The Pike's Peak Writer's Conference was awesome. I had a great time and met a lot of great people. Excellent classes and I got to sit and talk with horror writer extraordinaire Dan Simmons. My good friend and writing buddy, Mark Ortler came along and made some good contacts. I highly recommend the conference and you should all try to make the 2007 conference.

 

St. Valentines Day Massacre or Shooting at Illinois College - Feb 15, 2008

Written by Gordon Carroll

I’ve written a lot of horror in my time, but how do you top these types of stories? I mean fifteen wounded, four murdered, and the gunman himself dead. Terrible. The shooting at Northern Illinois University is just the latest in a growing line of school murders. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that these types of killings started in the High Schools and have now graduated to the colleges? Hmm. Will the Doctorate and Master’s programs be next? So, a gunman kills five, wounds fifteen and kills himself, and suddenly he is a media sensation. Did he get what he wanted? Fame, notoriety, a new record? All his dreams come true and he even gets to escape punishment. But we Christians know better. Hey, killer, I wonder what your first thought was when you woke up? Let me imagine. You make this elaborate plan to go out in style, murdering people you’ve probably never even met, dress up all dark, dangerous, and deadly. Takes your shotgun, your two handguns, walk in bold as you please and let loose with a fuselage of lead rain, killing indiscriminately. When you run out of ammo, you calmly reload and resume your little first person shooter game. After that you put the gun to your head and pull the trigger. Out go the lights, the sound, the pain. But then you open your eyes, and guess what big man, you’re dead… but you still exist. And suddenly it dawns on you that you will continue to exist… forever. You thought you would do your deed and then slip away from the consequences into the dark, deep sleep of death. Of nothingness. Back to where you came from before you were conceived. When you were not. When you were emptiness, non, un, zero. When you were what there was before there was light. Only that isn’t what this is. You don’t have a body. The eyes you open are the eyes of your soul. But with them you see far more than you ever did in life. You see it all. Everything. The horror. The horror you have caused. The horror you have let yourself become. The horror you will know for all eternity. Because now there is nothing to know but your debt. The debt you have accumulated in your short, pathetic life. The debt of your crimes, of your sins. The interest compounded massively in your last earthly act. And now you begin to receive the dividends on your investment. Your stripes begin to multiply. Each ripple touching others as it moves out through the wake of time; destroying families, causing depression, fear, suicide, murder. And the souls your actions helped to corrupt begin to fall down to you in your private chamber of endless personal torture. Each death slashing your soul, your consciousness, marring your psyche with the knowledge of your guilt, your ever increasing debt, amassing so quickly you can never make a dent in the principle. So yes, you are dead. Dead to God, to forgiveness, to life. But you have not escaped. You have just begun to serve your death sentence. And you realize just how little of a man you really are.

 

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