Dialogue

The light clicked on. A scraggly, starved man was sitting under it, looking sullen and depressed like a man in chains should. His posture described surrender; but his quietly fuming eyes were tracing a crack that led from his chair to the door.

“Gerald Davis. You were found guilty of multiple attempts of mass murder, the deaths of five people, and the custody of fourteen bombs and three machine guns. You have pled guilty already. Why did you do it?”

The man did not respond.

“Did you hear me? Why did you do it?”

“I was angry,” the man said slowly.

“At who?”

“Everyone. Everything. All of it. I was angry at everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“I don’t believe you. No lovers? No grudges? No unpaid debts?”

“No. I was just… unsatisfied. With everything.”

“Why were you unsatisfied?”

“They were all… Everyone was hypocritical. They contradicted themselves daily. ‘I gave that homeless man a donut, isn’t that nice?’ And then, ‘Give me the money, or I’ll do something you won’t forget.’ It was all so… ridiculous.”

“Not everyone is like that.”

“Oh, no. Everyone is.”

“How do you know? You haven’t seen everyone.”

“I’ve seen enough to know.”

“Well, what about you? If you say everyone, aren’t you including yourself in that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it explains the suicide note we found at your house. But why would you leave your wife and daughter behind?”

“They were part of it, too.”

“The whole contradiction conspiracy thing?”

“Yes.”

“You were going to kill them, too?”

“They were part of it.”

“That’s ridiculous.” And then softly after that, the officer muttered, “You’re mental.”

“No. They were.”

The officer sighed and paced around the room. “This whole dialogue is going nowhere.”

“No,” the man said. “It isn’t.”

“What’d you say?”

The man rose slowly out of his seat, ropes unwinding by themselves, and clamped his hands around the officer’s neck. The officer tried to call out, but there was no noise; then he struggled and fought and kicked, but his attacks on the man’s brute muscles deflected off harmlessly.

“Except this ain’t a dialogue,” the man growled. “It’s a monologue.”

Crack.

The End.