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stretchedknuckles-blog · 6 years ago

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Empty Chairs

Bryan

May 26, 1998, 9:05 AM

Springfield, Oregon.

Empty chairs. So many empty chairs.

The students that were here didn’t want to be. We just were. Most of us felt like we had no choice. Our vulnerability led us to believe almost anything. We were told it was all ‘part of the process.’

What process? Did someone create a process for situations like these? Was there a step by step procedure to follow?

Bullshit.

Some kids couldn’t bear the feeling of being back in the same place that fractured their naive induced innocence. But we were here; along with the empty chairs. Where there was once a hope-filled haven of infinite possibilities, there now was a skeleton of a building. To an outsider, the school looked the same, yet for the students, teachers and other faculties, Thurston High School was a severely weakened form of itself. It seemed different. It felt different. The atmosphere was gone. It was hard to breathe.

Twenty-eight empty chairs separated themselves from the others sitting abandoned. Twenty-eight empty chairs left an insufferable void in classrooms across the school. There was no ignoring those chairs. We could avoid looking in their direction, but their cruel silence made their presence felt.

Three of those twenty-eight seats would remain empty for the rest of the school year. Their space enshrined unintentionally.

In my second period class, I sat a few seats away from one of the three empty chairs throughout Thurston that would remain until the summer came. It was orange. The plastic backing and its flat seat looked even more uncomfortable than it was to sit on. Its creation is for mass wholesale. Comfort wasn’t its goal. And as it sat barren of a body to utilize its purpose, it gave impeding discomfort in other ways.

The thirty or so students who shared the room with me were muddled images that never seemed to move. Nobody moved. Everyone was silent. The only sounds were adjustments of seats. The sort of sounds a classroom makes when all the students are taking a significant exam, and no talking is allowed. In this case, the students remained quiet on their own accord.

I wish. I wish I to worry about an exam right now.

The teacher sat in front of the class at his large metal desk, facing the students, yet refusing to look up from a book that I only hope he was pretending to read.

Who the fuck could read right now? Who could do anything? Why are we even here? It’s only been five days.

Goddamn, I want to go home.

We were still in shock. Confused. Not a single kid in the class had any answers for their damning state.

There was another adult in the room. A counselor. She didn’t belong to the school, so nobody had seen her before. I assumed that for every empty seat of the twenty-eight, there was a counselor in the room. She’d slowly glide from row to row like a ghost, studying each student one by one. Her face was muddled too. Blurry as if just outside my peripheral. I stared down at the scratched up black desktop; wishing time would somehow go faster. And hoping the images would stop replaying in my head.

After a few minutes of silence, the girl sitting next to me, who was nearest to that empty chair, began to make sounds. The snot from her runny nose being sucked back into her wet nostrils was the first sound I heard. It was the first sound anyone heard. She tried to quiet her sniffles, yet her restraint began to break. She started to cry. Soft sobs. Her head turned to the left, and she stared at the empty chair next to her. The sobs turned into cries. Heavy cries. Then wretched screams.

None of the students looked at her. The teacher kept his eyes down toward his book. Only the counselor stopped her movement and turned toward the crying girl.

I sunk even further into my plastic chair and closed my eyes. But nothing went away.

His face appeared.

My eyes shot back open. His image slowly faded away.

Everyone but the counselor followed the teacher’s lead and pretended not to hear the girl’s sobs. I felt for her. She seemed to be all alone in a class of emotionless pods. Their silence, though unintended, mocked her cries.

The counselor moved closer to us.

The girl kept crying. Our bodies so close to one another, our shoulders touched. I felt like an extension of her. The cries felt like my own. I put my hand softly on her back, in a minimal attempt to comfort her. She was releasing the emotions we all wanted to release, but couldn’t. Her cries spoke for all of us.

Some of us were dried out. Some of us were waiting for the flood.

The counselor stood over us. Her shadow a blanket of uneasiness. Her presence brought discomfort to anyone wanting to get through the emotional day it was. She was a physical reminder. A reminder that we were carefully being analyzed. We didn’t want to be picked apart and examined. We got enough of that from our protective parents and curious relatives. We didn't ask for a stranger in our classroom, on our first day back to school.

“It’s going to be OK,” the counselor stated in a tone of voice a mother would use for her toddler. Those were the first words anyone spoke in the classroom.

The girl didn’t respond. I continued to rub her back slowly in solace. Her body remained stiff- tense to the point in which my fingers bent with the slightest pressure. We didn’t look at the blurry face standing over us.

Maybe if we ignore her, she’ll go away.

Our silence forced the counselor to try another tactic. She moved behind us, around to the left of the girl and attempted to sit in the empty chair.

“NOOOO! NO! DON’T SIT THERE!” The girl’s screams startled the counselor. She jumped up from the empty seat and took a few steps back and put her arms out toward the girl defensively. “DON’T YOU DARE SIT THERE!”

Students jerked their bodies in the direction of the girl, finally startled by the outburst. The teacher looked up from his book.

The girl put her arms on the chair, and the cries became even more intense.

