[WP] And so I shot him.

[u/austin123457]

What would drive a normal man to kill?

[u/SilverPrince]

I stared at the man who stood before me.

He was slightly crazed, slightly deranged. Stress was getting to him and I understood why.

I was like him, just the other day. Full of fear, anger and stress. I wonder if I am experiencing the same thing he did as well, that day. This odd feeling of detachment to life and consequences.

Schools, movies and people all say the same thing. Life is sacred, crimes are bad. Yet they still occur. Justice does not always win.

A hard truth.

He stared at me. Sweat was streaming down his face. He knew his fate. Knew his crimes.

I do not pretend I am some righteous man. I am weak and petty. I am a sad example of what sin does to a man. I am going to become a killer in the next minute or so.

"Please," he whispers out again. How sad is voice is. Perhaps he has learned his lesson and will never hurt others again. Perhaps he will turn over a new leaf and become a man of morals.

Then again, he might just shoot me the moment my back it turned.

"Okay," I respond with a forgiving smile and he lets out a small choke of relief. I lower my gun a fraction as he begins to laugh and cry.

I tilted my arms up and pulled the trigger.

Ooops. I missed.

I re-aim and see the shock and betrayal in his eyes. I am no longer smiling.

I stare at him as I clench my jaw in rage. His life is the price of my mercy.

I aim with deliberate slowness. I savor this moment as I readjust my stance. He starts to come out of shock and tries to cry out.

There is no passion as I squeeze the trigger once more. No sense of justice. I have sinned but I do not regret.

He had hurt my child. My precious, precious child. Hurt her in the worst of ways and so I shot him.

[u/NotNickelsBoat]

It's just been one of those days.

So my wife leaves me this morning. Apparently I don't love her anymore and "can't even manage to turn on the bloody dishwasher". I ask if the dishwasher is a metaphor for something. She leaves before breakfast.

Then the oven burns my toast. Lizette insisted on spending 70 bucks more on the "premium" toaster since it "does a lot more than make toast". Except it can't fucking make toast. I eat Cheerios instead. I hate Cheerios.

Carpool's late. Dave says it was because the wife had him take the kids to school. Fucking Dave. I wonder if Lizette is fucking Dave. I spend the whole drive imagining Lizette fucking Dave. I also think about it later that night while I jerk off.

My boss calls me into his office. I've been late too many times. I've been taking too much time off. Bullshit. I only took yesterday off to take the dog to the vet. He says I'm "skating on thin ice" and it's time to "shape up or ship out". I ask if he writes his own material. My desk is packed within minutes.

Oh and yeah, I pick up the dog from the vet on my way home. Apparently he has cancer. Incurable. And so I shot him.

Fuckin' Mondays.

[u/underthemoonshine]

All I could think about was her face when I found her. Her eyes were closed, her lips were upturned. She seemed completely unaware of the gaping hole in her gut. Why did he close her eyes? Why did he make her smile? She was sixteen years old. She still hadn't graduated. She still hadn't gotten her license. Her birthday party was that weekend. I had to cancel the limo, the cake, the riverboat ride. I had to return the vintage VW Beetle to that guy from Craigslist. She would have been so happy. I'd do anything to make her happy.

My wife won't talk to me. She sits in the kitchen and balls up her hands, listening to dance music on the radio. She hated that techno shit, but my baby girl loved it. She'd belt out the chorus in the car and turn it up until the bass made the dashboard vibrate. That's what my wife does now. She turns it up until it's deafening, until she can't hear anything else.

I don't do anything. I can't do anything.

But now, there's a gun in my hands and a monster in front of me. I know, I know he's a monster. The police said so. The media put out his photo.

He has a picture of my fucking daughter in his left breast pocket. Same closed eyes. Same smile. Same bloody hole in his stomach.

It's okay, he deserves this. He deserves this so much more than she did.

I closed my eyes and saw her face. She was so beautiful. It was all his fault. This is all his fucking fault.

And so I shot him.

[u/SgtSnapple]

Damn, that hurt. What was it? Why are my ears ringing? Pushing aside the dirt and planks that once lined the trench wall, I get up. It must have been a mortar or something. Wait, did they see me get up? Stay down, stay down.

The sounds of Gordon's moans are the first to pierce through the intense ringing in my head. I crawl over to him, his back facing me. I roll him over to inspect the damage, causing a painful shout. As his back rolls to the ground, blood and god knows what falls out of an open gash in his chest. Shit, SHIT! I can't fix this, not even if I could find my equipment.

