Justice

It was time for another one.
   Her clothes were sticking to her skin from the hot and muggy air that the city had to suffer from the midday. But from the roof of the dirty ghetto apartment building, she could feel a breeze crawl its way through and in between the buildings. She let it wash over her like a cooling shower after a hot workout, reveling in the relief as her bright red hair fluttered a little. Then she frowned. This wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to feel hot. She wanted to feel the anger and frustration build in her from the overwhelming heat.
   She knelt down, surveying the street from her perch. He would be arriving any moment now…and then she saw him. Her quarry couldn’t have been any more than thirty years old, only a few more than she was herself. He looked so smug, walking down the busy sidewalk as though it was his own personal cat walk. She stood up, matching him pace for pace along the building’s edge, watching the young man stroll into the alley way between buildings and disappear from the public eye. Perfect. There’d be no one to help him.
   She smiled, as the heat started building up again. The anticipation was coming to a head. She took off her court jacket, and pulled off her business slacks, folding them into the suitcase she usually had on hand. All that was left was the bright red, skin-tight suit, personally tailored to her measurements. Finally, she donned the red mask; a classic identity concealant. It was time to make right what had been made wrong.

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   Jennifer could feel the water singe on her skin, like an egg on a hot skillet. The icy cold water felt so cool and refreshing after a busy day’s work. She had been pulling “extra hours” all day and she was ready to cool down, for the night anyway. Soon the water was lukewarm and the steamy sauna that had first filled her bathroom had now dissipated into nothing more than the cold, crisp air that the penthouse’s occupant usually kept it.
   She came out furiously rubbing the moisture from her head with a towel. Jenn could have evaporated it from her hair but she found it killed the texture. Comfortable in her bath robe, Jenn plopped down onto the plush sofa and propped her feet up onto the small, hard coffee table in front of her.
   The television flickered to life, filling the room with sound. She casually flipped to the news channels, searching for any mention of missing people, homicides, arsons . . . but no, nothing just yet. The results from her courtroom battle today were on, but Jenn already knew how that had ended. Settling on one channel, she listened to the talking heads’ disgust with the results, talking about how “This case was an absolute mess,” and “how the NYPD botched the forensics test.”
   “Even without the screw-up, the prosecution should have had him!” One of the heads complained.
   Jenn snorted in contempt. It wasn’t her fault that the damned junior forensics officer contaminated the key evidence with his bare hands. He should have known better, and he did after she tore him a new one after the verdict. But it was irrelevant now. In the end, justice had been served. She had carried out her duty, even if she had done it in an unconventional and illegal manner.
   Jenn got up and went over to the fridge; she needed water. She was drinking it by the gallon these days. Her body felt like a boiler, and she needed the cool water to keep from overheating when it was inconvenient. Just earlier that day she had to gone through the whole water supply in the courtroom within the span of half an hour. The bottle she was drinking now was her fifth since she’d gotten home.
   The talking heads were still discussing the trial when the panel hostess grabbed her earpiece. “This just in,” she declared, hunched over the ear phone hidden underneath her hair. “It’s happened again,” she said, grimacing a little. “Marc Davis, the man we’ve just been talking about for the past twenty minutes has just been checked into a hospital in critical condition with third degree burns covering most of his body. But as we’ve seen with other recent arson cases, this man’s **** has been fried extra crispy. He is the seventh man (“Ninth, actually,” Jennifer thought) acquitted of **** to suffer such severe and life-threatening injuries in the past three weeks. Gentlemen, what is going on? It seems like someone’s just as pissed off as we are, and then they’re taking it to an extreme!”
   “No, I was more pissed off,” Jenn muttered, taking another chug from her bottle.
   “Well, I know it’s a cruel act that really nobody should have to suffer through, but don’t you think it’s kind of ironic?” one of the men, this one with a balding head, said.
   “The sweetest kind,” she pretended to answer.
   “Whoever’s doing this,” he continued, “is hitting them right where it hurts and, let’s face it, you can’t hurt a guy any worse than when you treat their ‘member’ like an over done hot dog on a grill.”
   “And that’s why I do it,” she replied again, giving a mock toast with her water bottle.
   “But he was acquitted!” one of the women argued. “And besides that, you’re right. That is a pain that will cripple ANY man. No one deserves that kind of cruel, vigilante justice!”
   “I resent that!” Jenn defended, jabbing her water bottle towards the screen, continuing the illusory conversation as though they could hear her. “I’m a hero for those women who didn’t get the justice they deserved!”
   “Need I remind you that he got off on a technicality?” The bald man countered (“No,” Jenn muttered). “This is just like the O.J. case; everyone KNEW he was guilty. I would bet my daughter’s college fund that if it wasn’t for the fact that if the junior forensics officer hadn’t touched the evidence with his bare hands, we wouldn’t be having this argument right now and Marc Davis wouldn’t feel like he was on JackAss 3-D!”
   Jenn sat down as the hostess banged her gavel, trying to settle down the bickering guest hosts. She leaned back, sipping her water bottle as though she had cracked open a 1985 chardonnay. It was all coming together. Sooner or later, she reasoned, someone would wise-up and realize that the only chance for survival in her jungle was to confess guilt; or else fear that they too would be torched alive, just like the rest. The women who had been violated would finally get justice, and she would be the one who delivered it to them.
   She held out her free hand and forced a spark. The fireball she held was small, luminescent like a small light bulb. She could feel the faint pulse from its core, beating like it had a heart of its own in perfect rhythm with hers. Jenn had the power to change the world however she wanted, and she was going to light it on fire.