Looking around the room, many students couldn’t help but display their concern. They sunk further into their seats. Heads went down to their desks. Their faces buried in their bags.

The counselor gave up and walked away defeated. The girl needed space. We all needed space.

The cries continued, but would eventually taper off. By the end of class, I felt a little better, and it was evident the girl did too. Defiant even. A stranger was not going to come into our class and make us feel better. We didn’t need to feel better.

We needed to feel.

#tcc #school shooting #aftermath #grieving #tragic

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stretchedknuckles-blog · 7 years ago

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The First Voices

Kip Kinkel

Fall of 1995

The bus slugged along its normal route, down the long Thurston road. Passing the many tucked in homes, weathered barns and empty farm roads on each side. It always took longer than I wanted it to before we reached McKenzie highway. That was the end of the first stage of my ride home from school each day and it was a sign that home was about twenty minutes away. It was the same route every day. All I could do was divide the thirty five minute trip into sections as we went along. If we weren’t chirping at each other as the bus traveled on, I’d usually stare out the window in silence. Seeing Walterville elementary school go by always brings back memories of me as a young boy. It felt like forever ago, even though it hasn’t even been a year since the bus came and went from there.

Things were pretty good back then, being just a kid. It was comfortable. Fun was pretty much the only thing I can remember. Family trips, living in Spain for over a year, playing with friends and adventures around the river every chance I got. Middle school is different. There are so many new kids I never knew before. Just as I had become comfortable with the same local kids, now more are introduced to throw me off. There’s no more recess. Now we only have breaks, which all we do is stand around and find recognizable faces to talk about nothing to. There’s no playing anymore. No imagination. We’re becoming teenagers. And I hate the word teenager. I don’t want to be a teenager. Not yet anyway. I want to go back to having fun all the time. Back to being around kids I knew I liked, and knew that liked me.

Once we were on Deerhorn road I knew I didn’t have long to go before the bus came to a stop for me to get off and walk the remainder of the way. Our house was at the end of a longer driveway that had full green shrubs on both sides that lined the entry. It was was surrounded by woods that always seem to be in the way on sunny days. There was so much shade. And when it rained? It was even more dark and damp. I guess there was a happy medium sometimes, but not really long enough to remember or get used to.

As I began to walk up the driveway, I wasn’t thinking about much. Maybe what was waiting for me in the pantry? I was hungry. Searching for a snack was always the first thing I did as soon as I got home from school. I’m sure most kids were like that.

I reached the front of the house and stopped suddenly. There was no reason I stopped, I just did. And I stared into the bushes closest to the front door of the house. It felt like just a few seconds of staring, then I felt frozen in place. I couldn’t move.

Then the voices came.

“You need to kill everyone. Everyone in this world.”

It startled me. I looked around, turning around to see if there was anybody around. The voice didn’t sound familiar. It was a man’s voice.

“Everyone. You need to kill everyone.”

The voice was coming from the bush! I stared at the bush to see if there was anyone hiding behind it. There was no one. The bush itself looked normal, but the voice was coming from it’s direction.

KILL EVERYONE!! EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD!!

The more it repeated itself, the more it felt like it was from within my own mind; it invaded. It scared me. I couldn’t control the voice. My eyes began to water. I couldn’t get it to stop. There was nothing I could do to get it to silence. It just kept repeating itself.

KILL EVERYONE!! EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD!!

You stupid piece of shit! (You aren’t worth anything)

KILL EVERYONE, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT (EVERYONE)

The words began to be jumbled together as they overwhelmed me.

KIEVONE PIECSHIT EVONE…

I ran into the house as fast as I could and didn’t look back at the bush. I used all of my strength to get away. My hands pushed the front door open and lunged into the house.

“Kip? Sweetheart?” My mom shouted as I ran upstairs. She heard the slam of the door behind me.

I crashed through my bedroom door and threw myself onto my bed and buried myself in my covers. Tears streamed down my face as I cried uncontrollably. Why were these voices talking to me? Why won’t they stop? Was it because I didn’t believe in God? Was it God telling me to kill? Or was it the devil? Was he now talking to me because he knew I didn’t believe in God? I don’t understand. Why me? Even if God is real, I hate him for these voices. I hate that he allows them to invade my mind.

I hate…

“Kipland? Are you OK? What happened?” My mom shouted as she walked upstairs. I could hear her coming.

I needed to make up an excuse. Anything. Something at school. A bully. Sure, she’ll believe that. A bully. Someone is picking on me. Don’t know his name. Doesn’t matter. I can’t tell her about the voice. I want to tell her, but she’d freak out. She’d pull her hair out. And no way I can tell my dad. He’d hate me for these goddamn voices. I can’t tell anyone. Anyone. That’s my rule. Number one rule. Don’t. Tell. Anyone. Never speak about the voices. Never.

They’ll think i’m crazy.

*This is a reimagining of Kip’s first experience with a voice. This story is told by Kip to one of his psychiatrists after the shooting took place in 1998. It is very close to what actually took place. It is public record.

#kip kinkel #tcc #school shooting

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