Starla.

When I trudged into the auditorium, the black figures hovered on the stage, all of them unaware of the monstrosity they had brought upon all of us. They walked, pacing back and forth on the hardwood. Our faces screamed of discomfort, those three not present probably shared the same look wherever they lay. I didn’t want to think about it.

The stagnant smell of Mrs. Greenwich’s blood still lingered in the air, and my eyes locked to Marie’s. She was conversing with Calliope and a person that made me dizzy at the mere sight. A jagged scar runs down his cheek, over his eye. Red, puffy scar tissue protrudes from the area and sings a harrowing song. His reputation is revealed through the simple line—dangerous.

This person is no other than Brutus, from what I had hear he is merely seventeen and has already witnessed for two murder trials, on the condition he not be incarcerated. Marie was with the bad seeds, she was trying to wage death in the hand of death. Ultimately, she was going one place or the other. Did it really matter whether it was moral or immoral if the outcome is all the same?

Maybe I should join them, from what I also happened to hear, he was a drug dealer. Might as well be higher than the exosphere when I get shot to a six foot descent in the ground, surrounded by polished oak, pine, maple, it’s not like I will know the difference when my time comes. “Next game starts in five minutes,” the male that explained the game spoke into the microphone briefly before departing back to his group.

That’s when Marie decided to cease the staring at me and enact on her pretentions. If I could hide for an hour, I can certainly stall for a minute. But when I got up to move, her face glued me to the uncomfortable upholstery of the theater seat, I didn’t dare leave the urgency of her glower. “Starla,” she greeted me, seriously.

I remained silent, abusing the shock I most definitely had but sequestered under layers of determination. “Starla,” she iterated again.

“No,” I clenched my teeth, locking tear brimmed eyes with her starkly clear orbs. How could she even ask? I would surely die, and I wasn’t about to condone myself being driven to the point to execute murder.

“You have nothing to lose.”

I laughed, “You’re fucking nuts. I have everything to lose. Those days we would plan our weddings, we’d pick out names for our kids, that’s not going to happen, Marie. Forming some shit alliance isn’t helping anyone—it’s only making it all worse,” I exploded, the tears stubbornly trailing down my jaw line. Marie had no right to be playing with everyone’s dwindling hope.

Her eyes began to glitter, they never did that. Not even when the incident occurred did she cry. The incident that changed her life was less to her than the truth. “I’m going down fighting. I’m not going down like him. Got that, Starla?” her teeth clenched together furiously.

“You’re going down anyways!” I screeched, causing the buzzing auditorium to falter into dead silence. For minutes, that were really seconds, all that was heard was my breath and Marie’s, jagged and full of spirit. The world zeroed in on my foolishly prideful friend that was on the fast track to destruction.

What interrupted the awkward silence was the laughter, the laughter of the main man in the dark clothing, prowling on the stage. There was nothing more in me that wished to pounce, to get death over with. “Oh, you all are just the cutest little things, fourteen minutes…” his red faced grin surfaced as my knees held up my shaking body. Mechanically, my feet broke into a sprint away from the auditorium, away from those raging hormones and the death wish I couldn’t fathom my friend chose. Most of all, I was running away from obligation and the sickness in the captors joy. We were their meal.

So somehow, I collapsed in a closet off of the central hallway. My chest rose and fell strategically, trying to keep my echoes vibrating off of the concrete. I didn’t care that it smelled of bleach. There was little left to care about and that wasn’t something I could find reasoning for.

Someone began creeping through the hallway, my heart stopped. The closet door stood ajar the tiniest bit. I had only been here for several minutes, maybe seconds at the very most. Lost in the shadows, I kept myself as still as possible, clutching those plastic beads that should’ve held some sort of ultimate power. My eyes clamped themselves shut in an effort to shield myself from the presence. “Starla, we’ve got to talk,” that familiar voice I tried to run away from so many times before
confronted me.

Closing the door behind her, the cool skin of someone’s touch I once knew caressed the top of my leg; hence I used to know this person. Now, my best friend, the one and only mejor amiga, she was nothing but an apparition of what was never to be again. “You must’ve ran into Owen’s group, right? With Toby, Delilah, and Jerome?” Marie announced clearly.

My head reluctantly nodded, “Why are you trying to have more reasons to die?” I angrily spat, my eyes opening to the harsh darkness that was no different than sleep and death. The air even smelled of death, stagnant, chemical, something not unchartered for Marie, but completely foreign to me. Odors of the dead never infiltrated my house unlike hers, when I compared the still air in the room to the certainty of death; I had no prerequisite knowledge to confirm it true.

