Cigarette roulette dispenser

Here is my list of Florida's post Furman execution roster that I wrote for my personal death penalty project. To be clear, the dates given here are a loose timeframe of an offender's first known criminal activities (including misdemeanors and delinquent activities) to their executions, and not at all their years on death row. In a large number of death penalty cases, the offenders were committing high level felonies, even other murders in extreme cases like Ted Bundy, well before the murders that condemned them. I wanted to encapsulate the earlier known or suspected offenses in order to express the scope and scale of their crimes.
As a warning, due how the death penalty is utilized in the United States, many of the surveyed crimes are extremely graphic by nature. Please read at your own risk. On a different note, Florida is the last currently completed list. I'm still working on Texas, and as of now finished 484 entries out of the state's 587 cases to date.
As with my lists for Missouri, Virginia, and Oklahoma, reddit's character limitations forced me to split Florida's roster into two parts. Here is the link to part 2.
The currently 105 executed offenders, cases 1 to 52:
1. John Spenkelink (~1972-1979, electric chair): While on the run after escaping from a Californian prison, Spenkelink picked up 45 year old Joseph Szymankiewicz while he was hitchhiking. Like Spenkelink, Szymankiewicz was a career criminal, and had a conviction for murdering a owner of a furniture store during a robbery. They went on a nationwide crime spree together, but Spenkelink shot Szymankiewicz and disemboweled him with a hatchet while he was asleep in a hotel room. He claimed that the killing was done to protect himself from a sexual assault and being forced to play Russian Roulette, but this was rejected by the courts. Spenkelink had several previous convictions of armed robberies, some of which he was serving when he escaped from California.
2. Robert Sullivan (1973-1983, electric chair): Sullivan and his accomplice abducted 38 year old Donald Schmidt from a Howard Johnson's he managed. They bound Schmidt's hands behind his back, and drove him to a remote swamp in the Everglades. He was beaten with a tire iron and shot four times in the head. The pair then took Schmdit's watch and his credit cards from his body.
3. Anthony Antone (~1970s-1984, electric chair): Antone, a high ranking mobster, was hired by a crime boss to arrange the murder of Richard Cloud, a 33 year old private detective. He arranged for two of his associates to gun down Cloud on his own front porch. Although he wasn't directly present at the crime itself, Antone bore the harshest penalties due to his employer and one of his triggermen committing suicide in custody and the surviving triggerman agreeing to testify against him.
4. Arthur Goode III (~1960s-1984, electric chair): Goode lured 9 year old Jason VerDow into a forest, and raped and strangled him to death. The next day, he abducted Billy Arthe, a 10 year old Guatemalan immigrant, and took him on a journey to Washington D.C. On their way through Virginia, Goode kidnapped 11 year old Kenny Dawson. Both boys were sexually abused, and he strangled Dawson to death with a belt in front of Arthe. Arthe was rescued when a passing woman recognized him from the news coverages. Good was notorious for being a shameless pedophile who openly flaunted and defended his predations of young boys to any listening ears. When he acted as his own attorney during the proceedings for VerDow's murder, Goode's defense entirely hinged on pedophila apologetics and advocacy. He started victimizing younger boys in his early teens, and dealt with several accusations of sexual assault throughout high school. His execution was somewhat controversial, as Goode was cognitively disabled and had the mentality of a young child.
5. James Adams (~1962-1984, electric chair): During a burglary of a ranch, Adams beat the owner, 61 year old Edgar Brown, to death with a firepoker stick. Several of the undisclosed items Adams stole in the robbery were discovered in his wife's car. Prior to the murder, Adams had a rape conviction that gave him a 99 year sentence, but he managed to escape from prison.
6. Carl Shriner (~1962-1984, electric chair): Shriner shot and killed Judith Carter, a 32 year old clerk, while robbing a convenience store. He was involved with petty crimes since he was 8 years old, and Shriner was on parole for armed robbery at the time of the murder.
7. David Washington (1976-1984, electric chair): Washington started his crime spree by fatally stabbing a minister, 69 year old Daniel Pridgen, during a robbery of his home. A few days later, he broke into a home that had 64 year old Katrina Birk and her 3 sister in laws inside. He tied up all four women, and stabbed and shot them. Birk was killed, but her sister in laws survived with crippling injuries. The day after Birk's murder, Washington and his accomplices kidnapped 20 year old Frank Meli from a university, tied him to a bed, and tried extorting a ransom from his family. When that failed, he stabbed his captive to death. In his 10 day long murder and robbery spree, Washington stole jewelry, a car, an undisclosed amount of some money from Pridgen, and $8 from Birk and her sister in laws.
8. Ernest Dobbert Jr. (1972-1984, electric chair): Dobbert routinely tortured his children with beatings, poking their eyes with his fingers, dunking their heads in bathtubs, and burnings with cigarette lighters. Two of them, 9 year old Kelly and 7 year old Ryder, were strangled to death during one of his daily beatings and torture sessions.
9. James Henry (~1965-1984, electric chair): Henry invaded the home of Zellie Riley, a 81 year old Civil Rights activist. He tied up and gagged Riley, slit his throat with a razor blade, and stole $64. A few days later, Henry shot and wounded detective Ronald Ferguson in a confrontation. He previously shot and injured a man in one incident and non fatally stabbed a man in another, and alleged in both cases that the circumstances were self defense. However, the apparent victims made identical claims that Henry was trying to rob them.
10. Timothy Palmes (1976-1984, electric chair): Palmes used his girlfriend to lure her employer, a 41 year old furniture store owner named James Stone, to her apartment and knocked him unconscious with a hammer. Palmes and his other accomplice, Ronald Straight, bound him with wire and locked Stone in a wooden box they specifically made for him. They tortured their captive by slowly cutting his fingers off, and stabbed him 18 times with a machete and knife. The trio dumped Stone's body (which was still trapped in the box) into a river and stole his watch, car, and $2,800 from his store. Palmes tried to blame the killing entirely on his girlfriend, but she was granted immunity in exchange for testifying against him and Straight.
11. James Raulerson (1975-1985, electric chair): Raulerson and his accomplice robbed a restaurant at gunpoint, and raped one of the female employees. When the responding officers arrived at the scene, the pair engaged in a shootout with them. Both Raulerson's accomplice and a policeman, 23 year old Michael Stewart, were killed in the skirmish.
12. Johnny Witt (1973-1985, electric chair): Witt and his accomplice frequently stalked random people they could in the woods, as they were thrilled by the prospect of hunting other human beings. On a whim, the pair ambushed 11 year old Jonathan Kushner while he was riding his bike. They incapacitated Kushner by hitting him in the head with a drill star bit and gagged him. After they tossed him in the back of their truck, Kushner suffocated on the gag. Witt and his accomplice then cut the boy's stomach open to prevent bloating, engaged in intercourse with his body, and buried Kushner in a shallow grave.
13. Marvin Francois (1977-1985, electric chair): During what is now called the "Carol City massacre", Francois and two other men, Beauford White and John Ferguson, forced their way into a drug house. They tied up the 8 men and women inside (who were all between 24-45 years old), and shot them all in the head. Only two of the victims, 45 year old Johnnie Hall and 24 year old Margaret Wooden, survived. A total of $800 was stolen in the attack. Accomplice Ferguson (who was executed in 2013) also committed a series of unrelated murders that Francois wasn't involved with. These crimes are discussed in depth under Ferguson’s section (case 78) in Part 2 of this list.
14. Daniel Thomas (1976-1986, electric chair): Thomas and his accomplices, dubbed the "Ski Mask Gang" by the media, went on a rampage that involved the burglaries of 16 homes and the rapes of 5 women. The husband of one of those women, 49 year old Charles Anderson, was shot dead in an attempt to protect her. Other murders attributed to the Gas Mask Gang include 20 year old Henry Kersey (shot to death while trying to defend his wife, who was then tossed off a bridge) and 70 year old Tessie Henderson (succumbed to injuries received in a beating). Another woman was blinded after members of the Ski Mask Gang poured liquid plumber into her eyes.
15. David Funchess (1973-1986, electric chair): Fuchess was fired from a liquor store due to the owners suspecting him of stealing money. A year later, he assaulted his former workplace with a knife. He stabbed two employees, 62 year old Bertha McLeod and 52 year old Anna Waldrop, and a customer, 56 year old Clayton Ragan. Waldrop and Ragan were killed at the scene, while McLeod died from complications relating to her injuries two years after the attack. Fuchess left the store with several canceled checks that total around $6,000. He had several misdemeanors and minor felonies on his previous record that included theft, loitering, obstructing traffic, public intoxication, and disturbing the peace. Fuchess also attracted some public sympathy due to him being a Vietnam combat veteran that was diagnosed with PTSD.
16. John Straight (1976-1986, electric chair): As mentioned in Timothy Palmes' section, Straight took part in the torture murder of David Stone, and the robbery of his furniture store.
17. Beauford White (~1963-1987, electric chair): White was another participant in the "Carol City massacre" that the previously mentioned Marvin Francois was involved in. He had a lengthy criminal history dating back to the 1960s, and one of his past convictions was related to an attempted rape.
18. Willie Darden (~1970s-1988, electric chair): Darden was convicted of the shooting death of 54 year old James Turman and the non fatal shooting of a 16 year old neighbor while robbing Turman's Furniture Store. Turman's wife was also raped in the robbery. Some supporters had citied that he was tried by an all white jury, and used it to push a narrative that Darden, a black man, was condemned out of racism. He had several previous convictions, which included assault, forgery, theft, and the attempted rape of a 70 year old woman. Darden was on furlough for the latter conviction during the time of Turman's murder.
19. Jeffrey Daugherty (1976-1988, electric chair): While on a road trip with his uncle and girlfriend, Daugherty murdered at least 4 women and one man, 68 year old Carmen Abrams, 50 year old Betty Campbell, 49 year old Lavonne Sailer, 28 year old Elizabeth Shank, and 18 year old George Karns. The victims were slain through either shootings or stabbings at grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants they worked at, but Sailer was attacked while hitchhiking. Daugherty mostly murdered for personal enjoyment, but he often stole coins, clothes, and watches from the victims.
