Day 46 - Justice Story

Justice Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer

Gil hated life.  It was capricious and arbitrary and unfair and he wanted everyone else to feel just a little bit of his pain.  It wasn’t the most rational or well adjusted thought process ever, but then again, when are most thought processes really all that rational or well adjusted?  And how do you judge that anyway?  Either way, Gil was a lonely and unhappy guy and bored by life and the people that lived in his neighborhood.

It was a nice neighborhood.  There where middle class homes with middle class families and shopping centers and schools nearby.   You could walk most anyplace you really needed to go.  There was little crime and it was far away from bars and liquor stores and other such establishments that might attract the wrong crowd.  Really, when you think about it Gil had very little to complain about.  But he was unhappy and bored with the mundane in life.  And unhappy and bored people tend to do really silly and strange things.

Gil had decided that he was going to make life just a little bit worse for everyone around him.  He didn’t know that’s what he had decided to do when he started doing it, but that was the unconscious gist of what his activities entailed.

There was no plan, no thought out doctrine or manifesto of declaration.  There were just the little actions.  At first they were small and fairly innocuous.  Your kid left a toy on the lawn?  If Gil saw it, he might hide it or even take it.  You set down your drink?  He’d spill it if he could.  These were not the actions of a madman or a sociopath.  They were the actions of someone who just wanted to be a little bit annoying.  He would push and shove in a crowded room.  He would step on the back of your shoe if he could.  It was all fairly silly and stupid.

But then it wasn’t enough.  Gil grew bored with that and he realized his actions were not having the intended consequences that he wanted them to.  No one was really enjoying their lives less on any noticeable level.

So he upped the ante.

Gil’s behavior escalated.  And it became more noticeably public.  He did things would be obvious and intentional.  And he did them in such a way that he could be caught doing them. He would leave screws and nails in the street.  He would clip one or two coupons from mailers, or fill out one or two words of the crossword puzzle in other people’s morning paper.  He would take the legs off action figures that he found, but leave the pieces where he found them, or remove one of the rubber grip handles from someone’s bicycle.  He did the strange activities like moving a neighbor’s lawn gnome or collecting all the pine cones he found along the street and putting them all in one person’s front yard.

After a few short weeks of not being caught, this too was growing dull. 

That was when Gil became destructive.

His first act was to crack the PVC pipe of a neighbor’s lawn irrigation system.  There was a rage that was starting to grow.  He was very unhappy that none of his actions were enough to bring about any discernible consequences.

Then one morning it happened.  Gil returned home from his morning rounds or newspaper theft to discover someone had replaced the burnt out light bulb on his outdoor garage light and touched up the paint on his mailbox.

Gil was enraged.  Not only had his neighbors failed to have their lives ruined, but now someone was actually trying to do nice things for him.  It was infuriating.

Across the street Gina watched Gil from her bedroom window.

Gina detested Gil.  She found him to be disgusting.  He was just such an amateur.  There was no skill or style or substance to his actions. They were just arbitrary and poorly conceived.  It was terrible and offensive to watch.  Gina considered herself an artist.  She took the time to really get to know a person and then and only then would she act.  She would perform the one deed that was guaranteed to get the biggest negative reaction from her target.  In this case it had been too easy.  Gil was an easy mark.