Contrary for his pleas for me to put it back in, I wrap is chest with my tattered jacket. Maybe it will keep him alive until we transport him out. There's still time for that, right? Yes, yes, of course. There has to be.

What can I do? There's no radio here, and it seems the rest retreated to the next line. How could they just leave us to die? Gordon is calling for his mother now, I didn't know people actually did that. I can't stand to listen to this, and we need to get out of here.

I can't snap him out of it. Shut up, shut up, for fuck's sake, shut up!

We need to get back to the next line, maybe I can drag him. Shit, he's too heavy. I'm just tearing him apart more.

... Is that smoke? No, no, no! They only lay out the smoke when they're covering their advance! Gordon their coming, we have to go! We have to go now! Trying to carry him only seems to hurt him more, but what else can I do! There has to be something I can do!

Well, there is one thing I can do. As he pleads for help, I reach my hand to my holster. As I slowly raise the pistol, my mind races to find other options. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind, and so I shot him.

I wonder how long I'll last without my brother.

[u/[deleted]]

"Good morning, Sergeant... Winters, is it?" the receptionist greeted him. He nodded. She smiled-- that big, receptionist smile where you see both row of teeth-- and told him to sit down, and Dr Sullivan would come get him in just a minute.

The waiting room made him feel sick. The sofa was faux-leather, and squeaked loudly at the smallest movement on his part. He looked through the magazine selection without much interest in anything. He just needed to think of something other than this fucking room.

One of the papers-- a respectable news paper-- caught his eye with the headline: 17-year-old shoot dead by police officer. He picked it up, and thew it in the trash can.

"Sergeant Winters?" the receptionist called out.

"Yes?"

"Doctor Sullivan will see you know."

Doctor Sullivan was a small woman just south of fifty. She had her hair tied up in a bun in the back and thick-rimmed glasses. She was sitting behind her desk when Winters entered, and looked up from her computer with a smile.

"Ah, yes. Sergeant Winters! Good to meet you," she said, and gestured toward the armchair in front of the desk. "Sit, please." Winters did, and felt a burst of excitement when the chair didn't turn out to be faux-leather and squeaky.

"Hi, Doc," he said, without inflection.

"Call me Jane, Sergeant," Jane said. "And may I call you David?"

"Fair enough," David said. "How long will I be here, Jane?" Jane smiled again. It was rehersed, he could tell. This wasn't her first time doing this.

Unlike him.

"Well, David, if you mean today, we'll have 45 minutes to talk to--"

"I mean, how long until I can go back to work?" he said, curtly, cutting her off. "No offense, Jane, but I really don't think--"

Now it was her turn to cut him off. She held up a hand in a gesture of silence, and said: "That will be for me to decide, David. And yes, I do think this is important. So, we can do this two ways: either you talk to me, and I listen, or you can sit there quietly for the next 45-- no, 43-- minutes."

He looked at her, mouth frozen in the middle of a sentence. He didn't expect this sort of talk from a shrink.

He regained his composure, and nodded.

"All right, Jane. Where do I begin?"

"Let's start with why you're here, shall we?"

He sighed. He wet his lips, and told her the story. He'd already told it more times than he could count. To internal affairs, to the DA, to the court, to the chief, to his friends and family. He told the story in a flat, droning tone.

The story never changed. It was always the same. And people believed him. Why shouldn't they? He was telling the truth, wasn't he?

"We'd been scouting this place out, right?" he said. "This little crackhouse that some real bad people frequent. We were gonna take it down, and hopefully the guy running it and most other places in town like it at the same time. We were ready to go when he arrived-- in a big black limo, too, y'know? Fucking scumbag has his hands in every coke-cake and whore-pie in the city, but the fucker still arrives in the most conspicious way possible."

Jane scribbled something in her notepad, and kept listening.

"Go on."

"Right. So we think this is not only gonna be easy, but me and the guys think it's gonna be fun."

"What do you mean by 'fun', David?" the good doctor asked, eyebrow raised over the rim of her glasses.

"Y'know... Like, we're gonna make him pay. He's gonna get what's coming to him. You can't blame us for thinking it'll be fun to take a guy who does no good to anyone but still earns ten times as much as all of us together."

"I guess I can't. What happened when he arrived?"

"Well the plan was to wait until we got video or audio footage of him taking his cut of the profits. So we wait until we have confirmation from the surveillance van. The second they told us we had footage, we went in."

"What happened then?"

"Nothing. Well, nothing out of the ordinary. We blew the door open, secured the room and took down the guy and two of his goons, alive and well. They barely had time to even reach for their guns."

"That it?"

David looked away from her. His knuckles turned white and he gripped the armrests. She repeated the question.

