Colm Brady

The beginning of a great adventure

“For Emily!” Came the roar as we remembered her before this horror. Her little eyes that indigo colour like a dancefloor in Vegas and her skin pale as a wino in a blood bank. We recalled her playing hopscotch with all the dexterity of a one-legged breakdancer. Her bloodstained skipping rope was coiled on the floor to remind us of this outrage and our anger grew like an illegal weed under hydroponics.
“We have to put an end to this, there can be no more Emily’s “ said the sheriff chewing his lip like a hyena cleaning up a zebra’s hindquarters.
“No more Emilys” was picked up by the mob like an Irish Rosary and repeated vigorously.
“No more Emilys”
The sheriff raised his hand for silence and the chanting stopped like a crash test dummy hitting a wall.
“Four more years”
“Shut up Grandma!”
“Sorry dear”
The crowd were hopping from foot to foot like a pogo tester and a few were eyeing up their neighbours for a bit of pre-emptive violence over previous disputes.
“We need to get all the weapons in here and distribute them among the men.”
“And women”
“Yes Dolores and women. How many assault rifles have you got stashed at home?”
Dolores shifted like a politician at a tribunal that had their name on it.
“Four, no five”
The sheriff nodded his approval. The only thing this town liked more than weapons was cable television and programs about weapons. The people were gaining confidence like a basketball team who had just noticed their opponents had no arms. They tooled up like looters at Kmart and headed out of the hall ready to engage the enemy.
“They say he learned to assemble a weapon at the age of three.”
“I heard he mastered Karate before he was five.”
“ Rumour has it he is a great lover”
The Sheriff took a step back and squinted at the speaker like a bookkeeper over a dying candle.
“Where did that little gem emanate from?”
“Word in the kindergarten was he was a bit of a ladies man”
“Jesus he is only seven”
“And heavily armed”
“I heard he could shoot the eye out of a mouse.”
The sheriff winced when he thought of the large calibre weapon the enemy was packing. That thing would take the eye along with the rest of the mouse and any neighbouring animals that happened to be around. It made him as queasy as a hangover barfly in a septic slaughterhouse.
After a brief discussion we headed west on the road up to the old sawmill. I vaguely remembered that in the movies the mob always met a sticky end at various abandoned buildings but nobody seemed too worried. Black Johnny stroked his hunting rifle and grinned.
“This is gonna be the best shootout since the Alamo!”
“We got beaten at the damn Alamo.”
“Well technically yeah them wetbacks whupped our asses but this time we are better armed.”
“And theres one of him against twenty seven of us…“
A shot rang out and a fragment of Black Johnny’s small brain landed on the sheriff’s beige shirt. The sheriff absently registered that the colours were complementary and it wouldn’t stain.
“Make that twenty six against one”
The members of the mob that didn’t have firearms gravitated towards the centre of the group. A grizzly looking individual grabbed the sheriff’s arm and pointed up at the sawmill.
“I reckon we split into three groups and surround the little bastard”
“That little bastard is my son!”
“Well were you and his father married?”
“No, but…”
“Well then he is a goddamn bastard”
The suspect’s mother was quiet; this crowd could turn on her in seconds. Fair enough the kid had been trouble but he had never done anything like this before. His father had trained him in the backwoods in the use of arms - that was bad enough but he had also dictated when they should be used. This list of circumstances stretched from the aftermath of a nuclear strike to dealing with the employees of the federal government. No wonder the little freak was screwed up.
“So we split into two groups and then what?”
“Three groups, one up front and two flanking groups to take him down.”
The sheriff looked doubtful as the grizzly speaker was the biggest single renter of war films in the video store. That was the sole basis of his combat skills. The sheriff scratched his head and decided to follow his training.
“Right everyone stay back and gimme that megaphone.” He turned it on and was greeted by a deafening howl that left the group wincing. It also let the freak know where they were and a large calibre bullet came whizzing through the trees and embedded itself in the grizzlies backside.
“I been shot, I been shot”
The sheriff had not taken his finger off the megaphone so the grizzlies’ howls were amplified one hundred times and solicited another bullet from the sawmill.
“Damnit I been shot AGAIN!”
The crowd milled around in panic and the freaks mother appealed for lenience.
“Will someone save my little baby”
“Yeah I will take care of the little bastard - he shot me in the ass TWICE”
With a pop another of the group joined the great lynch-mob in the sky and the rest dived to the ground. The stricken man had been a frequent visitor to Benny’s Fried Chicken Emporium and so had presented a sizeable target to the sawmill.
“What the hell do we do now sheriff?”
“Well Dolores I guess we stay back and call in the National Guard”
“I don’t reckon we need to involve strangers in this.”
“Jesus we have a seven year old mass-murderer and twenty armed vigilantes – it doesn’t get any stranger.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”


I’d teach em how to plant a bomb, start a fire, play guitar
And if they catch a hunter, shoot him in the nuts
I’d try to be as progressive as I could possibly be
As long as I don’t have to try too much.


