Kill Your Darlings

My life has taken another turn again. The days move along with regularity, one day indistinguishable from the next, a long continuous chain. Then suddenly, there is a change. — Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

2025 – Today.

A fist pounds my locker closed just as I was opening it, and I was reminded of my freshman year when some upperclassmen bitch did that to me for kicks (I’d struggled against her but she had the initiative, momentum, and a fatter ass). My face flushes hot. I turn to meet my adversary. His name’s Carson, a sophomore jock douchebag sowing his territorial oats. Yes, he’s shorter, but much stockier. He’s hardly the only jock who’s juicing (and I’m hardly the only victim), but here we face off.

“Hey, bitch. Got lunch money?”

“Sorry. Spent it.”

“On…?” he smiles as he leans against my neighboring locker. A freshman makes a move to reach past him but he barks, “Fuck off.”

The freshmen backs off. “Pot,” I answer.

“Well, I guess it’s ass or grass then.”

“Smoked it.”

“I can still smell it. My nostrils say you lie.”

“You’re just smelling shake in my locker.”

“Open it or it’s your ass then.”

“You just closed it.”

“New puke, dial the combination before I take it from you surgically.”

I fume a moment, and he impatiently pounds his fist against my locker again. Definitely steroids. Hormones make their users feral.

“Don’t make me ask you twice, city slicking Jew faggot. No one’s impressed.”

“Look, tell you what. Let’s break bread. We’ll share a bowl. I only have a little left.”

“Get dialing.”

I turn the dial a few times counter clockwise to gather all the tumblers, stopping one at 43, turn  clockwise once past 15, and position the next tumbler. Then I bite my lip. “No. This shit’s a bit strong for an underclassman. It would be irresponsible —”

He shouts, “— Come again, limp dick?!”  He was beginning to draw attention to us. A few girls. Other jocks. A few orchestra dorks (with violin cases in hand) who were pretending not to stare. Carson grilled hard at my face profile, but I just looked ahead at my locker for a second.

Then I faced my threat. “It’s a cannabinoid, Carson. Not your usual skunk. It’s too strong. This shit’s synthesized from weed grown in a hydroponic lab. It has a higher budget than this sch—”

“— You calling me some kind of pussy, new bitch…?!”

I struggle to remain calm, but his tone is making me nervous, “I’m telling you that your eyes will water, dilate,  and you’ll forget everyone’s name, your own included. You’ll forget where you are, why you’re here, and what money is for. You’ll act like a six-year-old lost in Wal*Mart and then finger me for making you that way. My tit’s already in the dean’s wringer. Let me absorb some of the brunt of that hit. Please.”

“Fine. Open her up before the bell rings.”

I ease the dial counter clockwise to 38. “Huff it through the vent,” I warn as I yank the casing loose from the lock’s shackle.

He does so and I pull the locker into his face. He stumbles back, his hands hold his nose as though I’d broken it, though I doubt that. I was just trying to startle him. Pepper spray (available in my father’s store for $12.99) was soon in my hand, and I feed him a healthy spray in the face of my preferred  condiment. Its effects won’t last forever, but for the time being señor douche is incapacitated. He managed through the tears with some difficulty, “w-wE coUld haVe…‘BROkEn bReAd’…wAtCh yOuR bAcK. i’M sTraPped.”

                                    -π                                 -π                                 -π

Yesterday.

When I was a kid my mom passed away from breast cancer. I have vague memories of petting zoos, impressing her with my jungle gym athletic prowess, being read one Dr. Seuss book after the next. I’ve missed her. I choke up about it. Sometimes I weep in the bathrooms stalls. I’m a transplant. I now live in a Georgian town you’ve probably never heard of. Kennesaw. A bit over 20 miles from Atlanta proper “as the crow flies” (so decrees Siri).

