[ WP ] You are legally allowed to commit murder once , but you must fill out the proper paperwork and your proposed victim will be notified of your intentions

It wasn ’ t the type of letter you expected to get. It always seemed like something that happened to somebody else, karma finally and definitively reaching into someone ’ s life to set things right. I didn ’ t know anyone personally who had received one, but you always hear the stories – so-and-so ’ s second cousin, a guy who worked with my father, the one-upper claiming his father sent one to the guy he worked for. With the way the papers talked about it, you could never be sure if they were more or less popular than people thought they would be. 
 
 I knew a few of the basics – you found out everything about the sender. You got a set of mug shots. Front, profile, height, weight, and age. Full name and known aliases. Office where they went to submit their application, and the most important detail of all: the date the notice took effect. That was the real kicker there, since I had a bad habit of never opening my mail. The listed date was March 24: today was the 27th. 
 
 There exists a category of butt-puckering feelings that seemed to underline, bold and italicize serious “ holy shit ” moments. The minor chills that accompany the debut of an awesome movie trailer would be the shallowest end of that spectrum. A more serious “ what am I thinking ” moment of reflection that comes before your first skydive would be a tick or two above average. The full-on “ oh my fucking God! ” that comes just before a 200km/h street racing accident was my previous high water mark. 
 
 None of those had anything on that dropping, falling, fainting feeling that accompanied the moment I found out that not only was I fair game, but at any point in the previous three days one John S. Ramos could have murdered me at any time, legally. 
 
 At this point of the story I ’ d like to pretend I was as calm and collected as a certain debonair super spy, that I finished my drink in a gulp and brought a ludicrously sized handgun out of some secret pocket on my coat, chambering a round before seducing the nearest woman, but I ’ m not a great liar. I shut all the blinds, locked my doors, pushed my couch up against the front door and then dove into my bedroom closet. 
 
 There in the dark, I remembered that a murder notice went both ways. You sent one and your intended victim got the same privilege on you that you got on them. There in the dark, after the hours of intense panic subsided, I started putting together a plan. John S. Ramos wasn ’ t going to kill me: I would kill him. 
 
 COMING NEXT FALL 
 An ordinary man, in an ordinary life, gets an extraordinary letter that will change him, or end him, forever 
 
 lead in to your next summer blockbuster, like the Purge except it wo n't suck
