The Judge: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Hello, can you hear me? Good.”

I am called The Judge. And I perform what I consider an important public service, a somewhat specialized line of work: I kill people. Not just any people of course, but people that deserve it. Now, you might assume that I mean murderers, rapists, pedophiles, kidnappers, hip-hop artists, that sort of thing. But no. I kill the people that I think deserve it. I can understand your typical murderer or rapist. They aren't really human, but they have a certain honesty about them. Their crimes make sense, part of the natural order of things. Life is violence, we are either violent to ourselves or violent towards others, or both. Just how it is, in many ways these animals don't have the ability to function in any other way, and such behavior falls short of what interests me. No. For something to be evil, for a person to be evil, it must involve a choice. They must understand the evil that they do and have fully embraced it, willingly. Having had the presence of mind or ability to choose otherwise.

True evil, real evil does not reveal itself in such an obvious manifestation as your typical murderer or child molester. It is a quiet cancer of society, hiding among the everyday people that sit across from you on the subway. Real evil looks normal, tricks you into thinking that it is normal, even becomes cloaked in what might be considered legitimate or necessary institutions. Supermarkets are evil. Schools are evil. Churches are evil. As you can imagine, I don't have many friends. But I will bet that as I named those 'wholesome' cornerstones of modern life what they really are, somewhere deep down inside you, you know it is true. If you doubt it, go out into the woods for a week, or lock yourself in a room with only the food and water you need to survive for a while, no TV, no radio, no computer or cell phone, nothing but you and the silence. Then re-enter the world as we have made it. It is a jarring experience. That is when you know evil. It is where I live everyday.

To say that I am cynical would be putting it mildly. I tend to see and expect the worst from people, and I am seldom surprised by that rare oasis of a good person in the parched wasteland that humanity has become. You might say that I bring it on myself, and I wouldn't disagree with you. An insufferable bastard like me is not likely to find himself in the company of shiny people. And if I did, I would likely tarnish the polish. Not even light can escape a black hole.

I imagine your starting to hate me, which is exactly what I am going for. This is not pathos, I want your hate. Hate is better then pity, and hating yourself is much better then feeling sorry for yourself. I suppose it can be hard to tell the difference, but there it is.

When you hate yourself like I do, sometimes all you can do is continue. There is nothing after this world, so you may as well try to make the best of it, but damn if it ain't a son-of-a-bitch most of the time. Its not as if I want some other person to come fix me, and like I said, I don't want pity. Its just how it is.

Some people are always alone, doesn't matter if they are with someone or not, in a crowd or in bed with someone fool enough or desperate enough to be there with a hollowed out man. And there is the pain. The acid drenched pain in your brain that is always there, burning away any peace of mind or fleeting happiness that might manage to come around from time to time. The chronic conscious migraine that is my reality. Empty. Futile. Hopeless. It is where I live everyday.

I have given little by way of biography, so perhaps I should mention a few trivial facts. I am past forty years of age, having been at my chosen profession somewhat over 6 years. I was not born to it, as one might assume, but rather fell, quite far, into it. Though I don't truly consider it having fallen, rather I feel somewhat liberated to have thrown off the yoke of cultural brainwashing at a relatively young age. In any case, I am a tall and naturally strong man, though not especially fit or athletic. I have no special training, nor occupational background that prepared me for being an assassin. I simply had the desire to do so, and chose to act. Once one sheds fear, it is surprising what things are possible. It may be that I simply have a talent for the hunting of men. Or perhaps I have the intelligence to have puzzled out how such things are done. In any case, some lessons and practice at the gun range was my only preparation. After that it was only a matter of finding my first client. I was close enough to each of them to smell their bodies and see their sweat, even for an amateur it is hard to miss at such close range, and the handgun I use is much more powerful then necessary to kill a man. I like the big guns, they have a nice weight to them, and they feel solid in your hand. Lots of steel and power.

