2023-08-11
Blinding lights. It's loud. I'm on stage and almost can't breathe. I'm so damn full of… hatred. Then I let it all out into a mic. And I realize it didn't help, I don't feel any better… and I hated it. Hated everybody, every inch. It was too real, even for a lucid dream.
Johnny's earliest memories involve adults talking about how he and his brother were different than other boys, Johnny in a more troubling way.
Johnny once strangled another boy on the school bus, accidentally, but it led to mandatory anger management therapy. Johnny's therapist told his parents his secrets and Johnny learned to conceal his true feelings, a skill he would hone into adulthood.
In the fifth grade, after punching out an eighth grader, the school headmistress, a Catholic nun, quizzed Johnny about his hobbies.
Do you play video games?
Yes. Sometimes.
What kind of video games do you play?
… chess.
A quick glitch of her face revealed that she realized that he knew where these questions were leading, but then also she knew that she wouldn't get anywhere with Johnny, his expression blank. His favorite games involved guns and explosions. Obviously.
Johnny created a comic book anthology about blowing up the school with a bomb.
Later, after the Columbine massacre, Johnny was upset that it was no longer allowable to joke about blowing up the school with a bomb. In protest, he wrote a song:
Kill yourself, with an axe
Murder your friends, exchanging hacks
Gore and death, to the max!
Laughing as they die.
Stay in school, but bring a gun
Slaughtering your friends is fun
Shoot them as they try to run
Watch them scream and cry!
...
At the clinic pumping slugs
Coma victims, pull the plugs
Beat the patients, take their drugs
Using deadly force.
Stab and slaughter murder hate
Disembowel and mutilate
Top it off with a brutal rape
Fuck a rotting corpse!