There was a shuffle at the back and a man in black shouldered his way up to the front. He had the dark suit with a dog collar and was brandishing a copy of the Old Testament – none of that wishy washy modern rubbish for him. He had black hair that was suspiciously dark for his fifty years and conviction shone forth from his dark eyes.
“Vengeance is mine says the lord, you know Sheriff”
“Well that’s as may be Reverend but we got a boy here that’s shot three people dead already.”
“Ahem”
“Oh yeah he shot this man in the backside as well”
“Twice”
“Twice indeed, but our mission is to avoid any more fatalities here Reverend.”
“This town is like Gomorrah, loose morals and no fear of the lord’s wrath”
“At least its not like Sodom or we would be overrun with damn homos”
The Reverend chose to ignore that comment from the back of the mob.
“The lord hath said that we should let the children come to me “
“Yeah we should do that and then shoot him” came the same dissenting voice. The Reverend shook his unnaturally black hairdo and slunk off to the side presumably to pray or perform some ablutions. The sheriff was distracted by the crackling of his radio and didn’t notice him leave.
Dolores shook her weapon and gestured at the sawmill.
“We just need a big enough cannon and next time he sticks his head out we cream his ass”
“We ain’t doing anything of the sort, the state troopers have arrived with a SWAT team and they are on their way up here.”
“ Well thank the Lord for the federal government, I hope they have a hostage negotiator with them.”
“He doesn’t have any hostages up there.”
“Well that damned fool preacher went up there while you were on the squawk box and he hasn’t appeared back”
The freaks mother came forward and began to wail.
“The one thing the boys father hated more than the government was the clergy – he said they were bloodsuckers and should be exterminated on sight.”
As if on cue a mobile phone rang and the kid’s mother answered. She listened intently and tried to interrupt a couple of times but to no avail. When she hung up the crowd looked at her slack-jawed in expectation.
“Sheriff it was him and he has the Reverend Beeks up there”
“Is he talking to the Reverend up there?” asked the Sheriff hopefully.
“No he says if he doesn’t get what he wants he is gonna shoot that priest in the, erm well in the Nuts.”
There was a collective gasp at this sacrilege from the few church-going members of the group. The rest had decided it was time to storm the building – well the ones with guns had while the rest had decided to watch the spectacle. If the media were here they could have watched it at home but the TV crews had not got wind as of yet. For the first time in their lives they were part of the news and they were relishing the moment.
The seething group was distracted by the arrival of a Phalanx of four wheel drive vehicles, plain colours with no markings or sirens. A detachment of marksmen took up their positions in the bushes and the rest pushed the crowd back down the road.
A large man with a military bearing approached the Sheriff.
“Could you debrief me in the command post” he said as he nodded to the biggest of the trucks that had arrived. They stepped in and the Sheriff told the sorry tale of little Emily, Black Johnny, the Fried Chicken guy and the Reverend Beeks’ current uncomfortable situation. Orders were issued and the command post called for the freak's mother to come forward.
“Right ms. freak we have to contact your son and persuade him to come down before someone else gets hurt.”
This sounded eminently reasonable to the mother until she eyed the grim marksmen lined up in the bushes with their oversized night-sights and a discouraging quantity of ammunition each.
“I will ring the reverends phone and we can all hear the boys demands. His mother is the only one who speaks at the moment.”
The mother nodded and everyone was quiet as the number was dialled. After five agonising rings a surprisingly strong young voice answered.
“ Is that you mama?”
“Yes my little soldier are you ok?, what happened to Emily?”
“She stole my marbles so I shot her”
The new arrival grabbed his microphone and started his patter to the kid.
“Now son we don’t want to see anyone else getting hurt so what do you want to want to release Reverend Beeks?”
There was a pause and the marksmen grimaced as they heard the speech.
“ I want a car to bring me to the airport…”
“Yes”
“And I want a flight to Disney World with spending money and I want to kick Donald Duck in the ass.”
“Hold tight son, I will see what we can do.”
Clicking off the microphone the commanding officer turned to his staff.
“My training hasn’t prepared me for dealing with a young offender but being a father has. We should be able to talk him down.”
There was a sigh of relief from some quarters and low curses from others. People were settling in for negotiations when a high whine came over the hill. A helicopter from KVVY News hovered overhead and covered the sawmill in a white searchlight.
“Who the hell called those bastards?” cried the sheriff but his voice was drowned by one distant shot answered by a volley from the bushes. It was soon over.


It was late when the sheriff got home and his wife was watching KVVY on television. The footage was of the Reverend Beeks carrying the freak’s body from the ruins. The banner at the bottom read “KVVY Crew killed by terror child”
It also promised further news on the tragedy as it emerged. The sheriff shrugged and went for a shower. This crap would be forgotten on TV Tomorrow. People around here might remember it for a little longer.


It might be fun to have a kid that I could kick around
A little me to fill up with my thoughts
A little me or he or she to fill up with my dreams
A way of saying life is not a loss.
(Lou Reed)

posted by Colm Brady @ 9:25 PM