MirrorWorld

He stops moving but stands his ground, hiding his fear. I respect that, but his inaction offends me. I motion to the philistine and then to the woman. “You should have stopped them.”


“I couldn’t,” the officer says.

“You had two guns.” The point can’t be argued.

“You don’t know who he is.”

“I know exactly who he is,” I say, speaking of his character rather than his name, which confuses the policeman. “You’re a shame to your profession.” I spin the gun around in my hand, prepared to coldcock the man and be on my way. But a roar interrupts.

The philistine is awake.

I turn toward the mountain of a man, his arms spread wide, reuniting with Violence, his long-lost lover. His face is covered in blood. Peanuts cling to the viscous red fluid. He looks like something I can’t quite remember.

Dodging the attack is easy enough. A quick duck and sidestep is all it takes. The man careens into the bar, but it’s not enough. I consider the weapon in my hand but decide against it. The man deserves a lesson, not execution. But a harsh lesson. I tuck the gun into my jeans as he turns around, coming at me again.

I meet his rush with a quick jab to his face. He’s stunned by the force of it, but also because he never saw it coming. As he staggers back, I sweep his legs, knocking him onto his back. Before he can recover, I drop to one knee beside him and lift his arm.

“Don’t!” the officer shouts. He’s got his small ankle revolver leveled at my chest.

“He needs to learn,” I tell him, then slam the philistine’s arm down on my leg, snapping it like a branch.

The big man screams anew, his high-pitched wail waking the unconscious woman, who begins to weep.

“Get up!” the officer shouts.

I raise my hands and obey. “You could have prevented this.”

The bartender is on the phone. No doubt with the police.

“Turn around! Hands on the wall!”

I obey.

“What’s your name?” the officer asks.

This is a tough question, mostly because I don’t know the answer. I have a name. I’m as sure of that as I am that at one point in my past, I had a mother and a father. I can’t remember them either, but the fact that I exist is biological evidence that a man and woman, at some point in the past, copulated and gave birth to a boy. I’d like to think those same people would have given me a name. “I’m Crazy.”

“You’re bat-shit crazy,” the officer says.

I look back, over my shoulder. “With a capital C.”

The officer inches closer. With his revolver pointed at my back, he reaches around my waist, fumbling for the gun I stole. “Don’t move.”

But I do. Slowly and subtly. I twist away from his reaching hand, drawing him in closer. When he’s all but hugging me, I reach back with my left hand. The bartender shouts a warning, but it’s too late. I twist the revolver away from my back and keep on twisting until the officer shouts in pain and releases the weapon. I spin around, draw the sidearm from my waist, and level both weapons at the police officer.

“Don’t kill me,” he says, hands raised.

“I don’t kill people for being incompetent,” I tell him.

Do I kill people at all? I wonder. I certainly have the ability. I’m fast, and strong, and know how to fight with brutal efficiency. I could kill him, with these guns, with my bare hands, or with a peanut from the philistine’s face. When the officer had first come into the bar, he’d waited for the tender to remove the bowl before sitting down, and then he wiped the bar down with a wet wipe. The man feared peanuts. Allergic, no doubt.

But I don’t want to kill him, merely educate him. I raise the revolver, aiming for the man’s arm, debating the severity of his lesson. Should I wound him or simply scare him? He’s already scared. But he’s an officer of the law. He failed to serve and protect the fool. He didn’t care about the man’s fate. Didn’t care about his job. Didn’t care about his life.

“Eat a peanut,” I tell him.

His eyes widen. “What? Why?”

“Eat a peanut, or I’ll shoot you.”

“N-no,” he says. “You can’t. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m allergic. I’ll die.”

“You have a reason to live?” I ask.

To his credit, the officer thinks on this. “My kid.”

He’s not sad, like a father who desperately loves his children would be. He’s regretful. “You’ve wronged your child?”

The officer nods.

“Bullet it is,” I say, my finger squeezing the trigger.

Before the round can be fired, I’m struck from behind. I fall to the bar’s hardwood floor, lying beside the writhing philistine and crying bimbo, looking up. The fool stands above me, a pool stick in his hands.

I grin at the man. “Good for you.”

The officer recovers his weapons and points them at me as backup storms through the door.

Turns out, the joke is on me. The philistine is the mayor’s boy. The bimbo is the sheriff’s daughter. And the fool … he’s a clinical psychologist. By morning, I’m committed. And while I believe everyone in the bar needed to learn a lesson, I can’t fault them for the straitjacket or the padded room. I am Crazy, after all.