When good people do violently bad things, one seeks answers, drawing from one's repertoire of theories and concepts that have served him/her well. Underlying one's attempts to understand violent behavior is the belief that one can impose sense on seemingly insensible actions. Sometimes, in the face of inexplicable events, one is left to try to reconstruct a narrative that, while not providing a satisfactory explanation of motive or state of mind of the perpetrator, at least imposes a sense-making format to give one a more comfortable sense of closure. Drawing from Nietzsche, Orwell, symbolic interactionism, and existential literature, the author constructs a narrative account that attempts to make sense of the Valentine's Day shootings at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in which six students died, at least 18 were injured, and 25,000 members of a campus community were forever scarred. (Contains 1 footnote.)