Shot Girl Read online

  #WTF.

  #LULZ.

  #ACTIVESHOOTER4EVS.

  There have been over a thousand active shooting incidents worldwide in the last fifteen years, 95% of them in the US of A. Only 4% were done by women.

  Endemic exclusive misogynist sexism. Yet another unfair case of guys having all the fun.

  I’m a plural. Generation Z. We’re called plurals bcuz we be pluralistic; a generation who accepts everyone, the full spectrum of gender identification, religion, color, appearance, language, beliefs.

  People are people. So why should active shooters all be white dudes?

  #ChangeTheGame.

  Of course, we all knew the big daddy of active shooters was Reginald Archibald Lorenz, who rented a penthouse suite in Grover, Pennsylvania overlooking Reinhold Stadium during MoshMania. From the twenty-third floor, only two hundred meters away from the outdoor concert, he opened fire with an AR15 equipped with a bump stock to simulate fully automatic fire. Lorenz wasted 66 people, wounding over 600 others. He had 3000 rounds of ammo, and barricaded himself into his hotel room using cement bags he brought up four @ a time using the bellman’s cart.

  Pretty dope, but Lorenz went out like a bitch, blowing his own dome off while the cops were still trying to blast their way in.

  Bad end.

  Trash.

  I’d never kill myself, no matter how many people I offed, bcuz that means feeling guilty or having serious mental problems, and homie don’t play that.

  When I do my thing, it’ll be different. I’m not going to get caught and go to jail. I’m not going to get head-glitched by 5-0.

  And I’m not taking the bitch way out and eating my gun.

  I’m going to get away with it.

  So I can do it again.

  The biggest problem with the shooters I mentioned, and all the shooters since Cleveland Hooper made it America’s greatest spectator sport 53 years ago, is those bruhs only did it once.

  Eff that.

  I’m going to be the first mass murderer who does it a whole bunch of times.

  For the lulz.

  I am woke and extra and savage and shook and all that other dumbshit my plurals say bcuz we need our own language bcuz we don’t fit in nowhere with nobody.

  I turn eighteen tomorrow. According to the bitch ass law, ima adult. I got money saved up from my shitty job serving shitty fast food to shitty people.

  Been saving for two years.

  Been saving all for this moment.

  Bye-bye job.

  Bye-bye school.

  Bye-bye Moms.

  I’m out.

  Mic drop.

  Already got an apartment lined up.

  Gonna sign that lease.

  Then I’m gonna buy a gun.

  Then I’m gonna kill more peeps than 9/11.

  Thank you, next.

  “Happiness is a warm gun.”

  JOHN LENNON

  “We cannot let a minority of people—and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people—hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.”

  HILLARY CLINTON

  JACK

  Tropical Storm Harry has been upgraded to Hurricane Harry. Category 3. It just hit Tobago.”

  My hands on the parallel bars, holding up ninety-percent of my body weight while my rubbery legs struggled to keep the other ten-percent from collapsing, I had zero desire to talk to my mother about storms.

  Especially storms named Harry.

  “I thought you were here for moral support, Mom.” It came out gruntier than I would have liked.

  She made a pfft sound. “I didn’t coddle you as a baby. I’m not going to start coddling because of a little spine injury.”

  Little spine injury? “I got shot in the back. My T11 vertebra cracked in half, the nerve holding on by a thread.”

  “And I was in a coma for months after a serial killer brutalized me. Did you hear me whine?”

  “You couldn’t whine. You were in a coma.”

  She made another pfft sound. “Wasn’t your third operation supposed to be the one that fixed everything?”

  I nodded. But my doctors had said the same about my second operation. And my first.

  “So the problem isn’t your back. The problem is you aren’t trying hard enough.”

  “I’d like to see you balance on your hands on this bar.”

  “I wouldn’t need to. I’d use my legs.” She squinted at me. “Are you doped up?”

  “No.” The pain was bearable, and I weaned off the Tramadol weeks ago. “It’s not the pain. It’s paresthesia.”

  “Your doctors said you should be regaining mobility.”

  “Tell that to my legs.”

  My mother tilted her head down, talking to my legs. “The doctors say you should be regaining mobility.”

  Smart ass.

  My biceps shook, sweat soaked me, and I had no confidence in holding my bladder. When I did physical therapy with Phin, my husband, and our daughter, Sam, they encouraged me with equal amounts praise and good-natured ribbing.

  They tried so hard to be supportive.

  It was miserable.

  But not as bad as Mom and her world’s lousiest pep talks.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be doing rehab at the retirement home where she lived. But Mom left her last home because of me, seeking out this place, where we could be together.

  “Let’s do it, Jacqueline,” she’d prodded. “It’s only twenty minutes from the beach.”

  We hadn’t been to the beach once.

  “I chose to do my recovery here with you because I thought we would bond,” I huffed and puffed.

  “You’re not lifting your toes. You’re going to trip.”

  “Think you’d be able walk when half the feeling in your legs is gone?”

  “You’re not walking, Jacqueline. You’re balancing on your hands and dragging your lower half behind you like an alligator tail.”

