Killer Voices
By: Kristyn D’Angiolillo
Do it…come on…he’s right there. Just raise the- “No! I can’t do that!” Mark David Chapman muttered to himself as he stared up at the starless New York sky. “I can’t, I can’t…”
He tried to concentrate on the book in front of him that he was reading to keep himself steady. The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger, a very pro-rebellion novel. Don’t you want to do it? Don’t you want to rebel? Don’t you want to prove that you have the power to destroy one of the most influential artists in the world? You would be famous; not one would ever demean or belittle you again. You will be held in high honor for this; if you could only just pull it out of your pocket and do it.
“Argh! No! It would destroy me, not help me! Stop it! Stop it!” People were moving all around him but he still had a clear view of the man in question. No one noticed the odd, fat man sitting alone on a bench outside the building across from the musician’s expensive loft apartment, murmuring softly, harshly to himself, contemplating a very dangerous matter indeed.
It wouldn’t destroy you, in fact, quite the opposite. Sure, you would go to prison, but it would be well worth it.
“Worth it?” he said out loud, picking his head up to rest it against the hard brick of the building behind him. “How could it be worth it?”
The notoriety, of course. Many people would think very highly of you. Just kill him.
“Maybe, but-but why?”
What have I been telling you all this time? You will be one of the most infamous assassins ever to have lived! Think of the things people will say. Finally they will respect you. Finally they will not think nothing of you. Finally they will fear you.
“Fear me?” he asked, now curiously interested. “I like that.”
Of course you do, Davey, of course you do.
“Are you sure? Absolutely sure I’ll be famous?”
Yes. Yes, just do it. Shoot him!
“Okay, okay. I will.”
***
Deafening shots ripped through the laughter and smiles of that cold December night. There in front of hundreds of adoring fans lay one of the most famous and beloved musicians that ever lived, dead on the sidewalk.
And there was the odd, fat man with a smoking gun in his steady hand, smiling as he looked at the corpse of the man he had asked for an autograph only a few hours before.
One of the men in the shocked silent crowd stepped out towards him and asked the obvious question, “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?!”
“I shot John Lennon.”
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