Mice Shockers

The Horse Breeder

At 7:15, Marshall attached his smartphone to the back of Beaker, his toy poodle. If the police ever did a GPS tracking of his phone, it would show he was at home. More precisely, he was moving back and forth from the couch in the living room to a dog dish in the kitchen.

Marshall packed his weapon, props and tools into a small army duffel bag, which he had purchased with one of the packs of cigarettes from a homeless Vietnam veteran. From 7:20 to 7:40 he hailed four taxis, finally settling on the driver whose English was sufficiently bad. Marshall guessed that he was Middle Eastern, which seemed in itself to add an air of mystery and danger to the evening.

Marshall got dropped off ten blocks away from Melissa's apartment in front of a dark alleyway. He tipped the driver well, not too well, and said 'thank you' with the same thick English accent he had used the whole ride as he explained the difficulties of his 'profession as a horse breeder'.

There was an essential piece of a murder that Marshall had yet to fulfill: the struggle with the conscience. Any good murderer, meaning any murderer that did not act simply out of rage or madness, who did not rely on homicide as their primary focus and source of fulfillment in life, must have a moment of doubt and a searching of their conscience. That was obvious. Marshall paced back and forth in the alley. There were two essential steps for proving that something normally deemed morally depraved was not only acceptable but actually necessary. He must show that what he was about to do would actually be just, in light of the circumstances, and that the action itself was not, after all, so terrible. The circumstances: Melissa had frustrated and annoyed him for years, failed to acknowledge his scientific prowess or his masculine... how should he put it... desirability, no, magnetism (he was after all a genius and quite good looking compared to most men); besides, he despised her. Sufficient justification. Next. Melissa should, no doubt, be punished, but is murder the best and most appropriate method?

Marshall stopped his pacing and adjusted the shoulders of his coat. It was three sizes too small. He pursed his lips.

"Put it in context," he said aloud. Death is strong castigation, true, but how often is it that those who do not deserve to die are killed? Every day. And how many people in this world have committed murder? A lot more than one would think. And a lot receiving praise for it as well. Most presidents, kings, and leaders living today have officially ordered people to death. The jails are filled with murderers waiting to be murdered, sentenced to be murdered. The judges, the prosecutors, the executioners and the governors are all party to those deaths. Then the military, police, government agents, drug traffickers, arsonists, and the vicious thieves and killers who walk our streets and are never caught. Ah, and what of the careless? The builders who erect faulty structures, the landlords who lease unsafe apartments, the drivers who are reckless or drunk, and then those with sexually communicable, fatal diseases who transmit death in seconds, smoke a cigarette and leave in the morning. Surely they are nothing short of murderers. The rich who let the famished and underprivileged starve rather than contribute money to feed them. Indirectly murder, but murder all the same. Suicide! There's another. Suicide is merely a murder of the self. But murder all the same!

Marshall began pacing again, his feet sliding forward in the over-sized shoes. He had a strong argument indeed.

He remembered something he heard a priest say over forty years before: Judas went to Hell, not for the betrayal of Jesus, but for taking his own life, for not believing in the possible redemption of his soul. "All he had to do was say he was sorry, ask to be forgiven and go on living," Marshall said to the dumpster.

The dumpster was mute, contemplating.

Marshall explained. "You see, one can kill anyone, one can even help to slay Jesus and still go to Heaven as long as one seeks forgiveness afterwards, as long as black murder is not still in the mind the last minute of one's own death. I should remember to repent just in case."

Marshall had fulfilled his obligation as a sensible murderer. His conscience was at ease. He strolled toward Melissa's apartment, recalling the day that mass had been given and realizing that the priest's words had probably stuck in his mind for so many years because directly after saying them, the priest suffered a heart attack on the altar. He never did find out if he lived or died. It was the last time he went to church.

"Probably died," Marshall said aloud.

At 8:25, he arrived at Melissa's late, not too late.