Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

TEECH1: Of course. I only object to the word. Murder implies that those animals I wiped out were human beings. Their families should say a prayer and thank me for emancipating those pathetic slugs from the ignoble slavery that was their existence.

Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

MIKE10: R U doing God’s work?

TEECH1: Sometimes I think so. I can’t claim to know how God intercedes in the world. But it could be through me. Why not?

Teacher? The only class this guy could teach was how 2B nuts.

MIKE10: I can’t believe that God would want U to kill people.

TEECH1: He works in mysterious ways.

MIKE10: What R U going to do next?

TEECH1: YR. IDTS. Wouldn’t U like to know. Now I said it to those cops, and I’ll say it to U. Stay out of my way. I know U think U need to catch me, but I’d take a real serious re-eval on that if I were U, Bennett. Because if U or NE1 else gets between me and what needs 2B done, I swear to Almighty God I’ll kill U B4 U get a chance to blink.

Christ on a bike, he knew who I was! He must have figured it out from the Times article. Why hadn’t Calvin just printed my home address while she was at it?

MIKE10: Guess I’ll have to take my chances.

TEECH1: That’s a dangerous way to think, Bennett. That’s what those two in the train car thought. Right before I erased them from existence. When is my mission statement going out?

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I passed my hands through my hair, forcing my distraught brain to think fast. Getting his message to the world was obviously very important to him. Maybe we could use that to gain some leverage or draw him out.

MIKE10: We can’t let that happen. Not until we get something in return.

TEECH1: How about I’ll let U live. That’s my final offer.

I’d been holding back my anger pretty well, but at last it jumped ahead of me. I was sick of this smug, cop-killing piece of crap. Before I could stop myself, I engaged in a slight episode of IM rage.

MIKE10: In that case instead of going on the front page, your manifesto of nonsense is going in my circular file. U catching my drift, U deluded freak?

TEECH1: U just cost another citizen his life, cop. I’ll kill two people a day if that message doesn’t go out. U don’t have the slightest conception of who U R messing with. My message will reach the world if it has to be written in your blood. TTYL. YFA!

I sat there staring at the screen. TTYL stood for “talk to you later,” I knew. I did have four preteens. But what was YFA? You something something.

Then I got it.

I turned and stared at the crosshairs over the Teacher’s face up on the wall, imagining my finger squeezing the trigger.

Yeah. Right back at you, Teech.

Part Three

LIFE LESSONS

Chapter 45

SITTING IN THE QUIET of his apartment’s shaded living room, the Teacher chucked his Treo across to the couch, and knocked back the last of the Daumas.

He grinned as a ball of sweet fire softly exploded in his stomach. He flipped on the TV set and channel surfed. Not only NY1, but the national networks were all over the hotel and subway shootings.

The people on the street looked solemn, downright paranoid. God, this was fun, he thought. Fucking with their heads was so addictive. He started laughing when a very concerned-looking cop was interviewed. Was that MIKE10? The asshole who just so lamely tried to get him to stop?

He held his sides as the hilarity of it all suddenly overwhelmed him. Tears actually came out of his eyes.