Thomas’ boots slap-slap-clump against the tiles. His deep laughter as he climbed higher up the steps, racing me to class.
The rustling of the leather jacket I wore and the smell of cigarette smoke lingering on my clothes.
The creak of the classroom door. The look-through glass smudged with grit and dirt.
Mrs. Turner’s smile. Her big blue eyes. Long lashes, blinked, and smiled.
Ticking of the classroom clock above her desk. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Blink and smile.
Dusty white chalk tickling the back of my throat.
My girlfriend, Lizbeth, flipping the pages of a book. Paper against paper. Pencil twirled around a brown lock of hair.
Then, Thomas was holding a gun, standing in front of the door, blocking the exit. Smiling.
Shooting.
And smiling.
I could still feel the fire in my legs where the bullets ripped through my flesh. “So you don’t run, mate. I need you to watch the show.”
The flashback so real, my scars actually ached. Squeezing my eyes closed, I could feel the icy breeze drifting in through the abandoned buildings broken windows, yet I felt so much more. The memories so vivid, the years between then and now blurred, and disappeared completely.
Thomas was standing in front of Lizbeth, taunting her… “Do you believe in God…Lizbeth?”
All she could do was cry and nod her head.
“Lizbeth. Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy. You can’t bloody be surprised by this little turn of events, could you? I believe I told you just this morning that I could kill you.”
Her tears poured down faster. She reached out to grab my hand and squeezed it tightly. I froze, God forgive me, I froze. I could do nothing to save her, say nothing to save her. I. Just. Froze.
We both flinched as Thomas threw something behind us, and the hot fiery blast of a pipe bomb exploded under the computer desks. The bloody thing was made out of sparklers and PVC fencing tubes. Tall flames devoured the books on the shelves, and floated pages of burning papers across the classroom. The sound of my heart beating, so loud and fast, so very loud and fast.
As I lay there, legs bleeding, not having the courage even to stand, I watched him shoot every bloody one of those kids. Mrs. Turner even dove in front of us, and I will never forget what the face of a hero looks like. Real heroes don’t wear capes. They are just normal everyday people, like teachers, who step into the path of danger without a second thought to help someone else. She died for Lizbeth and me that day. Died trying to save us.
She didn’t save Lizbeth though. Lizbeth lay dead on the ground, before Mrs. Turner’s crumpled body landed on her.
Then the searing explosion of fire tore through my chest. Deep red blood spread across my shirt, and I touched my hand to it. I never knew why I did. I think it was a natural reflex, feeling the warmth of my own life on my fingertips.
His face slammed into mine as he jammed the barrel of one of his guns under his chin. The guilt and hate. “You should have stopped me, mate. This is all your fault.” The warmth of the wet mess after he pulled the trigger.
All my friends. Dead.
He killed them all, as I lay there bleeding out on the classroom floor.
Now they’re all just headstones.
I never got over what happened that day. Nightmares, flashbacks, feelings of numbness and anxiety. I lived through something that other people only read about, watch movies about. They could only imagine it. I lived it. The only person who ever understood me since that day was Samantha.
I sat down heavily on the cold ground where the bodies of my dead friends once fell. My heart ached for the woman who had helped me begin to heal. Sam was the only person that understood the chaos of my mind, one I hardly understood myself. She challenged me on everything and helped me see other ways of thinking and feeling things. She made me human again.
I sat and listened as the corroding walls spoke to me in soft chalky whispers, and singsong cadence of dripping water. Reminiscing with me about our youth. We’re the same inside, it said, towering over me. It would be so easy to stay here with me, it cooed.
No. Fuck you, Thomas.
And I know where your mind is going right now.
You want a reason why he did what he did, don’t you?
Well, SO DO FUCKING I!
So do all the parents of all the innocent children who have ever been gunned down in schools where they were supposed to be safe. There is no answer good enough. There will never be one good enough, or one to help you understand.
