Call Out

So that's curtains.

The firearm, a pistol, has ten rounds, two bullets for each head.

Give up, Johnathan will not listen, he already has blood on his hands.

The bridge has been crossed, first Catherine, what was wrong with four more?

Johnathan gripped his finger tightly against the trigger, a small puff of smoke released from the slider mechanism burning the air with bitter propellant — the body recoiled from the brunt force of a shot, rivulets scattered the floor, dabbling it in crimson. Paralysed, I stumbled forward with an unrecoverable gaping hole, taking a crumbling step, before slumping head first onto the floor in a heavy thud. At least it was painless.

   I fidgeted in my seat, noting to myself that it was this scene, the climax of the documentative film. Uncomfortably but self-consciously, I snapped my fingers to refill my cola and took a long-winded sip from the paper straw. The straw was quickly eviscerated, the paper completely nibbled away; it didn't taste as sweet as I would have wanted it to. My eyes were now glued to the theatre's screen, watching as my body, my corpse seeped from the head, a wound leaking a puddle of blood seeped into the carpet, forming around the departed vessel. Wow, this acting is really good, I rolled my eyes satirically, speaking aloud my thoughts. No one minded it even if I screamed these words out loud till my throat turned hoarse, because even in this massive cinema capable of holding up to a few hundred people, I was still by myself.

   Cartridge, ejected and used. The calibre had pierced one of the surveillance screens, outlining the shattered cracks that branched off on the contour of the glass. The trajectory of gunfire had distorted the display, where there were once colours here now uniform strips of varying black and white of different sizes occupying the area between the fracture; blurring.

   Fern didn't know what to do, he was fractured and distorted in confusion. He stood there with Susana at his side, who had just escaped the brunt of a bullet through her cortex. The periphery he had witnessed was the downfall of someone he barely knew, Harrison. Fern didn't know if he was supposed to fight back. To mourn. To feel betrayed. To put moral debates aside when someone was willing to shoot him down. He truly didn't know.

   So he ran instead. Instinctually, that was all that he could really do, in a scenario where one person has a weapon and the other doesn't, he was the latter, the one holding the immediate loss. Out, out of the monitor room, through the grey hallway and stumbling through the makeshift rustic corridor, the backdrop was daggers to Fern's cowardice.

   "Oi! Get back in there," Susana slammed the door behind the surveillance room shut, sealing their exit. She wasn't going to let him just retreat, if they were dying, it was together.

   Fern by now was huddled against the wall in acceptance to his resting place, face buried into his knees and on the verge of tears, "W-what do you want?" in complete vanquishment, Fern spoke the truth, "We're all going to die anyways."

   "Exactly."

   "..."

   A plot was brewing with each stride of Susana until she stood barely centimetres away from the defeated boy. She paused and thought about her succeeding actions, this could go either way. With a striking kick, she violently punts Fern until his inimical mindset completely deteriorates. For this scheme to work, she would need another person. Hah, pain is actually the best teacher.

   "Hey, we're not down yet. We have to die trying, got it? So let's jump Johnathan."

The door shut behind launched the two of them into a frenzy as they were bound to eventually clash. Keith, in what could only be described as a manifestation of rage, submits to an instinct of withstanding his own death, dashing forward and disarming the gun out of Johnathan's hand. The gun clattered onto the cold floor and he struck Johnathan with haste — his burden, his suspicion of other innocent players. Once, twice and thrice until he made sure the face of her murderer was for sure battered and bruised, face stained with purple lumps. His breath felt heavier with each piercing thrust; for now, he could still ignore it. Catherine's white headband gripped onto his neck, digging into his skin and pressed down like molten steel, marking a kind of pain that felt right — correct.