t the end of it all Stowe shot himself. The fifty plus people before him didn't really matter to him anymore. Nothing did. Only the darkness that was to come after he pulled the trigger one last time.

In the following years people would be stirred by the compulsion to understand why Stowe had done what he had done. There were the obvious answers: The power of attorney over all other living beings: Godhood. The majority of humanity thought it was purely Satanic. The likened Stowe to people like Hitler and Charlie Manson. Several of the same considered Stowe's action as some kind of sign as to what was going to come next; an illusory panorama of Apocalypse in bas relief of the real thing.

Secretly, more than a few of these wished they had been the ones to make it happen.

 

s Stowe slipped the barrel of a gun in his mouth he quietly referred back to the expression of his first victim; an elderly woman strolling crookedly across the street. And the expressions of the onlookers which were too legion to maintain. The bullet entered the woman's neck, an unconscious decision on Stowe's part. Her mouth flew apart in a spasm of dread as her eyes rolled back in her head. When the pain registered, she fell to her knees.

Those were certainly the most fulfilling seconds of Stowe's life; the most important. Everything has changed, hadn't it? Every God damn thing. Since that moment the world had seemed different.

Blood in the streets. An impenetrably dark threshold. A circus of agony.

A man could do great things if he put his mind to it. He could become president.

Fuck that. He could become God.

He was God.

But things continued to change after the first. Things became dull. The slack expressions of the dead piling up became even more dull. Things were getting duller by the minute.

 

t was interesting that Stowe had decided on taking his own life at the end of his two and a half hour killing spree. It was suggested that perhaps he realized the law would put a stop him. He would run out of gas. Ammunition. Christ, The National Guard would run him over in their tanks.

There was never anywhere for him to run. He had killed old people and children. Even if they did capture him alive they would surely throw the switch.

 

towe had once believed in his fellow men. He had witnessed them doing great things. Yes. A man could do anything. But he had witnessed their evils too. Their illusions. He had felt the weight of their piled masses, nearly suffocating under the strain of all of their lies.

Even now, with the oily, gun-taste in his mouth, Stowe did not hate them. Maybe he loved them more. It was a sick as shit thought, but it traveled through his mind just the same.

He'd not thought about how much he loved them in a long time.

Stowe had even loved a number of them deeply.

Unfortunately they wouldn't think of him that way. The only thing they would remember him by was his inability to love anything at all, save for the violence that powered his final moments. They wouldn't think of him as a man with a family, job, aspirations. They wouldn't think of him as being human at all.

Black clouds obscuring the sun. Or dust of blood tainting the wind. Death.

A voice somewhere on the outside ordered Stowe “out and away from the vehicle”, but he was no longer an actor in that particular reality. It was as distant as the concept of drinking a glass of wine before bed each night. The language was all wrong, fabled and dreamt; a soliloquy from some unwritten drama.

 

o one would mourn Stowe's death. Not even his wife and kids. He couldn't have cared much for them anyway. Anybody who cared for life at all surely wouldn't have done those things. An empty funeral in a vast void of indifference. That's all it could be. Those who did mourn the death of Stowe, mourned secretly. Everyone, not a single human omitted, brewed thoughts of destruction, but only those who mourned the death of Stowe understood them for what they were. In a way Stowe had been brave to see them through. It was just too bad that innocent lives had been sacrificed in order to prove this point. Only, if lives had not been sacrificed the selfsame point would have remain invalid.

Stowe knew this turmoil better than anyone. It was the world's turmoil. It was the turmoil of chaos and rebellion; of spoiled revolutions.

 

t was time to pull the trigger. Finally. Stowe knew this, too. From the physical pain in bones to the figurative one in his heart. He ached terribly. All over. The darkness was creeping over him. The end was coming. It was much different than he had once imagined. Less pleasant

“We have the vehicle surrounded!”

Stowe thought of God as an unruly passenger on a flight going nowhere. That was humanity. Which was why he had the gun stuffed in his mouth. Which was why he was about to die.

It was time to land the plane.

BOOM!!!

Several gunshots echoed the first, sinking into the vehicle around him. What did it matter?

 

he Apocalypse did not come. A couple books were written about Stowe. They sold modestly. There was always another madman on the horizon. Another Hitler. Another Manson. False messiah's wallowing in darkness. Spreading their diseases.

It's a wonder Stowe didn't do it sooner.

 

[END]

© 2004 C.C. Parker - Contributor's Bio