Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom
By Christian Hale
Copyright 2015 Christian Hale
Chapter One
There was a time and place when one could reasonable expect not to be executed on video for skipping out on their student loan debt. That time had passed. It had passed at least a decade ago. Jeremy, taped securely to a chair, knew it. He also knew that he would soon be dead.
“You know, Jeremy, they call us cockroaches. Somehow, everywhere on this planet, everybody now uses the same slur for Americans: cockroaches.”
The Executioner’s comment distracted Jeremy from the focus he was attempting to maintain on his breathing. He tried to concentrate on not panicking. Long deep breath in, long breath out….and repeat.
“But, I can’t say I consider it an insult. I mean…I think it’s an accurate description. And I’ll tell you why,” said The Executioner. “A long time ago in Indonesia I saw a fight start when a drunk Australian called a drunk American guy a cockroach. Nothing remarkable about a drunk Australian. Nothing remarkable about a drunk Australian winning a fight against another drunk idiot tourist in Indonesia, but I had never seen that reaction to being called a cockroach. So I decided then and there to put my academic skills to use and do a little investigating. By the way, I also have a master’s degree in Terrorism and Homeland Security Studies – just like you. Did you know that?”
Jeremy did not respond.
“So, anyways,” continued The Executioner, “I went online and started to search for the origin of cockroach as an anti-American insult. I went to Wikipedia because I copy and pasted a lot from there when I was an undergraduate….and also when I was a grad student. Of course, there was an article on the subject. Do you know what the origin was?”
Jeremy didn’t reply to his executioner. He wasn’t listening. He was thinking about how online trolls would send the video of his execution to his parents. There were a hundred ways to get someone to accidentally view an unwanted video on their screen. The American ban on anti-advertising software and plug-ins had greatly increased the number of people being subjected to random pop-up images and videos of increasing depravity. Most people had become desensitized to the daily dose of porn and gore, but it was obviously a different matter when a family member showed up in a video. The favorite form of online harassment by far was still, of course, ‘Your mom did porn.’ Facial recognition software that could search numerous porn video archives going back to the 1990s in under a minute had brought new life to the earlier trend of finding familiar faces in still images.
Jeremy pushed these thoughts aside. He then started to move away from a creeping sense of panic and towards a numb feeling of acceptance. He was going to die, his family would watch. Eventually they would watch whether they wanted to or not. There was nothing he could do.
Jeremy’s situation was hopeless. His total student loan debt had grown with interest and fines to over $400,000. Of course, the lender was willing to settle for less than that, but not from Jeremy directly. The Executioner’s employer, a small specialist overseas debt collection agency, had, when capture was imminent, secretly purchased Jeremy’s debt from the original lender for a small percentage of the total amount due. And the overseas debt collection specialists all charged an extra $200,000 as a collection fee.
So now it was a simple matter: if Jeremy’s family wanted to ever see him alive again, they would need to come up with about $600,000. Of course, the practice of kidnapping and demanding ransom payments was still illegal in the United States. Nevertheless, if a debt collector could avoid being caught by a foreign government, then they were free to continue with their business. The US government could barely control things that happen at home, let alone overseas. As a result, no debt collector had ever been charged or punished in America. Plus, nobody knew who they were, exactly.
As for Jeremy, right before he fled across the Quebec border and onward to Asia, he had convinced his parents to insert a legal clause that blocked any borrowing against their house under duress. This was probably not necessary. Any bank or lender that was stupid enough to lend money to a family under ransom and execution threat would soon be subjected to not just a coordinated customer boycott, but also a firebombing by anarchists. The arson attack would take place during working hours and the employees would be considered fair game. The modern anarchist put great emphasis on not negotiating with hostage takers. Paying out the ransom only encouraged the debt collectors. ‘No negotiating with terrorists’ was now an anarchist slogan.
As for borrowing money from kin, nobody in Jeremy’s extended network of family or friends had that sort of money to lend – and none of them owned houses anymore. They, like most of the American working class, had all become renters mired in personal debt. But his parents would still blame themselves. Jeremy was certain of this.
“Seriously, Jeremy, pay attention. This cockroach stuff is important,” said The Executioner as he tried to keep his prisoner focused. “So anyways, the Wikipedia article on cockroaches was really interesting. It says that the slur arose independently in several locations in different languages. How cool is that? Forums and comment threads in places like Brazil, China, Europe and Australia all show that the use of ‘cockroaches’ for Americans was…like, organic and unconnected. Scholars who research internet culture and trends say it’s a very unique phenomenon.”
