Tori's Song

a short story by

Charles Copeland


"I won't be sorry," he says. "And threatening me with torture and the death sentence will not change that. They think that just because it involves special circumstances and that bumps it up to World Court jurisdiction, that will make me feel remorse? Ain't no goddamn way in holy hell!"

The patriot part of me, the conscious part, wants me to tell him it is perfectly understandable for him to feel that way. That all good fathers would do the same thing. But I cannot say that, because a situation such as this has never happened to me. Instead I tell him I wish I could take his place.

Because I have nothing to lose.

I do not admit that I would take the time to enjoy it more. I am a sociopath, so I would go to great lengths to savor the whole thing. And I would take any amount of prison time they wanted to give me for my crimes.

Murdering someone of such high stature would be worth it.


* * *


I suppose now is as good a time as any to fill you in on how it is that we got to this point. After all, one cannot have an ending without a beginning. Very well, here it is:

Imagine standing in the middle of Boston Common, in what has come to be known these days as the People's Republic of Massachusetts. It is the end of summer in 2007 and you are blessed because you know the key to life is raising a family. And you're at the park with the family you've created and the world is more or less perfect. Well, maybe not THE world, but YOUR world is.

Now that you've put yourself in Martin Ward's shoes, I have a feeling you're ready for the rest of the story. As ready as you can get, anyhow.

Tori --- short for Victoria --- is skating circles around her mother. Today is Tori's eighth birthday, and Martin and Tina have decided to give their daughter a pair of in-line skates. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now though, she's in a hurry to wear the wheels off and mom and dad can't keep up.

She's a ball of raw energy, this Tori. She's eight years old today and she's skating at the speed of light and that's not good because she has PLACES TO GO and NO TIME TO WASTE!

(The original plan was to escort her up and down the skate path along the Charles River until she wore herself out, so she would go right to bed when they got home. Three miles later, though, it was her parents who were worn out.)

And having no time to waste means taking eight extra strides to each one her parents take. And THAT means rounding the bend at the end of a tree line so quickly that her parents lose sight of her.

Which is where HE is waiting.

It is difficult to decipher, at certain times in our lives, whether animals live among us, or we among them. I often think we are all just wandering through life as bait for the varying degrees of psychosis displayed by forces in total control of every living being on Planet Earth --- the New World Order. Are we nothing more than gazelle waiting for the lions? Are we not the most dominant beings ever to exist on the planet? The obvious answer to the second question is yes, which makes it all that much more horrible when we're hunted by members of our own species. Sure, ant colonies can wage a certain brand of war on one another, but they don't have or use spears or assault rifles or nuclear weapons.

Man is the most efficient hunter of all the species of animals on Earth.

Especially so when hunting other members of the human race.


* * *


I would try to put myself inside Martin Ward's head for you, but the only person for whom it would do any good is me. However, if I were to put YOU inside his head, that would do us ALL some measure of good. And I can do that because Martin Ward is a fictional character, even if he acts the way in which real people wish they could act.

Most people have to take a certain amount of the shit that's shoveled at them each day, what with the boss at work, the boss at home, and that bitch at the grocery store. They do this to ensure their stability at work, and at home, and to get the hell away from that bitch at the grocery store, even if that sense of stability is nothing more than a grand illusion.


* * *


"Stability, huh?" Martin says. "What good is stability, whether it's real or illusion, when you have to call the cops because your daughter has just been kidnapped?"

I do not attempt to answer.

Martin sneers and says, "For that matter, what good are the cops the New World Order has installed in America?"

Well, he has a good point there. Our justice system isn't exactly the best it's ever been. Used to be that if you stole a newspaper in Syria, the punishment would be removal of your hands --- and not by surgical means, either. They got CHOPPED OFF! By comparison, if you stole a car in Los Angeles, you probably wouldn't have gotten more than a year in the county jail. Think I'm wrong in how I view how justice used to run in America? Reference the sentence served up by judge Cashman in Vermont on January 12, 2006 after a man (a term I use for figurative reasons only) admitted to repeatedly raping a six year old girl for four years. Ahem, sixty days in the county jail, ahem. Sorry, I can't say that without coughing. Go on, check it out. I'll be here waiting when you get back.