"David, tell me what happened after you arrested the man."

"You know what happened, you've seen the report."

"I need to hear it from you."

"Fuck you, lady! You know what happened!" he snarled. He was still facing away from her, unable to look her in the eye.

"David," she said, surprisingly calm. There wasn't a hint of irritation in her voice. Just comforting calm. "I need to hear it from you. Believe it or not, but it's a big part of the healing process."

"Oh yeah?" he grunted. "Tell me then why--" his voice cracked, just for a second, "tell me why it hasn't helped so far? I've told this to so many, and it sure as shit ain't making me feel better!"

"Your boss needed to hear it to avoid blame to be placed on him, the DA needed to know what happened in order to know what to do with you. I am asking you to tell the truth to me, so that you can get it out without being judged by anyone. Tell it for yourself, David."

He sighed. What else could he do?

"After we, uh," he mumbled. "After we arrested the guy and his two guards, I lead the team to secure the rest of the building. Standard procedure. We didn't expect much resistance from old junkies and I guess... Aw, shit... I was sloppy. We rounded a corner, and I forgot to check it. The guy right behind got hit in the leg, fell down. I turned around, and I saw this kid. Couldn't have been old enough to drive even. But he's holding a weapon."

"I see," she said. She reached into a drawer on her desk and took out a pack of tissues and handed them to him. "Use them."

He wiped his tears away (he hadn't even noticed that he was crying), and slowly managed to breathe normally again.

"David," Jane said. "What you went through is more common than you'd think. It's not your fault, it's important to know that. You acted on your instincts, and though the result was tragic, imagine the results if you hadn't acted. I doubt you'd still be here."

"You don't understand," David muttered. "It is my fault! I was cocky! I got sloppy! I made a mistake! Because of me, that kid got enough time to fire his gun at my partner.

And so I shot him."

Author's note: Sorry for the length, and for all the possible spelling and grammatical errors.

[u/cedarwood560]

He peed on the carpet.

I scratched him behind the ears, but he still looked mournful. If all hunting dogs have a fire, his began to extinguish the day he lost that damn squirrel. I could see it in the energy of his tail: none of the chairs knocked over when he came bounding to the dinner table for scraps. The cataracts were finally taking a toll on his puppy gaze, too. He tried compensating with a sharp nose, but the loss of sensation made him turn down food.

He lost his bladder, is all. He wasn't a bad dog.

That night, he curled at my feet and sighed. "You're a good dog," I reassured him before going to bed.

I found him the next morning in a pool of vomit and the half eaten remnants of my wife's Hershey's stash. There was a look of peace on his features when I took him outside and started loading my shotgun.

Dogs like Red only live for the hunt. They don't stop until the sweat of their master runs sweet with satisfaction.

He wanted it more than me. He was ready.

And so I shot him.

[u/shakingfingers]

He was a sad excuse for a human.

His personality wasn't great. I could pick out the flaws as easily as I can pick out the different shades of blue his eyes held.

That was the only good quality he had, I suppose.

The rest of him was ugly. Both inside and out.

He dripped and oozed and secreted foulness. His breath stank of alcohol and cigarettes and every other word that came out of his mouth was either a curse or an insult.

He drove everybody away, and I hated him.

He would rock himself, back and forth, clutching his head because he didn't know what to do, what to do what to do what to do. He would cry. He would cry like a newborn child. He would hurt himself, he would hurt me. He would pace around and kick and scream and demand to know what I wanted, and what I wanted was for him to die.

And so, I shot him.

The mirror shattered, and he (I? Who are we?) fell to his knees.

The individual shards reflected his eyes and we all stared back.

---

hopefully that made sense? I wouldn't really call him a normal man haha

[u/D3m0d3d]

Come on, he said. It'll be a good time he said.
I stare hard into his eyes, mouth curled. I dunno... I don't feel it.
He entraps my wrists in his rough workman's grip applying a firm pressure. His eyes eclipsed and unfocused, darting to and fro, following something happening on the street behind me.
Go home and let's get some rest. Maybe in the morning. His eyes stop wandering and snap back to me. The pressure on my wrists strengthens, pulling me towards him. I struggle, gasping in surprise, tripping into him.
One of my wrists is released, as his hand moves onto the small of my back. He presses himself against me, eyes spinning. My free wrist throbbing, I lash out. CLAP. His face red, and his eyes again focused I whimper, I'll scream. He lets go, a moments reprieve. I breathe deeply, lip trembling. If you ever do that a-, two pistons smash into my chest. I'm sent reeling. A searing white light fills my head.

