Wants, Tightrope, Spilt Milk

Part Four #55: MONDAY, MARCH 23RD 2009: MORNING

... I want to be remembered ...

Kasper woke first. He lay in bed for a while before rising and heading to the bathroom for a shower and a shave. He didn't linger over his appearance, nor do anything outside of his normal routine aside from perhaps staying in the shower a minute or two longer than normal. It felt like any other day apart from the tension in his stomach and the feeling that something was rushing at him that he could no longer avoid.

He woke Anna, who was exhausted after their work the night before. Though she didn't have to go to the school for an hour or so after him, he wanted to go over their plans one more time and ensure that she was as committed as she had been previously. So much rested upon her involvement now that he was worried lest fear get the better of her and he become the real victim of the day's events. She turned over to sink back into sleep and he felt a momentary anger, a desire to grab and shake her awake. Instead he simply stood there and waited till finally she turned over again and sluggishly climbed out of bed to go to the bathroom without even a glance in his direction.

He dressed casually, the clothes that Anna had prepared for him the night before now folded into a small bag. He had decided at the last minute to be a bit more cautious in his attrite until the morning's first, possibly messy, tasks were taken care of. The last thing he wanted after all was to be dashed in blood prior to kick off.

He went to his small kitchen as the shower began again. The rest of the building was quiet and he decided to put some music on, in part as a preparation tool, yet also as a means of removing him from his thoughts. Little things would come to him now and then, memories of things he once took for granted yet would never do again, such was the certainty of his fate. He wanted to avoid such nostalgia, recognising it as both useless and dangerous. We all come across times of change and, glossing over what once was and will never be again, will not help us make them reality again, nor will it give our memories more dimensions than the two we already have: the one that's now and the one that's then.

For breakfast he had Homebrand tropical muesli. He ate it every morning and this was to be no different. There was no need to do anything differently, for this was not to be a different day despite all he had planned. It was as normal as any other, differing only in what he was to do, or so he reasoned to himself. Obsessed as he was with being an incantation of normalcy, a picture of the perfect citizen, he couldn't deviate from his routine for fear that when they traced his actions later they may interpret some slight variation as a sign that he was abnormal and thus that his actions could be explained by instability. He had to appear normal, both now and when they later searched his apartment. Normalcy was one of his weapons, one of his tools for reaching and converting people.

As he ate his breakfast he looked over the map of the school and the short schedule he had drawn up for Anna. He looked at the parts he knew were fabricated, the actions that he had added to appease her and so ones that he had no intention of carrying out. She had believed all he had explained, but he had long known that such a plan, though once his vision, was impractical. He would never be able to achieve so much before they stopped him. To thus allow Anna to hunt and punish all those who had done her wrong was both trivial and dangerous. This, of course, he couldn't tell her now, deciding instead to leave it till after the hall. That was one thing he had to do, albeit in a differing form to the spectacle he had once envisioned. Once upon a time he had dreamt of mining the whole school, laying out booby traps and so on but the logistics and complexities of bomb making had forced him to reduce his plans. He had thus worked hard and long on a list of possible alternatives. Now finally he had one. It was smaller, more practical and achievable, yet it was enough: they would still stand up and take notice.

He had finished his breakfast and washed his bowland spoon before he made himself a cup of tea, allowing himself, contrary tohis routine, a dash of sugar. The shower had stopped and yet he knew that Annawould still be in the bathroom for another ten minutes. He sat down at thetable again and peered once more over the maps, his thoughts only skimming thesurface of his plans as he avoided thinking about his own death.