20. Theodore Bundy (~1970s(?)-1989, electric chair): Across multiple states, Bundy kidnapped, raped, and murdered a bare minimum of ~20-36 females between the ages of 12-26. Although his true body count is uncertain and heavily disputed, most experts agree that it well exceeds official estimates. Bundy's abduction tactics were diverse, and ranged from grabbing targets by force, pretending to be a cripple in need of help, posing as emergency workers, seduction, and luring them in through hitchhiking. On some occasions, Bundy broke into the residences of victims, and assaulted them in their bedrooms. After an abduction, the victims were bound with handcuffs, raped while they were alive, and he engaged in acts of necrophila with their bodies. Most of his killing methods were strangulations with cords or beatings with tire irons and other blunt instruments. Several victims were also decapitated, and he kept their heads as trophies. Bundy disposed of corpses by dumping them in deserts, mountains, swamps, and other remote wilderness environments accessible to him.
21. Aubrey Adams Jr. (1978-1989, electric chair): Adams lured 8 year old Trisa Thomley into his car by offering her a ride home from school. He tied the girl up and dragged her to a remote forest. She was then raped and suffocated with a plastic bag.
22. Jesse Tafero (~1960s-1990, electric chair): A pair of patrolmen, 39 year old Phillip Black and 39 year old Donald Irwin (who was also a Canadian constable), found Tafero sleeping in his car with his wife, their children (which consisted of a 9 year old son and a 10 month old daughter), and a friend. What exactly occurred next is heavily disputed, but Tafero or his friend shot both officers dead, after they noticed a gun on the dashboard and asked the group to climb out. The group then fled in a police car, disposed of it, and kidnapped a man to carjack him. Tafero's execution was controversial, as his head caught on fire during the electrocution, and his supporters cited evidence of his friend (who was sentenced to life, but was released in 1994 on good behavior) being the triggerman in the shootings. He also had a long history of armed robbery, rape, and sodomy. Tafero's wife was initially condemned for the murder, but her sentence was reduced to 25 years to life on appeal in 1981, and was released with an Alford Plea in 1992.
23. Anthony Bertolotti (1983-1990, electric chair): Bertolotti enticed 46 year old Carol Ward into his home with the promise of helping her make a phone call. He held Ward at knife point, demanded money, and raped her. She was stabbed to death during the assault, and Bertolotti drove away with her car. In the trial, Bertolotti alleged that Ward offered him sex in exchange for stopping the robbery, and used it to claim that his angry girlfriend made him kill her for it.
24. James Hamblen (1984-1990, electric chair): Hamblen shot and killed 34 year old Laureen Edwards during a robbery of her store. Despite forcing Edwards to disrobe, Hamblen left he unmolested. He then fled to Texas and quickly started a relationship with 20 year old Debbie Abbott. A month later, Hamblen shot Abbott dead during a heated argument.
25. Raymond Clark (~1964-1990, electric chair): In 1964, Clark beat Marshell Taylor, his landlord's 14 year old son that he groomed and abused, to death with a pipe. After his parole at an undisclosed date in the 70s, Clark groomed another 14 year old boy into an illicit relationship. He recruited him in the abduction of David Drake, a 49 year scrap dealer. With the boy's help, he kidnapped their victim at gunpoint with the intentions of ransoming him back to his family. The pair forced Drake to write them a $5,000 check, and shot him in the head. When he wasn't able to cash in the check, Clark dropped his accomplice off at his home to avoid being charged with the boy's kidnapping, fled to California, and tried to trick Drake's family into paying his ransom. However, a series of calls was traced to his accomplice, and he implicated Clark to the police.
26. Roy Harich (1981-1991, electric chair): Harich kidnapped two teenage girls, 18 year old Carlene Kelly and 17 year old Deborah Miller, after luring them into his van from a beach. The pair were then both sexually assaulted. He shot Kelly dead, slit Miller's throat, and dumped them on a highway. Miller survived the attack and dragged herself to safety.
27. Bobby Francis (~1970s-1991, electric chair): Suspecting him of being a police informant against his drug trafficking enterprise, Francis abducted 35 year old Titus Walters. He tied him up and forcibly injected drano and battery acid into his body for a span of two hours. Despite Walters' pleas for his life, Francis shot him in the head and heart.
28. Nollie Martin (1977-1992, electric chair): Martin and his accomplice robbed a convenience store at knifepoint, stole $90, and kidnapped the clerk, 19 year old Patricia Greenfield. She was then raped and stabbed to death by her captors.
29. Edward Kennedy (~1977-1992, electric chair): In 1977, Kennedy and some partners shot and killed 33 year old Robert Brown, during a robbery of a motel. He was given a life sentence for the murder. Four years later, Kennedy escaped from prison. While on the run, he broke into a house in hopes of stealing money and guns. The homeowner, 32 year old Floyd Cone Jr. returned home with his cousin, 35 year old Robert McDermon (who worked as a state trooper), and unwittingly intercepted Kennedy. He shot them both dead, fled to a neighboring home, and took a 21 year old woman and her 4 month old son hostage. After a hour long standoff, Kennedy released his captives and surrendered himself to the police.
30. Robert Henderson (~1964-1998, electric chair): In December of 1982, Henderson went on a month long rampage across 6 states. He raped, robbed, and murdered a total of 12 people between the ages of 11-79 through shootings. Three of the victims where his wife's parents, 61 year old Ivan and 57 year old Marie Barnett, and her 11 year old brother Clifford. A few other victims were women, like 50 year old Dorothy Wilkinson, 37 year old Cheryl McDonald, 30 year old Jerilyn Stanfield, and 21 year old Lucinda Russell, that were kidnapped from their workplaces and homes and raped. A couple more were men, such as 79 year old Murray Ferderbe and 61 year old Sam Corrent, that he killed while robbing their homes and businesses. Henderson's last remaining murders were a trio of hitchhikers, 27 year old Vernon Odom, 23 year old Frances Dickey, and 18 year old Robert Dawson, that he killed together. Last but not least, Henderson bound an unidentified woman and her 12 year old daughter at gunpoint during a break in of their home. After Henderson raped the mother, he tried to do the same to her daughter. The mother then broke free from her restraints, and chased him away from her home. Contemporary media reports noted that the mother "fought harder for her daughter then she did for herself." Henderson had prior convictions of growing marijuana, assaulting officers, and stealing license plates.
31. Larry Johnson (1979-1993, electric chair): During the robbery of a gas station, Johnson shot and killed the clerk, 67 year old James Hadden. Like David Funchess, Johnson enjoyed a considerable amount of public sympathy due to him being a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.
32. Michael Durocher (1983-1993, electric chair): In 1983, Durocher made an agreement with his girlfriend, 31 year old Grace Reed, to conduct a murder-suicide pact involving her 5 year old daughter Candace and their 6 month old son Joshua. Although he shot and stabbed them all to death, Durocher backed out of his end of the pact. He later shot dead 27 year old Thomas Underwood while robbing a decorating story in 1986, and beat his roommate, 38 year old Edward Childers, to death during an argument in 1988.
33. Roy Stewart (1978-1994, electric chair): 77 year old Margaret Haizlip invited Stewart into her home. When she caught Stewart stealing a gold watch from her medicine drawer, Haizlip tried to evict him. In the confrontation, Stewart raped and strangled her to death with an electrical cord. Her body was found with 8 broken ribs, a fractured larynx, bite marks on her thighs and breasts, several contusions, and a torn vagina.
34. Bernard Bolender (~1970s-1995, electric chair): In a drug deal gone wrong, Bolender and two accomplices abducted their dealers, 39 year old John Merino, 38 year old Rudy Ayan, 33 year old Nicomedes Hernandez, and 25 year old Scott Bennett, at gunpoint, and robbed them of their jewelry. All four men were beaten with baseball bats, stabbed, and burned with heated knifes to extort an additional source of cocaine from them. Most of the hostages died in the 2 hour long torture session, but Merino was still alive when Bolender burned him and the other hostages' bodies in a car. Although most of his criminal history is murky, Bolender was heavily involved in the drug trade during the 1970s at the bare minimum.
35. Jerry White (~1962-1995, electric chair): White robbed a grocery store, and held the owner, 53 year old Alex Alexander, and a trio of customers (which consisted of 34 year old James Melson, an unidentified man, and the man's 12 year old daughter) at gunpoint. He shot and killed Melson, wounded Alexander, and tried forcing the father and daughter into a freezer. When the pair refused, White tried to shot them, but his gun misfired. The man and his daughter were able to flee with their lives and called the police, while White ran off with $338. White had 9 previous convictions, which included attempted murder, armed robbery, theft, and burglary, and was first arrested at the age of 14.
36. Phillip Atkins (1981-1995, electric chair): Atkins kidnapped 6 year old Antonio Castillo and molested him in a forest. When Castillo threatened to tell his parents about the abuse, Atkins bludgeoned him to death with a pipe.
37. John Bush (~1970s-1996, electric chair): Bush and three other men kidnapped 18 year old Frances Slater from a gas station she worked as a clerk at. They stabbed her to death and stole $100 from the register. Slater's murder attracted national attention due to her being the granddaughter and heiress of renowned singer Frances Langford and the outboard motor mongrel Ralph Evinrude. Bush's previous convictions include rape and robbery.
38. John Mills Jr. (1982-1996, electric chair): Mills and his accomplice tied up and abducted 30 year old Les Lawhon after ransacking his trailer for any valuables. They took him to a nearby abandoned airport to hideout. Lawhon then was beaten with a tire iron and shot in the head execution style.
39. Pedro Medina (1982-1997, electric chair): Medina tied up and gagged 52 year old Dorothy James in her home. He stabbed her to death and stole her car, which he was captured sleeping in by investigating police officers. His execution was a source of controversy, as Medina's head burst into flames as he was electrocuted on the chair. Medina's case and similar incidents led to Florida gradually phasing out of the electric chair in favor of lethal injection.
40. Gerald Stano (~1960s-1998, electric chair): Stano was convicted of murdering 22 women and girls between the ages of 12-35, though he admitted to 41, and is suspected of a total of 88 killings. His victims were all lured with promises of rides, payment for sexual favors, or abducted through force. The methods he used were diverse, and included drownings, shootings, stabbings, and strangulations. Most of the sources noted that none of his victims were raped, and that Stano seemed to have murdered out of an enjoyment for killing. As a child, Stano was charged with fasley pulling fire alarms at school and throwing rocks at cars. He was also fired for stealing from coworkers in one of his jobs.
41. Leo Jones (1981-1998, electric chair): Supposedly out of revenge for being brutalized by policemen, Jones was convicted of killing Thomas Szafranski, a 28 year old officer, in a sniper attack. Szafranski was driving his patrol car when he was ambushed and murdered. His execution was contested, as Jones claimed that he was coerced into confessing by investigators through beatings, and one of the apparent witnesses allegedly recounted his testimony.
