What She Left

chapter six

not dedicated to kinkiestslut

nine sixteen a.m., march fifteenth, two thousand and seventeen

Jack knows what it feels like to be afraid. He's used to the feeling of adrenaline and terror mixing as they run through his veins. But this is different.

Running down a familiar school hallway with dozens of other kids and adults with bullet sounds coming from a direction he can't decipher and the shrieks of terrified students the only things he can hear, Jack knows it is different. This is mind-numbing; he's been afraid, but never faced death like this, knowing that any second that little piece of metal could find its way into his brain or his chest and his heart and lungs and mind would shut down and he'd be a number on a chart, a body count, that's all he'd ever be. He wants more.

There's noise behind him now but he can't feel it anymore. Just run, just run, he repeats to himself over and over and over again.

     He slams full force into a boy around his own age but much shorter, sending the boy sprawling onto the cold tile. "What the hell?" the words leave their mouth at the same time, one out of shock and anger and one out of fear.

    People are screaming and this time Jack can hear it very, very clearly. The back door is locked and secured by heavy chains. They really thought this through. This is not spontaneous, not impulsive. It is planned; and very well, too.

     He's disoriented now. Everything inside him screams to run towards the front door, but something tells him that wouldn't work. Even so, he knows it's his only option. Others are realizing the same thing, too, as they turn away from the door they've been futilely trying to open and running back the way they came.

    Jack's only taken three steps when he senses, rather then sees, the door swing open. The hair on the back of his neck stands straight up; the door was opened from the outside.

    Click, click.

     He turns so slowly it feels like he's not even moving. Surrounded by people too afraid to run, the shooter has complete control. One step, you're dead. The gun is trained on Jack.

     "Against the wall." The order comes clear and low, a voice distinctly feminine despite being low and husky. Some take pause at the sound of her voice, but within seconds every student is pressed against the opposite wall, their slippery palms reaching behind them for something to grasp onto.

     The first girl the shooter approaches is right in the center of the line, her face ashen and freckled. When the black-covered figure moves, she flinches like she's been stung.

      The black clad arm slams the gun barrel into her forehead so hard everyone hears the crack loud and clear; somewhere down the line to my right, someone's started crying. The freckled girl is crying, too, tears rolling off her cheeks like they were rose petals. Jack's chest is heaving. I can't see another person killed. Please.

     It's too late and the gunshot ricochets off every wall, the blood and brains halfway up the white concrete walls. The girl's body stays still for a moment, as if it were hoping it was alright. Then she collapses.

    There's at least sixty students in this line; Jack realized with a growing horror that the police might not make it in time. All of these people could be dead. He could be dead, within minutes, seconds, even. It's so easy.

    The boy who the shooter moves to next is shaking. He looks familiar, but it takes a second for Jack to place those eyes. Brigid's. This is her brother.

     This time, the pistol is pressed against his neck firmly enough to make a mark. The boy is gritting his teeth, waiting, waiting, hoping, please don't let me be like her, let me be the one who lived. When the gun goes off again, Jack's never seen so much blood pouring from one place on someone's body.

     The shooter backs away. A few people sag slightly, afraid to go too far and make themselves noticeable. Don't pick me, don't choose me, please.

    The gun is raised. It's moving in the shooter's hand. Firing, Jack realizes, but all he can thing about is watching that girl's head get blown off and everything is silent, so silent, too silent. One, two. He retches as quietly as possible. Three, four. A hole where her face had been. Five, six. He can't hear the shots but he can feel them through the floor. Seven, eight. The gun freezes in her hand.

     Ten people are dead. The shooter's running and Jack is confused; aren't they supposed to be the ones running away? But no, that girl dressed from head to toe in black and holding the deadly weapon is running the opposite direction. She doesn't waste time, though; as she runs, she sends bullets off walls and into people and anywhere she can get them.

     Jack's mind is numb, but his body is not, and when the bullet hits his shoulder, he feels it.

     He's been crying this whole time and he never realized it. The pain dissolves fast, but he can't register in his brain that he's been shot. There's a bullet sitting somewhere in his body and he can't feel it and blood is squirting and gushing out of the neat bullethole onto his gray shirt.

     Then he sees the girl, screaming senselessly over the body of the boy with the matching eyes and there's another girl with him, Mei, and he can suddenly feel everything so acutely that he wishes he were dead. Maybe he would die and still be nothing, just another name and another number and another casualty but he wouldn't be the one to worry about because he'd be dead and the world wouldn't exist anymore for him.

     Jack presses on the hole in his shoulder with his thumb so firmly that he hisses with pain. No one's watching out for him here; everyone's dead or gone or on their way to one of those.

     The girl with the matching eyes has her face buried into Mei's shoulder, her body violently racking and jerking with sobs. Turning back to her dead brother, she reaches up to push her hair behind her shoulder, and then Jack watch the bullet enter her gut.