101 People to Kill Before I Die

by Anthony O'Connor

  Then it finally hit me with full force, a full blown fucking epiphany - a revelation maybe, from one of the ancient long forgotten gods of vengeance. I had a purpose. Earl’s notion of karma but in reverse. I was the fucking Karma. All of those bastards had to pay for what they’d done to me. If I was going to die, they were going to die first. There would be no repercussions. By the time I got caught I’d be dead anyway - or so sick it just didn’t matter. I would make a list, making sure I didn’t miss anyone who should be on it. Before I go they go, every fucking last one of them, with extreme prejudice. I felt such intense clarity - for the first time ever. This was just so right, so inevitable. I knew who I’d do first. That was the easy one, just a warm up. After that I’d have to see Uncle Charlie down in Melbourne. Get some fire power. I knew immediately that I would be using a variety of weapons. Diversity is the spice of life. Besides it would make me harder to track. I didn’t want to get caught too quickly.

  I got home in the next cab. Drank some more whisky. Played some music. Fell asleep to Queen’s, ‘We will rock you’. For the first time in months I slept soundly, waking up the next morning with a smile on my face and a boner a cat couldn’t scratch. Sex and violence are not unrelated. And I was going to overdose on both, to an epic degree. Go out in a blaze of fucking glory and righteousness, giving the finger and a big ‘fuck you’ to the Universe and every asshole it ever spawned.

  Chapter 2. Strippers and Hackers.

  Natasha walked in the door, took one look at Wayne and then screamed at him.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  He turned towards her and looked up at her.

  “Huh, what?”

  He was sprawled out on the couch in their living room watching porn on the large screen TV, drinking the special bottle of Pinot Noir she’d been given as a twenty-second birthday present just a few weeks earlier.

  Natasha was furious. It was 3:00 AM on Saturday morning. She’d been working all night, at the Men’s Club in Melbourne, dancing naked on tables in front of slobbering hordes of drunken men. The bright lights were still glaring in her eyes and the blaring music was still a constant thudding headache which just wouldn’t go away. She was exhausted. All she wanted to do was just sleep, and now this.

  She started to repeat herself.

  “I said …”

  But he cut her off.

  “Oh, don’t be like that babe.”

  He patted the couch beside him.

  “Come on sit down here.”

  Natasha glared at him. A swift kick in the head was the best response to that. But she was too tired to argue. So instead, she sighed and sat down beside him. She pointed at the TV and demanded,

  “At least turn that off.”

  Wayne reluctantly complied. He put his arm around her, gently stroking her thigh, and moved in closer. She pushed him away.

  “You’ve got to be fucking joking. No way asshole.”

  He just smiled back at her. God, she hated him sometimes. He was such a conceited, condescending prick. Sometimes he was sweet. But it was no longer enough.

  He seemed particularly smug tonight, very pleased with himself. Speaking quickly, he burst out with,

  “I did it babe. I cracked their program.”

  Natasha stared back at him blankly. She asked without much interest,

  “Which program?”

  He didn’t wait for her to even finish. He continued talking at her, too excited to stop.

  “The one that was meant to hack me. I backtracked the IP address. It was a zombie but I got through that. An open port. Jeez, people are so careless. I installed a monitoring program. Tracked their own addresses. Got into their machine using a stream of their own replies. Buffer overflow. Classic. So fucking stupid. I got a Korn shell. Super user privileges. I’ve been downloading their files all night. Bank accounts. Everything.”

  Natasha was used to his outbursts and too tired to care. She didn’t understand any of it except the last bit. Suddenly wary, she asked,

  “Whose files?”

  Wayne shrugged dismissively.

  “Just some company in Russia. Nothing to worry about. I’ve covered my tracks. They’ll never even know I was there. I am much smarter than they are.”

  He was, as always, vastly confident of his own unquestionable superiority. Natasha was not so sure. But she just sighed.

  “OK.”

