He’s eighteen. That boy with the gun. He has a name, I know, but that would just make him human and I can’t call him human.

You know, I’ve tried to think like him these past few days. Imagined myself as the boy in the black t-shirt with the blue bag, a gun in my hand, a heroic swagger in my walk, and intense burning hatred in my eyes. He’s all over the place, in every newspaper, in every tv grab, inside everybody’s mind. One article I read even called him “handsome”. I imagine him walking around, laughing, yelling out jovially to his “comrades” as they spray bullets into flesh. I imagine the feeling of strength and power that overcomes him as he watches people run, and then fall to the ground. But that is all I can do. I can only imagine.

I will never be him. I am eighteen too, I have the same youth and intensity, but I will never be him.

It frightens me, yet is fascinates me at the same time how much hatred one would have to have to walk in and kill everyone you see. Everything you see. What is it, this force that drives you to do that? I want to ask him. What does he hate so much, and why?

Don’t think about it, I’ve been told. Don’t think about him.

But I can’t. And I won’t be able to forget him for a long time.