So much bloody time gets wasted trying to find exact tangible reasons for such violent behavior, desperate to find something to blame. Yes, all the blame and reasons in a pretty little wrapped up box, complete with a yellow crime scene ribbon that warns: DO NOT OPEN. If it were only so easy, yeah?
Was it because of bullying?
Did he play violent video games?
Could it have been that horrible music he listened to?
You want to know the bloody reason? It was because of all of us. Of me, of his parents, our friends, and teachers. Every-bloody-one of us. Thomas couldn’t cope with everyday shit. He was always frustrated and always pissed. He would walk to school in the morning and laugh, “Let’s see who gets to live or die today.” Of course, he’d go off on the girls who would ignore him. He was popular with some girls, but others, the ones who rejected him, he’d throw a tantrum like a bloody toddler, taunt them – humiliate them. He was quiet and sad, and so mis-fucking-understood.
Before school that morning, in the front seat of his car, Thomas recorded a video message, leaving the tape and YEARS worth of journals in an open box. The video began with: “I can’t bloody wait until I blow a hole in each and every last one of you bloody selfish motherfuckers.” His journals showed how the entire thing was premeditated and choreographed. Precise hand written details of each weapon he used, and how he came to own it, down to the bloody fucking outfit he wore. He truly believed that gunning down everyone was the only way he could be heard.
Understand me yet? HE JUST WANTED TO BE HEARD.
And, bloody hell yes, I blamed myself for the massacre, I still do. He was my best mate, and if I only could have LISTENED, if I only could have helped him through his shit, got him the help he needed for his violent tendencies, he and everyone that died that day, would still be here.
So no, it wasn’t that he was bullied. It had nothing to do with any violent video games or violent movies. And it sure as shit was not because of any loud disturbing music he listened to. It was that nobody bloody listened to him. Not even me. Because if we listened to whatever the fuck he was going on about, we would have known, we would have got him help, and we would have stopped it before it ever happened.
Fucking hell. I looked up through the cracked ceiling and into the sky. I wish I just could have helped him. I would have saved them all.
My mother found me in the cemetery that was ironically across the way from the school. Back leaning against Thomas’ headstone, looking up into the clouds just as evening was settling in. A sheer curtain of rain around me, everything muted in soft shades of gray.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you come here,” she whispered, lowering onto the wet grass next to me. “Dear Lord, Kade, the grass is all wet.” She placed a gloved hand on my leg and gave me a little nudge, “I miss him too, Kade. He was like a son to me. Yet, I hate him all the same for what he did to you and the rest of those poor children. I always blamed myself for the way you handled the tragedy. I didn’t know how to help you. I didn’t know what to say or do. I still don’t, love.”
“Ironic how everyone lives with the guilt of what happened, except for the person whose fault it truly was,” I whispered back. Sometimes, the need to claw my way out of my skin, to let go of the crushing grief, was overwhelming. Then there were times like this, sitting on Thomas’s grave on a cold wet night, when the grief was so suffocating and breathtaking, all I could think of, was to b
ury myself next to my friend, and let the world continue on its own without me.
“I was in such bloody shock, love. It was all a bit too much for my nerves. I was so happy you lived through, but you hardly did, did you? That first year, I don’t think you slept at all.” The cold leather of her gloves touched my hands and chills raced up my spine.
“When I got home from the hospital was the hardest, mum. Trying to sleep was the bloody worst. Still is, actually. All I saw were their faces. Cold dead expressions. Staring up to the ceiling. As soon as I’d fall asleep, I’d wake the next minute screaming, tangled in the cold grasp of Thomas’s claws, but were only my blankets when I’d open my eyes.
“We’ve never really spoke about any of it, love. I could never find you in a state where you were approachable. Now, you’ve changed, haven’t you?” She twisted her fingers together, a nervous habit I loved. “I tried, love. I did. I brought you both all the way to the States, to try to get you from the media and the God awful doctors with all their rubbish.”
“Mum, you did fine. It was hard to listen to the news reports tell everyone that I was in on the whole bloody mess. I’m glad you took me away. It let me find myself. It helped me to find the only way I knew how to cope, when honestly, I just wanted to die.”
