Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster

The calm of a late fall evening in S___ was shattered by shouts. “It does not exist! Do you hear me? IT DOES NOT EXIST!”
This phrase was being repeated over and over again by a man standing menacingly over the prostrated body of young boy. The man was an average height, not more than 5’10 inches, but his taut muscles nearly shot out of his Henley with every yell, and his prominent neck veins looked ready to burst with each additional roar.
The boy lay face down in the slightly yellow, dying grass, flinching at every repetition of the hated phrase. His new clothes were sullied with dirt and grass, and his long blond hair was a tangled mess. Tears poured down his cheeks as the man forcibly flipped him onto his back. Without missing a beat, the man continued his tirade, emphasizing each word with a puerile stomp of his foot.
“You’re so content in your ignorance, but I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you so you can feel the hell–the stinking, rotting hell I’m in; you believe its here; you think its all around you; but you’re wrong!”
With terror in his red-rimmed eyes, the boy tried desperately to crawl away from his aggressor, but the man grabbed him, slamming his tenuous body into the hard ground. With a whimper, the boy lay still; hoping his submission would placate the stranger’s fury. But his obedience only infuriated his attacker, and without warning, he began raining blows down on the boy’s small body. The boy’s helpless wails roused several neighbors from their houses: in horror they watched as the stranger mercilessly battered the helpless child. Several ladies ran inside to call the authorities, while they rushed their own children to the safety of their houses.
The man’s glazed eyes reflected the torture of his innocent victim, but they could not see the terrible crime he was committing. The man’s chest heaved violently, and with a final blow, the boy went limp and lay still. Exhausted from yelling and physical exertion, the man sank to his knees. In a daze, he scanned his surroundings. He watched without comprehending, both eyes dull and lifeless as several burly men came sprinting toward him. One was brandishing a shotgun while the other carried a pistol.
A single leaf spiraled down toward his sunken head. It playfully twirled across his face, before coming to rest on the ground. The leaf’s flippancy caused a fresh loathing for his hypocritical existence.
“I can’t live, knowing what I know,” he thought to himself. “None of it is real, but no one will believe me. Even a humble child, naïve and untouched, laughed when I tried to make him see. Who else will… who else could believe me?
Glancing down, the man noticed the boy’s rigid body. With a start, he realized what had happened. With a moan of despair, he whispered,
“Oh, but what have I done? How could I… h-h-how?”
His reflection was interrupted by descending the barrel of a shotgun, as it crashed down on his right temple.


During the holidays, the law enforcement in S____ , like many rural towns, all but stopped doing business. The policeman and detectives went home to their families, and did not go to work unless an emergency forced them to. So, it was a surprise when two men, deep in conversation, walked into the small police headquarters, on the morning of the 23rd. They walked past the receptionist desk without acknowledging the only guard on duty, and entered into an office with the words “Police Chief” written in bold letters on the door. The older of the two men was easily recognizable as the police chief, due to the condescending tone of voice; marking him as a person in authority over people he thought to be lower life forms than himself. A syndrome commonly found in school principles, and others forced to deal with delinquents and children. If his bombastic manner wasn’t enough, the stark contrast between his thin, scheming, meticulous eyes that never stopped staring, and his plump, rotund, stagnant belly immediately revealed his position of authority.
The other man was much younger than the police chief. He couldn’t have been over twenty-five years old. His dark black hair was pushed across his forehead, revealing a pale, handsome face. Despite his lack of color, he had strong features; his prominent nose complimented his firm, protruding jaw, giving him an impressive profile. His soft green eyes were warm, matching his sonorous voice as he spoke.
“I understand, chief, why you think this is a simple case, but I urge you to interview the prisoner again. In fact, let me ask him some questions. We can walk around the grounds; maybe he’ll be more open outside of his cell.” The man had been shocked to find out, after he arrived, that the chief had taken the liberty of interrogating the prisoner, and after ten minutes of questioning, had declared the prisoner mentally unstable. “There are processes in these matters,” thought the man; “It doesn’t take much effort to aver a man’s insanity; for god’s sake, he assaulted an innocent child; of course there’s something wrong with him, but that doesn’t justify such a careless diagnosis.”
