Hallucinatory Tribulation Vol. 1 [Anthology]

Black and White

Your whole life you're told what is good and what is bad. Don't lie, it's wrong; don't steal, only bad people steal. Don't say anything if it's not pleasant. They all seem to have the answer on what makes a person honorable or what traits mean they are evil. At what point was this all decided? and who, in fact, decided it? God? a king? a group of people with a similar mindset? More importantly, what proves that they are right? Are we just going to go on what the majority of people seem to think is right and wrong? I suppose so. In the end, most seem to boil it down to things being okay as long as no one is getting hurt. But it can't be that simple...

Can it?

I tried to do what I was told...uphold the law...help people out... When did it come to this? When did I become a criminal, despised by all who had heard my name, seen my face? How was I the evil one? What had I done so wrong? How could they not see my intentions and instead judge me simply on the blanket statements of good and bad?

As I stare down at the plate in front of me, poking at the mashed potatoes and steak I had requested, I feel the need to send this prayer out...to anyone and everyone who would listen. I'm not asking you to save me. In a matter of minutes, I'll march down that eerie hallway that leads to my death. I'll sit in that chair and look through that glass at the people who have gathered to see my murder. 

I'll take that needle in my arm and let the poison soak into me...

No, I don't want you to save my life; I just want you to make me understand...

Listen to my story, look me dead in the eye...and tell me I was wrong.

I had gone to school like any other day. I sat through my classes, I talked to my friends. It was nice or at the very least, usual...or so I thought. There was no hint that it would be the start of the end of my life and all because some kid with a gun decided that he was going to kill everyone in the cafeteria at lunch. 

I didn't know him. I didn't even recognize him. It wasn't until after the fact when the events hit the papers that people came forward with stories describing him as a strange guy who always stuck to himself. They said he had only, maybe, a couple of people he ever said a word to besides the trio of students that were told to have picked on him. That's how they spun it anyway. On the other hand, his family claimed he was relentlessly bullied. 

It was all kind of sticky, especially seeing that this family of his were also rumored to consist of an alcoholic mother and an aunt and uncle who never spent time with him. Scouring through his phone and social media accounts, the police never found anything out of the ordinary except that all his friends seemed to be cyber. There were those who mourned him, saying that because he was mistreated, misunderstood, neglected...that he snapped, murdering fifteen other kids that day...including several of my closest friends.

Everyone else labeled him evil, ruthless, pathetic...inexcusable. I didn't disagree. Not at all...but these days? I wonder...what was the real story? His story? Why? I sometimes found it hard to believe that it could be as simple as 'I'll make those bastards pay for what they did' especially when I knew absolutely that Tom, the guy I had known since we were in daycare, who always went out of his way to help everybody and never failed to be the first to give me my birthday present even if it meant knocking on my window at midnight, had ever wronged the boy that killed him.

It devastated me. It still devastates me. He, whose name I can't even bring myself to acknowledge, ruined so many lives that day. Not just the ones he had taken, but those he left behind...like me. I never got over it. Even now, horrible memories of that experience plagued my mind, though over the years, in different and ever-accumulating ways. Back then, after I had gotten over the shock and my brain fully grasped that it wasn't some crazy realistic dream, I had been so full of rage.