The thing about life is, you got to take it head on. That's what my mother always said anyways. She'd look me right in the eyes and say, "Boy, you can't run your entire life. You got to stand up for yourself, isn't that right?" Of course, as a young child I didn't quite understand what she meant when she told me to 'stand up for myself'. How could I? Six year olds don't quite understand how cruel the world can be.
But I do now.
I was never an outcast, I had friends, my family adored me, and I occasionally dated a pretty girl who caught my eye. That doesn't mean I was necessarily accepted though. I got in fights, sometimes I'd lose, and sometimes all I'd receive from the ordeals were bloody knuckles. Oftentimes, I couldn't even explain why the fight started in the first place. I'd often lie, I'd tell anyone who would listen that the other guy started it. He insulted my mother, pushed some kid in the hall, talked trash about a teacher. At first I came out looking the hero, but people eventually caught on that I got in too many fights for each one to be the other guy's fault. Truth is, I just really wanted to knock the other guy's teeth in.
My parents eventually sat me down to talk about responsibility. To myself, as well as to society. Yes, I needed to stand up for myself, but violence wasn't necessarily the answer. High school was going to end, I needed to grow up, become mature. I nodded along with them, agreeing that I had been in the wrong. My agreeance seemed to put them at peace, and my father gave me a tired smile as he patted my back and went to bed. My mother gave me a kiss atop my head, and followed suit. My parents might have thought they were getting through to me, but in reality I was cursing them as hypocrites. They wanted me to stand up for myself, and the only way to do that would be to assert myself as strong. Every time someone looked at me with judgement and amusement in their eyes, I needed to let them know who was in charge. I was sick of the games they played, sick of their smiles and gossip. I was sick of living.
Days passed. I paced back and forth across my room often, occasionally opening my sock drawer and rifling through to stare at what I had beneath all the cotton. I even took it out once, held it to my head with a shaking hand, and stood there for what felt like hours. Eventually my mother knocked on the door, and I hurried to bury it back under the mountains of socks. It wasn't until that moment though that I thought maybe, just maybe, I could assert my dominance once more. I could prove to everyone that I was strong, that I could play God.
YOU ARE READING
The Gunman
General Fiction*||COMPLETED||* A bang, a pop, an explosion. Whatever you choose to call it, made its way through Melbrough High School, changing lives in an instant. A gunman had entered the building, out to make a statement. This story follows many different per...