Jeremy didn’t acknowledge The Executioner.
“Hey Jeremy, maybe you should have majored in internet studies? You would already know this, and you could still be working on your PhD right now.”
The Executioner was quite pleased with his monologue. He had never talked this much before, as one experience at an early point in his career had turned him off engaging in discussion with what those in the business referred to as ‘runners.’ The Executioner made the mistake of having a talk with a rather quick-witted, but unemployed, PhD who had spent too much time debating during his fourteen years of grad school. The talkative Doctor of Philosophy may not have been able to find any gainful employment, but he was good at arguing. His line of attack – and his slew of quick facts, sound logic and well-timed delivery – was an attempt to brutalize The Executioner’s sense of honor, decency and humanity. The PhD’s attack did bother him a little. But more importantly, The Executioner didn’t like to feel that he had lost an argument.
Of course, in the end, the doctor had his skull crushed like every other one of the runners who couldn’t quickly come up with the money. It made for one of the more popular videos, with over 70 million views on one of the more popular apps the last time The Executioner had bothered to check. The high view count was mostly due to the fact that he, in his anger and frustration at losing an argument, neglected to place the bag over the doctor’s head before swinging down with a rusted iron bar. The popularity of the video helped somewhat to soothe what he felt was a defeat of sorts. Regardless, The Executioner soon regained his sense of decency and returned immediately to the use of a bag over the heads of the runners when killing them.
“So….yeah, cockroaches…” said The Executioner. “It had an interesting history. The term had earlier been used by one side in the Rwandan genocide and in Iran against some minority group or whatever. But these never got beyond their local uses. The first usage to describe Americans just pops up in the comment threads under articles, videos and on forums. It was, like, ‘Yankee’ went out with the Second World War and was never considered an insult in the first place. But there was this empty place that needed to be filled. Like when the first English dude called a French guy a frog. People everywhere, in the 16th century or whatever
, dropped their wheelbarrows full of cow manure and thought ‘Damn. They are frogs. They always were. We just didn’t think to call them that.’ And when cockroaches came along, it just suited us Americans so well. It fit like a glove.”
The Executioner, now doubly pleased with his cleverness and his timing, pulled a pair of gloves out of his back pocket and slipped them on. They were, along with the iron bar, his trademark: black, ultra-thin, fire-retardant auto mechanic gloves. They were the one constant in all his videos. His clothing changed, but never his gloves. He had hoped this would result in some cool nickname like ‘The Mechanic.’ Instead, he was stuck with ‘The Executioner’ as he was the first to upload the videos of the runners he executed. He was also the first to come up with the idea of spreading fear. Fear of him in particular. And for the fear to be explicitly about The Executioner, he needed a brand. After his first few videos he realized that he had used the same gloves in each video, more so to hide the scars on the knuckle of his right hand than to come up with a distinct identity. The gloves became his uniform; they became part of his brand. They instilled fear and dread. And they were very, very comfortable.
“Cockroaches. That label describes the current crop of Americans so well,” said The Executioner. “It’s perfect. Having totally destroyed our economy, society and government, we scurry – like cockroaches – away from a dead carcass with no remaining nutrients to devour. We run away to other countries that have more reasonable people and more responsible governments. We sneak in under cover of darkness on the cheapest 3am budget flight with some BS tourist visa and set up shop in the filthiest spot we can find and begin our new lives as permanent expat cockroaches. And some of these cockroaches, like you, took an extra large chunk of flesh off of what was left of American prosperity….”
Jeremy finally cut in, replying “Yes. I’m a cockroach who ran up a huge student loan debt and then ran off, laughing the whole way with my pockets stuffed full of taxpayer money. It was my plan all along. I’ve heard this speech before at least a hundred times.”
“Well, you’re in luck. This will be the last time you ever have to hear that speech. I’ll make it short and skip straight to the end.”
Jeremy didn’t respond, but he knew what was coming.