"Used to be that if you tried to kill someone in Florida" Martin says, "you'd get more time than if you actually DID kill someone."

He's got me there.

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to the good old days of American Pioneer Justice.

Back when a man got hung for just about ANY crime.

When almost everyone carried guns and cherished the freedoms afforded to them under the Bill of Rights.

When a man could challenge another man to a duel right in the middle of town.

They don't call it Tombstone, Arizona for no good reason, you know.

But those days, along with any memory of our American Republic, are long gone now.


* * *


"Okay," Martin says. "Let's get at it, brother."

Martin hates it when I get all preachy and philosophical. He doesn't understand that in order to tell his story in the correct way it deserves, a certain amount of back story must be told. Okay, some SIDE story too, but it's all equally as important as the main subject matter. So quit yelling at me and keep reading already. You'll see.

"But the sooner you finally get to the end," he says, "the sooner I can try to get past it."

He will NEVER get past it. But I'm not about to tell him that.

It burns my ass because I WANT to tell him that, because he does have the right to know, but I'm just the narrator. If I did tell him, the story would be over.

But, for him, the story will NEVER be over.

No matter what the outcome ever is . . .

It will never end.


* * *


So, like Martin says, let's get at it already.

Because this is a story of survivor's guilt.

That's right, survivor's guilt. It has been known to destroy all of those whom it affects. I'll be the first to admit that it's been working on me for years. Sometimes I lie awake at night, listening to my wife's rhythmic snoring and dealing with the faces of my fallen brothers who I can only see and hear now in the dark. I know that makes no sense, but neither does the fact that I made it through the opening stages of the war against the New World Order and they didn't. I'm not Superman, for Christ sakes. So why did death choose them and not me? Lincoln Henderson, whose name I have never spoken aloud since I watched two halves of his head speed away from one another from a direct rifle shot that day so long ago that feels like only this very morning, and I feel like he's been trying for more than a year to explain it to me. Either I cannot understand because I'm far too stubborn to accept what he has to say or I'm just a moron.

I often think it might just be a little bit of both.

I'm sure that's how Martin feels too, when he thinks back on how he outlived his own daughter.


* * *


Because that's what he found out just two weeks after she went missing.

A man named Jack White had snatched her from the skate path in Boston, taken her less than four blocks away, shoved her in his van and ---

Did what animals do to their prey.

For obvious reasons I've chosen to leave out most of what happened to her, but if you ask John Cooey what he did to Jessica Lunsford, you'll get a pretty descriptive picture. Because John Cooey is nothing but a putrid, spineless gutter snake who preys on little girls because they are defenseless.

John Cooey is not a lion, nor is he any of the other super predators on Planet Earth. He's what lions do when they squat over a hole they've dug. So is Jack White, no matter to what elite organizations he might be attached.

But that doesn't make Tori any less dead.

And that's not even the worst part.

The worst part: Jack White went on trial for second degree manslaughter (since the murder did not meet any of the criteria necessary to garner a first degree murder charge. The New World Order's World Court is funny in that way. The prosecutor couldn't prove Jack White ENJOYED killing Tori, which was the one shot she stood at having justice done) and he beat the rap.

HE BEAT THE RAP!

As in, he was allowed to go free.

And he can never be tried ever again for the same offense, thanks to the New World Order's double jeopardy clauses in their Constitution, which they stole from our own.

Which was why Martin quit his job and went into a bout of severe depression compounded by survivor's guilt. He found himself almost constantly throwing around the "what if" scenarios that survivors often find themselves trying so desperately to endure.

What if he and Tina had taken Tori to the roller skating rink instead of into Boston?

What if they'd gone ANYWHERE else that day?

What if Tori had been born a boy/born in Los Angeles/born to more responsible parents?

