MM Reviews: Bang

Title: Bang

Imagine the scene: it's lunch time and the school canteen is filled with people. It's noisy, your friend isn't very sociable as their boyfriend is glued to their side, and it's raining. There's just over ten minutes left of lunch and then you could go to your final classes of the day before being set free to go home and do whatever it is that you enjoy outside of school. You can picture it, right? Everything happening like it normally does, and that's what you expect to happen right until the doors burst open and the only thing you can see are guns.

Suddenly nothing is like it normally is and the prospect of never leaving the canteen is real.

This is the situation that Bang presents to us, and through the three thousand, three hundred words that comprise this one-shot, we're caught in the balance between life and death as the speaker narrates the terrifying experience she and her schoolmates experience. Tense, emotional and truly shocking, this one-shot tackles a situation that has plagued the headlines several times before with all outcomes resulting in death.

finnick odair has bravely written about a subject that is one which could be personal to the reader, and manages to execute it in such a way that is beautiful in a sad and horrifying way. And although this can be read as an original fiction, a certain Josh Hutcherson is thrown into the mix and right until the end, the reader is left holding their breath for the outcome.

In a situation like this, nothing is certain.

Special thanks to sheepcat; and elixir for editing.