Suggestion: Create a villain...

(written stream of conciousness with no edits. please excuse grammar and typo's. based on a suggestion from the "audience")

Park benches are not the most comfortable of sitting places. To my dissapointment, young children do not run around my recliner at home so I must sacrifice my comfort for opportunity. You cannot kill a child if you cannot catch a child and you cannot catch a child if there are no children.

My eye has been on one particular child for weeks now. His pale blue eyes seem to be larger than his head and his chubby cheeks and fine blonde hair strike sharp against the backdrop of char grey trees and autumn leaves. He always wears the same tiny plaid jacket and he is easy to pick out of any crowd of tots... His mother dresses him in suspenders which he hates and he methodically removes his jacket every day, lowers the elastic straps to a dangling position before returning the jacket to his shoulders.

It is facinating to watch someone that you know you must kill... The longer you watch them... the longer you let them live... the more temptation to revel in that power of life and death exists...

He stands under the money bars and stares up. His face in a frown as he watches another child who is stronger, taller, more agile glide across the bars hand after hand in an almost effortless fashion. The face the boy makes as he glides for a moment juxtaposes itself against the displeased look of the small blonde boy. The moment frozen in time might make for a priceless piece of art, but of course no Gallery can truly hold something as pure as this moment. No picture could ever grasp the true essence of what was about to happen... of what I am about to do...

From my pocket I pull a set of photographs. I unstrap the rubber band that holds them together and flip through them... searching for the right inspiration to do what I needed to do...

The first picture helps me in no way... it is a picture of a pile of dust beside a plastic table table tent the cops use to show scale... it reads #4 and the pile shows itself to be about 6 inches high... It is too far removed from human form to cause any reaction in me at all...

The second picture does its job nicely... a group of small bodies lying in a heap... their eyes bulging out of their sockets and their twisted bodies bent in directions that bones do not go without breaking... I stare at this picture. I try to focus on the pain and anguish they felt just before they died... just before their lives were ripped from their vessels and left like a pile of rag dolls on the hardwood floor.

Quickly I flip through the series of the other 30 pictures... some piles of dust, some mangled masses... but I have already found my motivation and the rest is just involuntary movement of an absent mind...

As much as I want to jump from the bench and grab his tiny neck to squeeze with all of my might I must wait... I must be sure...

I let my emotions run wild while keeping my body in perfect stillness... I watch and wait... In the open like this I will only get one shot... I must be sure...

The young child has not moved from his position under the monkey bars... He still stands, still looks displeased as two taller children, different than their predesessor crawl across the top of the bars and then dangle their feet while trying to maintain balance... The blond boy squints in the sunlight but maintains his gaze on the happy boys on the bars...

As much as I hate to cut things too close... to test moments too far before acting, I must be sure he is the one... and that is when it happens... I can feel it... crawling across the ground and hanging low in the air I can feel the evil seeping outward... soupy acidic evil pressure pushes further until I can feel it in full... and I gain confirmation... I was right... I had finally found him... this was the boy...

I stood and moved quickly toward him and even as I moved I knew I might already be too late... I didn't think him capable of this in the open with so many people around but then it is hard to know the limitations of the most hideous horrible villain you ever knew who is also a 6 year old child...

From his tiny jacket pocket he pulled a stone... one of those perfect round skipping stones you find at the waters edge. To anyone else it would represent fun... joy... carefree days with a friend or your father skipping stones... but to him it was all he needed to destroy a life...

I was now in a sprint toward the boy hoping against hope that I would reach him before the stone left his hand and both of those boys were dead before they even fell from the monkey bars... His tiny arm cocked back... it would happen before I reached him... and so I shouted "Juuuuussttttiiiinnnnnnn!!!!"

He turned. His arm lowered. He stared at me as I ran. I saw his eyes clear now... Those are the eyes of the boy who had murdered 70 children... some he left in piles and some he burned in his father's kiln and then returned to their homes... There was my nemesis...

His face turned to slight shock... then to an almost knowing smile and his arm raised again... the stone had a new target.

(to be continued)

~Jim