42. Judy Buenoano (~1957-1998, electric chair): Over the course of 11 years, Buenoano poisoned her husband, 32 year old James Goodyear, her son, 19 year old Michael, and her boyfriend, 39 year old Bobby Morris with arsenic to collect their life insurance policies. She also made an attempt to poison another boyfriend after he was injured in a suspicious explosion, but was foiled by a police investigation. As a young girl, Buenoano assaulted her father, stepmother, and stepbrothers, and served a two month sentence for it.
43. Daniel Remeta (1985-1998, electric chair): Remeta and his accomplices shot and killed 5 people, 60 year old Mehrle Reeder, 55 year old Glenn Moore, 42 year old Linda Marvin, 29 year old John Schroeder, and 27 year old Larry McFarland, across Kansas, Arkansas, and Florida. The victims were all murdered in convenience store, restaurant, and gas station robberies.
44. Allen Davis (~1970s-1999, electric chair): Davis broke into a home with the intentions of raping 9 year old Kristina Weiler. Although no sexual assault occurred, Davis tied Kristina up and shot her in the head. He also struck her pregnant mother, 37 year old Nancy, 25 times on her head and face with his pistol, and left the body "bruised beyond recognition." When Kristina's sister, 5 year old Katherine, tried to escape, Davis shot and bludgeoned her to death. He then sacked the home for any belongings. Davis was a long time felon, and had several previous convictions of burglary, child molestation, and involuntary manslaughter. His execution caused significant controversy, as his nose bled all over his body during the fatal shocks, and he suffered burns to his legs, head, and groin. The backlash, combined with other botched incidents like Pedroa Medina and Jesse Tafero, resulted in Florida replacing the electric chair with lethal injection.
45. Terry Sims (1977-2000, lethal injection): George Pfeil, a 57 year old deputy and WW2 veteran, walked into a pharmacy that Sims and his 3 accomplices were robbing, to pick up a prescription. Upon seeing what was happening, Pfeil pulled out his gun and engaged the robbers, but was killed by them in the shootout. Although Sims was injured, he managed to escape the scene, and was captured a month later while trying to carry out another robbery in California.
46. Anthony Bryan (1983-2000, lethal injection): Bryan and his accomplice kidnapped a night watchman, 60 year old George Wilson, and used his keys to rob a bank he guarded. They drove Wilson to a remote forest and shot him in the head. The pair dumped his body in a creek and drove their car into a lake to destroy any evidence.
47. Bennie Demps (~1971-2000, lethal injection): Demps received his first death sentence in 1971 when he shot and killed a real estate agent, 54 year old Robert Brinkworth, and his client, 64 year old Celia Puhlick, while the victims were trying to engage in a house sale. He also wounded Celia's husband, 62 year old Nicholas, and stole a safe from the house. However, his first death sentence was lifted from the brief nationwide capital punishment ban from the Furman decision. Two years after his first death sentence was commuted, Demps was given a second death sentence when he fatally stabbed another inmate, 23 year old Alfred Sturgis, on the behalf of the Perjury Incorporated prison gang. Sturgis was in prison for murder, and he was targeted due to Perjury Incorporated's suspicions of him of being an informant.
48. Thomas Provenzano (1984-2000, lethal injection): In retaliation for being charged for disorderly conduct months earlier, Provenzano stormed a courthouse, and shot and killed Arnold Wilkerson, a 60 year old deputy that was a veteran of WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, on the scene. Two more policemen, 53 year old Harry Dalton Jr. and 19 year old Mark Parker, were also hit by gunfire, and they both died from complications relating to their injuries years after the attack.
49. Dan Hauser (1995-2000, lethal injection): Out of a desire to kill somebody, Huser enticed a stripper, 21 year old Melanie Rodrigues, into a motel room with the promise of payment for sexual services. After they had intercourse, he strangled her to death. Hauser was also caught stealing a truck months before the murder.
50. Edward Castro (1986-2000, lethal injection): Castro lured three homosexual men, 57 year old Austin Scott, 50 year old George Hill, and 46 year old Claude Henderson, from gay bars. The victims were all tied up and stabbed to death in their homes. After each killing, Castro left with valuables such as cars, watches, rings, money, and wallets.
51. Robert Glock II (1983-2001, lethal injection): Glock kidnapped 34 year old Sharilyn Ritchie from a mall parking lot and forced her to withdraw $100 from an ATM. He then drove Ritchie to a forest 60 miles away and shot her in the head. Ritchie's wedding ring and purse was also stolen in the attack.
52. Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco (1986-2002, lethal injection): Sanchez-Velasco raped and fatally strangled Katixa Ecenarro, his girlfriend's 11 year old daughter. While awaiting execution for Ecenarro's murder, Sanchez-Velasco got into a fight with fellow condemned inmates, 41 year old Charles Street and 30 year old Edwin Kaprat, and stabbed them both to death. Kaprat received a death sentence for the sexual abuse and torture-killings of 4 elderly women, while Street was sentenced to death for the shooting murders of two police officers.

So I work ODP, most days I'm picking which I enjoy, but they also have me dispense quite a bit (I actually get bounced around the department and do a little of everything). I take a order out to a driver, and she looks like she's new, I've never seen her before.
Driver: hey buddy, you must be new! Slaps my shoulder
Me: actually, I've been here 7 months now.
She looked really confused. I look through her back window and can see the stuff piled up, and she starts getting real pushy. Trying to grab stickers off the totes and telling me to just load the orders up and she'll sort them out. I open her door and it looked like a dumpster. Trash was piled up in the back seat and spilling into the front, cigarette butts all over the floor and it smelled like beer. I tell her I can't give her the orders until she cleans up her truck, and she has the nerve to go in to the service desk and try to complain.
Coach got the story and told her "my guy said your truck was too dirty. Clean your truck." She started crying and ran out of the store. Sometimes I hate drivers, I have so many stories.

hey! it's the first time i post, i feel really out of my depth here. for context, my first real relationship started when i was 14 and lasted for 6 years, basically we were high school sweethearts. it was a very toxic relationship both from me and from him, but then i decided to move out of my family home, before even finishing highschool because of problems that i had with my dad and he came along. from there it was just me paying for everything and him spending his money on anything else except for the house, me taking care of the house and him not doing anything( our house was constantly a complete mess, if i didn t do the stuff he would just stay on tiktok, if i didn't cook, he wouldn't eat anything and he would constantly invite friends over and i would have to interrupt from anything else to clean) and you can imagine the drama and the fighting about all of that. also we got 3 pets together and i was the only one taking care of them. i lived with this mentality of i have to accept all the bullshit that he s throwing onto me because this is my life from now on. i was ready to live out my life like this, i was constantly sad but then figuring out that i would have to keep going for my 3 little friends, cuz nobody would take care of them without me here. i tried breaking up with him multiple times, but everytime he would tell me that he s not going back to living with his parents and that he ll just live on the streets or interrupt connection with everyone and start over in another city, so that just made me every single time take him back.
i feel like i was stuck in this cycle of distruction, until i left the country for a 6 month erasmus. there, for the first time in 2 years, everything was going well. i know , the erasmus effect and all, but i was getting a routine, my room was so clean and neat, i was losing weight, i was meeting new people and i kinda fully disconnected from my realtionships back home. i met some really nice people that were treating me so nicely, i wasn't getting verbally abused every night and i just realised that i really don't need him and i'm doing so much better without him. and that's when i met my current boyfriend. a really, really nice guy that was so nice to everybody, he knew so many things in our domain and he was just so perfect. we started hanging out, we would go to eachother's buildings for cigarette breaks, started making projects together. at first i was oblivious to me getting feelings, but after a friend woke me up to the realisation, it was over. i couldn t hang out with him without seeing how beautiful he was, every nice thing that he would do for me, i would keep thinking wow, i do really deserve to be treated with basic respect.
before i left i had bought my ex tickets to come visit me a month in me being there, so that completely coincided with me having all these realisations, but because i was feeling so bad that i was emotionally cheating on him, i called him a week in advance confessing to him what i have done, so guilty, but at the same time i was so sad that i was losing my chance at just normal and peaceful. we came to the conclusion that we should keep going, that he forgave me, mainly from the point that he wasn t gonna give up coming and the plans were already made. so i stopped hanging out with the nice guy and when my ex came he imediately wanted to meet him and he wouldn t take a no so we went out in a pub with a couple of people including him. the night was horrible, everybody hated him, they would take me to the side to tell me like what the fuck is wrong with me, why do i accept his behaviour ( he got very drunk and started talking about random stuff he saw on tiktok, and saying a lot of disrespectful remarks towards me, that i was so used to that i wasn t even aware of them, and the main point was that he kept being very mean to the nice guy, making fun of his appearance and his background), point which i just apologised to everybody and left with him. the start of an excruciating week because that night i broke up with him. after hours of talking i was just too tired and tried going to sleep, when he started touching me and trying to have sex with me. i told him multiple times no, but he wouldn t stop, so i just went and slept on the ground. the next day he called all of our friends telling them what a horrible person i was, come back in the room, scream at me, leave, call our friends again, telling them that it s all his fault and i m an angel, come back, scream more at me. next day the same, and the next, and the next. his mom started calling me telling me that i m a bitch and that she always expected me to do such a thing, my mom was calling me with the same tone ( cuz he called her btw). when he realised that he would have to move out he started going back on all the miserable words that he adressed me. he was hoping we would get back together under the promise of change, which wasn t going to help me anymore. i tried helping him out with money or to look for places to rent or anything or him moving back in with his parents. he wouldn t accept anything. the last night, since we still had to stay in the same bed, he told me that at some point i rolled over and touched his dick with my knee and that he thought i was awake and he started touching me. to this day i don t know what happened that night. so the week ended, and he promised to wait for me back at home, since he didn t wanna move out, which i was totally against since it was my house, but i still needed somebody to take care of the pets, so he decided to stay.
the night he left, i went to the nice guy and told him everything that happened. i told him how i started liking him and confessed to my ex bla bla. i was also very drunk, so the nice guy of course told me that we should speak about everything the next days. which we did. after a week or so we were together. the best time i had in such a long period. well while everythng was so good with my boyfriend, my ex would call me everyday, even though i knew that he himself already is going out with somebody else 2 days after catching the plane and even getting her to my apartment. well after his words, a week later he felt like he couldn t wait anymore for me and he just announced me that he grabbed his stuff and left. which meant that he left my pets alone. i went through a couple of sleepless nights trying to find alternatives for them, ending up sending the dog to the countryside and the cats with a food and water dispenser that my mom would refill every couple of days. it made me feel so useless cuz i couldn t give up my studies.
me and my boyfriend have been together for little over a year now, he eventually came back with me in my home country and now trying to study at the same university as me, he makes me so happy and i can t believe how happy i can actually be. i still see my ex almost everyday with his girlfriend and we started getting alone actually in a weird way i guess, in which it s really cool to spend time with him, but then i feel icky on the inside thinking of everything that he s done to me, but i'm still kinda happy to talk to him.
i guess my question is, in this situation, should i stop talking to my ex altogether or is this a situation in which it dioesn t really matter because i can t just ignore him because we have to be in the same room everyday and communicate with eachother by default?

