WINAMAC, IN—As the previously latent fury hidden deep within him began to awaken, sources reported Monday that a local child forced into a pumpkin costume felt the first twinge of a rage that would one day inspire him to become a mass shooter and commit indiscriminate murder.
“Doesn’t he just look adorable?” mother Sandra Spotherton said as she gently pushed her son Andrew’s limbs through the arm and leg holes of the bright orange jack-o’-lantern suit, nurturing within the 2-year-old a simmering resentment that would build for years until one day he unleashed bloody restitution in a senseless shooting spree that would leave 32 dead and more than 15 others wounded. “Let’s leave it on, now, Andrew. No, no, don’t take it off.”
“Aw, what a sweet little pumpkin!” a neighbor later told the costumed child, reportedly unaware that the assortment of Twix, Smarties, and candy corn she handed him would not extinguish the spark of hatred for humanity that was beginning to burn inside a boy who, as a teenager, would be handed a semiautomatic assault rifle in the legal purchase that would proceed his deadly rampage. “Aren’t you the cutest?”
At press time, sources confirmed the crying toddler’s nascent urge to kill had grown stronger after he took his first bite of saltwater taffy.