NARRATOR: Hello and welcome to the historical museum of the Bitter Bastards - brought to you by Spacer Times! Watch as the courts of an ancient system try to solve the issues of crime in a civil society. Today we have a case from 2096. Please enjoy this reenactment by our talented actors, and always remember, SpacerTimes - the only source of true news.
NARRATOR: James got to his desk this morning after a very peaceful past week. When he got to his desk he saw a file sitting there, it was another prisoner that he was called to interview - prisoner 2096095, David Bellaire.
JAMES: What the hell is this?
NARRATOR: He looked around the room for a bit before sitting down at his desk to open the manila folder. When he opened it he started reading.
JAMES: Okay… Prisoner 2096095, David Bellaire. What kind of name is that? Alright, let’s see what you did then.
NARRATOR: James began to read the file for Mr.Bellaire.
JAMES: David Bellaire, former Ice Cream truck owner, former drug addict, former father to three.’ This guy sounds half-decent, what the hell did he do to land himself here?
NARRATOR: As James continued reading he began to realize just why Mr.Bellaire has landed himself here.
JAMES: Are you telling me that this guy - a freakin’ ice cream truck driver has a kill count of 250 or more? It says this info is outdated. And that he has also been the cause of thousands of people getting addicted to hard drugs. How the hell did he do all this without anyone knowing?
NARRATOR: James soon realized that all his questions and more were about to be answered when he read that he was to meet Mr.Bellaire to interview him for what might be his final time.
JAMES: [shouting] I’m meeting this man tomorrow?! [angry] Why was this not on my desk 3 days ago?!
NARRATOR: What James forgot is that he has not been to work since Thursday as he took time off to be with his family.
FADE TO:
NARRATOR: James got to the prison a fashionable 15 minutes late. As he was walking into the interviewing room he looked at the halls of the prison and he almost thought he was in some rich person’s mansion with the amount of high-sought-for materials in the place.
JAMES: God, I will never get used to walking into this place.
NARRATOR: When he finally reached the interviewing room he could not believe the number of guards they had for this man, he was used to maybe one or two guards but they had 5 before he even walked into the room. The guards did their usual checks on James before he could enter the room - only allowing him to bring a piece of paper and a pencil. No pen this time as they were worried about what Mr.Bellaire may do if he got it.
JAMES: Gosh, you guys sure are being extra careful today.
NARRATOR: The guard scoffed at James before allowing him to enter the room.
JAMES: Wait, where is David?
NARRATOR: The guard told James that he was on his way. James didn’t have to wait long, in just a few minutes three more guards walked in holding Mr.Bellaire. They cuffed him to the chair he was sat in and then walked to the entrance of the door.
JAMES: That’s the first time I’ve seen them do that. You must be a really interesting character then, David. Oh- do you mind me calling you David?
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire gave stern-faced look towards James before relaxing in the chair made of the finest wool and fluff you could get.
JAMES: Er- You know what, I’m gonna call you that anyway.
NARRATOR: Now that everything has been settled James began talking with Mr.Bellaire.
JAMES: Well, hello David, my name is James, how are you doing today?
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire was confused to hear something like this. Most of the other interviewers just wanted answers fast, so Mr.Bellaire was intrigued to hear something like this.
DAVID: [sarcastically] Today is going just great, started off with a light beating by some of the other prisoners and then got dragged off to this room again.
NARRATOR: James noticed that Mr.Bellaire was not really well built he had little to no muscle. He had a nice face, a face of a man you would almost want to be friends with, but James knew that wasn’t going to help him here.
JAMES: Ah- Well… Uh, you must know then that I am here to question you today.
DAVID: Yes, yes. You are not the first and probably won’t be the last.
JAMES: So this isn’t your first questioning?
DAVID: Not at all, there have been many before you- but most of them seem to leave after a little while.
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire gave a slight grin that sent chills down James’ spine.
JAMES: [grin] I guess we’ll see how this goes then, won’t we?
DAVID: I guess we will.
NARRATOR: James finally began to ask Mr.Bellaire the real questions.
JAMES: So, David, how exactly did all this happen to you? I don’t get a lot of info in my file but it did say that you had a good family and what seemed like a stable job.
DAVID: Getting right into it I see… Well, back then was a great time in my life, I had just been married to my wife Bethany, and we decided to have three kids; one boy, and two girls, all a year apart. Of course, because we had three kids all at such a young age Bethany had to leave her work. So it was up to me to make enough money to support all of us, it was getting rough since I was just an Ice Cream man. So I needed to find a good way to make money, and fast. Winter was coming right around the corner and I was looking for a way that would make people want my Ice Cream even through the winter.
JAMES: How could you possibly make people want Ice Cream throughout the freezing cold?
DAVID: Hold on, I’m getting to that, let me continue.
DAVID: One day I was hanging out at the bar with my friend, Tom, and I was telling him about everything and he told me I should talk to a man named Harrison Haron. I didn’t really know what happened after that all I remember was waking up with a new contact on my wrist-phone with the name Harrison Haron. I didn’t think all too much about it since I had to get to work in less than two hours so I quickly ran to go take a shower and get into my work clothes.
JAMES: Okay, so what happened next?
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire laughs a little.
DAVID: Everyone always wants to hear more by then. Just- give me one second.
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire waives over to a guard to ask for some water, the guard goes to get a plastic water bottle for Mr.Bellaire. The guard then waited for Mr.Bellaire to drink all of the water before taking the plastic bottle and throwing it into the prison’s recycling system.
DAVID: [shouts] OKAY!
NARRATOR: James flinches, not expecting Mr.Bellaire to shout like that.
DAVID: Where was I again?
JAMES: You just got done getting ready for work.