I was sitting in the Jet Set with a few of my bouncer clients, Sebastian, Earl and Sparky.
“Why do we gotta sit so far from the stage?” Sparky said. He was a bouncer at the Jet Set, and his friends had christened him ‘Sparky’ when he’d been hit with an arson charge. The arson charges were a thing of the past, thanks to me, but Sparky’s nickname had stuck.
“This is my favourite table,” I said. I hate loud noise, and for me the worst noise of all is loud music. We were sitting at a dark table in a distant corner with almost no view of the stage, a small acoustic oasis that didn’t have a speaker pointed at it. Sebastian, the Jet Set’s bouncer-in-chief, sat across from me, his face in shadow. His second in command, Earl, was there as well. They’d been present at court to watch the arson charges die, and they hadn’t stopped making jokes about it. The charges had fizzled out, Sebastian said. The prosecutor got burned, Earl replied.
“Got a light, Sparky?” Sebastian said, sticking out a cigarette, it being legal back then to smoke in public places. They yuck yucked together, and I laughed with them as they smoked, sitting in a dark corner of the Jet Set. This was before my wife banned me from the place, when I was still allowed to meet clients there. Sparky was buying me a round or two or three, as a way of saying thanks for a job well done.
“So why’d Sparky walk, when everyone else got convicted?” Sebastian was a frequent flier at the local provincial courthouse, and he needed to know how his buddy had managed to avoid conviction on what had looked like a solid crown case. It had been a rather clumsy arson, involving more people than were needed, and a lot more talk than was necessary, both before the fire and after. The home owner and his friends all went to jail. Sparky, the man who actually set the blaze, was the only one to walk free. “Sparky, tell him what you said when the cops arrested you,” I said, raising my Guinness for another sip.
“I said jack shit. Everytime they asked me a question, all I said was ‘lawyer’. Over and over again.” Earl and Sebastian nodded approvingly.
One of the things I liked about my bouncer clients is that they always listened to me, and did what I told them to do. It’s a lot easier to get good results when your clients take you seriously, and do what you recommend. It also helps when the prosecutor fucks up, and the prosecutor had fucked up really badly. But I wasn’t going let luck take away any of the credit, so I accepted the accolades from my bouncer clients, and enjoyed the Guinness that the waitress kept me supplied with.
Maybe I should have said no to Sparky when he invited me out to the Jet Set. Sparky wasn’t the kind of client that you hung around with, that you had a drink with. Neither was Sebastian, the most vicious man I ever met, nor Earl, a mountain of a man, and next to Sebastian, the most feared bouncer on the airport strip. But here I was, hanging around with them all. Sebastian was from West Bay, from the same place I came from. At work and in court I had to be on guard, and mind my linguistic Ps and Qs. But with Sebastian et al, my speech returned to its default setting, and I dropped the proper English that I’d learned after I started high school.
“Sparky said jack shit when the cops arrested him,” I said, “and so long as you say jack shit when the cops arrest you, you’re already on your way to a not guilty. Just keep your mouth shut, and remember this:--” I held up a finger, and my clients came in on cue.
“No one ever talks a cop out of laying a charge,” Sebastian, Sparky and Earl said in unison, repeating a phrase that I and pretty well every other lawyer in Canada learned in first year law school. We laughed together, and I had a beer, and then another, and then the topic of Sparky’s arson charge came up again, and we laughed some more.
The dark table was briefly bathed in light when someone opened a door, and before it closed I got a better look at the people I was sitting with. “How’d you get cut?” I asked Sebastian. It was a small cut above his eye, clumsily stitched.
“I had a fight last night at the Lounge,” he said. The Lounge was a club at the other end of the long strip that ran parallel to the airport. The staff at the two clubs had a bit of a rivalry, so I was surprised to learn that Sebastian was moonlighting there.
“I thought you only worked for the Jet Set,” I said, and everyone at the table laughed. “This fight was for money,” Sebastian said.
“You shoulda been there,” Earl said, and Sparky seconded him, adding, “You gotta come see the next one. He fights again in two weeks,” explaining that Sebastian was the star attraction at the local underground, unlicensed fights, where he’d take on anyone, in any weight class.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” I said, but the fight was scheduled for when my wife and I would be out of town for a wedding. “Will there a video?” I added, “because I’d love to watch a video when I get back, if there is one.” I’d never seen Sebastian at work, doing the thing he did best, which was beating the shit out of people. I’d read more than a few witnesses' statements telling how Sebastian had assaulted them, and I’d seen some photos displaying his handiwork, but I’d never seen him in action. “Yeah, a video would be great,” I said, not wanting to miss out on the fun. Sebastian and Sparky exchanged glances. “I never thought of that,” said Sebastian. “That’s a great idea, Calledinthe90s.”
The next day Sebastian called me to say they’d found a video camera and that they were going to video his next fight. But by then I’d sobered up, and was having second thoughts. “You know,” I said, “maybe that’s not such a good idea.” It was a terrible idea, all things considered, to tell a client that you wanted them to make a video of an illegal prize fight. My brain likes to catastrophize, and it jumped fifteen steps ahead to the worst possible outcome, namely, a disciplinary hearing before the Law Society. Would drunkenness be a defence to a charge of professional misconduct? No, of course not; instead, it would be an aggravating factor, as would the fact I’d been hanging around in a strip club with disreputable clients.
“It’ll be ok,” Sebastian said, “you’ll see. We’re gonna give it a try out, just to make sure it works, then we’ll be all set for the fight.” He hung up.
I knew that I’d made a mistake, telling my client to get a video camera, and I mentally crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t come back to bite me on the ass. But of course it bit me on the ass. My mistakes always come back to bite me on the ass.
* * *
A week later I was at my office preparing for an impaired charge. My client had blown two thirty-seven, urinated himself in front of the cops, and in case that wasn't enough, he’d confessed as well. I was going through the disclosure, looking for dots to connect. I’d been at it all day, but the dots weren’t connecting, and it was driving me nuts, because I knew there were dots there, just waiting to be connected, and if I could connect them, my client would walk. But for now my brain wasn’t seeing a way to think outside the box, and I was stuck firmly inside. My phone rang. I picked up. It was Sebastian.
“I gotta come see ya right away,” he said.
“You got a court date coming up? Why didn't you tell me?”
“The cops ain't charged me-- yet.” I told him to come to my office immediately, and fifteen minutes later I heard the growl of an engine out front in the parking lot. I looked out the window, and saw Sebastian’s bright red Camaro. I met him out front and put him in our small boardroom, and closed the door on him. Then I went to see Aaron, the senior counsel that I rented space from.
“I’m using the boardroom,” I told Aaron.
“Your rent doesn’t include boardroom privileges,” he said. Aaron was always nickel and diming me. He was hungry for money; his divorce lawyer was eating him alive. He hated his own lawyer even more than he hated his ex.
“Nice try,” I said. I’d drafted the lease myself, and it gave me the run of the place. I headed back to the boardroom, and when I arrived, I could see Sebastian fiddling with the boardroom’s video tape machine. That’s why we were in the boardroom: he needed to show me a video tape.
I wondered what kind of trouble he was in. Sebastian’s next underground fight wasn’t for a week, so the video couldn’t be one of Sebastian fighting, and that allowed me to stop worrying about the idiotic advice I’d given him the week before back at the Jet Set, the advice about buying a video camera and filming himself committing a crime. I’d been stressed over the video thing for a week, but now I could relax.
“Should I get popcorn?” I said. “I usually have a snack when I’m watching a movie.”
“You can skip the popcorn,” Sebastian said, “the fight didn’t last long.” That got my attention. “But the fight’s not until next week,” I said, pressing play.
“We wanted to give the camera a try, plus I had to go to the Lounge, to straighten some guys out, settle a score, send a message. Kick ass. That sort of thing.” I hit pause.
“Hold it,” I said, “the cops are after you. Are they after you because of what you did on this video?”
He nodded.
“And you brought friends along to watch whatever you did at the Lounge, and they brought a video camera?” He nodded again, and my fear came roaring back, doubled and redoubled.
This was it. I was being bitten on the ass for my mistake, just like I’d feared. My client had videotaped himself committing a crime, and he had done it at my suggestion. My brain started catastrophizing again, going over the nightmare scenario of my pending public humiliation. Every now and again the Law Society magazine came out, everyone at the courthouse looked to see if anyone they knew got suspended or disbarred. I was going to be featured prominently in that magazine, I was sure.
“Hit play,” Sebastian said, “I watched this already a ton of times, but I can’t stop watching it. It’s the best.” I sat in a chair, and pressed play.
The camerawork was rough at the start, but the audio worked just fine. I heard shouts and swearing, and then the picture focused on the action just in time for me to see Sebastian’s fist connect with his victim's face. The man dropped like a stone, and lay framed in the middle of the image, in front of the main door of The Lounge, a seedy joint on the opposite end of the strip from the Jet Set. I hit pause.
“That’s not too bad,” I said, “from the sound of it, the fight started some time before you knocked the guy out.” A one-punch knockout is not exactly the toughest assault to defend, and because the video missed the start of the fight, that left a big blank that Sebastian could fill in with evidence of self-defence. “Wait,” Sebastian said, “there’s more.”
From the way the punch had landed and the man had dropped, I had thought the fight was over. I hit play, curious to see how someone could recover from a punch like that. The video started up again, and Sebastian’s victim remained motionless on the ground. Another man, a much larger man, burst out of a door, and rushed out. I watched as my client, Sebastian, swiveled, and almost without effort knocked out his opponent, his movements too quick for me to follow. I hit pause, and asked what happened.
