Insanity in the Fifth Period Massacre

Arcanus City is a dangerous place to live. Even more dangerous when you’ve driven a young man to psychosis.

The eye can see the horizon, whereas the ear can only hear scavenger birds, hands with black painted nails feel the dry dusty dirt that litters the west. The taste and smell of hot sun was unwelcome, but going back to school he’d be the unwelcome one.

With a population of one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-thirty-nine everyone knew everyone. Everyone knew him and his dirty little secret. But no one knew him. He was a man constantly beaten down with names. Fag. Gay. Pansy. Only his parents called him by his real name, Frank, but Daddy was never there, he was always at his mistress’ and Mummy never cared, she’d rather drink vodka, her son’s shame was too much.

Arcanus City is seventy-eight miles off highway-fifty, known for being the loneliest highway in America. One dusty dirt track road in, and the same road out. No car could make it down the road without leaving a trail of billowing clouds of earth or breaking down. Especially the beat-up car of a seventeen-year-old. But he wanted to leave.

There was no escape; the townsfolk wouldn’t let him. The last fag to live here was beaten rancorously until death when he tried to leave. Frank didn’t want that ending. He went to his Dad’s closet and picked up a .45. The cool metal burned his head. His finger fumbled with the freezing trigger. Hate is a strong word, but it was weak and pathetic compared to the way he felt. The wrath in him was innocently pure and sincerely evil. ‘Every motherfucker that gave me shit should die, not me,’ he thought.

The gun in his hand was then put in the pocket of his ripped-up jeans. Taking nine steps back he was at the closet and picked up three boxes of bullets. He walked into his shambolic, disorganized, typical boys’ room, veiled with posters of bands that ‘worship the devil’. He picked up his tattered messenger bag and threw the bullets in; leaving his school books on the diminutive desk. You can’t have lessons when there are no teachers, no pupils.

He ambled to school. Although he was already one hour late back from his lunch break, being a couple more minutes wouldn’t count; the ending would be the same, no matter what time.

Frank’s mind was perturbed, but what do you expect from a young man who was just like you, but had his hopes killed, murdered, butchered. Like his peers would soon be after he got his revenge.

Revenge, the word chanted itself in his brain. Words once chanting now screamed raw, hoarse and vociferous. The word became an incessant noise; crude, raucous and harsh.

He arrived at the school where he was in senior year. Frank made for the gym where every pupil would be in assembly. Creaking on its old hinges, the doors opened when Frank pulled on them. The hall was silent. The unremitting chanting noise ended. Instead, revenge bubbled in his mind and flowed through his veins, like Dracula’s venom in a beautiful virgin girl. So wrong, yet so right.

“Faggot,” whispered a boy, breaking the uneasy silence.

Frank didn’t move an inch; his hand was already on the gun in his jean’s pocket. His head was held high as he said, vehemently, “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Faggot’,” The boy seven months younger than Frank said boisterously. About half the school started to recite, “Faggot, Faggot, Faggot...”

All eyes were on ‘Faggot’. He simply pulled out the gun. A maniacal smile stretched across his pallid skin as he pulled the trigger on the boy. Shrill high pitched screams rang through the air. People ran in every direction trying to escape the boy they thought was a pathetic pansy. How they were wrong. The boy’s skull fell to the floor and his eyes were fixated on the back of his head.

The blood splattered on the walls as bullets lodged in their ribs, spines, skulls, anywhere and everywhere. Bones cracked and crumbled underfoot as they ran vainly, knowing deep down their fate.

One boy that had broke Frank’s jaw last year had the handle of the gun smashed across his head. The sound of his skull cracking brought a fanatical smile to Frank face. The blood covered his hands, and it felt good. Although bloodstained, his smile was pure.

Just as the hall became deprived of life he began to leave. The splintering of bone underneath his now blood-red Converse and the silent hiss of ruptured veins was music to his disturbed mind. Through the carnage and into the corridor he walked, one lone survivor stood. Her blonde curls matted with her best friend’s blood. Her eyes locked apprehensively with Franks’. She looked at the man she had her first crush on. How he’d changed. Frank pulled the trigger sadistically slow. The bullet flew into her right eye. Blood poured down her face as though it was her tears. A shrill, banshee like scream ordered that another bullet was to be fired. And it was, hitting her faultlessly in her dim, blonde, cheerleader brain. The monotonous lockers were now painted with a crimson red only found in the veins of humans. Silence was undisturbed as he walked out of the corridor humanity had abandoned.

He continued to walk away from the school. Blood was on his hands and he smiled so true and perfect. Blood becomes stale after awhile. The walk home took awhile. In the lounge his mother was drunk, as usual. She smelled the blood and then saw the gun.