If I'm not doing stuff, the voices in my head tell me to kill myself. That's why I'm always on the move. You can't let things stagnate. A dull, stale, grey afternoon where all the curtains are closed, you don't let any fresh air in, and the must and dust of daily life creeps into your very soul. It's a wonder it hasn't gaslit me to do so so far. And then I remember why: Spite. Fuck 'em. Fuck all them. I can do it. I can live until I DIE. And not something dramatic, like a murder or suicide. No no, something boring. I'll die when I'm GOOD AND DAMN READY at the ripe old age of 75 or whenever the fuck the average life expectancy of Joe Schmoe is from heart disease or cancer or what-have-you common causes of death. That's the thing nobody prepares you for. That you're not special. Is it all a lie? A façade? He who fakes competence should see to it that in the process he does not become competent. But you can't stop it. Nobody really knows what they're doing. A baby cries because it has no self-soothing mechanisms. It cannot stop crying. Not until its needs are met.

John Michael Smith peered at the chicken scratch scrawled on the paper. What is this lunatic going on about? "Sounds like mass shooter material to me," he thought. What a shit job. But you needed the money to live in this capitalistic age, so he didn't ask too many questions. You get too deep, too emotionally invested, and it starts eating you up. Just like that Nietzsche quote. "Huh, come to think of it, didn't this guy write that down in his manifesto or whatever this is?" He scanned the page looking for confirmation. Yep. There it is: "He who fakes competence should see to it that in the process he does not become competent." Smith was almost certain that was a quote from that… what was Nietzsche, a philosopher? Yeah.. Yeah, that philosopher. The original was about monsters and abysses or something. The last thing you want to do on this job is spiral.

He shut his mind up and focused on the job. Where did that little shit go? Mailing this letter to his parents and school. Didn't even have the courtesy of even personalizing them to each target audience. Like a mass market email. Psycho spam. It didn't seem like the body of the letter gave any much hints at all. What was his motivation? He decided he needed to give it another look. He's… saying he's going to act, otherwise he'd have to kill himself. Is that necessarily a violent act? It didn't say. None of the usual telltale signs. No rage, or resentment, or bedwetting or forest animal killing. So it was fair to say he could rule out psycho killer. If anything, it sounded like the kid was depressed. But then there's the passage about spite. Is that his form of revenge? He's not talking about bloodshed. He's talking about holding up a high middle finger to the world trying to make him kill himself.

He considered the profile of the kid. It was exactly what you expected. Quiet, loner, sensitive, didn't fit in with his peers, brilliant, yadda yadda yadda you've heard it a million times before. Why don't these assholes find a therapist or fuck a girl or do literally anything else except go AWOL? He looked at the envelope the message was sent in. Nothing. That kid was long gone by now.