#his classroom smelled like burnt plastic for several days

[virgil-upinthestars]

the fire alarm went off a lot when I was in high school, for a multitude of reasons (someone pulled it, someone decided to smoke weed in the bathroom, someone tried to microwave a burrito) that were never actually a fire. but, because of protocol, we'd have to stay outside in the cold pnw rain for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour as the fire department trudged over to figure out what the fuck happened this time. this resulted in a school full of teenagers who reacted to a fire alarm like it was an announcement for a suprise assembly. instead of dropping everything and heading for the exits, we'd jump at the loud noise because ew loud noise, groan because fuck not again, and proceed to pack our shit because there was no way we'd be standing out in the cold for forty minutes without our coats and phones.

cue me now, three thousand miles across the country, studying in the library of a well-respected university when the fire alarm goes off. my roommate and I nearly both jump out of our seats, grabbing each other's hand out of sheer reflex, and after a blurred prayer, I realize what's going on. all around us, people are getting up and talking over the alarm as they worry about what's going on, making their way to the nearest exit. my roommate gets out of her chair, looking worried. me?

I look up. I take a long sniff, like I'm impersonating the wolverine. and then I finish my goddamn email.

some of my roommate's friends come over to us, hurriedly explaining that it's just a drill, we don't need to worry. my roommate visibly relaxes. I respond "oh, thank fuck" and close my computer, packing my stuff up. these girls from east asia look at me with shocked and slightly unnerved expressions as I put on my blazer. they've all left their stuff behind. my roommate's also leaving her coat and bag. I shrug, and sling my backpack over my shoulder. If I don't smell smoke, I'm finishing my goddamn email.

[drainflyclub]

High Score

By M. M. Sheridan

The blood always smelt the worst. Not the times that they shit themselves, or had sat in their own piss in fear. Not the sour burnt smell of spent ammunition. No, the blood smelt the worst, as it settled in between the grout on the tiles and sprayed onto the painted walls. That rust smell which left a taste in the back of your mouth, coated it in something that wouldn’t wash out with toothpaste or water or whisky. Frank swallowed a few times and the taste got worse. There was a lot of blood. 

A twenty minutes ago a young man, looking agitated, ran into his local elementary school and unloaded several clips worth of bullets into the bodies of the children there, and a few teachers too. And himself, he guessed. A few had been dragged out by responding officers and thrown in ambulances, some would probably not make it. Others walked out in shock, or wailing, or throwing up, running awkwardly toward their tearful parents and the police who had that usual pained look on their faces. A lot more were lying in crumpled heaps around the building, going white and red under the strip lights. The shooter joined them in death, the same as them now, just a husk on the floor with a hole in his head, pumping blood through the lino, soaking into the concrete, into the foundation, then eventually into the dirt. 

“How many?” One of the officers near him asked. 

He stood up, “No idea. This room alone, maybe ten, fifteen, not including that piece of shit.”

“Jesus.” 

“Yeah.”

Frank walked out of the class and down the hall past several more bodies being checked by paramedics, pointlessly. One was balled up between lockers, two were missing parts of their heads or face. He pushed through a side door into the fresh air of the outside, listening to the screaming of sirens and journalists clamouring for quotes. He fell against the side of the building and put his head in his hands. Third one of his career. His clothes smelt like blood. His hands smelt like blood. 

“What the fuck do you mean?” 

“There was an active shooter at Letztelektion Secondary. Maybe still active.”

“Shit, how?”

“Just get there.” 

The radio was barely audible over the siren singing and her own blood pumping in her ears. Detective Sauer was heading toward the school not as an officer, but as a parent. Out on a normal follow up call and then the radio came to life. Fuck fuck fuck. Please, please, please. 

The police cordon was already up, special forces were stood around the building, a few with their rifles guiding kids out, searching them one by one at the entrance. Her mouth dried up. At least if they were calm the shooting was over. She ran over to one of the on scene officers.

“Is the shooter neautralised?” 

“Yes, shot by the special forces while running out the back of the school.”

She wanted to thank God but she couldn’t yet. She eyed up the children, panic rising in her stomach. 

“I need to go in.” 

The officer nodded and waved her through. 

