The Squatter

I was recently trying to process all of the senseless killing going on in our country and around the world. What would possess a person to shoot a roomful of kids, purposely crash a plane full of innocent passengers, or push a stranger in front of an oncoming train? How can people be so evil and are they even people at all? Maybe Bill Paxton’s excellent 2001 film, Frailty, got it right. Perhaps these people are really demons in disguise.

I wrote this flash fiction as a result of those thoughts. If you don’t like it, you’re in pretty good company. Nine magazines rejected it. Still, it speaks to me so now I’m sharing it with you.

***

I spotted you easily. Solitary and weak, you separated yourself from the herd. You were an obvious target. You couldn’t see me of course, my camouflage much too sophisticated for your human eyes to decipher. But I saw you. I saw you coming from a mile away.

You with your dull eyes, your doughy flesh, your slovenly attire, and your plodding gait. You had all the tell-tale signs of a once proud species, still holding onto the arrogant belief in your place atop the food chain. I know better. You are sheep, you are antelope, you are a solitary rabbit in a field bereft of burrows. You are prey.

I blew through you like a stark wind. The cold fury of my attack bit through your meager defenses in seconds, eliciting naught but a gasp before I shoved your pathetic soul aside and pulled your stinking body around me like an ill-used secondhand suit.

That wasn’t the culmination of my hunt. It was merely the preparation for the sport that lay ahead. I bided my time. I gorged on your starch-filled pantry day after day. I defiled your flabby wife every night she could be convinced to suffer your body’s feeble and awkward advances. I befouled your toilet more times than I can recall. And now, finally, the time is upon us to conclude our macabre little puppet show.

As I guide your stubby, cholesterol-clogged limbs down the narrow subterranean corridor between railways, I casually choose the instrument of your destruction. The C Train approaches, its brakes squealing like a 42-ton boiling tea kettle. Your end won’t be so clean, not nearly so abrupt. Instead I direct you toward the wizened old man that stands waiting on that train, his gout-suffering feet just a tad too close to the cautionary yellow line painted along the pigeon-besmirched cement. This sad, liver-spotted specimen is even weaker than you, another born victim if I ever saw one.

Just as the lumbering stainless steel behemoth reaches the platform, I force you to shove the old man forward. Like a straw-filled scarecrow loosed from its stake, he flops through the air, arms spread wide as if he might take flight and wing away from this terrible fate. But of course, he does not. The distinct noises of crunching bone and splattering fluid are immediately followed by the horrified blatting of those other sheep that stand witness around us. Their mouths hang open, their eyes wide with shock. And then they all turn to stare accusingly at you. The sound of a siren wails in the distance.

Our dance is now done. I float away from your addled mind and condemned soul just as the authorities arrive, guns drawn and radios blaring. It’s time to find my amusements elsewhere. This world holds so many to choose from.