And what if she had never been born at all?

That last one got to Martin the most.

And that was what made him finally snap.

Six weeks after Jack White's acquittal:

"How the hell can you stand there as a judge and tell me that my daughter's killer gets to walk away scott free while she rots in a hole in the ground?"

"I really am sorry, Mister Ward, but the Republic did not do its job. There is nothing I can do when it's a trial by jury. I wish there WAS something I could do, but with the transition into World Law, there just isn't anything I can do."

"You're a JUDGE in that system though, so you're supposed to protect the people."

"I am bound by the laws of the New World Order."

"Well I'M not."

"Mister Ward, don't go making matters worse. Your wife already lost a daughter. Don't do anything that would cause her to lose a husband too."

Martin examines the floor for answers, finds none, and says, "YOU can let Jack White get away with killing my daughter, but I can't. He's got to pay for what he's done. If you're not going to give him a death sentence, then I will . . ."

"Mister Ward . . . Martin . . . There are forces at work here that are far above normal human understanding. If you get involved too deeply and uncover the wrong answers to your questions . . ."

Martin allows a moment to escape while he waits for the judge to continue. But what follows next is nothing more than echoing silence.

"I don't expect you to understand," Martin finally says. "You wouldn't understand unless you had a daughter who was killed by some goddamn psycho."

"I did. I DID have a daughter. She was taken from me far too early in her life. It was five years ago, when I was still a criminal defense attorney. That's why I became a judge, because the forces that extinguished her are the same that will extinguish you if you dig too deeply into who and what they are."

Martin's voice is low and tight. "Well you damn sure dropped the ball on this one, judge. Even the New World Order itself says their laws are supposed to protect the victims, goddammit."

But that's more of an accurate representation of the good old days of American justice. The New World Order's laws do more to protect the bad guys.


* * *


Fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and twenty-six: that's the number of American lives lost in the "police action" in Viet Nam.

Of that total (which disgusts me each and every time I repeat it, since the Viet Nam war was predicated on a web of lies, much the same as all other wars are), more than eighteen hundred never made it home. They do not deserve to lie abandoned in a country for which they didn't know or understand why they were fighting. Where is THEIR justice?

And what about the six million Jews and "undesirables" who were never really alive --- just less dead --- before they were rushed off to High Mason Hitler's ovens? Will THEY ever find the justice they deserve?

Do you know the total number of people killed in the name of God throughout the ages? Neither do I, but I do know that the number easily tops those who have been killed in all the world's wars --- combined. There's no justice for them either.

Not to mention the victims of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, a million victims of the Rwandan genocide, the million Shiites who met up with Saddam Hussein's scorn, all of those whom Slobodan Milosevic chose to "ethnically cleanse," and those who had the courage to stand up to Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, Caligula, the Taliban, Castro, Pol Pot, and all the other faces cast from the same evil mold.

Once the matter is over with, justice doesn't go around LOOKING for those most deserving. Sometimes she must be sought out.

She is elusive, Lady Justice.

Even if she is blind.


* * *


"Would you PLEASE get on with it already? Are you TRYING to make me relive it all over again?"

I'm trying to tell everything the reader might need to know in order to fully comprehend the story. But it doesn't matter, because what I'm TRYING to do is next to impossible. I've explained this next bit more times than I care to remember, but I'll do it again out of necessity to help the reader understand the complexities of how life goes for someone like me.

What I'm trying to do is to get over my own survivor's guilt

To get what's left of our Congress to find the POW/MIAs still lost in Viet Nam and bring them all home where they belong

To get the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to put a stop to the cancer, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and Alzheimer's monsters running around picking us all off in numbers so massive they threaten the survival of the species

To get the New World Order to give in to the urges of Democracy and freedom

To get food into the stomachs of those who need it most.

What I'm TRYING to do

Is the job that not even the all powerful New World Order seems to want to do.

Because I give a shit.

