I See Your Night, and Raise You Hell

I was crossing the University of Arkansas campus at Fayetteville with my wife, Rachel, when a young male student approached us and said something weird. It was Saturday and there weren’t many people around. Just a few moments before, I’d found an odd-looking pencil on the sidewalk and some impulse made me pick it up. It was lime green and about twice the length and heft of a regular #2 pencil. I figured it might belong to an artist or something and still had it in my hand when the kid made his comment.

“Looks like you could stab someone with that thing,” he said, pointing at the pencil. “Do some serious damage.”

Now, Rachel and I were older than your average college kid and both of us were dressed well. I wore a jacket and tie. Surely the kid would have thought of us as parents or perhaps considered us faculty. What student says that kind of thing to parents or to faculty members he doesn’t recognize?

The comment clearly made Rachel uncomfortable, so I just ignored the guy and walked on. We were here to see Rachel’s son and within a few moments found his dorm room and began our visit. A little while later I had to use the dorm’s bathroom and was standing at the sink washing my hands when the same young man came up beside me.

“Stabbed anyone with that pencil yet?” he asked.

Irritated, and not eager to have an uncomfortable discussion with a strange young fellow in the bathroom, I snapped, “No! And it’s not in my plans for today.”

He smiled crookedly. “Look,” he said. “I know you’re a psychopath. I recognize you because I’m one too.”

I sighed, then reached beneath my coat and drew out the silenced 9-millimeter I generally carried in a shoulder holster. Quickly placing the business end of the pistol against the young man’s chest just over the heart, I pulled the trigger.

“Phfhfft.”

The kid’s eyes widened but my movements had been too swift for him to react. He collapsed slowly to the floor, like a blow-up doll deflating. He kept looking up at me as life fled him.

“When psychopaths meet, it’s best for one to kill the other immediately and get it over with,” I told him.

Holstering the pistol, I left the bathroom. I kept the pencil. The kid was right. It was a great tool to put through someone’s eye into their brain. On a college campus like this, I felt sure it wouldn’t be long before the perfect target presented itself.

∼ Charles Gramlich