All fall down...
"A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down."
("Ring a ring o’roses", nursery rhyme)
The silence now marked the fear. That classroom that had heard laughter and words, sneering and questions, smiles and tears, now seemed devoted to the chill of a cloistered convent. Everyone was looking at Silvia, frozen, not knowing what more to expect from her. Twenty compact eyes examined her hands, peered at her expression, like that of a captive tiger ready to take a leap, lingered on the gun she was holding with anger. They wondered why she had come back, the reason of that ferocity against little Alessia, who had always been the darling of the class, of that hatred against Eleonora, against them, against the Marco Polo high. Thoughts chased one another, flew fast from student to student, from hand to hand, from tremble to tremble. The beast was there, ready to tear them apart. Until a few minutes ago she had been Silvia, the warrior. With her they had shared boredom and excitement, and now she had turned into an exterminating angel who was slaughtering her classmates, at a whim, following a strictly personal choice of revenge. Now she had raised herself to the ranks of God and was deciding about their lives, about the present and the future. Now she was a monster without a tomorrow who wanted to precipitate them into the vortex, throw them in a cauldron, make of them, all of them, an army of despaired. And Silvia, in turn, looked at them as if she were seeing them for the first time, scared kids who just wanted to get out of a nightmare. And that nightmare had her hair and her hands, her gun and her choices. Her rebellious age.
"Come on. If you move you end like Alessia. Is it clear now?" she suddenly roared in a tone of voice that seemed to come from the depths of a crater.
She was as tense as a violin string. Her plan was not going as she had thought, and having had to shoot Alessia had made her vulnerable. She had never had any friction with her, she considered her only a small nonentity who never bothered her. Never bothered, she repeated to herself. And now she had shot her. She had to kill someone else to comply with the list. Eighteen more accurate shots. This she had decided. The bullets she had probably wouldn’t be enough. It didn’t matter, she must go forward. This was the path she had chosen. Why did she lack the courage? Why those faces – foaming at the mouths and with terror painted on them – kept her from completing the established mission? Why couldn’t she simply click and then click and then click endlessly and throw them down one after another to the floor like bowling pins? She couldn’t, she wasn’t able to, there was no way. She had failed. She would not go down in history. Neither she, nor Deborah, nor their carefully studied video, nor the music of Swan Lake. The gun was dying in her hands and she felt lost facing all that silence.
"Deborah, shit. Where are you?"
"I'm here, I keep them under control", her friend said, appearing like a cat behind the door of the open classroom.
The corridor was deserted. No one was coming out of the other classrooms. Everybody was barricaded inside. The school seemed abandoned, as in a vacation day.
"I'm here", Deborah repeated, with a strange, whimpering voice.
"Is there anybody out there?"
"No one."
"Then let's go. And you, still and silent. Got it?"
"Don’t talk, huh? All right. Don’t say shit... after all you always knew who was boss here. You liked it, didn’t you? It was convenient... little stupid asses... useless assholes..."
Silvia and Deborah went away quickly, closing the classroom door. The others remained frozen, staring amazed and astonished at the corpses. Their faces, their images, their eyes like those of caged animals, remained in the memory, for a long time and much more. They were immortalized on the walls, the benches, the broken glass. They laid on the blackboard, on the teacher’s desk, in the air. It would no longer be possible to go into that room, in years to come, without breathing again the fear, seeing the colour of blood, smelling the stench of death. Nobody dared to make even a gesture. Like a flash mob, they remained frozen. Outside, Silvia and Deborah were still in the corridor. They could hear them scream.
"What a mess, Deborah, shit! You made a big mess, you did everything wrong... first Luca... then Mrs. Rossigni. They weren’t involved, they were not in the list. I had nothing to do with them. You took them, you decided. You broke the pact."
"Why, what did Alessia have to do with it?"
"Come on. She moved. I warned them."
"You can make mistakes and I can’t. This is the game."
"Mrs. Rossigni was not involved."
"You're crazy, batshit crazy", the other yelled against her, "we had to kill twenty-three, twenty-three you said... and now you tell me about the list. Take it easy. I'm not a killer, I don’t know how to do this. You disgust me, you scare me. You scare me. What am I doing here? I don’t want to die, I didn’t want this. You make me sick."
Deborah had thrown the gun on the floor and was crying in the throes of a fit of hysteria, desperate. She was starting to realize what was happening, as if suddenly the veil had fallen from her eyes.
"It's not a fucking game, not a ring-a-ring-o’roses. Here people really fall down and never get up again. I didn’t want all this. I thought it was funny. It’s not! It's not nice to shoot on people. See them die. I don’t know what we did, Silvia. I don’t know."
Her friend stood in front of her with arrogance, and she was no longer the girl in black she knew. She was not her companion, the one with whom she smoked joints and spent afternoons planning murders. She was another person, a stranger. She looked at her while she felt scrutinized with hatred, and found that she was suddenly alone, with no defences left. Silvia grimaced angrily and pushed her violently, with her right hand on her shoulder, to hurt her. Deborah stepped back, refusing to fight. She bowed her head and began to see only her tears. Silvia gave her no respite, she put her hand under her chin, lifting her face to look into her eyes. She kept screaming.
"You said you were convinced. You said that we had to do it. That it was right, that we would go down in history, and now you pull back. It is you who make me sick. You're a coward and a traitor. You cheated."
Deborah had no desire left to talk, she just wanted to get away, run away, erase the memory of what had happened. Silvia had separated from her, still holding the gun firmly in her left hand, pointed to the floor, and had taken to rhythmically stomp her feet.
"I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand."
Silvia was walking up and down in front of her. Frothing with rage.
"Bitch, and beggar. I thought you were my friend."
"I am your friend but I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. I'm scared."
Deborah slumped to the ground. She had no strength left. She felt her heart go on its own, like a crazy butterfly trapped in a spider web. If only Silvia could go back to being her friend-mother, her affectionate accomplice able to help her get out of that nightmare. But no, she was bad now. She was only Judas. She was not going to save her.
"Come on. Now you're scared? Piece of shit, now? And look at me bitch!"
Deborah tried to look up, she was tasting her tears, but they weren’t giving her strength. She saw Silvia straight in front of her, with the gun facing her. She could not believe what was going to happen.
"No, what are you doing? Silvia, I’m Deborah, I'm your friend..."
The shot hit her full in the chest, then there was another and another. She fell backward in surprise, her legs folded under her body, and while life was leaving her she thought it wasn’t happening to her, the end could not be like that, not by the hand of her sister and accomplice, the one who had always protected her from everything and everyone, until she had become sort of a leader. Then she felt nothing more.
Silvia spat on her with anger. Even Deborah had betrayed her, disappointed her, humiliated her. Even Deborah had proved to be a failure, a wrong choice. Even Deborah had abandoned her in the time of need.
"It's you who make me sick", she said, kicking the body of her
friend. And then again and again. When she tried to turn and run away, she heard the explosion behind her, as violent as a body hitting you with the full force of a bomb. She fell on Deborah's face, cheek to cheek, with no time to understand. Behind her, a policeman was waving a gun and now, after swallowing, running from door to door to immediately let the kids out from the classrooms.
"Come on, come on. Everybody out, it's over. It's over. No one can shoot anymore. All out, fast."
Silvia hoped that her time had finally come.