Unlike the New World Order, that all-powerful, all-knowing branch of fun-loving, free-wheeling viral infection of people at the top who seem to want nothing more than to cull the world population until they've achieved their long awaited goal of no more than five hundred million living humans at any given time. And if their plan for me is anything like their plan for those who live in Africa and survive on a handful of rice once a month but watch their children die from starvation because they cannot afford to feed them, or their plan for those who waste away from cancer, or their plan for anyone who lives in Iran but doesn't bow down to the whimsy of the Illuminati doctrines, well, I think I'll just take my free will now and be off on my merry fucking way.

The New World Order's plan was for us all to THINK we've beaten cancer and other deadly illnesses, but to die from them anyhow.

Real thoughtful, New World Order elites . . .

Jack-anuses.


* * *


Anyhow, Martin is driving to the People's Republic of Vermont where he will pay a nice little visit to Jack White. He is alone. And drunk. And heavily armed.

As the narrator, I already know all the possible outcomes to the dilemma. Martin Ward does not. Neither does Jack White. And neither do you. So if I drop dead before I finish writing here, I reckon it was in the New World Order's plan. Thank them for me, will ya? Because I won't be able to, since I'll most likely be burning in the pits of hell.

My wife likes to think anything is possible, and I'm not bent on proving her wrong or anything, but there ARE absolute impossibilities. For instance, it's impossible for the universe to collapse in on itself tomorrow morning at precisely six-thirty-four in the morning. It is also impossible for me to eat eighty-nine thousand, four hundred and twenty-one hot dogs in less than ten seconds. And no matter what the holy King James bible says, it is IMPOSSIBLE for enough rain to fall so as to cover the Earth. Sorry Noah, but there just isn't enough water ON Earth to COVER it.

It's also impossible for Martin Ward to allow Jack White to get away with even so much as one more day of life that he's stolen from others.

Martin finds the house and pulls right into the driveway. No ambush here.

This will be a

Full frontal assault.

Martin wants the man to see it coming.

Because Martin is a man.

A man who does not prey on the vulnerable and utterly defenseless.

A man who is not afraid to confront the forces of the most evil individuals on Planet Earth.

A man who is HUNTING another fellow man, which, for the immediate time being, makes him the most dangerous beast alive.


* * *


Okay, here we go.

Martin is at the front door. He rings the door bell.

Jack White answers.

He is not amused.

"Okay, who are ya and what do ya want?" he asks. He had never seen Martin, not in court, and never in real life.

He is a priest.

A PRIEST!

He could just as easily have been a professional wrestler, or a construction worker, or perhaps even a rodeo clown, for Christ sakes. But no, of all the things he could've been, he just HAD to be a priest! Not that it makes Martin's job any more difficult, since he already has issues to discuss with Almighty God to begin with. But it just goes to show you --- and Martin --- just how evil a man can be. And after more than two thousand years of Inquisitions and Witch Trials and Crusades and men of the cloth who turn out to be nothing more than baby raping pieces of trash, how the hell can he be expected to trust ANYONE who claims to work for God? You tell me, because I'd certainly like to know what the big secret is. And don't give me any of that crap about one bad apple spoiling the bunch, because even history tells us about Roman Catholic popes who ordered assassinations. And let us not forget about their boss, God, who commands us all never to worship anything but Him, then, in the same sentence, commands Isaac to kill Abraham. Or is it the other way around? Doesn't matter. Either way, I can't trust or worship any God who commands assassination immediately after a prior command of "Thou shalt not kill." Maybe He should've said "Thou shalt not kill, unless the burning bush tells you to off someone. THEN it's perfectly okay."

And don't bother trying to explain it to Martin, because he is in the middle of dealing with Father Jack White.

Martin pulls his hand from under his jacket, revealing a .50 caliber Dessert Eagle AE pistol with a fourteen inch barrel and an itchy trigger finger.

One blast from a Dessert Eagle makes one hell of an awful mess. And Martin has eight bullets with him.

Oh Christ does he want to drill Jack White eight times in the chest and head.