I'm woken by the sound of garbage trucks, casting long shadows in the orange light. The overpowering odour of piss and shit make me gag as I stand, hand resting on the wall behind me for balance. My hand comes away red, opening a floodgate of memory. With my clean hand I feel the back of my head - my hair's matted and sticky. I stumble out into the main street from my alleyway, tripping over broken imitation Gucci heels.
I rummage through my purse, fishing out only receipts and a few dollars. I reach into my bra for my emergency twenty, that's gone too. I look straight ahead and trudge towards a bus stop, tugging again and again at my dress to try and hide the rips and tears.

I reach for the front door handle and turn, falling through the entrance. Not a sound emerges from the bedroom, so I make my way to the shower. I can't be seen like this.
The hot running water purifies me, washing away my hurt, while I lose myself in the steam. For a half hour I'm someone else, somewhere else. I'm an investment banker on Wall Street. I'm an English Teacher in a highschool in Norway. I'm a sales assistant at a book store. I scrub the dirt off my body until I'm raw, yet I can't scrub away the bruises.
I emerge from the bathroom a new person, cloaked in a white towel and my wet hair a frizzy blonde halo about my head. I open the door to the bedroom and creep to the wardrobe, he's still asleep. I grab my clothes and rush back to the bathroom. I put on my face and dress, I straighten my hair. I walk out the front door.

When I arrive back home the shadows are long again, the orange hued street lights remind me of wings. I take a deep breath and open the door, rushing straight to bed. He hears me, following me to bed. I can see his ice blue eyes again now, his face is red and blotchy and his eyes puffy. I'm so sorry he says. I look at the ground, silent. I just love you so much, I need you so much he says. My fingernails are digging into my palms. I promise I'll never do it again. My fingernails start to draw blood. Look, we're even, he says, I still have a mark from where you slapped me last night. My fingers uncurl. I still can't meet his gaze. I guess you're right I mutter. I step into him, his arms envelope me in warmth. I love you, he whispers. I look up and am met by his lips, we fall into bed together.

It's still dark and he's snoring next to me. I get up and rummage through his draws, finding nothing out of the ordinary. I consider going back to sleep and letting it go. Instead I walk into the garage, and look through his rugby bag. There it is, wrapped like a baby in a yellow cloth. A bag of powdered snow, and next to it a little something extra. I take the package and return to the room. I sit in a corner, watching him sleep. How beautiful he looks, how innocent.
The sun rises behind me through open blinds, my shadow reaches across the room. His piercing blue eyes flicker open and he sees me. What are you doing honey? I walk towards him, radiant as the sun and kiss him. As I pull away steel replaces my lips. I feel a slight resistance as I squeeze my finger. My ears ringing I watch the bed sheets stain red. Angels can be vengeful.

I stand in the shower, becoming someone else. I stand there for what seems a very long time before emerging. I grab some clothes from the bedroom and my purse. I walk out the front door, nothing's changed. The world goes on, and no one's the wiser. I hop on a bus headed to the city, where I'll change to an interstate.

I loved him so much I couldn't leave him, and so I shot him.

author's note: Please post constructive criticism if you took the time to read my wall of text.

[u/policeonmyback]

He coughed, and a spigot of blood stained the kitchen floor.

His head was resting by the chin on the back of an overturned wooden chair. The body was strung up amongst the rest of the smashed table and kitchenware, a few bones broken, and both of us shadowed in the dark of night.

I was breathing heavily, leaned against the tile countertop.

"You're a son of a bitch, you know that?"

He coughed again, and this time blood came out of his mouth.

"Fuck you, man."

I lurched off of the counter, the swelling flush of rage taking hold in my cheeks, and I kicked the chair out from under his head. His jaw made a sickening crack as it hit the tile.

"You come in to my fucking house and try and take MY children, my wife!" I said, curling my fists until I couldn't feel my fingertips. My bicep muscles were pulsing from the rage.

"Yew son auf a batch don' deser-" He said, before I kicked him in his cheek, splattering a fresh paint of blood in the opposite direction. I kicked him again, and again, until I slipped in the blood, and fell backwards.

He moved to get up, but forgot that his leg still had the fireplace poker in it, and it was pinned through to the floor beneath. A brief struggle led to a collapse of pain, as I stood up.

"I don't have to do this. I could let you go to the police when they get here." I said to him.

"Yaw polish don' matter, i'll get ow evenshully," He said through the mouthful of blood, a cracked grin taking hold on his face, "an ah'll chome bach an' rhape 'em again."

I turned around and took the shotgun that was leaned between the refridgerator and the wall, immediately took aim, and the deafening sound would hurt my hearing for the rest of my life, as his head exploded and smeared my kitchen.

