Thirteen
"One for every year he wanted to erase."
Before
They told us that attendance was mandatory this year. That everyone had to show up and pretend they were happy about it. They didn’t know that today was the day that our worlds would change. They couldn’t have known that today, the last day, half classes, no lunch, the brink of freedom, was the day he couldn’t handle his life anymore, couldn’t handle the end and our blank faces and that itch under his skin, the nagging, crawling, unmalleable sadness that was always forcing his attention.
They say that he tried to change himself – that he’d been caught the year before with his wrists bleeding as he faded into a pained sleep on the floor of his bathroom in his father’s house. When they asked him why, he said he wanted the inside out. To take everything that was building and set it free before it could force itself out into the world.
They said that he was admitted to Mercy Psychiatric Hospital for two weeks, and when his mother discharged him, he asked her if he could stay. But she loved him, they said, wanted to help him. So she took him back to his bedroom, everything reasonably sharp missing from the house. But she didn’t know that the bathroom wasn’t the only crime scene.
He was a sophomore, I heard. He’d spent the past two years pretending that everything was okay. He lived his high school career invisible, lost to the world, searching for different attention. And while he had friends, none of them really saw him in the way he hoped they would. He was just another one of the fucked-up-kids. Another sob story lost in the crowd.
Thirteen
How old he was when he tried to kill himself the first time.
The number of days he’d spent in the hospital.
The day of his little brother’s birthday.
The year it began.
The number of people he murdered.
During
The school was a battleground. Blood ran like rivers towards his feet, smeared against the lunch room tables. He was crying, apologizing for every person he shot with his father’s gun, like it wasn’t his fault, wasn’t under his control. He opened fire in the cafeteria on the last day of school. We were children and we stood just feet from him, frozen with some sick twisted horror rising bile in our stomachs as the first one hit the ground. They were like ragdolls. Each body smacking into the concrete with a wet squelch, blood oozing from their heads and their limbs folded unnaturally underneath them.
He screamed too when he realized what he’d done. We could see it on his face, accident, what happened, was it really me?, and he looked at the gun like he’d never seen it before, never pulled the trigger, as though he’d killed himself long ago and someone else had inhibited his body, using his hands as weapons and clouding his brain with fear and delusions.
He couldn’t see anything that was happening as his fingers pulled the trigger a couple more times. By now, we’d all run towards the doors, trying to break free and get outside, but the room was quieted by the incredible noise.
A girl went down this time, then a boy as the bullet slid through her body. Two for one. Some sick game that none of us wanted to play.
People screamed. We were no longer children. We weren’t graduating seniors or anxious freshman or upset about having to spend a day like today inside. We were terrified animals, trampling over each other to get out the door. Our peers went down around us, but we didn’t see faces anymore.
Teachers were screaming. They were no longer authority figures, just people trying to usher us out. They stayed away from him, no heroics, no tackling. He was dead, even before the bullet hit his brain.
After
"Thirteen high school students gunned down during lunchtime Friday afternoon… Perpetrator was fifteen-year-old, Dyson Conley, who was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder and Depression just last year…”
Afterwards, the headlines read like all the others. The story of an angry teenage boy who didn’t know how to be noticed in any other way. The horrifying backstory of two loving parents and middle-classdom.
He was just another story in the news, his name more recognizable two weeks later than the names of the thirteen. Nobody mourned him, not even his mother, who spent all her time apologizing for not raising him better.
She didn’t try to explain that he was sick, because somehow she never really believed him. He was a teenager and high school was hard. But it was hard for everyone. She never thought that there was something disconnected in his brain. She never listened. She never believed. She wondered where her baby went. Where 5 year old, smiling, laughing, giggling Dyson went.
Like all the others, she scrutinized his life, wondering where she went wrong. Why he hadn’t just killed himself instead. He could’ve done it this time, she thought, a gun would’ve worked a lot better. She wouldn’t have found him in time. Couldn’t have saved him. Why didn’t he just try again?
She could’ve handled grief a lot better than hate.