Jack's hands automatically rise to show he is unarmed and will submit. "I haven't got any money," he says. "You can't rob someone who has no money."

Though he hasn't done it just yet, Martin is already savoring the memory of blasting a donut-sized hole in the priest's chest. Oh how he wants to kill him.

"You . . . and I," Martin says, "need to talk."


* * *


I have every intention of rambling on for a few minutes here, but trust me, there will be a point to it.

It is summer of 2007. We will be at war with Iran soon. Within months. But it never had to get to this point. If, on September 11, 2001, at noon, the President had requested nationwide air time on every TV network and announced that we were pulling out of the United Nations and the Northern Allied Treaties Organization, the problem with the New World order would've taken care of itself there on the spot. Not to tell the President how to do his job (though it's always been more than abundantly clear that SOMEONE has been doing so), but today, September 2, 2007, I'd get on the horn just once and I would let it be known far and wide: We are the United States of America, and as such, we will NOT bow to the pressure of the New World Order. NO MORE FUCKING AROUND! Like Charlie Daniels once sang: "So you just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I think you're gonna finally understand."

And by the way, Russia and China, don't you ever step in our way ever again. And stop calling yourselves our allies. You're enemies, and ought to be shown and seen as such.

And while it's fresh on my mind, attention Israel, stay the fuck out of our American business, you goddamn war criminals. We all know what you did to the USS Liberty and to Lebanon and the Palestinian people. You are nothing but an enemy to the world and you deserve to be treated as such. You oppress your own loyal citizens and then blame the entire world for the problems you create!

Any other fake allies got anything to say? Hmmm?

And you United Nations armed forces perched across what once was the Canadian border, you wanna see REAL rioting? Piss off seventy-five million drunk American rednecks and crips and bloods and invite them to turn away from their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and turn in their guns. THEN you will see real rioting. Now shut the fuck up and stop trying to force us to go along with your plans and you won't have to deal with us on a street-to-street, house-to-house basis the way you had to with the insurgents in Iraq. Get off your fat, richer than God asses and pull out of America before we decide to show you just what armed American ingenuity can do, or we'll show you where the door is! And if you force our hands, we'll use 'em on you in ways you never realized they could be used . . .

Okay, that's out of my system now. Now, here's my point to all of that: I am VERY bitter. But guess what --- I'm nowhere near as bitter as Martin Ward.

Few people on Planet Earth are as bitter as he is.


* * *


"I know I'll get the death penalty if I do what I really wanna do to you," Martin says to Jack White. They're in the living room. "But it'd be more than worth it."

"I can't stop you," Jack White says. "But I can tell you that it won't bring your daughter back."

"You shut your motherfuckin' mouth, holy Joe! You don't get to tell me anything about my little Tori. I ought to kill you right here and now just to shut you up."

"Is this really how she would've wanted her father to go ahead and end it all?" the priest asks. "Surely she would've wanted you to pause for a moment and reason with yourself. Two wrongs don't ---"

"If you say MAKE A RIGHT I swear I will beat you to death with the butt end of this pistol," Martin says. "Now let me finish. I came here with every intention of killing you eight times. You have no goddamn idea what you did when you killed Tori and how badly that screwed up my head. But that isn't what I came here to tell you about."

"Well you're the one with the gun," the priest says. "You can say and do what ever you like."

"Damn straight," Martin says. He can't figure out why Jack White is so calm. But that's okay. He won't be calm when Martin draws the Eagle's hammer back and levels the barrel against his head. "Tori was a Beatles fan, you know. But more to the point, she was a John Lennon fan and follower of his teachings. All you need is love and give peace a chance and all that. That's pretty much all she ever talked about. But I could never tell her to knock it off with all of that because, hey man, I might as well have told her to quit loving peace and harmony. Do you know she actually wanted us out of Iraq and Afghanistan? There was Tori, a little seven year old girl, praying to God for intervention so that no one on either side would have to die. She even had a plan for peaceful retaliation against Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Yup, and she even wrote down her ideas and mailed them right off to the President of the fuckin' United States of America, who even wrote her back and said the world is a much better place for having little statesman like her in it. He said he saw her as future ambassador material, and maybe even as the nation's first female president. Most peace activists are all talk, but not Tori. She had a vision of a world living at peace with itself and its inhabitants. She wanted to love everyone, goddammit. And she was against the death penalty, even for people like you. THAT is what I came here to tell you. THAT is the force of good that you stole from me and from the rest of civilization."

