"Fucker," he swore softly under his breath as he slowly ever-so-carefully wiped the lens of the scope clear of sweat. For late April it was already hot, damn hot, and for the millionth time he wondered how he had always managed to endure it.

He refocused his eyes again and peered through the crosshairs of his scope and slowly played it in an easy arc across the playground from his high vantage point on the water tower across the street.

BAM! He imagined.

He could just see all of them scampering to a ‘fraidy hole after he fires the first round. And he recalled an old memory of his father laughing and shooting at the big, greasy roof rats at the dumpgound and saying how much he loved moving targets.

Cautiously he eyed his watch.

Ten minutes.

In ten minutes it was gonna be recess time and the kids would come flowing out of the school like a screaming, laughing, mocking river. He bit his lip until he bought blood at that mental picture.   

It was a perfect metaphor.

Carefully (carefully!) he worked the bolt on his rifle and chambered in the first of one of many (?) 150 grain bullets.

Nine…

Minutes.

The heat was hot and the ground was dry but the air was full of sound…

For some reason an old America tune kept playing over and over again in his head as if in a loop.

In the desert you can remember your name ‘cause there ain’t no one to give you no pain…

Pain.

Eight…

Minutes.

He panned his weapon across the school and then focused in through an open upstairs window.

There!

He put a little girl’s head right smack dab in the intersection of the crosshairs. “Hmmm…at two-thousand six hundred feet per second I’d BE THERE in a hurry” he whispered to the hot, stagnant air.

But no. Not quite…yet.

Seven…

Minutes.

After two days in the desert sun, my skin began to turn red…

Red.

Gonna be lots of red today, he thought.

Six…

Minutes.

He looked again into the open window. Heh, he could remember sitting in a class just exactly like it. Everyone, he remembered with a wince, was so…cruel.

“And now two can play that shit” he said to the open window.

Five…

Minutes.

He thought about his mama. She was always so…

What?

What was she? She was always so…

Weak.

Why did she let them do the things they did to him? He wondered.

“Because she was weak!” he nearly screamed.

But today HE would be strong.

Four…

Minutes.

What was her name? For the life of him he just couldn’t remember the bitch’s fucking name.

I wish it was her ass here today instead of this bitch he thought as he centered his crosshairs on the graying head of a fourth grade teacher expounding on some bullshit at the chalkboard.

Three…

Minutes.

And the story it told of a river that flowed made me sad to think it was dead…

Flow.

Yeah, it’s all about…flow he thought. When he was a child, his…his piss flowed. Why couldn’t he control himself back then he wondered?

But…

And he remembered the other kids laughing and the bitch teacher whore cunt slapping him across the face and angry that he wet himself.

Again! She had screamed at him. You did it again!

And then the horrible beatings when he got home from his father.

Flow! He thought.

Like piss and pain and shame and his father’s rage and his mama’s tears.

But today…

The flow was gonna be blood.

Two…

Minutes.

After nine days I let the horse run free…

One…

Minute.

RIIIIIIIIIIING! went the bell. It was finally recess time.

He watched and tensed up on the trigger as the kids came rushing out of the building and onto the playground. He trained his rifle on a boy climbing up a slide.

…and then a girl pushing another on the swings.

…and then another girl laughing with her friends.

Under the cities lies a heart made of ground but the humans will give no love…

Love.

He finally sighted in on one little boy who was sitting all alone underneath an ancient mulberry tree. But…what was the boy doing? He wondered. After another careful look he could see the boy was…

He was crying.

He watched him through his scope and wondered what the boy could be crying for there under the big tree.

All alone.

Crying.

And he… the ocean is a desert with its life underground and a perfect disguise above…

Yeah, he knew all about those perfect disguises.

Seemed he had been going a lifetime hiding what he could have been if it hadn’t been for his weak mother and that bitch teacher and those wickedly cruel children and his sadistic father from that time so long ago. All he ever wanted, he realized with a jolt, was to be loved.

And all he ever wanted was to be accepted and included and to feel like he…

Belonged.

He sighed deeply and worked the bolt action on his rifle. And after a few minutes cooling himself in a sudden northerly breeze he removed the heavy round from the chamber and climbed down from the tower to the welcoming, comforting solid ground below.