  Wayne was annoyed at her casual response and her apparent doubts. He growled at her,

  “You don’t get it. I got bank accounts, every detail. We’re going to be rich.”

  Natasha rolled her eyes.

  “Well, that’ll be a change.”

  She’d been paying the rent and all the expenses for the last few months - stripping at the Men’s Club. It paid very well, but she hated doing it. It was humiliating. Wayne was supposed to have been looking for a job. Instead he hacked into foreign accounts, watched a lot of porn and drank a lot. And she was supporting him. From time to time she challenged him.

  “If you are so smart why don’t you get a normal IT job?”

  He always replied disdainfully,

  “I will not work for those ass-licking corporate fuckwits. Their combined intellects barely exceed that of the hair on my ass.”

  She would shake her head and then ask,

  “Well what about something at a University?”

  He would shoot back with,

  “Just so many ass-licking fuckwits of a different persuasion.”

  She didn’t think his latest hacks would amount to anything. And neither would he, ever. When it came down to it he was just another lazy self-serving asshole, vastly conceited with an overbearing arrogance which had no foundation in fact at all. She couldn’t think what it was she ever saw in him.

  She was though, wrong about one thing. His latest activity would amount to a great deal. It would change both of their lives absolutely and irrevocably - just not in the way Wayne was so happily anticipating. Wayne would be dead in five days and Natasha would be running for her life.

  They sat there quietly for a few minutes. Then Wayne moved his hand onto one of her breasts, stroking it roughly, asking,

  “So, how about a root then?”

  She grimaced.

  “Oh, you are such a romantic.”

  But this time she didn’t say no. She was too tired. She sat there quietly, expecting him to move in even closer and kiss her. Instead he flipped her over onto her stomach, pulled her pants down and climbed onto her from behind, grunting as he mounted her. Natasha’s eyes went wide in shock. She started to say,

  “What the …”

  But nothing more came out. He was pounding into her with wild abandon. She felt nothing. She just stared at the black leather surface of the couch. What an asshole! What a fucking dickhead!

  When he was done - and it didn’t take long - he rolled off her, rested his head back on the couch and promptly fell asleep. Natasha stood up, pulled her pants up, and stomped across the room. She was beyond angry. She didn’t look back. This jerk was history. She was definitely leaving him. Well. It was her place. He’d be the one leaving. She couldn’t understand how she’d put up with him for so long. He had nothing going for him. He was a lazy slob, a self-centered prick. So why had she put up with him? Familiarity. Habit. God! She shook her head. Shaking. Confused. First thing in the morning, he was gone. Definitely! She stormed into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her, thinking to herself that he was also lazy, selfish, and utterly incompetent as a lover. And frankly it didn’t help his case that he only had a little dick.

  Chapter 3. First Blood.

  Early the next day I was on my way to Melbourne. I drove out of Sydney on the M5. The freeway was busy for a Saturday morning. I called into the office from my car and left a message for my supervisor - my former supervisor now - Robby Carter. With some satisfaction, I told him to go fuck himself, added in a few things about him I really despised, and then I hung up. He'd probably en
joy it though. He certainly enjoyed fucking over everyone else, every chance he got. Hatchet faced asshole. You might think that I would put him on the list. But homicide is very up close and personal - or at least, the way I intended to do it. That nasty little asshole made me puke and I just wanted nothing more to do with him. Ever! Not a problem now. I wouldn’t get off on doing him anyway. He would just make me vomit.

  I'd locked up my apartment. No-one would miss me until next month's rent was due. Then Sam, the fat asshole who owned the place, would start calling me three times a day and then after that start camping out on my doorstep - waiting to confront me, demanding instant payment, wallowing in his own righteousness. That fat fuck would certainly look so much fucking better with a bullet in his head. Shut his dumb fucking mouth once and for all. If I had time I'd come back for him. But I had far more pressing targets in mind and I didn’t think that getting back to Sydney was likely. So, he was on the provisional list.