“Spinning back fist,” Sebastian said.
“Not bad,” I said, “not bad at all.” This was clearly self-defence; the second ‘victim’ was a man almost as big as Earl, and if Sebastian had allowed him to get in the first punch, he would have gotten seriously hurt. “I think we can defend this. Let’s head over to the station, and turn you in.”
“There’s more,” he said.
“More? What did you do, kick the guy while he was down?”
“Of course not,” Sebastian said, scowling. He didn’t follow the Queensberry Rules, probably had never heard of them, but he had his own code, and kicking a man while he was down was not permitted, unless the guy was a total asshole and there were no witnesses. “So what did you do, then?” I asked. Sebastian took the remote from me, told me just to watch, and he hit play.
Three more men came out of The Lounge, all wearing the livery of their club: pale slacks, button up shirt, matching vest. They all looked very proper and professional, except they were enraged, and the one in the middle called out to Sebastian, challenged him to fight man-to-man.
“None of your flippy spinny karate shit, Sebastian,” the man said, squaring up, his fists raised, “let’s see if you can box.” Sebastian could box just fine; he whipped out a jab that snapped back the man’s head, and a straight right followed. The video paused.
“This is the best part of the video. Watch this,” Sebastian said. He rewound a few seconds, and I watched the two punch combination land for the second time. The man stared at Sebastian, stunned, his eyes open but his lights out. I could see Sebastian ready himself to lash out once more, but after a pause of a few seconds, the man collapsed into the arms of his fellow bouncers.
Sebastian hooted with laughter. And it had been amusing, in a cruel sort of way, watching a man’s brain run a little check on itself, before deciding it was maybe a good idea to shut operations down.
The last two guys met similar fates, Sebastian dispatching them each with a single punch. It really was no contest. It was like watching a grown man fight with school children.
“So much for self-defence,” I said, “at least for the last three guys.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was obviously a consent fight. Each of them challenged you, you accepted, and then you knocked them out.”
“But I thought consent fights were ok.” Of course he thought that. I’d beaten an assault charge against him the year before using the consent fight defence.
“The defence doesn’t work if you inflict bodily harm.” I would check my Martin’s, but I was pretty sure that a concussion counted as bodily harm.
The receptionist opened the boardroom door. “There’s cops in the waiting room,” she said. “They can wait,” I said, motioning her to close the door.
“We gotta hide the tape,” Sebastian said.
“No we don’t,” I said, “they won’t seize zilch from a law office, not without a warrant, and they don't have a warrant.” They had probably gotten lucky, and spotted Sebastian’s car in the lot. That’s the only reason they were at my office. I hit the eject, and put the tape behind some law books. “No one’s seeing this tape,” I said, “don’t worry about it.” I wasn’t sure about what to do with the tape, but the last thing I was going to do, was hand it over to the authorities. That would never happen. “So what are we gonna do?” Sebastian said. He wasn’t panicking, not yet, but he was close. He had beaten five men in front of a crowd of witnesses, every kick, every punch caught on video, and he looked trapped. Assault times five, for sure, but judging by the way a few of the victims had hit the pavement, there’d be some assault causing bodily harm tossed in, too.
The case looked hopeless, but then I had an idea. It bounced around in my head for a few seconds, that being my equivalent of quality control.
“I have a shot at getting you off,” I said. Sebastian’s panicked look changed to bafflement, almost to distrust. “How the fuck you gonna do that?”
“I’ll tell you later. I gotta work out some details first. But I’m gonna try to get you off. Just remember, when I hand you over to the cops--”
“I know I know I know. Keep my mouth shut.”
“Exactly. Don’t give them anything. Not even address or next of kin, nothing. Nothing at all. You’ll post bail tomorrow morning, and by then I’ll know what I’m going to do.” I led Sebastian out of the boardroom and handed him over to the cops in reception. There were six of them, all big men. They knew Sebastian’s reputation, and they weren’t taking any chances. I watched them cuff my client, and then they took him away.
With Sebastian gone, I was left all alone with the idea bouncing around in my head, the notion I had for how I was going to beat the charge. But this was going to be difficult. The path I could see to a win was complicated, almost baroque, and working out the details would be complicated, very complicated, if I was to keep my law license.
* * *
I had the feeling that I was in a little over my head, and when I was in over my head, there was only one thing to do. I stepped out of my office and walked down the hall, stopping when I reached a door whose small sign read, “Mark Cecil-Rowe, LL.D., Barrister.” I knocked. There was the sound of glass clinking.
“Enter,” a baritone voice said.
I opened the door, and entered the lair of Mark Cecil-Rowe, Barrister, Doctor of Laws, the man with the best speaking voice I ever heard. He may also have been an alcoholic. He always had some hard liquor at hand whenever I saw him, but on the other hand, I never saw him drunk.
“How’s it going, Mark?” I said cheerfully to a older man seated behind a massive desk
“You know that I prefer that you call me Mr. Cecil-Rowe.” The man rose, coming from behind his desk with a bottle of scotch and two glasses in his hand.
“Sorry, Mr. C.” I wanted his advice, but I still had to needle him, just a little bit. Cecil-Rowe had been the leading barrister in the county for several decades, starting with the West Bay Missing Limbs case back in the sixties. But he wasn’t up to big cases any more, he claimed, so he mostly stayed in his office. He was ‘of counsel’ to a couple of prominent firms, and he dispensed advice from the comfort of his chambers. Advice, as well as expensive scotch.
“Mr. C indeed,” he muttered. Then he smiled, and gestured to a leather couch. “Have a seat, Padawan,” he said. Cecil-Rowe was about sixty, maybe looking a bit older, with a neat white beard, and dressed impeccably.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me Padawan,” I said.
“Then we are even,” he said.
Cecil-Rowe always won. That’s how it seemed, at least to me, that he always won. For Cecil-Rowe, words were weapons in the martial art of speaking, and against him most lawyers were almost unarmed. I sat on the couch, and accepted a glass, and held it while he poured me some scotch. He stopped after about a half shot.
“More than that,” I said, meaning this particular problem was bigger than usual. Cecil-Rowe poured some more, and then one more time at my bidding.
“A one-and-a-half shot problem. This ought to be good,” he said. He settled back into his armchair with a small smile on his face.
“Here’s the situation,” I began, but Cecil-Rowe stopped me before I could get rolling. “This sounds serious indeed,” he said.
“How can you know that already?”
“You started by saying, “here’s the situation”. For you, ‘here’s the situation’, means the same thing as ‘forgive me father, for I have sinned.’ When you say, ‘here’s the situation’, it heralds a tale to come, and the tale always starts the same way, with you making a big mistake. And as usual, I will help you fix your mistake, so long as I don’t have to leave my office.”
That was one of Cecil-Rowe’s rules, never to leave his office on a legal errand of any kind. He would give advice from the comfort of his chambers, but he would not go to court. Cecil-Rowe had taken a liking to me when I took space in the same building, and he never charged me for the consultations. I think he enjoyed listening to the tales from of the legal scrapes I got myself into, usually when I fucked up, and back in those days, I tended to fuck up a lot.
“You think I fucked up?” I said. “Nope. I didnt’ fuck up this time.” My West Bay manner of speaking was several socio-economic classes below Cecil-Rowe’s station. He wrinkled his nose, and replied, “I’m suggesting that you erred grievously, and came here for help.”
“Here’s the situation,” I repeated, repeating the words that for us by now were almost a ritual.
“Tell me about the situation,” Cecil-Rowe said. “Tell me about how you didn’t make a mistake. Tell me how you did not fuck up.”
I told him about Sebastian coming to my office with the tape, and what was on it, and what the client told me. I told him everything, start to finish, from the moment Sebastian arrived in my office until I’d knocked on his door. When I finished speaking I watched Cecil-Rowe’s face, and how it worked slightly before stopping, and then he pronounced his opinion.
“On that very limited information, the situation looks hopeless,” Cecil-Rowe said. Coming from him, the acknowledged master of courtroom rhetoric, that was saying a lot. The guys in the lawyer’s lounge said that in his prime, Cecil-Rowe could make a reasonable doubt out of thin air, just with his words alone. “But I suppose you have an idea of some kind, a plan that you want to run by me. You wouldn’t be coming to see me if you were going to run up a white flag.”
“Exactly,” I said, and then I laid out the elements of my plan, the persons involved, the possible outcomes, the dangers to my client and to me professionally, Cecil-Rowe taking detailed notes like he always did, in his own personal shorthand that he created. Cecil-Rowe listened, never interrupting other than to offer a scotch refill.
“I take it you were thinking outside the box again?” he said when I was done.
“Yup,” I said, “but this one is going to be tricky”. My best solutions were always very simple, and with hindsight, quite obvious. But this plan was different. This plan had some moving pieces, too many moving pieces for my liking, and when I explained it to Cecil-Rowe I felt the dangers keenly.
“Not exactly original, but not bad,” Cecil-Rowe said.
“What?” I’ve had people call my ideas crazy, or just plain stupid, but unoriginal?
“It’s called ‘testem perturbans’, he said, “the technique you're using.”
“Testy what?” I said. Cecil-Rowe spelled it out for me, and I asked him what it meant. “I’ll let you figure that out on your own at the library. It’s a rare coup, I’ll give you that much. But hardly original. The first recorded instance of its use is by Hypereides.”
“It has a name, what I’m doing?”
“Of course it has a name. You need to give things names if you want to talk about them. Just as judo throws and boxing strikes have their distinct names, so do legal maneuvers. The ancient Greeks originated these tactics, and the Romans wrote about them. But they don’t teach them nowadays, anymore than they teach rhetoric. It’s become a lost art.”
“So it must be ok, then,” I said, “I mean, the plan I told you about. It must be ok if it has a name.”
“Really? Murder has a name. Does that make murder ok?”
“Sorry. Just wishful thinking.”
“Before we talk about the ethics of it, let’s talk first about what you really came here to ask me about. You want help on getting away with it.”
“Exactly,” I said without thinking and then I almost coughed up my drink. When I could speak again, I repeated myself, and continued on. “I don’t know how to do this, without getting in trouble. I’m asking myself, what do I do if it doesn’t work out? If everything comes crashing down? How do I look out for myself?”
“How do you cover your ass?” Cecil-Rowe said, the use of the vernacular causing him almost physical pain.
“Yes. How do I cover my ass.”