  I gritted my teeth, tried to get my damn feet to listen to my brain.

  “They’re predicting Hurricane Harry hits the mainland in six days.”

  Mom was back to squinting at a cell phone.

  “Seriously? You’re on your phone?”

  “Sam calls it phubbing.”

  “What?”

  “Phubbing. It’s pluralspeak.”

  “Speak English.”

  “Plurals are the generation under millennials. Grew up with smart phones and the internet and instant access to everything. They use their own lingo, mostly when they text. Phubbing is when someone is snubbing you to use their phone.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “It was trending on Twitter.”

  “So why are you phubbing me?”

  “I can watch a YouTube of a dog playing with a sea lion, or I can watch you pretend you’re trying your best on those handrails. I’m opting for the dog and sea lion. Maybe if you were trying, I’d pay attention. But you’d rather give up than try.”

  “Maybe if you helped me.”

  “The woman I raised wouldn’t ask for help. She’d help herself.”

  I felt my face get tight. She raised a white eyebrow.

  “Are you getting angry, Jacqueline?”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “I get physical therapy. I remember it well. I remember trying.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “C’mon, Jack. Get angry. Or start crying. Show me something, anything, other than you desperately trying to hold it all together.”

  “I need my chair,” I told the nurse. She was staring at her cell phone, too.

  Another phubber.

  Was my struggle really that boring?

  I thought about the day I’d gotten shot.

  I thought about Herb.

  I thought about the Cowboy.

  I thought about the bullet hitting my back and staring, amazed, as it burst out of my stomach, the blood spraying everywhere like slow-motion red fireworks.

  I remembered the Cowboy�
��s face.

  I remembered the pain.

  I remembered the lack of pain.

  My arms began to give out, and my whole body shook.

  My mother scowled. “You don’t need your chair, Jack. You need a kick in your ass. A kick in your ass that your husband isn’t giving you for some reason.”

  I didn’t know I’d pissed myself until I smelled it. The nurse finally put away her cell and came up from behind me with my damned wheelchair. She helped me sit down, then left to go get a towel.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “You wet your pants. So what? You can have some of my protective undergarments. I’ve got some cute ones with pink roses printed on them. Mr. Garza in C17 thinks they’re sexy.”

  I shut my eyes. I wanted my mother to leave.

  Actually, there was something I wanted more than that.

  I wanted to quit.

  My mother, the mind reader, put her hand on my sweaty hair. “You want to give up.”

  “I just need a break, Mom.”

  “From what, Jack? What do you need a break from? Your mother? Your husband? Your daughter? From physical therapy? From teaching gun safety classes? From life?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Where’s your Colt?”

  I stared at her. “Why? You going to put me out of my misery?”

  My lame joke didn’t register, and her face pinched with even more pity.

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What is it you want, Jack? Because I can’t tell anymore.”

  “I want to walk, Mom.”

  “Then get off your lazy ass and get back on those bars.”

  I did not get off my lazy ass. Instead I looked outside, into a windy, overcast Florida sunset, partially blocked by the nurse standing there with a towel, waiting for my mother to stop yelling at me.

  “Where’s your Colt?”

  Why did she keep asking me that? “Where’s yours?”

  “Locked up in my gun safe. Now answer my question.”

  Semi-curious where she was going with this, I told her. “Compartment under the chair.”

  She reached over, opened the caddy door, pulling out the Cobra. “Why isn’t the trigger lock on it?”

  “I forgot to put it on after class.”

  She scowled. “Do I have to remind you that you have a five-year-old in your house?”

  “I was going to lock it up before I got home.”

  “What about here? I don’t want to talk trash about my elderly cohabiters, but there are at least a dozen residents here with the mental capacity of a lounge chair.”

  I fished the gun lock, the key still in it, out of my pocket. “Knock yourself out.”

  My mother took the trigger lock. “Ammo?”

  “I unloaded it before class. All six are in the pouch with the snap caps.”

  Mom took the leather pouch. “Bring any other ammo?”

  “For what? We’re in a retirement home. Do I need a box of cartridges to break up a riot at the tiki bar?”

  My mother, hunched over with a back so curved it made me want to mainline calcium, squinted into my under-seat compartment. “What else have you got in there?”

  “A pony. Because you never bought me one when I was a kid.”

  She took out my first aid box. “What’s in here?”

  “The big red cross on the top doesn’t give it away?”

  Mom opened it anyway, rifling through the assorted bandages, sutures, pill packs, and various gear. Besides the standard emergency crap, the box also held some prepping stuff. I got into prepping a while ago, after a particularly disastrous incident in Spoonward, Wisconsin made me paranoid enough to carry around certain essentials. Such as an emergency mylar poncho, a Swiss Army Knife, a multitool pliers, a tube of sunscreen, waterproof matches, a tactical flashlight, candles, energy bars, QuikClot. All the essentials.

  She put the kit back, then unzipped the leather pouch and peeked inside.

  “Now what, Mom? You load the gun and offer it to me, daring me to do it?”

  She replaced the gunlock on the trigger guard and put the .38 in the pouch and zipped it closed. “I’m keeping it, because you’re obviously clinically depressed.”