I’m originally from Queens Village in NY. I was raised by my father, talented locksmith and security expert extraordinaire. You know how on TV actors somehow acquire the skills of lock picking, safe cracking, and jimmying cars with little effort? Theatrics. I know because I’ve tried to learn these skills since I was a pre-teen. Lock picking is a hard fought knack. It doesn’t bear results save for the lucky and highly proficient. Car door jimmying? Same deal. Both can sometimes exceed an hour, even for my dad. And safe cracking, where the cracker listens to clicks of turning tumblers? That’s a triathlon. I was once squatting with him by a safe located at JFK airport. I sat in a hunched position reading The Stand for five hours as he tried to dope it out. At last he rose from his crouch, straightened his herniated discs, and sighed. “Guess I’ll have to come back tomorrow.” This may seem like no big deal, exercising that kind of patience, but to your narrator it was superhuman. He never had any for me. Almost all locksmiths drill now and have for decades. There may be ten guys in the nation who can (or would) do what my dad can do. These are merely facts. To abbreviate, as a father, he’s been somewhat lacking. My sister knew early to cut bait and hooked up with some guy who assisted a guy with a seat on the stock exchange. Sleeping her way up to the middle was still a stratospheric height from which to gaze at our paternal unit. Ever being impressed with money, my dad didn’t rue her decision, but she almost never calls and what few attempts I’ve made to hail never broke five minutes. I was part of a past with which she sought to make a clean break. I’ll never know if she feels guilt about leaving me to deal with him by myself.

I’m 18 now. Senior year in a high school. I came only a few months ago. I won’t out it with a name. I just received a poor grade for an English Comp story. Since I came here, my pop has been none too fond of hearing about my grades. I catch holy hell for it. Not that he’s an academic or has ever tried to help me with scholastic disciplines, but here I go again, dramatizing my situation. Less is more, after all.

“Bloated”, she said. “Needs a leash.” “I felt kidnapped, not drawn.” “Kill your darlings.” My teacher’s name is Ms. Joan Brenchmann. Pronounced Brenk-man. There are 30 other kids registered to my class, but barely two dozen attend at a time. A few are pretty. A couple are gay. A handful are high, and another handful helped them get that way. Of course there are the jocks, the prom queen hopefuls, and a small gaggle of overachieving nerds who compensate for weak bodies by conspicuously flexing their grey matter. I only know a few names. Or care to.

The bell rings, and I’m soon off to pick up a tuna salad sandwich and chips from the cafeteria. My unlicensed psychopharmacologist and rabbi, Les, is sweeping up ground cheese doodles and whatever particulates come off of everything-bagels. He’s the school custodian and only black person in this structure. I try to make eye contact, but he evades it. His attention is often difficult to come by. In my Queens high school we had a resident social worker (who also sold me herb). I must have averaged cutting one class a day lying on his green pleather couch, but there’s no budget for a social worker here. My new psychopharmacologist is as close as I get to school treatment, but he’s a moonlighter. Since the bad comp paper, I’ve been off my prescribed meds. My doctor says I’m bipolar. Scrounging my diagnosis from the psychiatric ailments grab-bag was a jinxed pick. If I’d gotten schizophrenia I’d be, at very least, less lonely.

I’m shunned here. My efforts to network were roundly rejected. I’m not a square peg. I’m as impossibly shaped as an Escher lithograph. My girl back home stopped writing, and my overtures to call have met with finding a full mailbox. I have to admit to some liability here. You can pick your girlfriends; your can pick your locks; but you can’t pick your girlfriends locks. I got the impression she might be cheating, and I picked the lock to her diary to discover I was right. What few friends I had stopped corresponding too, but I apparently queered all those relationships. Everyone feels awkward talking to an institutionalized outpatient. I’m what my biology teacher calls “interstitial fluid”. Dead blood cells trapped outside the conduits of the blood stream soon swept up by the lymphatic system and pissed away.

I eat next to an overweight kid with a cello case named Rodney. He’s targeted by many school subcultures and disdained by the remainder. I prefer to sit by myself, but there’s limited room on the benches, and he takes up the space of two. I tried a dialogue with him once and have since regretted it. He’s as insubstantial inside as he’s substantial out. I feel bad now each time he tries to engage me. He might have been okay if not for being a wide-load target. But picked on grade by grade Rodney will probably never know a well-adjusted day in his natural life. Of course, thanks to proximity, arrows are cast at me, too. I try to ignore them, but I’m only human. Comebacks always materialize 20 minutes too late. That’s how it goes. But I’m woolgathering. Facts is facts, ma’am. I’ll do my darnedest to be loyal to them.