The power had gone out in the school, probably to get the alarms to turn off. It was quiet, most of the children already evacuated. Sauer breathed through her mouth and stopped herself heaving. Mrs. Roth’s classroom. Mrs. Roth’s classroom. Mrs. Roth’s classroom. She jogged down the hallways glancing at all the classroom doors, shoes echoing off the tiles, click click click click click. The door was open, no, splinters of a door frame and a cheap lock on the ground. Broken. Oh fuck, oh God no. Mrs. Roth was lying on the floor at the front of the class, a red puddle behind her back and three red dots on her chest. She felt her breath catch and realised she was already crying. Stepping between the desks, slowly, painfully, torturing herself. Please, please, please. And she was there, her blonde hair wet and dyed crimson. She was on her knees and grabbing her cold hand, limply pressing it into hers, she felt her throat growing tighter and something animal coming out, but she heard no sound. 

Harry pulled his jacket in as he walked up his drive. The wind was bitter as hell this time of year, and he shrugged off the idea of going hunting. All the birds and deer would be daft to go out in this weather, and so would he. 

He sat down for breakfast with the letters he picked up, thumbing through the bills and spam. Not even fleeing to the wild countryside had managed to stop this shit getting through. He left them in a pile and opened the newspaper while he let his toast and tea get cold. 

“Bloody hell.”

Front page, shooting at a German school. Twelve dead including the shooter. He shook his head and wondered why someone would do such a thing. He kept reading, no details of the gunman, except he was as student. What a waste, what a huge waste. So soon after the two shootings in the US earlier this year. Stories like this made him feel particularly wretched since he’d had children, but he couldn’t stop reading. Eventually the text ended and he moved onto another story, something about social media, so he skipped it, and read a particularly boring article about economic problems in Europe. 

His son came downstairs, and Harry looked at the time. 10:30. Hell, when would he start acting like an adult? 

“Morning Sam.” 

He didn't say anything back, just grunted. A perpetual teenager, nearly twenty and still jobless, educationaless. Give him time, give him time, his ex-wife had always told him. Well, she didn’t have to live with him. 

“Going to do some job hunting today?”

Harry knew he hated that question, not quite sure why he asked it again but feeling some parental duty to do so. Sam responded with a glare and took a bottle of orange juice upstairs. Yes, that was par for the course, standard procedure. Why hadn’t he had these problems with Jen, she’d grown up alright, moved to the city, managed to grab a solid job doing something techy. He didn’t much fancy spending his retirement babysitting, but it seemed more like that every day. Oh well, maybe we just needed to give him time. Yeah, sure thing, that was what the lazy shit needed. Time. 

“Close the fucking door mom!” 

That goddamn bitch, didn’t she respect his privacy at all? That was the third time she’d just burst in this week. Didn’t she understand knocking? Dumb bitch. 

He shook his computer mouse and woke up the screen, jumping straight online. He stuck on some music and cracked open a warm beer sitting next to his bed. He perched on the end and started clicking around. Holy shit, a new shooting - US, wow, 36 dead and nearly a hundred injured. Hell. 

Time to get to work, then. He clicked the link in his bookmark bar and logged in. His inbox was already full so he took a few minutes clicking mindlessly through the endless abuse and praise, news alerts, spam. He clicked off it and went to create a new post. Few things to update today, the tables needed another bump and a new stickied post needed to be put up. What a hassle, he’d only started this as a joke, something to do to kill time. Oh well, he supposed he needed something to do, the trailer was cramped and the site barely generated enough money for beer and pizza. Better this than being bored. 

This didn’t feel as good as Jaewon had hoped. If anything he felt a little bit ill. He looked down at his hand and pulled off his gloves. They were shaking, hard. He reached up and pushed his fringe out of his eyes. When he pulled them back he saw they were smeared with red. It made him heave a little bit. No, this wasn’t fear, it couldn’t be, I’m brave, I’m brave. This is adrenaline, surely. 

He looked down at the ground, a flower of blood sprayed out onto the floor and wall in front of him. That cunt wasn’t looking so pretty now. Still, he didn’t like how brutal it all looked. He pulled a plastic bag from under the teacher’s desk and draped it gently over her mutilated face. He nearly got up but realised her short dress had come down. He started sweating. Why not? He reached out to feel her breast, pulling it a little out the fabric to see it better. Still warm. His cock stirred a little bit. Ah, the good times we could have had. 

He shook his head and stood up, now was not the time. Heading out to the door, he stretched his neck from side. Gotta warm up. He checked his gun, nearly out of bullets. Should have dumped less into her he guessed. Too late now, he supposed, it was time for his big show anyway. 

Jaewon kicked through the front doors of the university and held his gun high, firing it into the air. 

“Nop-eun jeomsu! Nop-eun jeomsu! Nop-eun jeomsu!”