Jack White cannot even speak.


* * *


What follows here is how I thought the story would end:

Victoria Ward died on her eighth birthday, and with her, some of the world died too. Gone is any chance that she might've grown up to be a lovely young woman who might one day have saved humanity from destroying itself. She may have turned the tides of perception of global warming by planting trees in the dessert (not that it would have worked, because we are NOT the cause of the warming happening on the planet today, but we'll never know that now that she's been snuffed out) or single-handedly stomped out cancer by developing a cure or ended world hunger by inventing a miracle seed that could grow anywhere under any conditions.

She was an incredible force of good, as her father had said. But her flame has gone out now, and the world will never know how important she was to it. When civilization implodes in on itself, we have ourselves to blame for allowing animals like Jack White to go free and kill in the first place. You see, killing Tori was not his first offense. It was his first murder, but not his first crime. No. He had once raped a young woman and beaten her almost to death. And he had beaten the rap then too, because he's an extremely high level Freemason and we all know how they stick up for one another. The state could have put him away for sixty five years to life. Instead, he went free.

That's how he was allowed to kill Tori.

Those are laws WE put up with.

Laws that do not apply justice equally.

Which is why Tori is gone now.

THAT is the conclusion to the story.

But it isn't the end.


* * *


The end doesn't come until we peek back in on Martin Ward and Jack White, two hunters of different prey.

"Look, if you're going to kill me," the priest says, "I'd like to take a moment to make my peace with God."

"THIS is my righteous fury, the part of me that wants so badly to splatter your fuckin' brains all over the walls of this house." Martin cocks the pistol and presses the barrel's mouth against the flesh of Jack White's brow. He holds it there for what feels like an eternity, so the priest will know he means it. Then Martin does something that totally contradicts everything in which he believes. He lightly squeezes the trigger and hammer at once, allowing the pistol to return to non-lethal state. "And THIS is Tori's peaceful forgiveness, the part of me you never would've seen if I hadn't spent eight of the best years of my life learning from a little girl who didn't believe in the death penalty."

A small trickle of urine sneaks down the priest's trousers legs. "God bless you, my son. You've shown a great deal of compassion tonight."

"No, God bless Victoria Ward, the little angel from Heaven who saved your life even after you ended hers."

Martin turns to leave, pauses, and while looking away, says, "Justice is balance. Tori always said that to me, and I never understood it until this very second. Because SHE is what balances ME."

Martin reaches for the door, pauses again, turns to face Jack White one last time, and says, "But she also said that in order to conquer evil New World Order lackeys like you, one must BECOME evil. And the second I'm done with you here, the people of Earth will begin a revolt against your New World Order, an armed revolt the likes of which the world has never seen."

And Martin cocks and fires seven times, each round smashing through Jack White's chest and head the only way .50 caliber Dessert Eagle AE rounds can. Blood splatters everywhere. When it's all over and Jack White is good and dead, Martin stops and stares into the open mouth of the pistol's barrel.

And fires into his own head.

Because justice is balance . . .


* * *


"Honey . . . Honey, wake up," Tina Ward says. "We're gonna be late." She shakes her husband.

"What?" Martin says. "Late for what?"

"It's Tori's birthday, silly. Did you forget? We have that skate party in Ashland at noon."

Martin smiles to himself, whispering, "Skate party in Ashland? That's better . . ."

Copyright © 2006 Charles Copeland and CharlesCopeland.com All Rights Reserved

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