  I was driving my own car, an old worn-out Toyota Camry, easily identified. Australia like the UK and the US is heavily surveilled. There are traffic cams everywhere on the streets and the highways. The over-head average-speed cameras installed on major routes are an easy and obvious excuse to take high-res photos of all drivers on key journeys and store them in databases. All trips and identities are carefully cross referenced and correlated - readily accessible to any intelligence or crime-fighting authority that says they need them. Soon there will be a push to commoditize the information and sell it to anyone willing to pay. No questions asked. Government’s always looking for ways to make money.

  I would dump my own car in Melbourne after the first kill. Once I got to Melbourne I’d rent something classier. A Mazda MX-6 or something like that. Might as well go out in style. Nothing too extravagant though. Stands out too much. People remember it. Didn’t want to get caught too easily. I had a fake ID and a fake credit card for the car and the hotel. Should be good for a while. I’d have to check. I had a decent amount of cash. This was all from jobs I did for Uncle Charlie. I helped him out from time to time. Nothing too illegal. Let’s just call it opposition research. Last time I helped stitch up one of his competitors. He pays me quite well - though the work is only intermittent. Anyway, I’d get another couple of sets of IDs and cards from Uncle Charlie when I saw him.

  I had no doubt that they'd catch me eventually. The average citizen has no idea of the forces arrayed against them, watching them, recording them and, when so ordered, smashing them into a pulp of blood and bone. As I said I used to be a cop. I know how it works. I knew my own end-game. Suicide by cop effectively. I wouldn’t want to inflict this on most of them. But there were plenty of budding young psychopaths in Special Operations. Tight assed, crew cut, eyes glaring, just busting their chops for a legally sanctioned opportunity to blow someone’s fucking head off. Put another notch on their belt and then go off for a breakfast of steak and eggs with their mates. I'd be doing them a favor. Whatever happens though I will not kill another cop - except Jack Williams of course. I almost looked forward to going out in a blaze of gun fire. It'd be quick. Probably wouldn’t hurt much - or at least only very briefly. Beats the hell out of lingering in a hospice, fading away, pain and vomiting, pumped up on morphine, dull, lethargic, doped to the eyeballs. Most days fervently wishing that this one would be my last and then at night desperately not wanting to go to sleep terrified that it might be. No! My way was much quicker. Do you even feel anything when a burst of high velocity rounds slams into your head - shatters your skull and splatters your brains? I honestly don’t know. Don’t think so. But anyway, between now and then I had a lot of work to do. And it was going to be fucking glorious.

  The M5 morphed into the Hume Highway. I was thundering along at 140 kilometers per hour. I slowed down a bit. It wouldn’t help to be pulled over for speeding at this early stage. I had some music playing, very loudly, Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Phwow! Epic. Clashing. Oozing in sentimentality. Overweening aspiration, defeat and unbearable loss and pain. Doomed heroes. The twilight of the Gods. The dark, ultimately self-defeatist primitivism so beloved by the Nazis. Not that I suddenly found myself with some bizarre vestigial desire to strap on the jackboots and start goose steeping down the plaza screaming out 'Sieg Heil'. Stomping on already bloodied faces. Taking the whip and the crop to nubile young virgins - blonde haired and blue-eyed. Instructing them in compliance and submission and the finer points of fellatio. No. Honestly. Not my style. Fucking Nazis! They all should have been strangled at birth. I shed a few tears though. Awesome music. So sad.

  Beatrice got me onto Wagner. She gave me the DVD I was playing - for my birthday, the last year we were together. She used to play cello for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. She used to go on and on about my limited taste in music - and everything else. It was pretty fucking annoying most of the time. But she got some things right. Beatrice was without a doubt the bitch of all bitches - the uber-bitch. She would definitely have been on the top of my list. I would have been at her door already strangling her with my bare hands. But I could hardly leave our daughter Laetitia without a mother or a father. Laetitia was the only one I loved and the thought of never seeing her again was already heart-breaking. But that choice had already been made - and not by me. The music surged. Oh, so tragic. My eyes moistened again. Then I smiled. Yeah, well. It was going to get pretty fucking tragic for all those concerned when I reached Wagga Wagga in a few hours’ time. I didn’t have any firearms yet. But I had an axe.