“This woman, Samantha, she was helping you through all this?” she asked, hesitantly.
My mother’s eyes glistened in the lamplights from the streets as they came to life. Climbing to my feet, I held out a hand to her and helped her stand. “She brought me back from the dead. I never realized how ugly my insides were until she showed me what beauty really was.” Gently pulling her elbow, I led her across the grass, away from the rotting remains of nightmares and unending vengeful memories. “Let’s get you home, Mum. It’s fucking freezing out here, and it’s getting dark.”
Nodding her head thoughtfully, she placed her arm in mine and walked me to her car.
She had parked near the entrance. I never asked how she knew where I would be. I’m your mother, she’d say, that’s how. We drove in silence and walked into a dark and empty house. I glanced at her questioningly in the entryway, and she just shrugged, “Henry is staying at his friends flat for a few nights. Go change into some dry clothes. I’ll put on a pot of tea. Or would you rather have coffee?”
Sam would have always chosen coffee. Tea was for you uppity Brits, she’d tease.
“Tea is fine, Mum. Thanks.”
Peeling out of my wet clothes, a wave of wet chills ran over my skin. A foreign feeling of acceptance followed slowly after it. Sam and I were over. Period. Get over it. And get over what Thomas did, straighten out your head, be fucking normal.
For once, be normal.
“Come sit beside me, Kade,” she said, patting the couch cushion next to her. Two steaming cups of Earl Grey were set on the coffee table. “Tell me about her,” she urged, “Tell me everything, son.”
Staring at the twirling mist of steam floating off my cup of tea, I ran my hands over my face, letting out a heavy sigh. “She was bloody brilliant, Mum. Samantha was the kind of woman who every single day, would buy a half a dozen cups of coffee after her shift at the hospital, so she could drink one herself, and then hand the rest out to people she thought needed a warm drink. She’d hand deliver a buttered sandwich to the vagrant that practically lived in the emergency room each day. She was different, so different than anyone I’d ever met before.” My eyes reached my mother’s smiling ones, “She was one of those women who always blended in with the background, never brought attention to herself, but when your eyes adjusted to everything around her, then her presence was so bloody overpowering, it hurt. I didn’t love her because she was beautiful or sexy. I loved her because she made everything around us beautiful, because she made me look at the fucking bloody world differently. She made me a better man, and I swore I’d try my best to encourage her to reach over her limits. I thought I was enough for her. Bloody hell, she never mentioned she was unhappy enough to leave. And the way she left, mum, fuck, she left me a note on the desk in her office.”
Getting agitated, I stood up and started wearing a trail into my mum’s carpet. “What the fuck was she thinking? What the hell did she think this would bloody do to me? I fucked up. I should have hid myself from her. Not told her anything, I thought she understood me, I felt like I belonged with her…She unraveled me all at once, and I threw myself at her. Told her everything…let her see me raw. Why the fuck would she want a broken man? I get why she left, I just didn’t think that she was like that, I thought she was different.” She left because she knew I would take her father and ex-husband’s life to make her safe. She couldn’t love a cold-blooded killer. What kind of a person am I? Could I do that, exactly what Thomas did? “Now, I just want to fast forward, and get the hell over her.”
She sipped quietly at her tea, and then placed it back down on its dish with a soft clink of the china. “When I was a schoolgirl, my first boyfriend and I thought we’d marry and have children. Oh, dear. It was all we could talk about. We planed the date and named our future babies.” Her lips curved up with the memory. “When we broke up, I was sixteen, and at the time, I truly thought my whole world was at an end. It hurt like nothing I had ever felt before. Yet after, both of us lived through it. I met your father a year or so later, and we married and had you and your brother. He married eventually too, and had five of his own children. I see him every once in a while at the market. All those feelings of not being able to live without each other, now just add up to a smile or a polite wave in the grocery store all these years later. That’s the way of the world, Kade. Life goes on.”
“Yeah, Mum. Nobody knows that better than me,” I muttered, bitterly.
