Evidence of Emptiness

Evidence of Emptiness is the story of a school shooting, told from the perspective of the shooter. At a juncture in U.S. history when mass-killing incidents occur at rates and extremes unimaginable in previous times, this story opens our eyes toward some of the social and internal realities which cause these terrifyingly destructive actions to rise from within an otherwise "normal" human being. This tale of unsettling horror introduces us to the life of a young college student, working to find his way in the world and place amongst people, while wrestling with the realities of his troubled past, and the less-than-fulfilling circumstances of adult life. After experiencing a great deal of social violence at the hands of his peers throughout his educational years, we find the narrator engaged in a high-stakes search for meaning and worth in the world around him; and we are left to watch as light transitions to darkness, and hope to the pain of despair. This is the story of the unraveling mind as it encounters the emptiness associated with modern social living, and the very human responses which result from our experiences of coldness and isolation in the world. The words and thoughts captured on these pages, work toward dismissing some of the heavily biased mythologies often created around the people who commit these unthinkable acts, and open our minds toward understanding, in order that we might prevent tragedies like this from happening again.