There’s a lot more I’d like to say here, but airing these things would only amplify my misdemeanors into felonies. Being the bad guy in one’s own story doesn’t earn one any prerequisites. Instead, I make it to my locker, find my pipe, and adjourn to the bathroom. Turns out it isn’t bereft of resin, so I scrape the fuck out of it with some metal doweling my dad once contributed to my keychain, fire up, and inhale in a  stall. Calm saturates me moments after I bear down. A minute later I release into a ceiling vent. The urinals all say “Standard,” quotes included. Are the manufacturers being facetious…? I piss so long I’m thirsty afterward. The flush handle doesn’t work.

I tolerate my remaining classes (Industrial Tech, Gym, and Social Studies) and then into the big yellow limo I go. It feels like I’m on a Department of Corrections bus. Peace and quiet aren’t virtues here, and it spoils the high. Nature’s best weed killer. The only thing remotely amusing is the metal embossment in back of the bus driver seat: “This Is a Bus.” Holy crap! Thank you for the memorandum. I was positive I was traveling on Southwest Airlines! Reminds me of the sign posted outside my clinical treatment center. “Deaf Welcome!”  As if the exclamation point wasn’t there they might not have heard it. And as if there was some corresponding sign at a less welcoming clinical outpost, “No dogs, no Hondurans, and we don’t serve the hard of hearing here.” At my stop I realize that post actually says “This is Bus 2134.” My pareidolia both amuses and frightens me.

I’ll edit all this out. The non-superlative from here on. Honest.

Call me Negative Pi {- π}. An anti-circle. I haven’t included my real name because I don’t think mass murderers should be glorified. Even (especially) if it’s because said murderer’s intent is misconstrued. I’ll surely be associated with an Alt-Right group. That’s the sad truth. They’ll make this assumption from my Facebook page, the music I listen to, my DVR library, the porn I watch, or whatever. Won’t matter what suicide note I leave.

I find the pistola in my dad’s safe, naturally. No, I didn’t crack it. The combination’s my birthday. Why he didn’t reset it after the Newtown, CT or Quartermain, RI incidents? He’s not very savvy with the news. I mean, he reads it, but never absorbs the salient lessons a person should draw. Maybe you’re wondering what brought him south? Box stores. His services were out-bidden by places like Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware. Soon he could no longer keep his 30-some-odd-year business afloat. Plenty of business here, though. There are no shortage of gun safes, and die-hard gun aficionados are just as protective of their safes as they are their other hardware. My dad doesn’t drill, so he’s built a niche. Of course I was opposed to leaving. My mom’s grave is in Cypress Hills (not seven miles from where I lived), but my Dad didn’t spare much in the way of tears over that, and my input wasn’t invited. I had a seismic break in my high school a week from this pilgrimage and was hospitalized. The doctors resolved it was just a bad reaction to mescaline laced pot. My dad picked me up from Creedmore and said, “This where you’re going? Just going to bottom out on drugs? A bum? Don’t get me wrong, kid. You’re a nice bum. You’re a well-mannered bum. BUT YOU’RE A FUCKIN’ BUM!” Snow crash. My ears rang, and my brain was sodomized by a Kristallnacht of marching nazis. He and I haven’t spoken much since.

Kennesaw’s an odd place. It shares the same distinction as Nelson, Georgia; Nucla, Colorado; Virginia, Utah; and the aptly named Gun Barrel, Texas. In these townships, not only is gun ownership encouraged, it’s a mandate. If you have no criminal record or mental illness history, you’re required to own at least one. Google it. The NRA croons that crime in these places has plummeted thanks to these ordnance ordinances. Of course, they don’t talk much about suicide statistics or bullet related hospital visits, but pish-posh. Guns cure crime, halitosis, and probably cancer too. On balance, best for everyone.