She tapped my leg and smiled, “Why don’t you go off to the pub for a while. It’s still early and Barney’s, that new place on the first floor of the new hotel, always has loud music going on and a room full of pretty birds, Kade. Go take your mind off of everything. Get pissed and live a little. Live simply, love.”
I thought that was the best advice anyone had offered me in a while, so I bloody took it. With a heavy heart, I found myself walking down to the pub, hearing the low thump of a rock ballad a block away, and I inhaled a deep breath of crisp cold air. England always smelled different to me than the states did. Older. Mustier.
The pub was crowded, more like a club attached to the lobby of a hotel. The infectious sounds of Radioactive, by Imagine Dragons, hit my ears as soon as I stepped in. The gasp after the first verse took me away, and after my first pull of a brandy, I was far beyond the pub, in my own fucking universe.
And that was where I stayed, with an entire bottle of brandy.
Until I got knocked back down into the atmosphere, spiraling and plunging in a bloody free fall back to earth. A head of ginger colored hair, the same ivory coloring of the skin, cheeks flushed a deep rose from dancing… I bet if you could’ve seen my face right then, my eyes were glazed over in sheer animalistic lust. Someone needed to pinch my mother-bloody-freaking arm or something, because I was seriously having the dirtiest of fantasies staring at that woman who could be Samantha. Then I tripped and fell, quite drunkenly I might add, landing right at her feet. Yeah, that happened. But, that was just a random gravity test. It’s all good. Bloody gravity is still strong.
Stumbling up to stand, I almost lost my nerve. Her eyes were a golden brown; they weren’t green, making me almost turn away.
Then the first cords of a piano whispered through the speakers. Just Give Me a Reason, by Pink. All I saw, was Samantha standing in front of me, not the stranger who was smiling and sliding her body against mine to the heart wrenching rhythm of the song.
She spoke. I heard no words, just listened to the song, watching her lips move in the strange shadows of the dance floor. Her head tilted, locks of Samantha-like-hair tumbled into my hands, Samantha-like-smiles danced on her lips, all invitations to take what I needed.
“I can’t believe this. You’re Cor
y Thomas the writer. You’re like famous…” Her voice whined high and irritating. It would not be good to rip her throat out. No, it wouldn’t. I’ll just jot that little drunken note down for later, insert that shit in a book. Love to kill people in books. Priceless.
“Don’t talk,” I whispered. Don’t do anything but look like Samantha, just one night. Just one more night.
Her teeth bit down on her bottom lip and I cringed. Samantha would never pull a fake porn-star pose like that. Pulling the woman closer, I swayed her to the music, laying a hand across her bare neck, and another skimming under the waist of her shirt.
“I’m game if you don’t fancy sleeping alone tonight,” she whispered, standing on tiptoes to reach her hot breath into my ear. Warm hands gently tugged at my pants, sliding a palm over my cock. “Doesn’t that sound good?”
“One condition.”
“What’s that?” she purred.
“You don’t speak anymore, and I’m going to pretend you’re someone else. Someone named Samantha,” I said, sliding my hand down her neck, spreading my fingers across her collarbone and feeling her heart pound against my palms.
“That’s some kink you’re into,” she giggled, drunkenly.
“Shut up,” I snapped, pulling her off the dance floor and into the lobby of the hotel.
She waved a keycard in front of my face and giggled, pulling me towards the elevator, and shoving me into an open one. Immediately, her eyes were closed, lips slack and she began unbuttoning her shirt. She offered a pair of small high breasts with tiny dark brown nipples. I leaned heavily against the wall of the elevator, the handle that protruded around the inside dug into my lower back.
Slipping her hands into the waist of her pants, she dug into her crotch and started going to town on herself, moaning, and rotating her hips.
I thudded my head against the wall. Everything was spinning.
Ding. Sixth floor.
The elevator doors slid open and she was shoving me out, yanking me into a room numbered 601, and slamming the door behind me.
Drunken hands grabbed at my buckle, fumbled with my belt, and unzipped my pants. Lowering herself to her knees, she smiled up at me.