Classroom X

day four: malice

Knowing you were going to die must be the worst kind of feeling in the world. James wasn't sure. Because everyone knew everyone had to die someday. They were all dying, whether it was in the span of a few days or a few decades. James had only ever encountered death in movies and video games, but those were different. The actors kept living. He could buy more lives in a game if he had enough coins. But reality wasn't like that. He'd already watched five of his classmates being killed right before his eyes when they hadn't deserved to die, when they weren't supposed to. He lived with fear. Because he knew someday, someday very soon, it might be his turn.

The voting session yesterday night had been a disaster, solely because Chloe Evans knew she was going to die, feared death, and tried to make a run for it. They'd only noticed Chloe had gone missing when it was time for the voting session. She had tried to hide, but unfortunately for her, the soldiers discovered exactly where she was hiding herself.

A pair of military hounds found her first. She'd climbed halfway up a tree for refuge. She was shivering violently when the soldiers caught up with their hounds, her ankles crossed beneath the branch she was sitting on, arms hugging the trunk of the tree in a death grip as she gazed down at the snarling hounds in terror. She was pale, and the sleeve of her shirt was ripped. Her hair was like straw spilling out of the chest of an old scarecrow, dirty and dishevelled. She was quarry and she had nowhere to run.

They dragged her down kicking and screaming, her hands scratched raw upon the rough bark of the tree from trying too hard to keep clinging. She was pleading, and threatening, and bawling her eyes out. And when she tried to run, Strauss shot her in the knees. He then made her walk on her wounded leg all the way back to the classroom as punishment for breaking the rules.

One of the soldiers had offered to carry her, because honestly she made a pitiful sight, and despite the mess she looked, she was still attractive. But she was allowed no help.

The voting was delayed by nearly an hour and by the end of it, Chloe had lost a lot of blood.

James thought the sight of her might perhaps stop many of his classmates from voting for her, but she still gleaned nineteen votes. Most of them just needed the smallest reason to justify voting for someone else. Chloe made a solid reason. She was a murderer. She deserved the bullet in her knee, the trepidation in her eyes, and death. They required her to deserve it.

When it was time for her to die Chloe had still tried to run. She was delirious and she kept saying please over and over again like a chant, as if the word really held magic like they were taught when they were kids. She begged the soldiers, told them she'd admired them all their lives. She hobbled towards her classmates hoping they would shield her from impending doom, but they peeled back from her like an ebbing tide and she was left alone.

She swayed on her feet and one of the soldiers stepped forward to catch her before she fell. James noticed how one of his hands wandered beneath her loose shirt while he supported her and he felt a little sick in his stomach. The soldier coaxed her back to the centre of the room, murmuring soothing words in her ear. Chloe calmed down a bit when she felt his arm around her, or maybe she'd just lost her will by then.

She just muttered a single, broken word before Strauss's bullet found its mark.

"Sorry."

Chloe Evans had not been the Angel of Death either.

"Hey, if you are not hungry I can eat that sandwich for you." Someone thumped his shoulder. "Hello? Are you in there? Knock knock."

James brought his focus back from the distant nothing he had been staring at to see the hand Dustin was waving before his face. Dustin had finished eating his sandwich already, and he was appraising James's breakfast with covetous eyes. He looked hungry, like he wanted to rip James's sandwich out of his hands and gobble it up in one go.