Title: Final Moments
Status: Complete
Characters: Anon, Fang, Naser, Naomi
Rating: SFW
Classification: One Shot
Author: SupriseVisitor
An unholy thunder crack rips through the air, shattering the peace. The pressure wave wracks your eardrums, demanding your attention despite disorienting you. At the front of the room, a flurry of crimson flecks arc through the air. The source is the girl you love, who collapses to the floor. Even through the intense ringing in your ears, you can feel the horrific, suffocating silence wringing this single moment into an eternity.
There’s a gun in your sister’s hand. Without thinking, you leap out of your chair. You feel her name escape your lips, but you’re not sure if it’s a scream or a whisper. You take a step, closing the distance. The gun raises toward the source of the shout. You take another step, unable to change course. Her eyes flick to you and her finger twitches.
A second crack tears away the silence, and the room fills with screams of terror. Searing pain erupts from your shoulder, and you fall against the teacher’s desk and onto the floor. A pair of black boots back away as the students near the front of the room flee. You try to reach out, but your shoulder screeches in agony. The screams intensify, a verbal contagion spreading throughout the hallways.
You try to pull yourself up with your good arm, but your legs give out beneath you. A third crack from the doorway brings another wave of pain to your head. You bear down on the ground and pull your abnormally heavy body along. A fourth crack rattles you, but you crawl further despite your leg’s refusal. A fifth crack is followed by a sixth, no longer phasing you. You reach out, desperate to stop this madness. Your bloodied hand brushes against her leg.
You stare down the barrel of a gun. The blood still in you turns to ice. The hammer falls. You can’t hear the click of a firing pin against a spent cartridge, but the intense pain tells you that must be what happened. Your eyes travel up, meeting hers. You ask why, trying to decipher her expression. If she said anything, you didn’t catch it. She shakes you off and walks down a hallway.
You pull yourself forward again, calling her name, you think. She disappears into a stairwell, and you try to follow. The hallway you’ve walked down hundreds of times stretches infinitely onward, and each inch of ground you try to cover peels away at your remaining life force. You prop yourself up against some lockers, glancing at your wound. Blood smears down your jacket and across the corpse-littered floor you dragged yourself across. The body of your girlfriend lies silent, a scarlet pool mingling with your own spilled ichor.
You need to stop this. You take a deep breath, your lungs burning but the oxygen failing to revitalize you. You take a second breath, but it’s shallow and stunted. A third doesn’t stop your vision from blurring and darkening. You need to regain your strength...
You fall forwards, onto your wounded arm. Pain explodes throughout your body and you flatten onto the ground. The smell of fresh death invades your nostrils. You try to think, but your thoughts are jumbled. You can only ask yourself why, over and over again.
The ringing subsides, replaced by the blaring of sirens. A pair of footsteps come up the stairs. You struggle to open your eyes, silently watching as the bald human steps through the carnage. He steps past you, and you reach out again. Let me help you, you think you say. Your strength wanes and your arm collapses onto the tile floor. He turns to face you. Fear. Confusion. Grief. It’s not over...
You reach out again, but he turns away. He disappears into the same stairwell, and the last of your strength vanishes, a wet thud signalling your last movement. The pain recedes, as does everything else. Your senses are dull and fading. Your limbs are numb and unresponsive. Your breaths are short and useless. Your heartbeats are slow and erratic.
How could you let this happen?