Invisible

 Watching the video of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz with his head down, eyes closed, and his thumbs in his ears while recordings of his confessed murders played in the courtroom made me wonder if he hoped that he might turn invisible. It's a trick we all try to play when we are three or four. If I can't see you, then of course you can't see me. I'm invisible. 

Once you get a little older, you know that's not how it works. Still, when we throw around suggestions for super powers, invisibility comes up frequently. Given a choice, I'm still going with flying, but I can see the appeal. It shows up in Harry Potter, too. Toss this cloak over your head and you disappear. Now you can sneak around wherever you'd like without worry for being detected. 

Unless you sneeze. Or kill seventeen people. It's pretty difficult to disappear after you have shot up a school and murdered more than a dozen of your classmates. In many of these events, it is that precise moment when the cloak of invisibility is torn off to reveal the twisted individual beneath. 

And now Nikolas Cruz seems to want to return to the shadows. 

Can't get the ketchup back into the bottle. The bullets back into the gun. Souls back into the victims' bodies.

If you scroll down to the bottom of these stories and look at the suggestions from casual readers who have ideas about how to best deal with Nikolas and others like him, it starts to come clear why we might all be better off if there was a way to take care of this business off camera. The righteous anger directed at this individual who now carries the stain of his crime as well as being the object of a system that cannot figure itself out is apparent in comments describing what citizens believe should be done with the confessed killer. Outside of the life in prison without parole or death sentence. Torture, both emotional and physical seem to be on most of the respondent's minds, and that's when I start to wonder how thin the line is between thought and deed. 

And then I am struck by the everlasting reality of being the one who destroyed all those lives. Nikolas Cruz will never be invisible again. 

No matter how hard he closes his eyes. Or who does it for him.