Caged Bird | ✔

Chapter Twenty

The bird catcher

People kill all the time, every single day for that matter. Multiple forums online will actually give you the amount of murders being committed in the world yearly, and how the rate is only rapidly increasing over the course of time

Every single human has it in them to take a life; we are programmed killers, in a game of survival of the fittest. The only thing that differentiates killers from each other, is motive

Motive is what drives a person, it is what determines whether you are a bad person or not

Kill someone to defend yourself, this is not a problem at all – you needed to, you are a victim actually. kill a person because you claim that the person was begging you to kill them

Off to the Looney bin you go

Regardless of whether you have a psychological disorder driving you to commit these acts or a simple motive to take someone's life

You still took it

What was my motive? What drove me?

It was my need to protect. To protect her, and honestly I did not think it was all that different from the people whom the president issued out medals of Honor to and whom civilians celebrated them for defending their country

Because in order to protect their country, the soldiers needed to kill people

Irrespective of whether they took 12 lives in one day or 50, - it did not matter, they were not labeled serial killers, as they were killing for purpose. They believed they were doing the right thing, and they maintained the notion that they were the real hero's in the story

I have killed; I have done it a few times to know what it is like to hold a man's life in your hands before you yank it from him

No matter how good your intentions are, admitting that you killed someone to protect another would not win you any favors

Yet I had done it to protect her and I would undoubtedly do it again.

The metallic black sniper rifle is aimed at the opening by the window, the weight of the gun resting adequately on the bipod, and the stock already adjusted to my length.

It was a monstrosity of a gun, with its long nozzle and mounted scope. It was also bitch to cart around with all the adjustable pieces, - but it did its job eloquently; one single shot to the head from 1000 yards out could save 1 life or a hundred.

I bought the gun a couple of years back, and upgraded it over time, a better scope, a sturdier bipod, a more comfortable stock to rest my cheek on when I needed to look through the scope. I was not a hunter; I had not even used this designated rifle yet. To anyone else it might have seemed like a waste of money to buy the best rifle that money could buy, including going through the costly and annoying process of having to renew the gun license every year just to not use it.

But it wasn't a waste

You spend 20 years with your hand on the trigger of some sort of gun, killing people to make your country a safer place, - the only time you start to feel safe is when that metal is in your hand and you have a clear sight of your target

It was not uncommon for ex special ops to get their gun license renewed after their service; neither was it strange to own any type of firearm with no intention of using it.

I took a swig from the beer bottle that I had brought with me from the bar I had just come from. I didn't normally drink but tonight was a special occasion

A few of the guys had met up at Spencer's, a bar that played trash music all night and had a pool table that was so ancient that if you so much as put your hands on the wood of the table you'd end up with splinters embedded in your palms