VN AfterTaste

I once lived in a dorm room filled with cockroaches the size of a child’s fist.
Every day I killed cockroaches.
Every night I killed cockroaches.

But only after a fair and impartial trial.
I am nothing if not the paramour of justice. Fair Play’s bitch. The Rajah of Righteousness. The Ayatollah of Equity. The Emperor of Impartiality. Neutrality’s whore. The Justice of Justness. The Imperioso of Even-Handedness. The Fair-Minded Fascist.

Yeah. That.

“You’re gonna die cockroach!” I’d announce, and thereafter the trial would begin.
I would choose a jury of twelve cockroaches. Cockroaches who I had ascertained would be impartial through a selection process. I appointed a cockroach defense attorney; and I appointed a cockroach prosecutor who I forced to act as a traitor to his own kind.

This is justice. This is what justice looks like. I eat and breathe justice.
I followed the forms and the norms as they apply to western justice.

I, after all, was a philosophy major, and no cockroach was going to out-argue or out-maneuver me.
I would never allow such impertinence.
I kept a civil courtroom and a civil death chamber, both.

We are lost without the backdrop of civility; don’t you agree?

One day a cockroach defendant rose up and had the tenacity to say, “This court is a travesty and a mockery of justice. I demand to be put to death immediately and end this farce.”
So I killed his children.

Let anyone who wouldn’t have done the same come forward now. I’m waiting.