“Do you know why I like this insult so much?” asked The Executioner, still not done with his mini-tirade. “I like it because after decades of foreigners saying ‘Oh, I don’t hate Americans. I hate their government,’ we finally have an honest slur that says ‘I don’t have an opinion on your government or your country as a whole, aside from maybe pity. I hate you personally. I hate the American people. You’re a disease. You cockroaches need to turn around and take your infested horde back to America.’ And that makes everybody more honest. For me, it’s a reminder that we were once strong. We were once respected, if not liked. And now look at us. Look specifically at people like you. Cockroaches like you are a daily reminder to me of how far we have fallen.”
Jeremy felt a sense of resignation to his fate. But despite his silence, his brain was still expending a great deal of energy thinking of a dozen things at once. Then, in a fraction of a second, everything changed. His mind became clear and a sense of relief came over him. He was done. He had nothing left to say. He had nothing left to think. He stared straight ahead and focused on a small chip in the concrete wall. Looking through the wall, the chip became a blur.
“Hey, Jeremy! Hey! Heads up. Pay attention,” said The Executioner as he propped his phone up on a chair and started the recording. “Look into the camera so we can get this video done and over with. I’m tired, Burma is a really hard place to operate in, and I’ve had an upset stomach since the first day I arrived. I don’t want to be here any more than you do.”
The Executioner paused. A thought came to him.
“Jeremy, is this ironic? I mean, is this execution, of you in particular, ironic? It’s just that you have a Master of Arts in Terrorism and Homeland Security Studies. That’s two years of coursework plus a thesis of, what, 80 pages? And somewhere in there I know you must have paid some attention to, maybe even studied, those angry Muslim dudes who were always decapitating or sawing off people’s heads. You must have analyzed it, and now you are going to get pretty much the same thing. Is that ironic, or is it merely unfortunate? You know, that PhD guy I executed, he had a doctorate in English Literature. If he was here, he could tell us.”
The Executioner did not also have a master’s degree in Terrorism and Homeland Security Studies. That was a lie that was supposed to lead to a joke, but he had forgotten the punchline. He thought about this as he went through his checklist: Hood pulled up? Check. Baseball cap? Check. Motocross goggles? Check. Bandana covering lower face bandit-style? Check.
Off to the side The Executioner stood, as he always did, gently swinging his iron bar and giving a sufficient amount of time to add descriptive subtitles to the video before he stepped in. He couldn’t help but to be honest and yelled “You know, I’ll have to kill the audio for this short section when I upload the video, but I need to tell you something. I was joking about the master’s degree. I don’t have a master’s degree in Terrorism and Homeland Security Studies. That’s just stupid. I don’t have a graduate degree at all. I researched the benefits and drawbacks of a master’s while I was an undergrad. That was a while ago. And it seemed, economically, like a terrible idea, at least according to every single study I found on the internet. So, yeah…”
That was a lie also. The Executioner didn’t have an undergraduate degree. He had never attended university.
The Executioner walked over slowly and stood behind Jeremy. There was no hesitation. He jerked the iron bar back and, putting his entire body into the swing, thrust the bar down.
Zero dollars. That was the first thing that came into his mind as Jeremy slumped over onto the floor. That was the figure in his head. He was getting zero dollars for this. And his expenses were obviously not going to be recovered. But as everyone knew, it was about setting an example for those who thought that they could negotiate for time or for a smaller figure, and for those who thought that contacting law enforcement was a good idea. And for those who couldn’t get the money to pay off the debt and the extra fine? Well, this was for them also. This was for them specifically.
Then suddenly it hit him. He forgot the bag. He thought about how he could have possibly forgotten to place the bag over Jeremy’s head. He wondered if he was starting the early stages of senile dementia as a thirty-something year old. Cursing, he tossed the iron bar to the side and paused, letting out a slow, deep breath. He started to think. The Executioner was worried about the comments he would read later that day on the internet. Online criticism wounded him deeply.
The Executioner grabbed his phone off the chair and, sidestepping the large pool of blood, spoke to the lifeless Jeremy.
“Alright. Sorry about the speech. That was very cartoon villain of me. Anyways, we’re done here. I’ve got a flight to catch. See you later.”
The Executioner took off his shirt and walked over to his bag. He pulled out a strip of quick-release Propranolol Hydrochloride patches and stuck them on his side. The second part of the drug combo would be needed quicker. He jabbed a needle full of quick-dissolving Cortisol micro-beads into his arm and slowly injected. He would be forming no traumatic memories this week. Preventing PTSD was important for overseas debt collection specialists. And The Executioner was a cautious guy.