Inwardly, the chief was cursing his luck. His vacation had been rudely interrupted a week ago, and now, when he was close to getting the problem off his hands, this man had arrived, asking questions and disturbing what was left of the peaceful holiday season. “Of all the times of the year…” thought the chief. The chief was a proud man, and he hated to be second guessed; this pretentious man from the big city irritated him greatly, but the only way to facilitate the process of quickly moving the prisoner–as the chief saw it–was to allow the man free reign. With a slight nod of his head the chief assented, but not before proclaiming a bit too loudly, “you’re free to question him until his ears bleed, but you can’t take him outside of his cell; he stays here, okay?”
The young man bowed, graciously thanking the chief for his acquiescence and assuring him he would not take the man anywhere, while he inwardly mocked his imperious proclamation.
The young man–whose name was Barkley–was greatly annoyed with the pompous chief who was more concerned with preserving his image of venerability than doing his job. He had had prior experience with men such as the chief, and he loathed the uncomfortable, albeit necessary, interaction.
Barkley was two years removed from law school, but instead of joining a firm or setting up his own practice, he had chosen to enter law enforcement. He had made a name for himself with his acumen in several high-profile crimes in a neighboring, much larger city; he was especially dexterous in dealing with people because he listened to what they had to say. Most don’t really listen when others talk to them; instead, they focus more on how they will respond than the message they are hearing, but Barkley learned that the key to understanding why people act the way they do–especially criminals–is to listen to what they say. Humans, even the most asinine, know when their words are being taken seriously, and they certainly know when they are being brushed off or ignored. Despite all of this, his reputation clearly had failed to precede him, and now he was forced to start over. “These damned small town police forces” thought Barkley, “it’s like they’re setting up the fourth Reich, and anyone who meddles in their business has to deal with the Gestapo.”
As he ventured down the stairs, he noticed that the cells of the ancient prison were in sorry repair. They were clearly intended for short term use only, and the ubiquitous rust saturating the bars showed that they had rarely been used. As most towns in the area, S____ was unaccustomed to holding serious law breakers. Belligerent drunks, usually trying to pick a fight in the local bar, were the only patrons to frequent the poorly maintained cells.
Striding purposefully down the rows of cells, Barkley stubbed his toe on a protruding nail; he cursed softly, stopped, and held his breath. A high-pitched, almost maniacal chuckle was coming from the dark corner of the cell to his left. The sound was somewhere between an angry hyena and a startled cat. Barkley tried to clear his throat in attempt to regain his composure, but his battle with the nail had stirred up a miniature dust storm, and all he mustered was a feeble cough. Steadying himself against the old yellow wall, he peered into the cell; trying to pierce the shadowy darkness, but light from the late morning sun-seeping through a small hole near the top of the cell precluded his vision, stopping his gaze at the tiny particles of dust dancing in the hope of the morning light.
The eerie chuckle continued for several seconds before trailing off. An awkward silence, which, to Barkley, seemed to last hours; but, could not have been more than twenty seconds, followed the dying laughter. Working up his courage, Barkley was about to part his lips to speak, when a low, monotone voice, nothing like the high-pitched chuckle he had just heard, began methodically chanting the same, nonsensical phrase, over and over.
The prisoner slipped partially into the light. His hair was disheveled, and several days without shaving gave his face a haggard look. The grimy clothes he had worn for the last week gave off a foul stench and only aggrandized his squalid condition. Though his appearance radiated defeat, his eyes-with a spark straddling the line between zeal and insanity-carried the hope his enervated body couldn’t sustain. With a surprisingly quick and agile leap, he cleared the five feet between his protective darkness and the cell bars. Shoving part of his face through the bars, the prisoner stopped chanting and looked up expectantly at Barkley.
Barkley frowned; he hadn’t anticipated his first meeting like this. For a man who thrived on control and order, the delusional chants and frantic behavior had frightened and unnerved him. An uncomfortably long silence followed, in which Barkley tried clearing his throat several more times, but the stubborn crowd of phlegm refused to disperse. With a quick stammer, the prisoner broke the silence; “please let me go… I…I… gotta get outta here, man.” The prisoner’s strange behavior and wild appearance had done nothing to soothe the suspicions of Barkley, but in his pathetic plea for release, Barkley detected a note of scorn. Thinking it was an aberration, or confusion on his part Barkley decided to provoke the prisoner, in an attempt to upset him and make him lose his cool.
“Are there more children you’d like to beat? Is that why you have to get out?” Barkley emphasized the “have,” making it sound like “haaave.” But instead of lashing out or breaking down, the man looked him straight in the eye, and with surprising poise asked, “is the boy alive?” Angered at the prisoner’s chilling composure, Barkley nearly yelled his response, but, with effort, controlled his rising anger “you have no right to know the boy’s condition.”