“Take notes, young Padawan,” Cecil-Rowe said.
“Please don’t call me that,” I said, catching the pad of paper he tossed me, and the pen that came next. Cecil-Rowe began to talk, lecturing me on legal tactics in his fine voice as I wrote furiously to keep up with him. I kept those notes, and the notes of all the other discussions I had with him. I have them to this day. Cecil-Rowe spoke and I asked questions and he spoke some more, and all the while I took notes. After a long time he finished.
“Thanks,” I said, as I got up to leave. But he stopped me.
“You forgot to tell me the best part. The error you made, the mistake that’s causing you to panic.” There was no point denying it, so I told him, and he laughed uproariously.
* * *
The cops kept Sebastian in custody that night, and the next morning was his first appearance. I was sitting in the lawyer’s lounge drinking the shitty coffee that was always on tap, and chatting with the other lawyers. It was the usual mix of aged veterans and younger counsel, all of us waiting around for court to start, telling stories, shooting the shit. The usual stuff.
One of the guys was Benjamin, a ten-year call with a pretty good drug dealer practice. He was reading the newspaper, because back in the 90s, people actually read physical newspapers. Nowadays newspapers are mostly for old people, but back then, it was common to see people sitting around reading the newspaper. Benjamin was sitting in an old leather armchair that was more duct tape than leather, drinking coffee and checking out the news, and as he turned the page I saw a headline:
“Five Bouncers Beaten at the Lounge,” the headline said. I almost dropped my coffee when I saw the headline. “That’s my case,” I said, “my case is in the news.”
Getting mentioned in the newspaper was a big deal back then. Greenspan’s career was made by the newspaper coverage from the Demeter trial. It didn’t matter that he lost the trial; all that mattered is that people saw his name. My case was in the news, and that meant I was only one step away from getting my name out there. The lawyer’s lounge got quiet, and I told everyone the basic facts.
“Congrats, kid,” Benjamin said, handing me the paper. The article presented the case as something of a mystery, a highly unusual event, because usually when there was a fight involving bouncers, it was the customers that wound up in hospital, and the bouncers that got charged. But not this time. Sebastian’s name was not mentioned until the end, when it said he was charged with assault causing bodily harm times five. I passed the paper back to Benjamin.
“So you're going to plead the guy out, or what?” Benjamin said.
“Nope,” I said, “not a chance.” There were approving nods all around. None of the guys that frequented the lawyer’s lounge were known for quick guilty pleas. Lawyers who pleaded everyone guilty weren’t welcome in the lawyer’s lounge. Lawyers like that were known as ‘dump trucks’, and they were shunned by real lawyers, because dump trucks were bringers of bad luck, jinxes, harbingers of doom. Benjamin let me take his newspaper, and I headed out of the lounge for the cells. I needed to have a quick chat with my client.
“Can’t let you in,” said the cop whose job it was to let lawyers into the interview room at the cells.
“Why not? I gotta see my guy before we get started.” There’d been a change in plans that I needed to tell Sebastian about. I was going to do a bit of a one-eighty that morning, and I wanted him to have fair warning.
“Short staffed today,” the cop said, “come back in an hour.”
I didn’t have an hour, so I headed for the courtroom. They always brought the prisoners in a bit early, and I’d have the chance for a brief, whispered discussion with him before things got started.
“Why’s the place so packed?” I said to the court clerk. There were lots of empty seats for lawyers, but the public benches were almost full.
“We have a reporter here,” she said, “something interesting must be happening. A lot of victims, too, and their relatives.” I looked around the room for the first time, and in the front row of the gallery sat five men, each looking the worse for wear, their faces bruised and discolored. Among them were broken noses, split lips and fresh stitches. I was still staring at them when the Crown walked in, and not just any crown, but Polgar, a lawyer as junior as I was, but whose career was on the fast track because he was the son of Polgar Senior, the Crown Attorney for the County.
I drew Polgar more often than any other crown, partially because we were both junior and were learning our trade by exercising our skills on the petty offences that were the small change of any provincial courthouse. The talk in the lawyer’s lounge was that Polgar’s almighty daddy used to feed him the easy winners, files where his son couldn't go wrong, helping his son pad his record so that he could climb the ranks.
There were a few cops sitting at counsel table. The oldest spoke to Polgar, and pointed to a person in the gallery. “Reporter,” he said.
Polgar the Crown and part-time attention whore made a beeline for the reporter. “What case are you on?” he said. The reporter was young and pretty, and she told Polgar that she was here on the fight that had taken place at the club near the airport.
“The Five Bouncer Beatdown,” Polgar said. I rolled my eyes as I listened to him chat up the reporter, full of self-importance, trying to impress her. “The guy who did this won’t get away with it, I promise you,” he said, “he’s got a record as long as--”
“He doesn’t have a record of anything except wrongful arrests,” I said from the defence table. I would have added, ‘thanks to me,’ but Polgar did it for me.
“Thanks to you,” he said, “but he won’t get away with this one. We have too many witnesses.”
“He said she said or whatever,” I replied, “their word against my client’s.”
“We have independent witnesses,” Polgar said, “guys that your client didn’t knock out, plus the cops are still looking for evidence. You’ll see it all in the disclosure.”
It was too bad that they hadn’t brought the prisoners in yet. Sebastian would have enjoyed listening to this, plus I also needed to speak to him before court started, about the little change in plan that I had, an extra dot I would be connecting that morning once court started. But then Judge Hermann walked in, and the chit-chat came to an instantaneous end.
The Honourable Judge Hermann, aka the Hermannator, stood at his dais and bowed. All the lawyers bowed back and everyone took a seat. His Honour took in the empty prisoner’s dock. “How are we to conduct bail hearings without prisoners?” he said.
“Staffing issues today,” Polgar said. He told the cops to bring Sebastian in, and a few minutes later he was seated in the prisoner’s dock, while the terms of his bail were set on consent. As Polgar spoke, I tried to catch Sebastian’s eye, but he had eyes only for the young, pretty reporter. I wrote out a note, and headed over to the prisoner’s box to pass it to him.
“Sit down, counsel,” The Hermannator said, “you can consult with your client after court.”
I sat down, the note burning a hole in my hand. It contained a message, a really important message that I had wanted to give Sebastian before court started. But I couldn't give it to him. I could only sit, and listen as Polgar read out the usual terms of release. No contact with the victims, live with his surety, keep his bail papers with him at all times, sign in once a week, keep the peace and be of good behavior, the usual. Sebastian nodded as he heard the routine words that he’d heard many times before. The lawyers checked their calendars, and we set a date for a case conference. We were about to move on to the next case, when I stood. It was time for stage one of the plan, a little wrinkle devised by Mr. Mark Cecil-Rowe, Barrister, LL.D.
“There’s just one more thing, Your Honour,” I said, opening my briefcase.
“Yes?” Judge Hermann said.
“A video tape has come into my possession,” I said, pulling out a large manilla envelope. Polgar was immediately suspicious.
“Your Honour, I object. Whenever Calledinthe9os is involved, there’s always something, some nonsense that delays things.” But the judge made him sit down, and told me to continue.
“As I was saying, a tape came into my possession, a tape that may or may not have some bearing on the charges before the court. I'm not saying either way, but I’m handing the original over to the Crown.” I’d made copies the day before, just in case, but the copy that Sebastian put into my hands was the one I gave to Polgar. Polgar accepted the envelope hesitantly, as if fearing a trap. But the concern on his face disappeared when Sebastian saw what was up.
“What the fuck,” he said, “that tape was like confidential.”
“Be quiet,” I said to him. He was inches away from incriminating himself.
“You told me you wouldn’t show it to anyone,” he said. I wanted to ignore him, but I couldn’t, and my next words were addressed to the judge.
“My client misunderstood me, Your Honour. Yes, I agreed to keep it confidential, but not from the Crown, of course, because it might be evidence.”
“You might have fuckin’ told me, asshole,” Sebastian hissed from the prisoner’s box. The judge silenced him.
“From your reaction,” the judge told him, “it sounds like you know what’s on the tape, and you should keep quiet, like your lawyer told you. Calledinthe90s handed over the tape because he had to. He acted in the best traditions of the bar.” That’s what they call it, when you sell out your client: ‘acting in the best traditions of the bar.’
“Fuck your traditions,” Sebastian said, his voice a low murmur. His face was rage-filled as the cops took him back to the cells, and I wondered whether he’d keep the peace and be of good behaviour the next time he saw me.
“Not too popular with your client, it seems,” Polgar muttered to me.
“Your daddy think you can win this case? That why he gave it to you?” But the judge told Polgar to move things along, and I shuffled out of court, following a crowd made up of the five bouncers that Sebastian beat, along with their friends and supporters and the young reporter from the Tribune.
“What was on that tape?” the reporter asked me when we got outside.
This was my chance, I thought. A reporter, a real live reporter, was talking to me about a case. Sure, it wasn’t a murder case, nothing too serious, but the facts were interesting enough that for a day or two, it had the attention of the press. Here was my chance to get my name into the newspaper. To get myself noticed. To advance my career.
“What was on the tape? Can’t say. Privileged.” The words rolled off my tongue automatically. I gave the same answer I gave my wife when she asked a question about one of my cases. The answer was always ‘privileged’, unless we were talking about something that happened in open court, on the record. It always drove my wife nuts.
“That’s it,” the reporters said, “that’s all you can give me? You make this big show of handing over evidence, your client goes nuts in court and wants to kill you, and all you can say, is that it’s privileged?” The reporter sounded as annoyed as my wife did when I played the privilege card
“Sorry,” I said, “ but until the Crown’s had a chance to review what I gave them—“
“Never mind,” the reporter said, turning her heel on me and heading out.
“You really do have a way with people,” Kurt Mandrick said, observing the encounter from his seat on a bench outside the courtroom. Kurt the Dump Truck was at court that day to plead a few clients guilty, because that’s all that he did, plead people guilty. He’d been avoiding me since the notorious Autrefois Acquit case a few months before, but after seeing me get kicked around, he figured it was safe to speak to me
“I wasn’t trying to piss her off,” I said, but the next day when I picked up the Telegraph in the lawyer’s lounge, I saw that I had seriously pissed off the reporter. “Lawyer leaks tape to the cops,” the headline said, mentioning me by name as someone who had sold out their own client. That’s how I learned that lawyers who gave reporters nothing to write about got negative publicity. But I shrugged it off to experience, and then headed out to my car. I was going to the Jet Set for the next stage in my plan.

