excited, Director Harris perks up. “Caught one… caught him?” 

“Depends on who you mean by him.” 

“The shooter. Did you catch him?” 

“No… but that day will be soon enough. Caught a son of a bitch school administrator. Could be in cahoots with the main target. I’m interviewing him right now.” 

The tied man screams, garbled by the blood pooling in his mouth. “Help! Help! Somebody help me! Help me, God!” Director Harris is quiet for a moment. 

“I see. Well, the shooter is en route to his next stop. You’re saying this man seems to be in contact with him?” 

“Possible suspect. Haven’t established evidence of communication as of yet.”

“You said he was an administrator?” 

“Yeah, bald fuck with glasses.”

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“….All school employees have already been cleared. The shooter is en route to his next target. We’ll be sending approximate coordinates to you.” 

“Copy that.” Fritz hangs up. He picks up the serrated knife from the tool tray and unceremoniously slits the administrator’s throat.

#

It’s the beginning of the Spring semester and Ryan is back with a new attitude for college: completely disconnect with any attempts to connect with his peers; ignore any of his desires to reach out socially; focus on doing the bare minimum to survive; consume entertainment as distraction, and get through the week so he can go back to his real home with his family every weekend. There are only 64 waking hours from Monday through Thursday that he has to get through every school week. He’d made his schedule so he was done with Friday classes by noon and didn’t start Monday classes until 11 AM, so he could easily drive back to school Monday morning and leave immediately after his last class on Friday. He’d made the Dean’s List with a 4.0 GPA in the Fall semester, so his mom gave him her ‘02 Toyota Corolla as a reward. She’d just gotten a new car and was happy to offload her old one. 

For entertainment, he’d compiled lists of the top Television shows and movies of all time and was working his way through, starting with The Sopranos. Plugging into these shows at night and during the afternoon, to accompany him during meals made things pass much more quickly. And it was a lot easier than sitting in the middle of the dining hall, forcing himself to eat a meal with just his inner thoughts keeping him company. 

The shooter’s stream was a bit difficult to watch these days. The ads were usually uninvasive. They were placed as transparent lower third banners or would play in the minute and a half before the “action” of the stream started, and sometimes as half screen ads with sound, which would only play during significant lulls in the stream, like if the shooter was walking through an extra long hallway with no victims to kill, or reloading multiple weapons in a janitorial closet. Nevertheless, having the ads made it feel different to Ryan. It made it feel safer and more polished. Sanitized. Corporate, even. They took him out of the story. Even worse, the ads made it feel like the shooter had lost track of his own message. Whereas, in the early days of the stream, watching it felt like being on a journey with a lone wolf rebel, you and him against the world, taking revenge and taking back something that had been taken from us, it now felt like some co-opted, Disney bullshit. Ryan would still watch the stream occasionally, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. 

Ryan is early for his Wednesday afternoon Sociology class. He’s on 4chan/tv/ participating in a heated debate about The Sopranos vs Breaking Bad to kill time before the lecture starts. He overhears a few guys in the back of the class talking in hushed voices about the shooter’s most recent stream. “Dude… the way he just— Pop Pop Pop, and when that bitch turned around… holy shit.” 

“Bro…” 

“Bruh.” 

“Fucking crazy.” 

“And when he stepped over that one dude and just double tapped him. Fucking based.” 

Ryan sneers to himself. These guys don’t even look nerdy. A couple of them even look like they could be on a sports team… and they’re watching the shooter’s stream? This is the type of bullshit ruining the stream and proof it would never be what it once was. Ryan shakes and pinches the skin on his hands to stop himself from getting too angry. One of the guys, wearing Sperry’s and some frat t-shirt talks even louder, saying, “And that thing he said about killing normies, I was like ‘fuck yeah.’” 

