The fog of madness, it seems, descends not only upon the docks of London but reaches even the distant reaches of Perm. There, a man of some seventy-two years—a pensioner who ought to have spent his twilight hours in quiet contemplation—decided instead to wage a wretched war against the most innocent of souls: the children of a local nursery.

On a Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of June, this elderly scoundrel took up his pneumatic weapon. With a heart hardened or a mind shattered, he unleashed a volley of shots, the pellets whistling through the air to shatter the windows of the sanctuary where the little ones play. Imagine the terror! The sudden crash of glass, the screams of children, and the bewildered looks of the matrons.

But the law, though slow, is inevitable. The constabulary closed in, and the weapon was seized—plucked from the old man's grip like a stolen trinket from a pickpocket.

Now, the court has spoken. The magistrate, showing a mercy perhaps undue, has spared the wretch the damp walls of a dungeon for the time being. He is confined to his own quarters—a domestic arrest, as they call it—where he shall rot in his own solitude for at least two months. The court noted his advanced age and his failing health, concluding that since the 'instruments of his malice' had been confiscated, he posed no further threat to the public peace.

Yet, the shackles are not merely iron. The old rogue is forbidden from the post and the electric wires of the internet; he is cut off from the world, a prisoner in a gilded cage of his own making. The decree is signed, the ink is wet, and the city breathes a sigh of relief, knowing the mad marksman is finally silenced.