Reagan Economics

The Punishment Fits the Crime

AN: In the coming months, I plan to perform a deep edit of this book. I decided to finish the story first, then do the polishing. You will find grammar mistakes and a change in the first person POV from past to present, maybe some plot holes and poor flow in writing. Feel free to point them out and I will definitely use them to the betterment of this story. Thanks so much for reading.

                                           Merick Bishop

At what point would a person question if their actions were sane? After the third life they took or maybe the seventh? Was murder ever justified?

As I walked down the side-street behind my prey, I contemplated the difference in meaning between justice and revenge. The two words had become almost synonymous to me over the years. Sometimes to get justice, a person had to exact revenge and sometimes to get revenge, justice had to be served. Therefore, to call me a vigilante as if it was an insult; something to be ashamed of, had been beyond my manner of thinking—until recently. Was it possible to get lost in the vengeance and err on the side of violence and madness? Was seeking retribution for other people a corrupting influence?

The man in the ball cap had no idea he was being followed.  In his naivety, he believed his deeds were hidden under cover of night, but everything done in the dark was brought into the light. I heard that somewhere once and it stuck with me.

The man I followed was guilty, guilty of multiple muggings against the elderly. He waited in the shadows, watching his unsuspecting victims, gaging their weaknesses. He would strike the person in the back of the head with a large hammer before taking whatever valuables they possessed. The police had been unable to capture him, the victims literally never seeing who or what hit them. Some survived, if calling lying in a bed, pissing through a tube, and not having a single cognizant thought run through your brain, truly surviving. Most died where they dropped, unaware of the predator rifling through their purse or wallet, not knowing they had just been murdered for forty dollars.

It had been a coincidence that I was present the night he attempted to assault a woman as she left work late, a pocketful of tips from her day's labor at a local diner weighing down her purse. I intervened before he got the chance to strike her and although she had not gotten a good look at the perpetrator, I had.

The hammer I carried in my coat pocket became heavy as the man continued to walk too close to the public eye. I needed to wait until we were all alone. As he meandered down a lonelier street, I drew closer in my pursuit. He stopped and cautiously looked around a brick partition. Scanning for potential victims, he wasn't alert to the fact someone was about to make him a victim.

GREED HATRED

The man's emotions were pure and disgusting to hear, full of greed and hatred of his victims, he no doubt believed life had treated him unfairly and somehow he was owed the right to kill the easiest prey and take what they possessed, what he thought he should possess.

I swung the hammer with no regrets, feeling the bones of his skull collapse inward, almost throwing me off balance.

SHOCK SURPRISE

He pitched forward prone in a crashing fall as his own murdering hammer slipped out of his hand. To be sure of his fate, I struck him again.

In my world, I believed the punishment should fit the crime. The mugger died by his own design.

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I was named after my grandfather, who was an accomplished executive officer aboard a supercarrier in the navy. His captain and subordinates called him Exo, so the name stuck.  His real name was James Pater Reagan, so my parents named me James Exo Reagan. As a nurse, I was in the business of helping people, but I was also an empath.  No, not that sappy, I can feel your emotions and I'm not judging you for your actions, type of empath.  I was the real thing.  I knew exactly what emotions you were experiencing, no matter how many lies you told otherwise.