A Choice

         

A Choice

By Jay Holloway

"Tomorrow, get to the bus stop ON TIME!"
         "I will--God!"
         Chris sighed as he heaved his backpack over his shoulder while slamming his mom's car door. He then scurried off to the shelter of the front courtyard hoping that no one had noticed his arrival.
         At Hillhurst there were two kinds of people. The popular kids and the losers. It wasn't like in the movies and TV shows where the losers were nerdy geniuses who would eventually get their revenge by creating the next Facebook and marrying models. In reality the popular kids had everything: they were better looking, smarter, more athletic, richer, and of course, cooler. The losers were the exact opposite. There was no in between. No upside to being on the outside. Chris had no doubt which side he was on. But what Chris did have was some common sense. Last year he had been such a moron. He wore such raggedy ass old clothes, sported a dorky looking haircut from five years ago, and rode to school with his mommy. Not surprisingly he was the target of everyone's shit talking. In real life, bullies don't steal kids lunch money anymore (again that's only in the movies). In reality the cool kids just mercilessly mess with whoever looks and acts weirdest. That was the cornerstone of Chris' new strategy for this year: keeping a low profile. Chris would become so unremarkable as to fly under the radar of bullies. He had gotten a haircut from this decade, some new hole-free clothes (with the help of his new part-time job), and on days when he wasn't late, he had started riding the bus to school like a normal person. Now he beelined for the sparsely populated rear left corner of the courtyard. He crossed the informal "basketball court" where all of the cool kids hung out. He could already hear words like "pussy", "fag", and "bitch" being hurled at the dumb kids. Fortunately for Chris, they were serving as a convenient distraction as he made it to shelter. He turned his gaze to avoid becoming a target as a group of guys were making fun of some other kid with a lisp. Someone was bound to get their ass beaten in; better that it was some other poor fool's than his.
Luckily, it seemed that now was the ideal arrival time as people were already scattered around with their friends, fully immersed in their own conversations. But not THAT lucky. Just as Chris dropped his backpack to begin chatting with his friends, the bell rang.
         "Fuck me" Chris grumbled.
         "Too late" Kyle chuckled.
         Chris then swung his backpack back over his shoulder and trudged off to first period. History, with Mrs. Lawler. He hated that class. The subject was boring, the classmates were all douches, and Lawler was mean and looked like some kind of skeleton monster that pops up when the skin of a character bugs out on a video game.
         He dropped his bag next to his desk and wiped a thick film of sweat off his forehead. The spring humidity was a bitch. He slumped into his chair, and numbly pulled out his textbook, flipping to the page where his most recent worksheets had been stuffed. He then slouched to his right, his cheek propped upon one hand as Mrs. Lawler began her daily droning. Chris began doodling random symbols and patterns onto his notebook. He shifted periodically between sketching, daydreaming, and occasionally taking notes so as to appear attentive and not totally bomb the midterms.
         At one point Chris found himself gazing at Jennifer Bell, specifically Jennifer Bell's chest. Upon noticing the time he, quickly shifted his posture and looked back at his notes. The last thing he needed was to sport a boner once the bell rang.
         Just then the door creaked open. A hush fell over the class. John crept in quietly. Beads of sweat dropped from his black hair and copper face onto the floor.
         "He's wearing his coat still, what a dumbass!"
         "And look at his backpack! What the fuck does he need to carry around that's so big?"
         "Probably his sleeping bag-- you know, for when he's not under the fuckin bridge."
         The others continued to mercilessly mock and snicker until Lawler cleared her throat in irritation. The hurried whispers stopped, replaced by condescending smirks. John sat down in the far corner of the room to stare out the window. His gaze averted from all of the cool kids teasing him. Chris was never the type to mess with him, or anyone else. He certainly wasn't cool, but he had enough sense to stay off the radar and not paint a big target on his back. He knew that kids like John practically invited shit with stuff like, wearing all black, listening to emo music, and the like. Still he also knew that kids like Zach and Taylor wouldn't think twice about messing with anyone (including possibly himself) who wasn't as rich and popular as them. Chris didn't know John that well and certainly didn't want to, but he always felt a pang of sympathy for him. On the other hand, he always secretly worried that if there weren't kids like John at the bottom, to eat all the shit, people like him would be next. Nevertheless, it wasn't his problem so he always made sure to stay away from all of them.
         Suddenly the bell rang. And then the world slowed to a crawl. Just as the room and hallways began to bustle with students ambling to their next classes, John reached into his backpack and pulled out a long black object. Everyone froze in place for a moment. John then hoisted the astoundingly long weapon, looked one of the cool kids straight in their now stunned eyes and pulled the trigger.
         "Bababababab!" A loud rapid noise, like the sound of hundreds of tiny bells ringing ripped through the air. Chris immediately felt something warm sputter onto his face and clothes. The classroom was now drenched in red. John continued to methodically point his weapon at each of his former tormentors and cut them down in a matter of seconds. Everyone else now, finally beginning to register what was happening, started screaming in horror.
         Chris, without even thinking, joined the stampede for the door. The threshold was now a pulsating bulb of sweaty terrified bodies pushing, cloying and trampling their way to escape John's wrath. John then turned his fire indiscriminately at the crowded doorway.