I mentioned the low attendance. I mean rampant truancy. It doesn’t require an education masters to figure it out. Most vape outside or ditch to hit whatever passes for a pizza joint around here (pizza here is a wholly different and disappointing entity — it’s got to be the water). Hall monitors are constantly asking for passes, but some kids crowd the nurse’s or administrative offices in acts of civil disobedience. There’s one more K-12 public school besides mine, and at least 5 private secondary schools in this town. Not to mention (how not to mention?) about 25 public/private elementary schools.

I pull out my dad’s Glock 17 9mm (America’s pistol of choice), load it, chamber it, and then toss three surplus magazines into a bag.

A year ago, in Atlanta, there was a school shooting. I won’t out that school either. It could’ve happened anywhere. Fourteen were shot. Five bled out. One soul is still in a “persistent vegetative state.”  Another is paralyzed from the waist down. Yet another, from the neck down. The rest are recovering but will be indefinitely traumatized. The NRA’s answer, as always, was more guns not less, so Kennesaw, stalwart — and arguably racist — next-door-neighbor to “The City too Busy to Hate” found their obvious solution (one they’ve championed since 1982): give each teacher a gun. In the elementary schools, too. There. An elegant answer to school violence. Of course, this has made certain students a bit (forgive me) gun-shy attending their three Rs. I’d drone on, but you know. Less is more. Unless we’re talking about guns of course. The exception that proves the rule.

-π                               -π                              -π

Today.

I won’t ramble. It overburdens the reader. I come to English class before homeroom and get the lock picks out. Beside Kwikset, Segal, or Yale locks, picking open most deadbolts is hard. It requires a minimum investment of 40 minutes, and, even then, I’d have a better shot at jumping into my own asshole. Desk locks are simpler though because they have only three pins, and lock boxes? Simpler still.

Come class time I walk in and settle myself at my desk. Carson makes a face at me, and I make one back as his plastic prom queens laugh at me. He forecasts death after class, again threatening that he’s packing. Of course he is. How nice for him. Ms. Brenchmann finally enters and begins, “Hey y’all. Open your textbooks to 194, and we’ll get back to discussing irony.”

I had an organ once, in the depths of my chest. It used to beat, but I’ve been feeling it disintegrate one cubic inch at a time. A vacuum has taken up residence where it once used to be. As a result, my other organs have been pulling closer to the center of this naked singularity. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all. Breathing has become harder. Feeling, harder. And I’ve been enduring doubling and redoubling electric bursts in my head. SSRI, Benzo, an lithium withdrawal. It’s outmatched my ability to bear, but I won’t continue them. The side effects make me bloat, and before too long I may outsize Rodney. It’s not just the stigma of weight gain, though that doesn’t help. It feels unnatural to retain this much water. Seeing edema pool in my legs. No more. Bum? Bum’s have no worth. I’m -π, Pop. I’m worth even less.

I raise my hand. I almost ask to go to the nurse’s office. Nausea wouldn’t be overselling it.  Then I remember it’s very much occupied, and, more to the point, why. “Ms. Brenchmann, a material illustration, if you’ll permit.”

“Mr. {-π} there are three classifications of irony. We’ve only discussed the first yesterday. Could you hold your roll until after we’ve covered the other two? Then maybe the class can categorize yours.”

“But I take issue with the textbook definition. It operationally defines it as a writing technique, like personification, alliteration, flashbacks, and all the rest. I have a competing theory.”

“Well, since you seem so bent, I suppose let’s hear it.”

Kids groan. Carson glowers and cracks his knuckles.

“Classifying irony as a literary technique is a categorical error. Similes, metaphors, imagery, allusions, hyperbole, allegory, and motifs are literary techniques with the intention of achieving irony. Irony itself isn’t a technique. It’s the objective. I’ll bet  authors worth their salt must realize this.”

This gives Ms. Brenchmann pause. “You wanted to provide a material illustration…?”

“Sure. Were a podunk town, say, this one to implement a reactionary gun law for the purpose of reducing gun violence, and then to double down on said law after a nearby school shooting — by arming its teachers — this would be no mere technique. It would be the very goalpost for such a sci fi.”

Her eyebrows knit. “I believe you’ve mistaken this class for poli sci. You can take that up with your corresponding teacher in E hall.”