  I closed my eyes. “I’m managing.”

  “Well, you’re doing a shitty job. You don’t want to talk to me. I bet you aren’t talking to Phin. When was the last time you talked to your squad?”

  “My squad?”

  “Your peeps. Your fam.”

  “Stop talking like Sam.”

  “Your friends, Jack. When was the last time you talked to Herb?”

  I haven’t spoken with Herb Benedict, my old partner back from my Chicago PD days, for over two months. “A week, maybe.”

  “Bullshit. How about Harry?”

  “Hurricane Harry?”

  “Not funny. You know who I’m talking about. Harry McGlade can be hard to take, but he’s the oldest relationship you’ve still managed to keep.”

  “There’s you and Dad.”

  “Your father is an asshole.”

  “Dad’s not an asshole.”

  “Is he here, standing in a puddle of your piddle? When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “I dunno.” It had been a while since I talked to anybody. People call, leave messages, send texts and email. I ignore them.

  “What’s talking supposed to do, Mom? Will it help my legs work?”

  “Before these can work,” she tapped my knees, “you need to get this working,” she tapped my forehead.

  That’s stupid.

  “That’s stupid,” I said.

  “You’re jelly of my wisdom.”

  “Jelly?”

  “Jealous.”

  “I’ll never let you see Sam again if you keep using that plural crap.”

  “I’m down. You want some of my Zoloft?”

  “You’re on Zoloft?”

  “I’m in my seventies, I wet my pants, and my daughter got shot and is in a wheelchair. Of course I’m on Zoloft.”

  I forced a smile. “Who gave you the prescription? Dr. Agmont?”

  He was the main shrink at the home, notorious among residents because he looked like a male model.

  She nodded. “You’ll make an appointment?”

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Now.”

  “Fine. Give me my gun back. I feel naked without it.”

  Mom smiled. “Nothing wrong with feeling naked every once and a while.”

  My mother had no idea how wrong she was. But she did put the gun pouch back under my chair.

  I nodded to the nurse through the window, and she came back in.

  Mom was already on her cell phone, calling Dr. Hottie.

  I stared out the window.

  Palm trees were really starting to sway.

  It was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

  “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”

  SIGMUND FREUD

  “Outside of the killings, D.C. has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

  MAYOR MARION BARRY

  GAFF

  So my story really begins today.

  I woke up when my cell alarm rang—6:15 A.M. so I’d have time to catch the school bus—checked my email, went to the bathroom and pissed and shit and showered and brushed my teeth, got dressed, found my Moms holding a birthday cake with eighteen candles on it, and when she started to sing to me I grabbed that stupid AF cast iron pan she had made me carry around for the last six years, and smashed her in the face as hard as I could. She went down, and I flattened out her skull and brains until it looked like a stomped Halloween pumpkin.

  Okay, I didn’t do that 4realz.

  I’ve thought about doing that, lots of times. But that would be whack.

  Srsly, Moms dead in the kitchen, who is 5-0 gonna blame?
/>   I’d be the number one prime first numero uno suspect. And unless I wore gloves and a full rain poncho, her DNA would be all over me and my forensic evidence would be all over her and I’d be locked up b4 I could even buy a gun.

  Trill.

  Any dummy can kill one time. The key to getting away with killing a bunch of times is all about one thing.

  Planning.

  Not saying none of my peeps didn’t plan. Look @ Salvatore Persimmons, who killed 17 of his co-workers on December 13, 2012. Bruh worked @ a postal factory that set up all this security swerve bcuz another worker got stressed and shot his supervisor a month earlier. So Persimmons, in a move that can only qualify as genius, mailed three guns to himself then intercepted his own package @ work.

  Shaking my head lit.

  His planning was tight, but dude broke every rule.

  Let’s go over Gaff’s Eleven Rules.

  One, don’t do a small crime b4 the big crime.

  Persimmons beat the eff out of his wife b4 going to work. I mean, he kicked her ass so bad she needed plastic surgery. When he left for his job, she called the cops, so they were already en route when he unpacked his arsenal and started fronting his displeasure @ his workplace environment.

  Two, don’t kill people you know.

  4realz, bruh killed co-workers. Even if he got away, someone would recognize him.

  Three, don’t kill people in front of cameras unless you’re wearing a disguise.

  Persimmons had no disguise, and there were cameras. You prolly saw the footage on the news, from ten different angles.

  #StupidAF.

  Four, don’t shoot any place where people shoot back.

  Persimmons did okay here. He was actually smart bcuz his workplace was a no gun zone. You never see any active shooter walk into a police station, or a sporting goods store, or a gun show, bcuz they’d get taken down quick. Best places to kill a lot of people have no security, and you’re the only one packing.

  Five, don’t announce you’re going to kill a bunch of people b4 you kill a bunch of people. Lots of channers these days post shooting plans b4 the Big Event, then strap on a GoPro camera and live feed. You know how fast the first responders get there when you’re streaming your murder spree on Facebook? I savvy cred and clout. I don’t savvy getting your high score cut short by 5-0.