What she, and everyone else, didn’t know was that Dyson was gone long before he turned fifteen. He hadn’t been the same person for years, almost two, and while he once was sad, once tried to bleed to death in his father’s bathroom, now he couldn’t even see the sun. It was as though another person had blinded him, smuggled him, replaced his essence with the cruelty of someone else.
In the weeks to come, nobody felt bad for the boy who died. He was labeled a murderer. A memorial went up over the summer, honoring the teenagers that lost their lives to something out of their control. Dyson’s killing story played like bad reruns across TVs and cities, across the country.
”Dyson Conley (15), killed 13 in high school shooting during last day of classes at Momoth High School in the small town of Lawley…”
It was big news. It was remembered, it trumped all other stories. It made invisible the headline that’d been playing for two years already. The headline that if noticed, could’ve saved fourteen people.
”Dyson Conley (13), found dead in parent’s home. Investigation found suicide linked to lifelong physical and mental trauma, budding multiple personality disorder, and major depression.”
0-12
Birth, crying, diapers, new foods, smiling, walking, running, giggling, kindergarten, new friends, first grade, elementary school, Daddy’s new friend, homework, curfew, middle school, puberty.
Thirteen
Puberty, armpit hair, girls, 7th grade, sleeping in, waking up, the sun, confusion, Dad’s eyes, Dad’s fingers, Dad’s in my bed?, “Don’t do that”, “please”, “Dad, stop”, “Please”, crying, hating, disgusting. ”Shh, Dyson, you’re not a little boy anymore.” Suicide. Still living.
Dad.
Fourteen
It never ends. Jamie’s turning 12. ”Don’t hurt him, Dad, please.” “I’ll stop fighting you, just don’t hurt him.”, Never ends. Someone else. Who I am? Who AM I? High school, freak, loner, “who are you?”, invisible, pained, hurting. “I don’t wanna go home. Please don’t make me go home.”
Fifteen
”How do I die?” “Please let me just die.”
Desperate. Alone. Scared. Gun. Gun. Gun.
“Don’t fight me, Dyson.” “Don’t fight yourself.”
”Just let go.”
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang
Bang.
Bang.
They told us that attendance was mandatory this year. That everyone had to show up and pretend they were happy about it. They didn’t know that today was the day that our worlds would change. They couldn’t have known that today, the last day, half classes, no lunch, the brink of freedom, was the day he couldn’t handle his life anymore, couldn’t handle the end and our blank faces and that itch under his skin, the nagging, crawling, unmalleable sadness that was always forcing his attention.
They say that he tried to change himself – that he’d been caught the year before with his wrists bleeding as he faded into a pained sleep on the floor of his bathroom in his father’s house. When they asked him why, he said he wanted the inside out. To take everything that was building and set it free before it could force itself out into the world.
They said that he was admitted to Mercy Psychiatric Hospital for two weeks, and when his mother discharged him, he asked her if he could stay. But she loved him, they said, wanted to help him. So she took him back to his bedroom, everything reasonably sharp missing from the house. But she didn’t know that the bathroom wasn’t the only crime scene.
He was a sophomore, I heard. He’d spent the past two years pretending that everything was okay. He lived his high school career invisible, lost to the world, searching for different attention. And while he had friends, none of them really saw him in the way he hoped they would. He was just another one of the fucked-up-kids. Another sob story lost in the crowd.
Thirteen
How old he was when he tried to kill himself the first time.
The number of days he’d spent in the hospital.
The day of his little brother’s birthday.
The year it began.
The number of people he murdered.
During
The school was a battleground. Blood ran like rivers towards his feet, smeared against the lunch room tables. He was crying, apologizing for every person he shot with his father’s gun, like it wasn’t his fault, wasn’t under his control. He opened fire in the cafeteria on the last day of school. We were children and we stood just feet from him, frozen with some sick twisted horror rising bile in our stomachs as the first one hit the ground. They were like ragdolls. Each body smacking into the concrete with a wet squelch, blood oozing from their heads and their limbs folded unnaturally underneath them.
