i can't decide... // dystopian story

Prologue

A gentle pitter of droplets fell on Emrys' harshly stained cinnamon brown running shoes. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, and tried to resist the paranoia that would cause him to glance around to make sure he wasn't being followed.

"Just a normal day of school," he sighed in his toneless, smoky voice. "I guess I have gender studies first thing today."

As he approached the maroon double doors, he heard a loud thump behind him. When he turned around to face the noise, he noticed he was looking at a petite girl, her back to him.

She was on the concrete pathway, and was gripping a book with its pages ripped and lettering soaked with rain water. The girl seemed about 8 years of age, and looked severely disoriented.

"Are you alright?" Emrys asked, slowly trudging closer to the girl. The girl slowly turned around to face him, and revealed herself to have a feral look on her face and ghostly pale skin. Her soaked brown hair was torn out in chunks and messed up, with one eye torn straight out of its socket, blood seeping slowly from the hole it has left.

"Fuck," Emrys blurted out, frantically looking around for some sort of weapon. "If I'm around her much longer, I'll become infected too." Emrys searched around, and locked his sights on a metal rod.

He dashed towards it, gripping its rough texture in his two hands. He spun the rod around in his hands a few times, then ran at full speed towards the girl, swinging the rod at her skull with all his strength.

A loud bang sounded when the rod made impact with her skull, putting her out of her misery, and ending her short life. His knuckles were stinging and pale from the power of the blow, but at least he ended the cycle of insanity for her before she could have caused any damage to herself, or anyone else. Blood seeped from her lifeless corpse, mixing with the rain water and filing neatly into the cracks of the pathway, making its way to a sewage drain.

-- Two Years Earlier --

Fallon's phone lit up, displaying a recent local news headline. "A paramedic in Serenity Valley was brought to a hospital late Monday night, blah blah.. gone insane?" he read aloud, considering every aspect of the article. "Must be some more bullshit fake news or some overly exaggerated story. Hm." He sighed, tossing his phone back onto his ocean blue bed-sheets.

Fallon moved slowly into a comfortable position, which was laying down on his stomach, face shoved into his soft white pillow. Fallon, of course, like any normal 16 year old, didn't want to go to work, but he really didn't have much of a choice in the first place. He had to help pay for the bills since his mother was widowed, and he really wanted to get himself a new fancy watch for his upcoming birthday.

Overall, he was the least excited to see Emrys' face once more after having a 2 week long vacation time. Emrys, a 6'2" intimidating male had bulging muscles and a completely masculine figure. Fallon was a lanky 5'9" making Emrys tower over him.

A groan escaped from Fallon's mouth as he cautiously got out of bed, making sure not to step on any of his homework sheets or doodles that were scattered around his room. He reached his arm towards his tinted bedside table, grabbing hold of his circular glasses and putting them on.

After finding his favourite yellow knitted turtleneck sweater, he slipped it on, and reluctantly pinned his cashier name tag to the sweater. The name tag was a shade of orange, and read 'Hi! I'm Fallon, and I'm a manager at Nolan and Roger's book-store.' There was an obvious difference between the computer generated font and his own messy handwriting that he used to fill in the blanks. Yes, he was 16 and a manager at a book-store, the people who work there were very desperate for an intelligent person like Fallon to help get Nolan and Roger's more popular.