The Shape of Goats

Little Frozen Tears

The phone's battery was at 27% and it was just noon. Bored, Johanna looked around, only finding her classmates' heads down, staring at their phones. She was convinced that if they could, they would bury their faces inside the screen and never look back. The accountants were chatting to each other, ignoring their presence. She sighed.

They said that it would be a good experience to meet accountants and hear them talk about their jobs; they said that it was going to be a very useful when applying to universities; they said that it would be interesting.

They were full of lies.

Once again, she sighed.

The smell of hot chocolate was gradually escalating to everyone's noses. In seconds, the aroma was cut down by the smell of orange juice. Eventually, a battle began: sandwiches, chips, drinks and cakes were fighting to win everyone's attention.

Lunch was ready. It looked fancy.

Unsurprisingly, everyone stood up, and ran to get their lunch as quickly as they could. Johanna waited for the crowd to dissipate before grabbing a couple of sandwiches and a plate of chips and walked out of the room. It was getting way too loud for her liking.

The long corridor, with glassy walls and dark violet carpeted floor, led to more glassy rooms with dark violet carpeted floors. She sighed again.

At least the whole 'experience' was not pointless: the trip taught her something. She was much poorer than what she first thought.

She put on her headphones and looked outside the glassy walls. As she was getting lost in the music, she let her gaze wander in the cascade of snow outside and began eating her lunch.

Not far from where she was, there were a few buildings, bent, touched by red snow. Johanna, wondered how much more interesting it would have been to go there. She swallowed the food. Everything around that place looked soaked in blood. Nobody seemed to notice it, and if they did, they didn't care. How on earth did that happen?

A man popped out of one of the glassy rooms, walking in a weird fashion: it was something between walking, running and jumping. He was wearing a white complete suit, paired with a polka dots pink shirt and a beige tie. Everything he was wearing was way too large for his bony body.

He stopped near Johanna and stared outside.

"It's sad, don't you agree? Always crying..."

Johanna took off her headphones and looked at the man, confused.

He smiled and walked inside the room where she was supposed to be. She ignored him and went back to listening to music.

After munching the last chip and letting the song finish, she decided to return to the conference room. She opened the door, chucked the plate in the bin and took off her headphones.

It wasn't a heartbeat. It was many. Thousands, maybe millions of heartbeats in a second. Johanna did not know if that was physically possible; what she did know however, was that her heart had gone on a rampage.

In front of her, in a room filled with dead bodies, the man with the white suit was sitting on her chair, holding a gun. She held her chest, making sure she was still breathing fine.

"Can you see the tears?" the man walked to the walls and shot a hole in the glass. Few snowflakes flew inside, followed by the gelid wind. "This can't go on forever."

Hysterically, he ran to Johanna. His hands shaky. The gun shaky.

He roared something incomprehensible.

Johanna's body did not move. She simply closed her eyes, in a futile attempt to escape fate. She was not ready to meet death yet.

One boom. One shot.

He was on the ground, blood squirting out of his head. At the sight, Johanna's body moved too. The hard floor pressed against her body, as she stumbled backwards.

Her head was tilted to the side; her eyes looking straight at the snow falling carelessly. Overloaded with tears, her vision blurred. Her heart tense with sadness.

Was she ready? Was she ready to take his place?