He screamed too when he realized what he’d done. We could see it on his face, accident, what happened, was it really me?, and he looked at the gun like he’d never seen it before, never pulled the trigger, as though he’d killed himself long ago and someone else had inhibited his body, using his hands as weapons and clouding his brain with fear and delusions.
He couldn’t see anything that was happening as his fingers pulled the trigger a couple more times. By now, we’d all run towards the doors, trying to break free and get outside, but the room was quieted by the incredible noise.
A girl went down this time, then a boy as the bullet slid through her body. Two for one. Some sick game that none of us wanted to play.
People screamed. We were no longer children. We weren’t graduating seniors or anxious freshman or upset about having to spend a day like today inside. We were terrified animals, trampling over each other to get out the door. Our peers went down around us, but we didn’t see faces anymore.
Teachers were screaming. They were no longer authority figures, just people trying to usher us out. They stayed away from him, no heroics, no tackling. He was dead, even before the bullet hit his brain.
After
"Thirteen high school students gunned down during lunchtime Friday afternoon… Perpetrator was fifteen-year-old, Dyson Conley, who was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder and Depression just last year…”
Afterwards, the headlines read like all the others. The story of an angry teenage boy who didn’t know how to be noticed in any other way. The horrifying backstory of two loving parents and middle-classdom.
He was just another story in the news, his name more recognizable two weeks later than the names of the thirteen. Nobody mourned him, not even his mother, who spent all her time apologizing for not raising him better.
She didn’t try to explain that he was sick, because somehow she never really believed him. He was a teenager and high school was hard. But it was hard for everyone. She never thought that there was something disconnected in his brain. She never listened. She never believed. She wondered where her baby went. Where 5 year old, smiling, laughing, giggling Dyson went.
Like all the others, she scrutinized his life, wondering where she went wrong. Why he hadn’t just killed himself instead. He could’ve done it this time, she thought, a gun would’ve worked a lot better. She wouldn’t have found him in time. Couldn’t have saved him. Why didn’t he just try again?
She could’ve handled grief a lot better than hate.
What she, and everyone else, didn’t know was that Dyson was gone long before he turned fifteen. He hadn’t been the same person for years, almost two, and while he once was sad, once tried to bleed to death in his father’s bathroom, now he couldn’t even see the sun. It was as though another person had blinded him, smuggled him, replaced his essence with the cruelty of someone else.
In the weeks to come, nobody felt bad for the boy who died. He was labeled a murderer. A memorial went up over the summer, honoring the teenagers that lost their lives to something out of their control. Dyson’s killing story played like bad reruns across TVs and cities, across the country.
”Dyson Conley (15), killed 13 in high school shooting during last day of classes at Momoth High School in the small town of Lawley…”
It was big news. It was remembered, it trumped all other stories. It made invisible the headline that’d been playing for two years already. The headline that if noticed, could’ve saved fourteen people.
”Dyson Conley (13), found dead in parent’s home. Investigation found suicide linked to lifelong physical and mental trauma, budding multiple personality disorder, and major depression.”
0-12
Birth, crying, diapers, new foods, smiling, walking, running, giggling, kindergarten, new friends, first grade, elementary school, Daddy’s new friend, homework, curfew, middle school, puberty.
Thirteen
Puberty, armpit hair, girls, 7th grade, sleeping in, waking up, the sun, confusion, Dad’s eyes, Dad’s fingers, Dad’s in my bed?, “Don’t do that”, “please”, “Dad, stop”, “Please”, crying, hating, disgusting. ”Shh, Dyson, you’re not a little boy anymore.” Suicide. Still living.
Dad.
Fourteen
It never ends. Jamie’s turning 12. ”Don’t hurt him, Dad, please.” “I’ll stop fighting you, just don’t hurt him.”, Never ends. Someone else. Who I am? Who AM I? High school, freak, loner, “who are you?”, invisible, pained, hurting. “I don’t wanna go home. Please don’t make me go home.”
Fifteen
”How do I die?” “Please let me just die.”
Desperate. Alone. Scared. Gun. Gun. Gun.
“Don’t fight me, Dyson.” “Don’t fight yourself.”
”Just let go.”
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang
Bang.
Bang.