sleepy violin

Name: Travis

Age: 16

Sex: Male

So comes the day of the end of the world. Two enemy schools forced into one territory. Our territory. They'll infiltrate our classrooms and crawl around our hallways like cockroaches from Hell. Stupid kids. Why did their school shut down, anyways?

Uninterested in the dodgeball game, I sat out. Staring. At nothing. So boring. A girl from the other school, who obviously had the same idea as me, was sitting just barely on the edge of my peripheral vision. I turned my head. She's kinda cute... She caught me staring and I looked away (rather suspicious, she probably thought). She stood up and walked over to me. She shied her hand slowly towards me (to strike me?) and every nerve in my body tensed. "Hi!" she insisted, "my name's Claire." I looked at her hand, still outstretched, and shook it slightly. She looked about 16, too. "I wanted to play in the dodgeball game, but the original students of this school keep cheating. I expected better."

I offered to referee. Nobody who knew me would object. Any opposition would be crushed immediately and ruthlessly. All accepted, spare a few unknowledgeable from the other school. I would deal with them later.

Of course, I cheated. I tipped the table to Claire's side, denying the fact that she did, in fact, get hit with the ball. Still no opposition.

Later that day I saw her laying on the bleachers outside. She'd done something different with her makeup, and it looked almost clownish. Half of her blush was a thick gold, and the other half a purple smear. I smirked. She was trying to support her new school, I supposed. And it did look somewhat cute on her. I sat beside her and looked down. Oh she is so cute! I couldn't resist. I squeezed her cheeks together between the palms of my hands and laughed. She stuck out her tongue and rolled over to draw in the dirt with her finger. Even her pictures were cute. She was almost like a child.

"Now this is you," she told me, finishing her drawing of a teddy bear. She drew her own unique creation and declared, "This is me." I smiled.

A boy hopped down the bleachers, almost falling near the bottom. He hit Claire in the back of the head with his backpack and started calling names. How embarrassing. I was silently enraged. "Andee!" she whined after him, rubbing her head. The pitiful look on her face demanded a reaction out of me. "I'll kill him," I said plainly. And I always held true to my threats.

I began chasing him. Not even his bike could outspeed me. "Hey you!" I said, almost delighted, "You'd never guess what my hobbies are?!" He pedaled faster. I ran a bit faster, still daunting, "I love killing people, shooting people, and gouging eyes out of bunnies!" I threw the latter threat in there for a twist. I had never gouged out an innocent bunny's eyes. "Oh yeah," I warned, my voice deepening a bit and my breath beginning to run a bit short, "I love running, too. I won first place in track and I can outrun any sort of bike or skateboard!" Okay, that wasn't a total lie.

I was slowly losing him. Damn. He's pretty fast. He ran into an oncoming raider team. They were practicing. He was stuck. Haha. I continued running after him. He got off his bike and walked it over this narrow ledge on the edge of a piece of land where they were building a house. It was a good nine foot drop below him. I hope he falls and dies. Stupid boy. The raider team right flanked right before I made it to the ledge and blocked my path. Why in the hell were they walking in front of that specific ledge? I swear. Some people make it an effort to make my life harder than it has to be. I jumped the fence.

I had every intention of killing that boy on the spot. Running him over a few times with his bike then throwing him off that cliff. If he survived all that, then so be it. My lucky day, I see Francesco. He happens to know how violent I can be in the absence of a quick, efficient answer. "Where is he?" I demanded. He swallowed and pointed behind a fence. "Andee!" I said viciously and ran to the place I'd been directed to. I stopped.

Andee was sitting in a lawn chair with his back turned to me. A violin raised. He began playing. I stumbled into the shadow of a dogwood tree and reached out for him. Oh I was gonna kill him. Sleepiness overcame me. The music was so... I collapsed on the pavement and a petal brushed my cheek.

I awoke eventually. I was still on the pavement, nobody was around me. I stood up, looked around somewhat awkwardly, dusted the blossom petals from my back, and began walking home. I caught a glimpse of Andee's face, peering from behind the corner of the fence. I could only wonder if he was checking to see if I was still alive or checking to see if maybe by some lucky chance, I had died. He stalked me all the way to my house. "You can stop following me now," I grunted.

"Sorry," he said, coming out from the shadows of the dusk in which he hid. "I just wanted to make sure that you had made it home safely. I'm sorry if I offended you earlier. But Claire's my little sister. It's just something that siblings do. Try not to react so violently next time," then he disappeared.

What was that earlier? What did he do to me? I had never been defeated so easily before. And by music... I smiled. He wanted to make sure I was okay, how cute. I looked down to my right shoulder and flicked off the stink bug.