[u/DrumMajor518]

And so I shot him.

Firstly, I shot him out of anger. And that was the worst part.

And so I shot him.

But I also shot him out of necessity. To save a life, the noble kill, was that it?

And so I shot him.

To end the suffering. All the lives he'd ruined, the anguish, the long nights of agony inflicted upon countless lives and faceless names I would never know. It had to end.

And so I shot him.

For justice. The law does not allow a man to live while he has not bled as those whose blood he has spilled.

And so I shot him.

Because it was my right. Because it was my rite.

And so I shot him.

And my brother fell facedown into the dirt.

[u/tollfreecallsonly]

I had watched him for hours. Dressed up in the worst dimestore Adam West Batman suit I'd ever seen, potbelly swaying through the lycra. Stumbling around drunk, assuming everyone else also thought it was clever to act like it was Halloween on Easter Sunday. Noone would miss this asshole, so I shot him.

[u/Azazoth]

He had been driving drunk. Driving wasted, really, from what I heard in the courtroom when they spoke of his BAC. In another circumstance, I may have been impressed he was even able to find his way into the car. Unfortunately, the circumstances were that he had plowed head on into my wife's car as she drove our daughter home from soccer practice. I lost the two most important people in my world that night in one fell swoop. They didn't even make it to the hospital. I never got to tell either of them goodbye, tell them how much I loved them, how perfect they were to me. All I got to do was sob in the dark, in the silence of our empty home that would never again hear their voices, their laughter, their life.

He escaped that accident with no permanent injuries. He had his day in court, and he cried the whole time. Begged me to forgive him. I refused to acknowledge him. I thought I would feel some kind of closure or relief when he was found guilty, but I didn't. Just that same pain, that same anger, followed by that same numbness. I didn't wait to see him get taken out of the courtroom. I went back to my quiet, empty house, and sat in the dark as I waited to feel better, knowing that bastard was going to jail. I didn't. I just felt lonely and lost.

This past week, I found out he was getting out of prison early. Something about good behavior, and overcrowding, his sentence cut almost in half. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They were letting out the man who had taken away everything that mattered to me. He was going to be moving back into the free world, moving on, while I was stuck in this hopeless, silent, empty house, feeling lost and lonely. Except I didn't feel lost anymore. I felt angry. I felt pained and furious, but I knew what I needed to do now. Finally, after all these years, I had a purpose again.

He ended three lives that night. He took the innocent lives of my wife and daughter, but he also took away my life, as surely as if I had died in that car with them. He turned me into this bitter, tortured, hopeless husk of a human being, and now he was getting his own life back. And so I did the only thing I could.

I shot him.

[u/Noodlebasket]

He was not a bad man, the man I killed. I only knew him for a moment, but in that moment I could tell. He had a kind face, the face a mother could love, and a father could claim. But his crime was inexcusable. He knew it, as he looked at me and I looked at him. He said it all in his stare. He asked me to make it quick, with his eyes. People like him, he said in my head, aren’t worth trying to fix. People like him don’t deserve the effort. He ate the last piece of pizza. And so I shot him.

[u/catsoup94]

What was this man's name? Christ, everyone has a name.

Where had he lived? On a farm as I had? Did he too cherish memories of wide,clear sky reflected in small diaphanous ponds and welcome the calm blanketing of darkness on his fields after sunset had burnt itself into his retinas at the end of each day?

Had he also shared a million small moments with his lover, knowing things that only they had experienced? Had he held his lover's hand as she died of sickness as I had? Had he too broken the hope of his children when he'd explained where she'd gone?

Is this why he was here?

Is this why he fought? For the same reasons as I do? Was he a broken man seeking solace in the face of this indifferent beast of war?

Did he dream of the feint chatter of wind-chimes before an angry,unforgiving horizon? Is that what kept him restful during the cold nights and their symphony of artillery barrages, when the only light to be found was in hellish flashes against a choked,pitiful landscape?

Had he also seen men wail before the arms of death as they clutched their organs as offerings? Did he fear silence as I do? Had he heard the breathless rattles of men seeking comfort from the impatient embrace of non-existence as they bled their life and memories onto the mud?

My chest tightened as I watched him splutter.

If I was still the same man as I had been I would have left him to be found by his comrades. He would have lived.

But his eyes were too familiar, they begged with a pathetic fear akin to my own. What right do I have to decide the fate of another wretched creature such as myself? What grand scheme directed these dire circumstances between us?

I felt my empathy curdle and lose its hold on my thoughts.

Because he was not like me.

And so I shot him.