Ryan has had enough. He whips his head around and barks out at the douchebags in the back of the class, “Actually, you guys would be considered normies, so, yeah…” 

The guys look back at Ryan with curious expressions. “What’s up, man?” the one with trendy clear framed eyeglasses asks, with a friendly smile. He genuinely didn’t hear. 

Ryan mutters “Nevermind” and turns back around with his arms crossed, sneering again, but with his heart pounding. He bites his knuckle skin hard to avoid passing the threshold between adrenaline fueled anxiety and a panic attack. 

The guys chuckle and murmur to each other. Ryan whips around again. “I said, you would be considered normies. You are the normies.” 

The one in the frat t-shirt snorts.“No we’re not.”

Ryan stands up. “Yes you are. Just look at you. You’re in a frat. You’re dressed well. You’re handsome. Girls probably want to fuck you all the time and throw their pussies at you. Just because you have a proven social circle. You can talk to people while looking them in the eye. And relate to them.” Other people in class are watching now. 

One of the guys retorts. “Well thanks for the compliments. You seem to be pretty normie, too, if you care about what people think about you so much. Isn’t that the hallmark of a normie?”

“Of course I care. But I don’t change myself for their approval, like you do. I care but I still act the same. You just go along with whatever the latest trend is, or however you’re supposed to act so you can fit in with the other guys and get your dick sucked.”

“Or you’re just not chill to be around. Maybe if you relaxed you might have some friends.” 

A pretty girl with auburn hair chimes in. “Yeah, why are you being so mean to them? They didn’t do anything to you.”

“Mean to them? I’m just— I thought I could have one thing that was mine. That wasn’t tainted by mainstream society, or capitalism. I thought I could have one thing that I could retreat into, one space that felt safe, and it turns out I can’t. It’s for the masses. It’s for the people who look at me like I’m fucking dirt.”

“What are you talking about? No one even knows your name here. How do we look at you like dirt?” 

“Exactly. No one gives a fuck about me because I’m not an extroverted retard like you guys. I don’t have perfect hair, I don’t have as many millimeters of bone in my jaw. I don’t watch sports. People just don’t fucking like me. Because they can see that something is different about me just by looking at me, and I know that something’s different about me. And I will never know what it is. So I’m doomed to walk around like a leper.”

“You shouldn’t say the r-word.” 

Ryan sits back down. He smacks his laptop in frustration. The girl seated at the desk next to him packs up her things to move away. One of the guys that Ryan had directed his anger at retorts. “You’ve got issues, bro.” 

Ryan turns around again. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” He stares at the guy. 

The professor enters the room. “Settle down everyone. Weird energy in here. Can we use this energy for a spirited discussion about this week’s reading material? I hope so.” The teacher crosses his legs, the double monk strap leather shoe of one foot dangling over his knee. “So, what’d we think of the book?” 

Ryan throws his laptop into his backpack and storms out of the classroom. 

The professor waits for the hydraulic door to shut. He smirks and quips “Hmm… did someone eat some bad sushi?” The tension in the classroom breaks with laughter. He pushes his blonde hair off of his forehead and flips through his notes to the day’s lesson. 

Ryan storms through the campus, clenching and unclenching his fists. He can’t stop shaking. His breathing comes out ragged and irregular. He thinks to himself about how this type of day, this type of interaction, could’ve been the type of thing that pushed the shooter over the edge and made him do that first shooting. He notices a nerdy guy in tennis shoes, overly long denim shorts, and a gray Nike tennis shirt that’s tight over his paunch. The nerdy guy is just sitting on a bench, seeming to dissociate. Ryan looks at him for a second, and the nerdy guy looks back. The nerdy guy quickly breaks eye contact, and then frantically looks through his phone to appear that he was preoccupied. Ryan feels bad for him. At least things weren’t so bad. Ryan’s adrenaline and anger dissipates. Was it so bad that normies were watching the stream? Did capitalism not corrupt everything anyway? Maybe the normies would see other viewpoints by watching the stream. He was glad he confronted them. Maybe they would respect him now.

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