A Matter of Perspective

Sometimes stories come to writers in different shapes and sizes. The one below was born of my wondering where the phrase 'a matter of perspective' came from and the questions this brings up, such as: Whose perspective? The perspective of what? Isn't perspective a very subjective thing?

Okay, sometimes writers just like asking a silly question and see what story pops up from that question. My answer, to the question(s) above, is below.

* * *

The courtroom, smelling of unwashed bodies and sterilized air, welcomed back the tired jurors to their plexiglass enclosed seating area.

Charley Alexander Masogina, defendant, forty-seven years old, was accused of the sledgehammer murders of a socially prominent, politically connected Neo-Democrat family—three fathers and an adopted twenty-two year-old daughter. Charley's lawyer, a disheveled but eloquent trans woman, pled not guilty by reason of insanity, citing the fact that Charley was born and raised in the new industrial zone of the Detroit/Toledo metroplex, therefore subjected to massive amounts of heavy metal toxins, therefore incapable of even rudimentary moral decisions.

Decisions like beating to unrecognizable blobs of crimson pulp four human beings.

Charley sat impassively watching the jurors, long dyed black hair covering his thick head, lavender painted fingernails gently stroking his custom made three-piece golden silk/Kevlar suit. In the waning days of the twenty-first century, assassins were still well paid for their bloody services. He had been assured by his benefactors/employers that put out the hit all was taken care of in regard to the outcome of the trial.

"When da hell am I gonna get outta here?" he asked his lawyer in a guttural voice. "You got me the first-class ticket to Bora Bora, right? I need me some rest and relaxation after this cluster-fuck."

The lawyer stared grimly ahead and said nothing.

"Hey, I'm talkin' to you," Charlie said irritatedly. "I asked you if—"

The judge, a statuesque Nigerian-American woman in her mid-fifties, motioned with a microphone toward the jury. "Has a verdict been returned?"

The jury foreperson, a 40ish Asian-American man dressed in a microcrystalline see-thru one piece jumper, stood under the plexiglass enclosure. "We have your honor." He slid a small piece of paper into the vacuum tube that silently delivered the verdict to the judge's hand.

She read it quickly, stood. "This court of law, in the Peoples Free Republic of Michigan, finds Charley Alexander Masogina guilty on all counts and recommends the most severe penalty by laws of this land. Will Mr. Masogina approach the bench?"

What da fuck?" Charlies whispered to his lawyer. "Guilty? This is bullshit! I was told that everything was arranged!"

"Everything was arranged, you brain-damaged moron," the lawyer hissed. "Now go to the judge and take your punishment like a man."

"Who da fuck are you to tell me to take it like a man?"

"Mr. Masogina?" The judge said sternly. "I said approach the bench."

"Fuck ya all," Charley blubbered, eyes welling with tears. "I ain't movin.'"

"As you wish, Charley." The judge sat and contemplated the man before her like a piece of fecal material on the bottom of her. shoe. "The judgement of this court is so rendered: Charley Masogina will serve the next two hundred years in cryohibernation, neural activity stepped to maximum, so that he will be able to contemplate the nature of his crimes to himself and society. At the end of that time he will be incinerated. So speaks the court."

Charley let loose with a hundred decibel wail while bolting for the bench. "How can ya do dis?" he screamed, clawing his way toward the judge as two bio-enhanced, seven-foot tall deputies held him back. "It ain't fair, hell, that family of fuckin' freaks I offed are sleepin' easy now, why should I have to be alive in my head for... for... " he burst into tears again, the thought too much to bear even for his heavy metal addled brain.

The judge sighed and hoped the rest of her day wouldn't be such a shit show. "Well, Mr Masogina, try to look at it from a different viewpoint. Remember, it's all just a matter of perspective."