But she knew what it smelled like to have a decomposing body in her home. It was the reason I had a ladder leading up to my window on the side of my family’s generic two story nestled in rural suburbia. Marie said the smell never left, she couldn’t sleep with it wafting around her, hugging her like he used to. Used to, now it was just a memory for her. Frequently, actually, every night for four months, she’d come up into my window and I’d pretend I didn’t hear her but I knew she came exactly one-hundred and twenty-five nights. “I’m trying to find something to live for, I’m not going to sit here and accept the slaughter of fifty people and my brother,” she bitterly recollected, those beautiful eyes glistening with the little light the room received.

“It probably isn’t related,” I tried to reassure her. There was no way it could be related.

Marie shrugged, “Different people, same evil,” she proposed. I couldn’t say I disagreed. “Our group isn’t out to threaten like Owen’s. We just have each other’s backs and we’re trying to disable cameras in case they have the security footage tracking us,” Marie shrugged her shoulders. Something told me that even she didn’t have faith in her minor accomplishments. “At least I can do something half decent before I die,” she frowned, my inevitable death theory growing on her.

It didn’t sound bad, but I was never a trusting person to begin with. Trusting someone in a time like this? It’s impossible, it is against all human nature, but, then again, the actions we are currently subjected to aren’t humane in any context. Morality is fickle, at least to me. I’m in the gray of everything, constantly seeing both sides and never sticking to one myself; I am indifferent. “I’ll join you, but one thing,” I forewarned.

Marie nodded enthusiastically, but subtly enough to remain noiseless. With the sounds of hurried rubber soles jetting down the tiled floor, my common sense attacked me for what I just said to her, ultimately sealing my fate to die alongside her and whoever else accompanied Marie. “I get to lead,” I quavered, not believing what I said within the confines of the grainy bricks.

“Alright then, Joan of the Arc,” Marie chortled. I even released several giggles, trying to take the moment for what it was, attempting to realize what drastically changed in my last hour of life.

My tongue itched to ask more, but I knew this wasn’t the place and time. Instead of filling the air with pointless small talk only aiding in revealing our location, we kept eye contact and the world moved around us. About the same time, Marie was nearing in closer to me, touching my nose with hers. Knowing what was coming, I hadn’t the heart to stop her, and I hadn’t the personal pride to reject her. Marie’s prettily painted red lips crushed against mine with unskillful force as they quickly parted. “I’m so sorry,” she disdainfully admitted. Blushing, her rosy red pucker and the equally red, flushed, cheeks were her most dominant feature.

Words, the right ones didn’t fit together. “Might as well cross it off the bucket list,” I rolled my eyes, trying to forget that even happened. For Christ’s sake, it’s the day we’ll both die and my best friend spontaneously kisses me?

She chuckled awkwardly; embarrassed by the fact I figured her out. I chuckled awkwardly as well, filling in her gaps, mostly because I didn’t want to hurt her or lead her on. There was no way I was a lesbian, I was straighter than a ruler and as heterosexually charged as a man at a whorehouse. “Yeah,” Marie quietly mused, putting a finger to her lips to signify silence. Though she was my subordinate, I obeyed the common sense she vocalized.

With the time passing slowly, a good and an unfortunate thing at the same time, the first gunshot I heard made me jump a little due to the presumed proximity. Marie put a steady hand on my knee. She kept me grounded and made me realize that the advancing persons were really not advancing, but farther away. I was always one instinctual screech away from death.

Thankfully, they walked around the other side of the hallway; my heart rapidly beating alongside Marie’s created a bass to accompany the beat of the nervous notes lingering in the air. Not one of us dared to talk, we didn't dare move, and I barely tested the boundaries of thought. Without a clock, there was no way to even keep track of the time that passed, forty five minutes could’ve already passed and we wouldn’t have known.

I wonder if that’s the way he felt, with the cool barrel up against the back of his skull. That’s how to crime scene analyst said it went down, the blood splattering the clarity of the window and the jewel toned, sapphire walls. Forever, the stains would remain, even after the sapphire was coated in a taupe green. They were always there to me, bleeding through; I couldn’t imagine what they were for Marie. And to think, I could have prevented all of this from happening to myself if I had not been so insistent on sucking up to a teacher, one that was now shot dead. Her rosary beads in my white-knuckled hand. My own jeans were doused in her drying blood. Life had taken a sharp turn to chaos.

Sitting there made me think over the whole event occurring a little over five months ago, how it should have tipped us all off. But even now looking back, it was all a little farfetched and out of our grasps. Guess denial is a powerful thing and conspiracy is foolish. Either way, all hopes are achieved through hindsight, but never in reality, I have to deal with what I have been thrown into, we all do. There’s nothing we can do that changes the location of where we are thrown—which just so happens to be under the bus.

Marie and I held onto each other’s hands, basking in the fear of the yellow vehicle advancing towards our spines.