Bonjour, je me présente et je m'apelle Mei et j'ai 17 ans.
Récement j'ai vécu une déception amoureuse entre parenthèse. Mais je ne reste pas dessus je suis un peut triste je l'admet, mais je considère cela plus comme une preuve d'amour. Cela dit j'ai constater que j'avais bien tourner la page car je ne rescent n'y tristesse n'y dégout en y repesant.
​
Maintenant que le contexte est posé, je vais pouvoir parler un peu plus en détail de mon problème. J'étais très sportive étant petite (je faisais de la gym en compétition et j'avais plutôt un bon niveau), mais voilà plus de 5 ans environ que j'ai arrêté suite à des blessures, des traumatismes, et la pression. Je commençais également à décrocher scolairement, car avec 5 entraînements par semaine, j'étais très fatiguée (de 18h à 20h30 en général), sans compter les compétitions qui rajoutaient encore plus de pression. J'ai fini par être dégoûtée du monde sportif et compétitif. Pour moi, le sport était devenu ma bête noire, un vrai dilemme, et j'essayais toujours d'obtenir une dispense.
​
Puis, cette année, j'ai rencontré un garçon vraiment très musclé. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais moi aussi, je voulais être comme lui, trouver une force et avoir l'air d'avoir un corps en bonne santé. J'ai commencé à aimer les mêmes publications que lui, puis par la suite, j'ai vu des femmes avec un corps vraiment parfait à mes yeux : des cuisses énormes, pas nécessairement de grosses fesses, mais une masse musculaire qui, parfois, me semblait sympathique, et un DOS ! Tout cela pour dire que cela a commencé à me motiver depuis septembre. J'ai pris l'habitude de courir les weekends (car en semaine je suis en internat), puis les mercredis après-midi. Lors de ces sorties, progressivement, cela m'a aidé à arrêter de fumer (shame on me). Je fume toujours des cigarettes, mais c'est vraiment rare maintenant, seulement en soirée ou lors de mes périodes d'examens, mais je suis déjà fière d'avoir arrêté tout ça.
​
Maintenant, depuis deux semaines (à cause de ma déception amoureuse), j'ai commencé à courir un peu moins, mais de manière plus intense, où j'essaie de tenir un rythme régulier sur un temps donné.
​
Et je m'entraîne à la maison avec des haltères et une barre (je suis allée à la salle une seule fois et j'ai peur des regards des gens car je tremble énormément, surtout des bras). Je fais des exercices intenses d'environ 1h avec des pauses modérées et je vais jusqu'à l'échec (car je ne sais pas compter, mais je fais environ 3 séries de 12, puis 8, puis 6 pour bien déchirer mes muscles). Je regarde beaucoup de vidéos comme celle d'Aline Dessine, qui m'ont énormément boostée, et sur Insta, je suis Savilift (je crois que ça s'écrit comme ça).
​
Bref, j'aimerais avoir quelques idées d'exercices pour muscler mon dos. D'ici cet été j'irai à la salle, mais j'attends de prendre un peu de masse car mes bras sont comparables à des cure-dents, j'ai des cuisses plutôt athlétiques depuis toujours, pour mon dos on va dire que ça va, et mes abdos sont dessinés, mais j'ai une petite couche de gras, je pense, dessus.

First / Previous / Next
◄▼►
I’ve seen fifteen thinnings and two merges, so I know a few things.
First, most thinnings don’t merge.
Second, Universal Reality Anchors catch thinnings. (I shouldn’t know about URAs. My therapist messed up on that.)
Thinnings all have kaleidoscoping colors and make my ears ring. That’s the URAs. If you can hear it but not see it, don’t worry. If you hear it and then don’t, do worry. But that almost never happens.
Fourth, merges and thinnings almost always come in threes. The Truth Club thinks three is a Number of Power. They didn’t make that up. I did.
And last, every thinning I’ve seen happened after my first merge. And Alice and Dad both say I made them up.
They’re both liars. Make of that what you will.
◄▼►
Outside Victoria, British Columbia - May 23, 2043, 11:53 AM
- - - - -
My tinnitus gets louder and louder until, as I step through the L-shaped entrance to the girls’ bathroom, it’s all I can hear. The thinling’s screeches/roars/grinding fail to break through the ringing, and my whole head feels like it’s vibrating, even though it’s only my aural aug. I’ve only been this close to a thinning once, and that was three—no, four—minutes ago. This one feels worse.
I want to see the Truth in this thinning. But, I’ll be honest, I’m terrified. My throat burns, and my arms won’t stop bleeding. And I don’t know where the thinling is. It’s with me, on the right side of the fire door, away from other people. But I don’t know where.
I’m still in my lizard brain—fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Besides the water balloons, that’s one of the only true things my therapist told me. Everyone’s got two brains—the people brain that makes choices and the lizard brain that keeps you alive. My lizard brain is good at freeze, fight, and fawn. Freeze usually keeps me out of trouble, and fawn keeps Dad happy. Fight’s never gotten me much, though. Alice is a fawner, too, but she fights with Dad as much as she fawns. I’m in trouble now because I got curious and then froze instead of fleeing like I should have. I squeeze my eyes shut, count to three, and open them.
The graffiti in the girls’ bathroom never gets cleaned up—not before the girls draw more. Someone’s penned ‘beware of limbo dancers’ onto the bottom of a stall door along with a stick figure doodle of a man bending backward, and Candice has written her boyfriend’s name on the tile wall with a heart around it. A half-dozen other girls’ commentary about what a creep Derrick is adorns the rest of the chipped, off-white tiles. The thinning’s dancing lights reflect off the stained, pink floor tiles inside a stall, but not the one with the limbo man.
Some girl has kissed the mirror over the bathroom sink, leaving a blindingly crimson lip mark in the corner. It hasn’t been cleaned off yet, either. She’ll probably get sick from kissing it if a thinling doesn’t get her first. And the whole place stinks like only a girl’s bathroom can. Pee, lemon cleaning supplies, and perfume. Ugh.
Really, I decide, the whole thing is a math problem. The steps seem simple, but it has a lot of variables. I can’t let the thinling find me, and I have to stop bleeding. Once I solve those, I can work on the rest of the problem.
So, first, the thinling.
The thinning is in the stall. I ignore it for now.
The whining ring fades slightly as I creep into the bathroom’s entrance. This is not an improvement since now I can hear the monster’s screech/roagrind. It sounds like it’s down the hall, tearing into something solid. I pop my head out for a moment.
Its claw/jaw/saw pulls away from the impossibly thick fire door, revealing a gash so wide I can see it from down the hall. Its eyes/sensors turn toward me, and I duck back inside the bathroom. That was stupid. There’s nowhere to go. But I can’t think—my head is light, and I wobble just standing. I stagger back to the wall, slide into a sitting position with my legs splayed and my baggy cargo pants hiked up around my calves, and wait.
I don’t have to wait long before it slithers/slides/clatters into the bathroom entrance. It roars again, rushing toward me, and then stops.
Not, like, of its own free will, but like it’s hit an invisible wall across the bathroom, right in front of the first sink. It strains and lashes its claws/jaws/saws against whatever’s stopped it, but it can’t pass. It doesn’t even make sparks.
I release a breath I hadn’t realized had caught in my throat. The thinling’s roars of protest/angefrustration and my tinnitus drown out the raspberry sound between my numb lips. It can’t come in. It can’t come in.
Why can’t it come in?
That feels important, but it’s not something I can puzzle out right now. My brain feels fuzzy. The thinling’s not doing it, and the ringing in my ears—okay, it’s awful, but it’s not the problem. I slump down below a paper towel dispenser, reach up with a shaky hand, and grab the rough brown paper. Sheet after sheet rains down on me as I pull, tear, grab, and repeat. Once I have enough, I start the long, agonizing process of trying to find and cover dozens of cuts across my arms and face.
Most aren’t a problem. They’re shallow, and they’ve already slowed or stopped. But one on my right palm has cut deep. I wrap paper towels around it, but it keeps throbbing and pulsing. Blood drips from a long cut across my forehead, but head injuries bleed a lot, right? It’s probably not gonna kill me. My hand is more worrying. Did it catch a tendon? It hurts to move my fingers, but that might be the cut, not something deeper.
While I’m playing at medic, the thinling stalks back and forth just feet away. It roars and rips/tears/cuts futilely at the…barrier…keeping it from me. I still can’t see exactly what it is, and I can’t tell why it’s stuck. But I don’t care. Just this once, I don’t need to know the Truth. At least, not yet.
So, equation time. I know where the thinling is. Obviously. I tighten my makeshift paper towel bandage around my palm and start dabbing at my forehead, wincing every time the rough brown paper catches on the cut’s ragged edge. I’ve got most of the bleeding mostly taken care of, though my skin looks like it’s mostly paper towels. Which means I can work on the next step in balancing this.
This part goes fast. Dad? Shelter. Sora? Not sure. Ugh, Alice, who left me? Shelter. Teachers? Unknown. The police? Probably in shelters, but definitely not here. SHOCKS? Not here, but probably on their way. This seems right up the boogeyman’s alley. Superman? Yeah, right.
So, no one’s coming—no one I want to see. I’ve got me, Mom’s dress, as many paper towels as I can use, water, and…
…my phone.
I fish it out of my baggy cargo pants’ pocket, though I have to hike up Mom’s filthy dress a little to get to it. There aren’t any new messages, just a flashing SHOCKS warning to avoid the strange. I snort. Then I laugh. Then I can’t stop laughing, and it doesn’t feel like good laughter.
As I sit against the bathroom wall and laugh, I thumb through my contacts. Eventually, I land on the one person I can trust to text me back, even if I can’t trust her for anything else. I start typing, and the panic hits me again like a wave, crashing straight through the hysterical laughter.
Claire -
The ‘sending a message’ icon spins and spins, my throat tightening painfully again with each passing second. I count to almost forty in my head before a new message comes in, and my message’s text goes red.
Victoria Emergency Services -
I stop reading and shiver despite myself. SHOCKS. The boogeymen. They’re here. Or maybe not here, but on their way and aware. And I’m in the middle of their merge. Again. I don’t need a repeat of last time, because the Truth about last time is that I got lucky and my therapist wasn’t as clever as he thought.
There’s no way I can stop the shivering, and the room keeps swimming back and forth in the panic tsunami.
