Jammy Jams by Dave Fischer Copyright (C) 1998 David Fischer Theodore had just put on his jammy-jams when his head was blown off by a point-blank blast from a 10-gauge shotgun. The gun was fired by a man named Zippy who had broken into Theodore's house looking for money to buy speed. Zippy took fifty dollars in cash, a box of CDs, and a stereo. The stereo was converted into methamphetamine within twenty minutes, and five minutes after that, Zippy was dead with a spike dangling out of a vein. The dealer whose house zippy died in threw him in the back of his pickup truck, drove up into the mountains, and tossed him into a deep ravine. Then he went home where he found one of his business partners ripping his house to pieces looking for his inventory. When confronted, guns where drawn on both sides, and an old west style shootout decided the case, which apparently was guilty for both, since neither survived the initial exhange of gunfire. If they hadn't both been up on speed for five days, perhaps they wouldn't have engaged in a dual in a three-foot wide corridor. The sound of shots aroused the suspicions of several of the neighbors, who came right over and started banging on the front door. Knowing nothing of their neighbor's private black market enterprise, they had no idea danger might lurk within this quiet suburban home. Actually, it no longer did, as nothing within the house was still breathing. Ironicly however, a sudden meteor storm covered the immediate area with a rain of mothball-sized rocks, killing all four of the inquisitive neighbors. Ken and Patty, the geologists who managed to beat the police, fire, and rescue to this strange scene of carnage completely ignored the bodies and started franticly collecting meteor specimens. Unfortunately, their appearence on the crime scene, hurrying from place to place hunched over, and searching through debris between the bodies made the SWAT team that finally appeared extremely suspicious. They called a warning once, were ignored, and opened fire, thinning the local geological ranks by two. That particular SWAT team later became infamous for looting during a major earthquake, and they were killed during a six-hour battle with a team of National Guardsmen, who were then tragicly crushed by a collapsing water tank during a minor after-shock. The engineer who had designed the water tank was just putting on his jammy-jams and getting ready for bed when he heard the news about the collapsing water tank. Knowing full well that the collapse and subsequent deaths were the result of a design flaw that he had been covering up since the tank had been completed, he calmly emptied his prescription bottle of tranquilizers into his palm and swallowed them all, one by one. Then he went to bed, never to return. The engineer's wife suffered a nervous breakdown upon discovering her husband's body the following morning. One night several months later, while walking to her car after an evening session with her therapist, she was gunned down by a mugger. That was the first shooting that this mugger had ever been involved in. He normally plied his trade as a petty thief and occasional mugger. He was so shaken by having actually shot somedown down in cold blood that he gave up his life of crime entirely, and began spending his days doing charity work with a church youth organization in the inner city. He worked long and hard every day, building homes for the poor, and repairing community playgrounds and churches, untill one day he was shot in the head by a former aquaintence whom he had ripped off many years before when they robbed a convenience store together and he had split the take unevenly. The gunner was caught and tried for first degree murder. Upon discovering that his victim had had a change of heart and had become a well-loved member of the neighborhood community, he showed no remorse. He wore boxers to bed untill the day he died.