DAVID: Ah, yes. So I got into my truck and headed into the park right in time for the heat of the day and for most people to be on break for lunch. But even though normally I would have between 100 and 200 people come to get Ice Cream I only managed to get 25 people to buy Ice Cream. I was panicked at this moment. I didn’t know what to do, but then I remembered what Tom said, and I opened my wrist-phone and opened the contact for Harrison Haron. I decided to call him and, well, the call went like this…
(FLASHBACK SOUND)
FADE IN:
HARRISON: [sternly] What do you want?
DAVID: I’ve been told you could help with my Ice Cream Truck.
HARRISON: Ah… You must be David, David Bellaire. Yes, Mr.Bellaire I indeed can help you with your Ice Cream Truck. But what kind of help do you need?
DAVID: I need people to buy my Ice Cream, lots and lots of people. At this point, I’ll do anything- anything at all! Just please, help me get more people to buy my ice cream.
HARRISON: Yes, we can do that, here is what we can do for you, Mr.Bellaire. I am going to supply you with highly addictive drugs, and your job is to get these people addicted to these drugs quickly and effectively. Can you do that Mr.Bellaire?
DAVID: Yes- yes, I can do that.
HARRISON: Then I’ll get you your first shipment tonight.
(CALL ENDS, FLASHBACK SOUND AGAIN TO MOVE OUT)
FADE OUT:
DAVID: So that’s pretty much how it happened, after that call I began mixing the drugs into the ice cream before giving it to people, and by the time anyone started getting really addicted I was getting 2 thousand or more people per day to come to my Ice Cream Truck. But of course, I had lots of people who were confused about why so many people came to eat my ice cream. I didn’t want anyone to find out about what I was doing, so on the next shipment I asked them to give me some highly dangerous drugs, ones that caused people to die. Not instantly though, this one that I used caused people to have extreme cases of withdrawal so much so that about a week later they would kill themselves or get so addicted that they would start buying other drugs just to compensate, but most of them could never get their hands on anything as powerful as that stuff so they end up killing themselves. Ah, it was so much fun to watch it unfold. Just to make them feel a bit crazier I wouldn’t put any more drugs in their Ice Cream if they visited again to see if that’s where they got high in the first place.
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire began to laugh uncontrollably.
JAMES: So you sold Ice Cream to adults with drugs in it?
DAVID: And kids, oh so many kids.
JAMES: [shouting] You sold drug-ridden Ice Cream to CHILDREN?! What the hell were you thinking?!
DAVID: I was thinking about my family, sadly though, my wife, Bethany, didn’t seem all too fond of the fact that I was somehow the talk of the town all of the sudden, and began to slowly cast me out of my own home. Since I was using drugs in my Ice Cream I had to meet a quota each month which led to many days away from home which didn’t help the situation anymore. Eventually, I began giving the more addictive drugs to more people, basically, anyone I didn’t like, people who would come up to the truck with an attitude or were impatient, wouldn’t pay. Anything at all. It gave me such a feeling of power knowing that I controlled who died and all because they ate some Ice Cream, who would have thought!
JAMES: Okay, so obviously something happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be here now. Would you?
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire gave another smirk towards James before continuing.
DAVID: You know, you’ve made it the furthest out of everyone else.
JAMES: [angry] Just answer the damn question.
DAVID: Alright, alright. After selling thousands of pounds of drugs through my Ice Cream, eventually, somebody has got to find out, right? One day I sold Ice Cream to this one government official. He was really getting on my nerves. I had already hated him and his party, and I blamed him for my family leaving me as he passed acts that helped low-income families live in nice places with food to eat and school for the kids, all for free too. I wanted something like that so badly when we were all still together all those years ago- before all this happened. So a mix of blaming him and just disliking his party. And, on top of it all, he thought because he was a [mockingly] government figure [normal again] he would get his ice cream for free too. I had had enough. I gave him his ice cream- but this time, I put enough drugs into it to kill him in an hour’s time. So as he made his way back home after a lovely day at the park with Ice Cream in hand, he died. Oh, how lovely it was when I heard it live.
JAMES: So you killed a man just because you didn’t like him? And you did it so blatantly. Wow, you really are insane.
DAVID: But it was so [empowered] satisfying! Sadly though, at the same time, they decided to launch a full-scale investigation into what happened to him. They tested him and found a large number of drugs and considering how many people he had following him all day and saw him do nothing other than get Ice Cream, well, I’m pretty sure you can guess what happened next.
JAMES: They caught you. But that doesn’t really answer how you got here this place is for the worst of the worst, it wouldn’t make sense that they put you here for that one guy.
DAVID: You’re right, they did another investigation into my Ice Cream Truck and found it to be linked to many other deaths, I think by the end they said it was over 9 thousand. It was so satisfying to hear that all the people I gave the hard drugs to had died- they all deserved it. But they also found me being linked to more than 68 thousand children getting into drugs. Even I couldn’t believe that. I guess after 5 years you kind of get around.
JAMES: [frantic] That’s insane! How did you even manage to do something like that?! For so long! Without being noticed once?
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire laughed a little more. And James took a deep breath before asking one last question.
JAMES: Do you regret any of it? Losing your family, killing thousands, and being the cause of children getting into drugs?
DAVID: Not. A. Single. Bit.
JAMES: Well, I will make sure the court knows this. Thank you for your time, Mr.Bellaire.
NARRATOR: Mr.Bellaire gives one last smirk at James before James left the room.
NARRATOR: One month later on February 28th, 2096, Mr.Bellaire received a digital letter.
ROBOTIC READING OF THE COURT RULING: On the 26th of February, 2096, prisoner 2096095, David Bellaire’s release was denied- and has been sentenced to be executed immediately. Execution will be by a violent overdose of drugs.
NARRATOR: Three guards then came to get David and took him into a room where he ate his last meal. One. Last. Cone.