<…and Goldstream. Further messages with additional instructions will be set as needed.>
The message comes in twice more, identical word for word, before it stops. My phone doesn’t power off, but it’s like it’s stuck in airplane mode. I can’t connect to anything. Not to the internet, or text messages, or even to my augs—both of which are stuck in one-to-one mode with my unaugmented eye and ear. That’s not the end of the world, though. Even running hot enough to hurt, neither gets above three-to-one. What is the end of the world is that I can’t text or call anyone. Well, almost anyone.
I dial 911. It doesn’t disconnect me. Instead, an automated voice speaks in my aural aug. “All VES emergency lines are currently busy. Please hold. An operator will be with you as soon as possible. Your emergency is impor—“
I hang up and recalculate my equation since I can’t talk to anyone. SHOCKS: Definitely on their way. Superman? Even less likely, he won’t want to fight them. And no phone—or at least the only thing it’s good for is as a flashlight.
Pushing down another shudder, I light my last cigarette, push it into my mouth, and ready myself. The smoke fills my lungs, and I blow it out slowly—West End High’s in trouble already, so a fire alarm won’t make things worse.
It’s time to deal with the thinning.
I push myself up to my feet with a groan. The thinling scrabbles/scratches/slices at the invisible wall, making me jump, and I side-eye it the whole time I scooch toward the bathroom stall. My tinnitus ramps up until my entire head pounds and my aural aug burns inside my ear. “I want to know the Truth,” I whisper to myself. I repeat it like a mantra. Then I pull on the stall door’s handle.
It opens with a creak. The smell of cinnamon and tulips hits me.
I catch a split-second view of the new thinning before its rainbow colors flash and vanish, the ringing stops, and every lightbulb in the bathroom shatters in a loud, rippling series of pops.
◄▼►
I’m terrified, but also relieved.
Terrified because I’m in deep shit now.
I’ve been in the center of two merges in the last fifteen minutes. The animal/monstemachine paces ten feet away, back and forth. The darkness feels like it’s trying to drown me, and that’s worse than the thinling. And SHOCKS is on the way.
But relieved because, when I flip my phone’s flashlight on, I see what’s emerged from the second thinning.
It’s a gun. A revolver. Not the kind from Westerns with the long, gray-black barrel and worn wooden handle, but the kind a hard-boiled detective might carry. Or May Lay, one of the Knights from Knights of the Apocalypse. She has like twenty guns. It’s short, stubby, and shockingly white—almost porcelain, except for the part where you put bullets. That part shines like polished brass. It’s loaded, with shells made of different metals.
I should stop myself, a tiny voice in the back of my head says as I reach for the revolver. I’m already in deep shit, and I don’t need more. And the revolver’s a lie, anyway. It’s not real. It can’t be real. But the other voices—the ones that want to know the Truth or that know that if I want to deal with the trouble I’m going to be in, I need to solve the trouble I’m in now— shout it down. My fingers wrap around the carved, notched grip.
And I’m not drowning anymore. My whole body burns instead, and I scream. But when I move my arms, it just gets worse, not better, until I’m hugging myself and whimpering while trying not to so much as blink.
As quickly as it hits me, the sensation fades, and I examine the revolver more closely. It’s not heavy, and the grip is somehow perfectly sized for my not-quite-adult hand. I fiddle with the brass bullet holder—I’ve never paid attention to what you call a gun’s parts. The bullet holder should rotate out so I can load it again, but no matter what I do, I can’t get it to. It doesn’t even spin when I run my thumb against it. Instead, the bullet seems locked in line with the barrel.
Seven seems like a strange number of bullets for a six-shooter.
There’s also no safety. I know that part of a gun. My finger rests against the trigger guard—it is porcelain, but the kind you make armor out of, not the type that rich people use for dishes and everyone else shits in. This little pistol is ready to use; I can feel it more than I can see it. And I’m ready, too.
{Halcyon System Final Sync}
{Overriding Firewalls}
{Firewall Protocols Overridden: 2/3}
{System Access: 50%}
{Affected System Features}
►Skill Information
►Truth Information
►Archived Anomaly Information
►Assistance Functions
{Truth Learned: Anomalous Bond 2 (-2) - Information Unavailable}
{Stability 7/10}
{Skill Acquired: Revolver Mastery 1 - Information Unavailable}
{Claire Pendleton}
►Stability 7/10
►Skills - Revolver Mastery 1
►Truths - Anomalous Bond 2 (-2)
►Inquiries -
I blink back tears as my optic aug heats up and my aural one pops and hisses. The message reads a little like an error report on a crashing computer, a little like my augs when I reboot them in the morning, and a tiny bit like Knights of the Apocalypse’s character status screen. I glaze over most of it, but a few important parts stick out—like the Truths. I try to mentally tap the link to Anomalous Bond, but every time, I get a bonking, boinging error sound. There has to be a workaround to see what Revolver Mastery or Anomalous Bond are, but no matter what I try, the message screen won’t open them.
After almost three minutes of trial and error sounds, I decide three basic things.
First, I need to keep my Stability high. Without the Halcyon System’s Assistance Functions—whatever those are—I can’t say for sure what’ll happen if I lose all my Stability, but based on the fire I felt when I grabbed the revolver, and on the earlier message when I panicked after seeing the thinling, I don’t want it to dip much lower.
Second, I want to know what the firewalls are and how Inquiries work.
{Inquiry: What’s going on at West End High?}
Ah. That’s how. I’m not sure what’s going to happen if I answer it, but it helps me keep track of my variables better.
And third, I have a tool to access the Truth now. And not only that, but to do it in a way that lets me be sure, for the very first time, that it really is the Truth. That is, as long as I can trust the Halcyon System. And, unlike my English teacher and Mr. Roberts, it hasn’t lied to me yet. It also hasn’t told me anything yet, except that I’m in the process of…losing my mind? Falling apart? I wish I knew what Stability did, but I have bigger problems.
I push myself out of my squat and turn, pointing the revolver toward the sink, and the door, and the thinling. I’m not helpless. I don’t have to run, and that’s the Truth. I can—
It’s gone.
◄▼►
My first instinct is to chase after it.
Why is my first instinct to chase after it?
Without the tinnitus and the thinling’s impossible-to-describe form-changing, my migraine recedes slightly. I shouldn’t chase it. It’ll tear me apart. What I should do is try to find a way through the school, or out of the school and back inside somewhere else, to the shelter. That’s where safety is. That’s where Dad and Alice and, I hope, Sora all are.
But that thinling? It’s a mystery. And I swore an oath to the Truth Club and myself that I’d seek the Truth. Only they all thought that circle under the bleachers was a game, and I knew I meant every word. So I’m going to chase after it.
But I don’t have to be dumb about it. I mean, I’ve been pretty dumb so far, but I don’t have to be. Alice is a valedictorian, and while I don’t care enough about Language Arts or Social Studies to earn top grades like her, I’m not dumb. I just don’t pretend I’m interested in stuff I don’t care about.
On one side of the equation, I’ve got the thinling. And on the other, a variable. Something made it stop, and it didn’t do it because it felt merciful. It could be the mirror. Maybe it can’t understand its appearance either. Maybe there’s something else going on with it. Or maybe it’s the pipes. I’ve read plenty of myths that make running water a safe place. Maybe there’s truth to them.
I can’t steal a pipe, though.
My fingers scream in protest by the time I finally wrench the bathroom mirror free. It takes me almost ten minutes of pulling and wriggling my fingers between its steel backing and the cinderblock wall. When it finally does, I’ve twisted two nails back on my right hand, crushed my left thumb between the wall and the steel, and my head spins from standing for too long. But I have the bathroom mirror—intact, even the half-cleaned lipstick stain in the corner.
I lean against the wall, arms wrapped around the glass-and-steel mirror in a hug, and breathe. Then I carefully creep back to the door, revolver in one hand and mirror tucked under my arm, and stare into the twilit hallway.
It’s there. The thinling is back at the steel fire door, clawing/biting/sawing at the metal. It’s only a matter of time before it breaks through, which would be both good and bad. Good, because I need that door open. But bad, because there are people over there. Fakes and liars, yes, but still people.
They can’t handle the Truth.
I decide I can, and I flip the mirror around to face the thinling. I hope the reflection will act like a steel beam, flattening the monster against the wall or smashing it into the fire door. But it doesn’t. Instead, the thinling ignores it.
But for the first time, I can see its true form in the reflection. It’s alive. Not like a wolf, but similarly-sized; we have wolves nearby, where Vancouver Island goes wild. Where it should have four legs, it has six, and where a wolf would have jaws, its mouth is a circle of spinning, writhing teeth. It’s covered in white plates that make it look bug-like, but there’s never been a bug this size. Below the white, raw flesh pulses and twitches; I can’t tell if it’s black or dark red, but that’s a lighting problem, not because I can’t see the Truth.
It’s still ignoring me and the mirror. I decide to take a gamble. The mirror—hopefully—stopped the thinling once. It can probably do it again. I set it against the wall under a poster about the quadratic formula, level the revolver in my hands, facing the thinling even though it hurts my palm and my smashed thumb to aim, and pull the trigger.
It cracks, a purplish beam of light cuts through the air, sizzling, and the shell clatters to the ground. The sound echoes in the hall, and I realize I’ve imagined the beam’s sound. The ray leaving the gun’s barrel reaches twenty—no, fifty—feet, touches the wall above the thinling, and vanishes except for heat ripples in the air. I’ve missed. The revolver’s bullet-holder clicks as it slowly spins, and a new shell appears in the empty hole.
I stare at the mirror, not at the thinling, because the mirror tells me the Truth. It’ll stop the thinling. It has to.
But as the monster slithers/slides/clatters across the ground toward me, I lose my nerve and run. The mirror sits against the wall outside the bathroom while I hide inside, the revolver pointed shakily at the doorway.
A moment passes. Two. Three. I allow myself to breathe. To stand up and take one hesitant step toward the entrance, then another. When I gather the courage to look outside, I almost break right back into hysterics again.
The mirror worked. And the revolver’s shell glows a bright orange against the hall’s twilight.
I hobble toward the thinling. It roars in protest/angedespair as I grit my teeth, hold the revolver six inches from its scrabbling jaws/claws/saws, and brace myself.
I pull the trigger.
Then the thinling screams—the most concrete sound it’s made since I first saw it—and falls to the tile floor. Its scream hammers my mind, and I try to fight it, but can’t. The revolver slips from my grasp and joins it. And a moment later, so do I.