Dark Souls

2: toy guns

My head jerked up from the calc book and whipped around to everyone else in the room. A slow motion had appeared to get the better of me and its tantalising grip latched on steadily. The others, some of them clambered over tables when they realised what was happening: closing the blinds of the classroom window and throwing panicked looks at the teacher who was running her fingers through her hair, eyes wide. She motioned with her hands for all of us to calm down and to be quiet. It was if they'd been prepared. Or maybe they just watched the news. Heart-wrenchingly, shootings in schools weren't out of the ordinary.

Hurriedly, the students threw chairs out the way to climb under desks and out of the corner of my eye, I could see tears start to drip down Gemma's face as she crawled underneath the table. The pools swam like miniature streams down her shivering hands as they brushed up against her cheeks. My own palms were shaking when overturned and before I knew it, Mrs Jenkins was in front of my face, returning from shoving a chair up against the door. I stayed rooted in my seat, time clearing, slowing, twisting-

"What do you think you're doing?" She shouted in a whisper, putting two hands on my shoulders,"Get underneath the table now!"

So what if I didn't? Would I be the first one to be shot by the mentally infused madman who was storming our hallways?

I hated what I'd thought before it entered my head. Sliding off my chair, I obeyed the teacher's orders, curling up in a ball against the metal leg. One million thoughts were zooming through my mind, and I knew the same was happening to the shaking students around me.

Was this what it was like to be in a shooting? To curl up under a desk and wait for death to bash down the door. Was this how it worked? To be silent and still and to feel your bones shaking beneath your skin, your heart pounding in your chest, the black spots to begin to float behind your lids-

The worst thought: who had those previous shots hit? Whose mouths had the screams burned from?

Who was dead already?

"Can you hear that?"

A boy to my left, fear cold in the pit of his eyes, whispered out into the still air. We perked our ears and sure enough in a few seconds, we all heard it: soft taps growing louder and louder. Footsteps coming towards the door. I stared up at the wooden hinge protecting us from whoever was holding the black barrelled gun and blood on their hands.

Suddenly, the footsteps stopped and for a minute I thought we'd escaped.

Then the kicking began.

Three loud hits, boot to door is all it took before the frame rebounded on its hinges and split in half, flaking against the propped up chair. To my left and right, students started to tremble, shaking, wrapping their arms around themselves and whispering sweet nothings into their palms. Praying perhaps? I didn't know. I felt odd, out of place and relapsed into a beautiful numbness. Maybe it was my body preparing for my death.

That's sweet, I thought, how my cage of a self is trying to help me not to feel any pain. Why couldn't it of done this before, when I was undoubtedly lost in the fire?

Gemma was sobbing against her hand, the muffled moans becoming apparent in the small enclosed room. I realised then that I wasn't scared. I wasn't shaking and my palms were still.

In fact, I felt calm.

All I could do was watch the two black boots step over the broken door and slowly -casually- walk towards me.

***

Do you ever lie in bed late at night, when the world is alive and vivid around you and your veins are pulsing beneath the sheets and think about how you might leave? Of course, there's the healthy, safe option of growing old with the one you love and floating away peacefully-it's the way you wish everyone would go.

But there are the other possibilities: the unexpected events you never think of before you imagine yourself stroking the wrinkles on your husband's hand or puffing against what you say is the last cigarette you'll ever have because you know you have lung cancer. But you still love the burn on your lips and aroma it gives you because at seventy-four it reminds you of the boy who sat on his motorbike outside your house with the real killing machine slack between his fingers.

You keep smoking because it's what he tasted of, before he said that even though you broke his heart, he messed up your world before he knew he was yours.

I thought that would be me. But then, when I was curled underneath the table, I regretted even dreaming of it. I regretted every moment I'd ever encountered in my life. It was like re-watching everything in a few short seconds. A ten-hour movie with only one major event, yet even that wasn't something you'd replay for the drama. Pointless, boring, undeniably a waste of breath before I'd even set foot in the further future.

A little part of me wanted to get up from under the desk and ask the person to not shoot. I'd only ever kissed a measly boy in sixth grade. I had never fallen in love. I hadn't gone to New York- shit I'd never left the United States. I hadn't lived.

The bigger part of me gave in. Because that's just what I did back then; I gave up and let myself fall into the inevitable.

Before I could wallow in what I would never have or become, the boots stopped a metre before my desk. It looked like a man from the skinny black jeans and combat boots. My eyes went even wider when the desk was lifted up silently over my head and chucked against the wall. The crash didn't phase me.

What did were the electric blue eyes I stared up into, shadowed by a familiar black hood and haunting gaze. He motioned with a finger for me to stand up and I realised there was no gun. Not in his hand or pocket- a pounding above my left temple began to occur. Gingerly, I raised myself up and he walked closer, the darkness shadowing him, making it uncomfortably tempting to reach out and touch.

Finally, he was inches from my face and I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. I was irrationally tingling, burning under the skin but numbed with cold on the outside, my throat clattering against every inch of air I was sucking in. Throughout the whole time, the stranger stood staring, waiting -whatever he was doing- I kept thinking to myself which gulp of oxygen would be my last.

"Do you want this?"

The hiss was undeniably sweet and strangely reassuring; I was overcome with the question but frozen as he raised a bare hand and formed it into the shape of a gun. Slowly, he pointed the two fingers at my skull, a familiar small smile forming on his lips. I couldn't see the face of the boy before, but then when I focused further, I saw it all too clearly.

It took me everything not to scream. His face was covered in tangles of thick black webs-tattoo like structures, weaving in and out of each other throughout the pale skin. But his eyes were what wrenched me inwards and sucked out all the air. Electric blue gone, they were replaced with black round holes. Everything inside of me clenched together and pure terror made the sickening route through my body.

Black spots were beginning to pound at my vision.

The sound of another sudden voice brought me back to focus.

"Step away from the girl and put the gun down".

My eyes flitted to a young police officer standing behind the black-eyed boy, a gun to the back of his head. My teacher was ushering the students at the front of the classroom out through the door and they crawled forwards, letting their sobs be known to all of us.

I opened my mouth to shout to scream, to tell him that the boy had no weapon, that no one needed to shoot. But I didn't. I couldn't. All I did was stare in fear as the tattooed face began to fall in on itself, sparking and flaring inside the black cotton hood. The boy's lips flashed with a grin and for a second I was lifeless.

He pulled his thumb like a trigger at the same time the police officer shot at the back of his head.

Either way, I still fell at 100mph, fading against the sudden blackness.