         Chris, being so far to the back of the crowd, found it more easy to simply cower under a desk than to try to squeeze out the doorway. This turned to his benefit as, just then, John let out another stream of bullets in that direction. The pulsating mass of flesh was now stilled in a large bloody heap. John then turned his aim to the front of the room and silenced the shrieking Mrs. Lawler without remorse.
         Chris took this moment to dash for the door. Now that John's back was turned he barrelled through the still warm, sopping corpses without a moment's hesitation. He made it into the hallway. Here he could hear more intermittent screaming, followed by bullets ringing, as well as other indescribable bangs and thuds. Freed from the claustrophobic room, Chris ran as fast as his doughy body could carry him. He had never been much of an athlete, but he was now sprinting through the hallway at a breakneck pace. Where he was going, he had no idea. His mind was not clear. Where, what, when, who- those things didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was running, moving, escaping.
         At that moment Chris came to the end of the corridor. He saw a group students looking around desperately, fiendishly for an exit. Then the air cracked with the sound of bullets. Two of the students collapsed. The door to this room suddenly slammed shut. The remaining student began banging furiously on the door.
         "Let me in! I'm still out here!" The boy let out in a high pitched screech. "I won't hurt you! Oh fuck one of them's coming! Please let me in! I'm not one of them! Please I don't wanna die!" The door remained silent. Chris stood frozen. The student's tone quickly turned from horror to accusation and then despair.
         "Open the door you bastard! You're killing me! Please..." The student screamed through his sobs. He was now no longer twisting the knob or slamming into the door, but simply clawing at the surface of it while looking back frantically to his left. Chris now noticed a long shadow slowly approaching from that direction. Suddenly he saw another student dressed in a long trench coat hold up what he recognized to be some kind of SMG. The figure held it calmly to the face of the now palid student and let rip a quick stream of bullets. The terrified student's pleas were instantly replaced by a chilling silence as he collapsed in a bloody mess.
         Chris' panic then pushed him to bolt the opposite way down the corridor past all the now crimson spattered lockers. He turned right down a different corridor and stumbled through the door into the first classroom he could reach. There he saw a girl lying dead in a bloody pool. Her eyes staring upward lifelessly, her mouth still hanging open like a recently hooked fish one might see after it had finished flopping around on the deck. Chris noticed another survivor, a boy in the room with him. He was standing on the teacher's desk, apparently attempting to escape through the window. His right leg was already outside and he was maneuvering to find some sure footing. Just then Chris stepped on some trash. The sound of crumpling paper immediately revealed his presence. The panicked boy turned his head and saw Chris. He let out a terrified yelp and then his hand slipped. The boy stumbled out the window. A second later Chris heard a thud, reminding him that they were still on the second floor. Silence followed. The light from the window covered the carnage of the massacre in a haunting glow. Chris didn't know what to do, but apparently his fear of breaking his neck from a two-story drop still outweighed his fear of being gunned down. He wheeled around and darted back into the corridor.
         He ran feverishly in the opposite direction of the last gunman he had seen. He moved past his history class and now left down another corridor. All the while he could still hear screaming, gunfire, and banging. He bolted past another girl crawling on all fours, the trail of blood streaming from her leg leading Chris in a desperate search for escape. The ground ahead was littered bloody bodies, shards of glass and cylinders of brass. Chris could briefly make out his disheveled reflection in the shattered pieces covering the floor. Even in his dark clothes, he could still make out that he was covered in blood. The halls still smelled like a busy spring school morning, though now the mix of perspiration and deodorant was triggered by an effort to get out rather than in. Still Chris himself, felt no pain. In fact he felt nothing at all except an overriding drive to escape into the open.
         Suddenly he found a stairwell. He rushed down, nimbly skirting the numerous corpses that had already collapsed there. At the base of the stairs was a large puddle of blood. Light gleamed in from the doorways to the outside. The reflection from the sunlight onto the school's trophies illuminated the West entrance hall with an otherworldly golden glow. Crash!
         A fleeing boy tripped and slammed into one of the lockers. At that moment two gunmen emerged into view, one from either direction, coming after the boy. The halls met in an L-shape with the other boy, Chris, and the entrance on the opposite end (in that order). One of the gunmen closed in on the boy. He loomed over him staring down coldly into his fear stricken eyes. Chris didn't know this gunman's name, but he recognized him. He, like John was a moody weirdo loser who always wore an over-sized, stifling trenchcoat. Unlike John, however, Chris had briefly joined his own clique in mocking this trenchcoat guy in years past. Chris felt a stab of regret. Suddenly the boy leaped upon the trenchcoat guy. He tackled the other to the ground biting his face. The guy in the trencoat howled in pain. He threw his small pistol aside and pulled at the boy's hair with his newly freed hand.
         Chris stood motionless as the weapon landed at his feet, illuminated by the ethereal rays of judgment from the exit. Chris looked on in horror at the student in the trenchcoat wrestling with the other student. At that moment he knew what he had to do.