An X-Mas Carol
That first night in jail after he sprayed a suburban shopping mall with semi-automatic gunfire killing nine and wounding fifteen, John "Jack" Digger had a dream, although he did not know it was a dream at the time.
A vision of his hero came to him under the cover of night, Fred Axley, mass murderer of eleven, crippler of four, but he looked different from his smug grinning picture. Gone were the cameras and the reporters' microphones. Newspapers and magazines lay on his lap badly singed. Fred, you see, sat in a wheel chair bound by a straight jacket. It looked like someone had pushed him though a furnace. Smoke rose from his head and a pus-like ooze dripped from his face. But at least Fred still smiled, in a wide-eyed demented sort of way.
"Jackie," he said, "Jack, well d
