...is thinking he don't give a tinker's cuss about the car.
It's a tricked-out Chevrolet Lumina in shiny purple candyflake,
it packs many horses, many status stallions.
These wheels are parked slap-bang-boom
in the middle of Orange-Blossom shopping mall
and it's mid-morning
and before shoppers and browsers
start thinking of lunching
there will be mass-murder
in a fell swoop like,
one of those mad gunman howlers.

Three hands on the car
and last hand touching wins the prize.
Seven others already fell
by the competition wayside.
There's the middle-aged plains mother.
The dude from east Texas.
And, the nihilist.
They're nearly sixty hours into the thing,
the endurance test competition
for a desirable symbol.
Plains mother and the Texas dude
are in this to the bitter end, literally.
The nihilist is suffering
from an overdose of internet propaganda
and too much deep thinking, mentally.
In less than one more hour
he will have seduced his own thought processes
and entered the flipside of sanity
and given this mall a glimpse of
how to deploy the destructive arts.
How to slaughter the innocence of humanity.

Plains mother reckons she can tough it out,
she has history, three cars to the good,
and she talks the talk baby.
But it's way too much,
and way too loud.
Texas dude reckons he can win the car,
and he really wants to,
some kind of whipped-up redneck thing.
Rolling through Miami streets,
cruising trendy bars.
The nihilist just couldn't care less,
he left their headspace long ago,
and slipped peacefully into insanity.
He has proclaimed himself,
a one-man suicide sect of depravity.

And there are cameras watching.
The unblinking eyes of closed circuitry,
and minority-interest cable t.v.
Sensationalising endurance contests
for the bored and lonely,
detached from reality,
on high-definition screens.
Soon to be shaken from lethargy,
by the shuddering force
of surround-sound screams.

It's turning out to be a nice day.
That's what all the strollers and shoppers
are subliminally thinking,
and the guards in the mall are lulled
into false security,
as the nihilist takes his hand off the car,
and turns, and stares, unblinking.
Plains mother looks at the Texas dude,
and they both think
that leaves just the two of us.

The nihilist strolls across the mall
into a sporting goods store,
throws a cash register
into a display case,
and helps himself to a box of shells
and a sleek pump-action twelve-bore.
He loads the gun,
as people scatter,
as security is alerted.
Then turns and fires!...
...slick-slick...Fires!...slick-slick...Fires!
low-down, point-blank,
indiscriminate,
uncaring,
lost and mean and dirty.
The nihilist has flipped,
in the embrace of madness,
seduced by evil flirting.

Security has his jaw blown off
in a hellish shower
of bloody mist and boney fragmentation,
and the nihilist rains down fire and brimstone
on unsuspecting innocence,
glassy-eyed and calm-as-you-like,
firing with deadly deliberation.
Now exiting the store, into the mall,
standing in the shafts of sunlight,
as the horror shatters wide
and suffuses him with the power
of unholy liberation.
Fire!..slick-slick...Fire!...slick-slick...Fire!
Reloading as he walks,
amongst the glistening bedlam,
gripped by the force of mayhem,
he doesn't think,
he doesn't talk.
As panic casts zig-zag shadows in the mall,
the gun muzzle barks out death
and many people start to fall.

Plains mother takes one full-force,
straight in her told-you-so face.
And the Texas dude has his heart removed,
exploding from his cowboy rib-cage.
And their hands slip from the Chevrolet.
Everyone's a loser baby,
'aint nobody winning this car today, no way.
And there is screaming and howling and horror,
as the gunsmoke hangs blue in the air.
The nihilist fires!...slick-slick...Fires!
At least six people lie dying and dead
in the carnage committed without a care.
And as the sirens get louder
the nihilist sucks on the smoking muzzle,
and takes off the top of his head.