I use a revolver. They are dependable. The barrel is fixed, it doesn't float around in the casing like a semi-auto. They never jam, and if you do get a dud round, you just have to pull the trigger again and she shoots. The brass stays in the gun, I like that; easy clean up. And, they last forever if you treat them right. You might only have five or six bullets to work with. But they are big bullets, and if you can't get the job done with six bullets or less, you probably don't know what the fuck your doing anyway. I use a S&W 500. Five shots, integral compensator. It has the half-lug barrel I prefer, nice and balanced. You can kill a moose or an engine block with it, let alone a wise-ass punk. Of course, you can eat the moose, punk meat is too rancid.

I have some special bullets I carry around with me. Winchester had a sweet round called the Black Talon they used to make. Nice hollow-point, reliable expansion, really tears the insides out of people. They leave quite a mess once I am done with a client, though you have to dig around on the internet to find the pictures. The media doesn't print such things, too much reality is not entertaining. You can't buy the Black Talons anymore, but I got a box made special for me. A box of .50 Talons, bigger then Winchester made when they were in production. When I decide to end it, this is the bullet I am going to use. It will basically liquify your brain, no coming back. In the meantime, so long as there are people that deserve to die more then me, they'll get one of the Talons before I do. I had a full box. I have 86 left. 14 used, 14 dead. I keep the cartridges as mementos, just like a serial killer. Its pretty sick, I know this. I'll save the last one for me.

Lest their be any confusion, I have killed many more then 14 people. My Black Talons are for very special targets. Just any old thug that crosses my path that needs to be put down gets a regular old round. No, when I use the Talon it is on a person that I have come to know very, very well. I will get to know 85 more people in this way, then I will be done. Everyone needs a retirement plan.

I have my box of talons right here, 14 empty cartridges that I put back in the box, 86 live rounds. You can see etched in the side of these empty cartridges the name of the judged. These talons deliver my verdict of lead. Each of these cartridges is a life, each has a story. Since we have time perhaps I will tell you about some. Those who hide their evil in plain sight.

You might wonder how I find these people, my clients. When they so cleverly fool everyone around them. Believe me, it is not as hard as you might think. Everyone has secrets. Spend a day or two as a fly on the wall in anyone's life and you will learn about some perversion or sickness. The world we have made for ourselves breeds it in people, infects us with a false sense of meaning or purpose that at the root is not fulfilling, so that we turn to the desires that lurk in the shadows of our minds to find something that feels real to us.

My clients tend to be cunning, intelligent, even brilliant individuals. Perfectly sane. Not driven to their evil by some sort of neglect, trauma or mental deficiency. Evil by choice. Evil because they enjoy it. Evil because they can. True evil. That is my quarry. That is who I judge. It is this hunt that gives me purpose in the meaningless void of existence.

My one willing concession to vanity are my .50 Talons. They are, so far as I know, unique to the box I had made for me. They are my verdict, my calling card. The only thing that significantly connects my clients to me. Even so, I get little sense that the serial nature of my work has caught on. The authorities are slow to publicize random crimes they are unlikely to solve. Local law enforcement remains surprisingly provincial. Unsolved murders, especially once the idiosyncrasies of my clients come to light as a result of the homicide investigation, seem to work their way to the bottom of the pile and get cold quickly.

Surprisingly, other then my clients 'loved' ones I know of little public outcry. Though it is true I avoid clients that live in smaller communities, which is fairly easy as my clients usually seek a certain anonymity, it seems to me that people in general have become ambivalent about even murder, not unlike how car alarms are typically ignored, they are heard so frequently. To the best of my knowledge, I am not yet hunted, and I admit some disappointment about that. Still, eventually someone will catch on to what I am about. Which is fine, I still have a lot of bullets left, and I will be the only one to judge me, in my way. No clown in a black robe. No bearded white man in the sky. I am The Judge.

There is no God. There is no heaven. There is no hell waiting for those to whom I bring judgment. There is no hell waiting for me beyond the personal hell I wake up in everyday. All there is, all there ever was, is the consciousness between birth and oblivion that we all endure.

I am no hero. I don't really care about the victims of those I judge. I don't really care about my own victims when I am indiscriminate, or impatient. I don't suffer fools and have shot more then a few people just for being in my way. Too stupid to live. I recognize my own evil, my vanity, my ambivalence. My nihilism. That is why I will be my last client. To rid the world of me, and rid me of the world.