wo Web sites. Two warnings. One brandishes a recipe for bombs; the other offers an antidote to violence.
''I kill who I don't like,'' boasts the creator of the first site. ''What I don't like I waste.'' The words accompany drawings of devils and daggers, pyres and pipe bombs, guns and gore. Throw in a few references to Adolf Hitler, some blood-curdling lyrics, and homage to shoot-'em-dead video games. In a screed devoted to games like Quake and Doom, the author screams, ''Good luck, marine, and don't forget, kill 'em all!!!! ''
On the second site, a parent worries. ''We are all waiting for the shot to ring out. We're all dreading that phone call that will follow the gunshot,'' the author writes. ''We are all bonded by our anxiety that tomorrow morning a potential killer will rise up to act out his fantasy using us as figures in a video game.''
The first Web site, with its ominous threats, is gone, stripped from the Internet Tuesday night by American Online. The profile of its creator, Eric D. Harris, was also taken down by AOL hours after Harris and classmate Dylan Klebold stormed through Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 13 before turning their guns on themselves.. The site's content has been preserved for investigators at the FBI.
The second Web site, masterminded by playwright William Mastrosimone and a few colleagues, is mercifully intact. It was launched three weeks ago as part of a grassroots effort to prevent another Springfield, Ore., or another Jonesboro, Ark., or another West Paducah, Ky. - and, now, another Littleton, Colo.
The site offers a gift for teenagers everywhere. That gift is a play about violence, to be performed exclusively by students in their own communities. It is available only on the Internet, and Mastrosimone has vowed that it will never be presented by professional theaters or be made into a film, despite lucrative offers. ''I want them to see their peers so that the potential killer will see the kid who sits next to him up on that stage,'' he said.
The play was inspired one night last year when one of Mastrosimone's three children came home from school in Enumclaw, Wash., and reported that one of the other students had scrawled an ominous message on the blackboard: ''I'm going to kill everyone in this class. And the teacher too.''
The playwright couldn't sleep that night. He paced. His mind raced. And he came up with the idea for the play ''Bang Bang You're Dead.''
''There is not an adult in the country who knows what to do about this, but the kids do,'' said Mastrosimone during a phone interview from New York. ''The power lies in the kids. The baby boomers are a failure generation. The government doesn't have a clue. Our kids are killing each other, and as a parent, I'm going out of my mind. As I thought about it, in a lightning flash, I realized these kids need a way to talk to each other. What better way than the tool of theater?''
The play, which can be performed on a bare stage with minimal props, spotlights an adolescent who killed his parents and five of his peers. It opens on his first night in jail, where he is haunted by the spec ters of the victims, who ask unrelentingly, ''Why me?'' Their voices won't be silenced: ''Just five bullets wounded hundreds.'' ''Thousands.'' ''Wounds that bleed.'' ''Wounds that weep.'' ''Wounds that never heal.''
Mastrosimone took the idea to Michael Fisher, theater director at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., where a 15-year-old gunman killed two students last May. ''I was guarded at first,'' Fisher recalled. ''The media loves to put everyone's pain on display, and we weren't going to be parading children around for the media.'' But Fisher was an admirer of Mastrosimone's work, most notably his play ''Extremities.'' And the students supported the idea. ''They all wanted to talk about it; it touched a nerve,'' Fisher said.
Mastrosimone originally wanted to publish the play the old-fashioned way (paper and ink) and deliver it to every high school in the country. But that changed. ''If I believe my premise, that the power lies with the kids and not the adults, I had to put it out on the Internet,'' he said. ''And this is coming from a guy who's been using a computer for four months.''
So it's out there in cyberspace, along with hate sites like the one Harris posted. ''Technology doesn't make us better,'' Mastrosimone said. ''It magnifies what's good in us, and it magnifies what's bad in us.''
Since Thurston High School debuted the play earlier this month, scores of other productions have been launched nationwide. And Mastrosimone is looking for funding to expand the site to include chat for teenagers about violence.
But for now, the play's the thing. It ends with the gunman surrounded by the victims as they list the things they miss and the things they'll never get to do. Ordinary things, teen things, like flirting or swimming at midnight, the sort of things now being reported as pastimes of the slain students in Littleton.
Harris's site held a brash warning: ''I kill who I don't like.'' The on-line play, however, shows the gunman after the act. ''I didn't know it would be forever,'' he says. ''I thought it was `bang bang you're dead' again. I thought I could hit the reset button and start over. Why can't I have another chance?''
The play can be found at www.bangbangyouredead.com. Send e-mail to [email protected].