“Ah, so he IS alive,” whispered the prisoner, almost triumphantly. Temporarily satisfied with the answer, the he walked unceremoniously to his corner and without a glance at his inquisitor or any indication of finality, fell back into a supine position. Realizing he had been dismissed, a confused Barkley turned on his heel, and, with what dignity he had, strode down the hall until he was out of sight of the prisoner, where he sunk down in a chair to ponder the bizarre meeting.
Barkley leaned forward, smoothing back the hair that had fallen over his face. His brain was working furiously. The prisoner’s cool indifference had surprised him, but what he couldn’t reconcile was the prisoner’s mocking petition for release.
Barkley knew that small towns with close knit communities like S____ handled crime differently than the cities he had worked in, especially violent crimes, and the police chief had casually mentioned earlier that “several town leaders” had visited the prisoner to condemn his actions. Barkley suspected their seemingly innocuous visit was an excuse for them to physically punish the prisoner while the police chief looked the other way. This brutality could be the reason for the prisoner’s mocking tone; a way for him to express the scorn he felt toward his captors; but that answer did little to satisfy Barkley’s craving for an answer. The prisoner’s maniacal laughter had disturbed Barkley’s sense of social propriety; insanity in criminals was a common theme, but though this prisoner had fits of apparent lunacy, his icy composure and frank openness indicated some other explanation. Barkley knew without a doubt the police chief and other investigators would take one look at the prisoner’s peculiar manner and declare his insanity from the rooftops of the small prison, as they had before, but Barkley was not satisfied, and resolved to return for further questioning of the prisoner. On his way out, he walked past the chief’s office, nodding politely, while the chief, with a glance of suppressed mirth, gave an over-emphasized nod, almost bowing his head to the desk.


A week later, the smirk of the chief had been replaced with a vacuous stare of disbelief. Barkley had been visit the prisoner and had spoken with him every day of the week, sometimes twice a day. After allowing Barkley to question the prisoner alone, the chief’s latent paranoia sprung up, causing him to send whatever officer was on duty down to sit idly while the prisoner and Barkley talked. At first, the officers reported that the prisoner would rant and rave for the first part of each interview, but after twenty minutes of yelling, he would calm himself and spend the next hour in speaking in hushed tones. The officers were so annoyed with the prisoner they would block out his droning and doze for the hour and a half Barkley would spend with the prisoner. What the officers didn’t know is that each meeting was deliberately started with the prisoner acting like a lunatic, and once the guard was sufficiently bored, the two would begin their conversation in earnest. The prisoner saw a trustworthy and honest man in Barkley, and took his chances divulging the terrible secret that had plagued and afflicted him. Barkley listened, skeptically at first, but after experiencing the prisoner’s brutal honesty and total sincerity, he began to suspect their was some truth–if not comprehensive reality– to the prisoner’s tale. The prisoner often became irascible when he suspected contradiction from Barkley, but after their second meeting, Barkley was mostly convinced; and from then on, the prisoner’s petulant fits occurred less frequently.
The chief stood, arms hanging loosely at his sides, gazing into the empty cell the prisoner had occupied just thirty-six hours earlier. Naturally, every able bodied law enforcement officer had been dispatched to search the nearby area for any signs of the fugitive; but with the miles of wilderness surrounding three sides of the town, the chief had little hope of recapturing the prisoner. The chief had screamed and swore at “that pompous little shit,” as he now referred to Barkley, accusing him of complicity, but the negligence of the officers gave Barkley deniability; after all, the officers had seen nothing but the ravings of a madman and Barkley had made no indication of sympathy or assistance. No case could be made against him, and Barkley was fully aware of it. He went along with all the formalities; denying everything and trying to make it seem like he was running the gamut of human emotions. In reality, he felt rejuvenated: his mind was clear and the recent stress had vanished. Tromping through the small town streets without a care, he found joy in all that was around him. But occasionally, he would stop in his tracks and focus intensely on a single object; his eyes would harden and a distant, detached look would mask his pale face. No sorrow was there, only a pensive look of concern. He would stand–posture erect, eyes slightly downward–gazing for eternity at a dandelion. “Is it really there?” he would ask himself, “Is it more than just a well-founded phenomenon? Does anything REALLY exist?” It is unclear whether the dandelion ever answered him.