“Your lockbox is light, Ms. Brenchmann,” I say as I advance a round into her pistol’s chamber. Her hands tremble and her eyes fix on me. I place her gun on my desk. Eyes all about the classroom freeze.

Before Carson makes his move my gun-arm telescopes, and I kill him. There’s a blast off the walls and the exit wound splashes one of his prom debutants with a face full of red, like from a Carie paint bucket full of pig blood. She screams, alerting the school if the shot failed to. The smell of gun powder permeates as smoke rises from the barrel.

My mom’s dead. I’ll never be some asshole lock technician. I have neither the chops for it, nor the appetite. What hope is there? College, shortly after garnished to unending student debt? Working for a collection agency? My life’s been in tatters ever since I was uprooted into the sticks, and I feel utterly numb. But I keep doing this. Emoting. My little feelings are immaterial. My little words, immaterial. Trying to keep things relevant, y’all. I shoot the PA system speaker and they all jump in their seats.

“You and you. Names?” I ask.

“Rachel.”

“Brett.”

“Brett, stand by the door, face to the window. Rachel, I’d like the blinds drawn. Do the honors, please?”

They comply. Ms. Brenchmann stammers, “{-π}, let these kids out of here. Please.”

“Which? These three apple polishers?” I point to the nerds.

“Everyone. I’ll be your hostage.”

“Alas, I’m not accommodating hostages. This is war. I don’t take prisoners.”

“War? What do you want, {-π}?”

“Not obvious? Your last assignment brought me some pause, Ms. Brenchmann. ‘Kill your darlings.’ I did. Every last one in my fireplace after my pop saw my grade. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose. Now I’m going to kill your darlings, and for extra demerit I may torture them first. You. Rise.”

A nerd stands at my beckoning. “What’s your name?”

“K-Kendrick.”

I point the Glock at a comparatively cerebral girl with shrewdly understated good looks. “You. Name…?”

“Jessie,” she says, whitening like, well, I’d say but I’m trying to abbreviate my exposition.

“Jessie, please open your marble notebook. You’re my minutes taker for this office meeting. Record the following names and give each a full page. Rachel. Brett. Kendrick. Then your own. Add names as they’re called out, please. If you don’t, they’ll go unrecorded, and their last words will be forgotten forever.”

“Jesus, {-π} please. Don’t go through with this. Their lives —!”

“— That’s good, Professora. Tell me about their lives. Starting with Kendrick here. The longer you talk, the longer I may let him breathe.”

Brenchmann began hyperventilating. “K-Kendrick what do you want to be when you graduate?”

Kendrick’s eyes are white.

“Anti-Christ on Kris Kringle, Ken, she’s trying to save your life. It’d make things snappier if you just answered a simple question,”

“A ph-physicist,” he finally stuttered, salt water falling off his face.

Tears begin streaming down Ms. Brenchmann’s face, too, as it relentlessly twinges.

“That’s good. The world could probably have used a few more of you. Unfortunately, you’re one of Ms. B’s ‘darlings.’” I blast him through the kneecap. He falls to his other knee, bellowing, and then I drill him through the temple. Brenchmann screams and drops to her own knees. “No, no, no, no, no…”

“Ohh, yes.” I blast three more holes through the floor just to sow my own oats and dust flies up in narrow cones from each explosion.

My sights land on another well-dressed schoolmate. “Altar boy. Name.”

“V-Vincent.”

“Any last words? Keep them taut and relevant, please. You know how harshly Ms. Brenchmann grades.”

Woolgathering again. Less is more. Let’s abbreviate. I shoot a dozen more students, Vincent included, making sure each have an opportunity to submit an epitaph for the yearbook. Then I yawn. I switch guns, favoring my dad’s fully loaded Glock. Five kids standing. And I hear gunfire. Outside and directed elsewhere. Blood has spattered all over the place, and the floorboards are saturating.

Something outside the door’s window seems to have aroused Brett’s attention. A moan escapes him.

Jesse’s crying. I reassure, “Fear not, dear heart. Someone must take Ms. Brenchmann’s lesson into the world, just as someone here had to be the bad guy. But Brett’s expendable, isn’t he?”