  In Australia gun ownership is highly restricted and tightly regulated. Penalties for illegal possession of a firearm are quite severe. If I was in the United States then of course I could have just popped into the nearest supermarket and come out with a trolley load of machine guns, claymore anti-personnel mines and a range of ground to air missile launchers - along with multiple crates of ammunition. All casually payed for with a credit card - or maybe just an in-store line of credit. Not that simple here. But Uncle Charlie down in Melbourne dealt in illegal weapons and many other things. I would be able to get what I needed from him.

  A car closed in behind me. A dark blue SUV. Driving far too close. He could have passed me easily in the other lane. But he didn’t. So many drivers are just fucking idiots. It gets me angry. They pass you, pull in front of you and then slow down, or they sit behind you. Inches behind you, or a few feet at most. Tailgating. I fucking hate god-dam fucking tailgaters. If I did have a gun I would have pulled into the other lane, let him pass, as he was so belligerently demanding, and then shot him in the side of the head - many times - as he went by. As it was I ignored him. Eventually he passed me in the other lane. I watched him carefully. I glared at him. He didn’t even notice. He had a fat stupid face, oblivious to any offence. Lost in his own piss-ant little dream-world. I'd be doing him and the actual world a favor by knocking him off. Fucking moron. Problem is there's so fucking many of them. Wouldn't be anyone left.

  I roared on down the highway - reaching Wagga Wagga - five hours later. I stopped for petrol once. Three years and a couple of months ago - just before prison, and the divorce - one of the newsagents in Wagga Wagga had stolen a winning lottery ticket from me. I remember the incident very clearly - having replayed it in my mind often enough. Beatrice and I were visiting her mother. I bought a Powerball ticket and a couple of days later when I was back at the store I had the ticket checked. I gave the ticket to the old guy running the place. He was there with his wife. He put it into the machine on the counter. The lights on the front didn’t seem to be working and back then the machine faced away from the counter towards the proprietor. I asked him about the lights. He replied that they were broken. He seemed to put the ticket in the slot to be checked. Then he told me, 'sorry mate, no luck. Try again?' I shrugged and then I said, 'no thanks' and walked off. When I was across the other side of the plaza I happened to turn back and I saw him showing something to his wife. They both seemed excited. He saw me looking and instantly calmed himself down, looked away an
d made a show of going about his business. Incredibly I didn’t jump to the obvious conclusion.

  It only hit me a few days later back in Melbourne. What a fucking cocksucker! He would have known he'd sold a winning ticket the day before I turned up. Disabled the lights. Taken the ticket from me when I handed it to him. Pretended it wasn’t a winner. And then lied to my face. I remember every fucking line on his evil fucking face. Then he kept the proceeds for himself. He would have had to give it to a trusted friend, since as a lottery agent he couldn’t buy or cash in his own tickets. But that would have been easy enough. I looked up the winning amount that week. Seven million dollars. One winner. There was no way I would ever see any of it. And it was too late to go back and confront him. Fucking cocksucker.

  I did some checking of course. Sure enough, the official winner was one of his mates. The fucking asshole ended up with a cool six million in his personal account. He paid off his mate one million. I was working in Fraud at the time. It was easy enough to get to and go through the relevant records. I got all the details, full name, family, associates. Everything. I was going to open it as a case. But that's when I got arrested. My illegal searches through the financial records was used as a small part of the case against me. A couple of years later I heard that the Lottery Agency had the police investigating a number of similar cases. Store owners and operators ripping off the punters. Several of them were prosecuted. The ticketing machines now all face outwards towards the customers and are operated only by the customers. None of which helped me. I often thought about the asshole while I rotted in jail. Got a bit obsessed to tell you the truth. That piece of shit was living it up on money that was rightfully mine.