Brett begins breathing like he’s just run eight laps around the school track. “Ms. Brenchmann, tell me about your pet Brett.”

She looks back up at me with bright red defiance. “He’s beautiful and bright. He comes to class even though there’s a gun in it because he cares about reading. He has a sister I taught who felt the same way, and a little sister I was hoping to teach and won’t ever get the chance. He had a future, writing. He had a deviously creative mind and, unlike you, knew a thing or two about restraint. He’s daring with prose. He takes risks with his concepts. He made efforts to rewrite, even when not told to. He read and read more, always realizing humility while radiating power. A gifted student, an inspiration, and now he’ll have lived a life too short because of you, a crazy bastard in a crazy town with a crazy law…”  Ms. B rambled and then sobbed.

“You get all that, Jess?” I ask as I feel myself vibrating. Jess frenetically shakes her head no. The guilt is trying to pour in, and I fight it back with every last calorie I have. I hear more gunfire. Exchanging gunfire. Inside and directed elsewhere but becoming louder. I turn my gun to Brett, and suddenly the door opens from the outside. I’m about to fire and there’s the school’s janitor (my rabbi) in the doorway. His eyes freeze. In earnest, so do mine.

“Better put the heat away and back out of here, Les.”

“{-π} I’m not packing. I was convicted on drug charges. I have no gun.” I hear a gun blast and a student squeal outside like a stuck pig. Is what I’m hearing really happening?

I fumbled for words and finally say, “Join the party then.”

We stand dumb for a moment. At last he finally says, “Do you know what you just started? Why are you doing this?”

“This isn’t a Dr. Phil panel. Don’t you have dope to sell to someone?” More gunfire. More yelling. Multiple exchanges. Closing.

“Yeah, he cancelled his appointment. I have an opening. What made you go all trench coat mafia?”

I find my gun hand shaking. “Nothing I’m going to discuss here. Got any ganja?”

“How about you put that piece down, and I’ll roll us one.”

“Nice try, but I guess this was supposed to be a sobering moment.”

“Let these kids go. I don’t know what point you were trying to make, but you sure made it.”

“I’m just testing the theory that more guns in a town amounts to more lives saved. I dispute that.”

“So do I, but I didn’t have to waste a baker’s dozen to do it!”

“Well, sometimes the darlings need to go for the greater good. So says Ms. Brenchmann.”

“What good could possibly come out of this…?!” Les shouted at me.

“It may show Kennesaw it was inviting a bloodbath with an unsound arms policy.”

“Yes—! It surely will! But can’t you hear the bullet-storm out there?! Rodney! Remember him? He kept an AR-15 in that cello case of his, and he just unloaded 3 clips into two study halls before the nurse was forced to give him an impromptu tracheotomy! Fucking pandemonium because of the fuse you lit! Kids vs. Facs!  Facs vs. each other!  It’s the Wild West in every hall! All because you got religion over some back-water town’s politics?! Was fighting fire with fire worth all their tears? The holes in their lives…?!”

My gun barrel quivers more. That black hole in my chest is sucking harder. Tears suddenly begin forming in my own eyes. The profundity of what I’ve done — what I’m doing — is flooding in on me just as blood is coating the tiled floor. Rodney.

“Brett, your mentor just saved your life with her bloated diatribe. Don’t kill your darlings. You’ll miss them.” I turn toward my teacher. “Darlings. I had one. I literally owe her my life. My mom. She was an English teacher, like you. And my inspiration. All I wanted was to resurrect a piece of her, but that didn’t cut the chutney for you.” I nodded to my rabbi and conceded.

Figures the bad guy with the gun was stopped by the guy without. Les was more. Therein lay the irony, a dish best served bittersweet. I set my father’s gun pipe where my cerebellum and medulla articulate, just to make sure I get it right the first time, and punctuate my story.

-π                               -π                              -π

Hey “y’all.” The Bible’s most notorious anti-hero is here. Would you believe He needs a viceroy for a new plane? An “anti-ring,” He called it. He just let me bang this piece out before shutting me in. I doubt I’ll pick my way out of here either. This yarn is comfortably under five thousand words. Pretty svelte after all, for a negative ring in Hell.