He screamed until the police’s bullets tore through his lungs and brain, dropping him dead on the steps. 

Frank sat at bar. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon yet and he was already buzzed. It had been a hard day, but maybe the easiest decision he’d ever made. 

“You can’t do it, Frankie.” 

“Sorry Don.” 

He felt a little lighter for the first time in years. He hate to let down the guys but he had to look after himself, the sleepless nights were getting too much, and his work was suffering. Best to quit, do something else. Maybe private investigation work. Or he could train at the academy. Not right now though, right now he wanted to drink. 

The last shooting set him over the edge. Couple of high school kids, boyfriend and girlfriend. Wasn’t even in his jurisdiction but the guys came to him for help after hearing about his work at the elementary school. Shitty stuff, fucked up. They’d been laughing the whole time, got it on the security tapes, which he sat through and watched the whole damned thing. Boyfriend had lived, girlfriend had shot herself first, and he chickened out. Cowards, both of them. They wanted his advice on questioning them. 

It was too painful for him though, he wrote a small report on his advice, emailed it over, and spent the next two weeks unable to sleep for more than an hour or two a night. He still remembered some of the kids’ names, and they went through his head as he pictured the bodies. At the start of the third week, he walked into his bosses office and slapped his resignation on the desk. It was an easy choice. Harvey. Ellie. Leo. Bobby. Harper. Gracie. Miles. Hm, he was remembering less now. He ordered another drink hoping to forget the rest. 

Obsessed wasn’t a word Harry liked to use, but he was probably obsessed. It started with that article on the German school shooting. Eventually curiosity got the better of him and he needed to know the name of the shooter. Then he needed to know what his family was like. Then his home life. School life. Love life. 

First it started as professional insight. His psychiatry degree was now hanging uselessly on the wall, so why not put it to good use and try to find out what made this man, no, this child, work? Then he found himself gathering news articles online, putting them together in a spreadsheet. He had dreams of coming up with some great breakthrough, maybe a way to spot shooters before they did what they did. Pipe dreams of course, the last pipe dreams of an old man, so he let himself fantisize. Then why not help other people? Soon he’d bought a domain and set up a website, looking at shooting cases, gathering information on motives, details of the event - old ones, new ones. He started getting a little bit of traffic, people wanted more, old policemen, students researching, sometimes just morbidly curious people. So he did more. He even contacted police involved in the case to see if he could get some additional details, but he never made it very far. One call to an old US based detective seemed promising as he did consultancy work, but Harry was told he’d retired and couldn’t get any further. Oh well, no harm. 

Hunting season had been a bust and he had crawled back to his office to work on the site like most mornings. Maybe look at re-formatting the layout to make it easier to search for information. He also had to start work on that Korean shooting, heavy stuff. It was still fresh but maybe he could scour social media to get some leads. He checked his email to see if any complaints or comments had come in, and to his surprise there was one new one, sent from someone calling themselves hanna66. The email’s subject was two words, “High Score”. 

Detective Sauer was no longer human. Her daughter was dead. Her husband had left. She had no other children, no family she wanted to speak to, no pets. What she did have was rage, burning blinding rage somewhere deep inside her, wrapped in apathy. The rest of the world seemed pointless now, everyone walking around doing mundane bullshit like heading to work, or shopping, or going to eat out, or walking through the park. What was the point? None of this appealed to her now. She only had a single thing on her mind and that single thing was Elise. Elise at two years old, laughing at the crunchiness of the leaves in Autumn. Elise at six years old, screaming as her foot touched seaweed for the first time. Elise at ten years old sitting with her on a ferris wheel, cheering as she stuffed her face with candy. Elise at twelve years old crying because she’d gotten in trouble for kissing a boy. Elise at fourteen years old lying dead with a hole in her head, her pretty hair stained.

She let the image sit in her head and turn her stomach. Trying to ignore it, sleep it away, shake it off, nothing worked. It was burnt there forever. She instead had a little blog where she wrote about Elise’s life, what she dreamed she would do, what she wished she could tell her, what she hoped she would be like today, how much she dearly, dearly, dearly missed her. 

When she wasn’t writing, she read a lot about school shootings. She’d found a few websites and forums dedicated to them. Some she liked more than others. Some were crass and seemed to treat the events like pornography, making jokes or commenting gleefully how terrible it was. Some were professional, like a little site which analysed the shootings after they happened. She often read the entry on Hans Richter. The little bastard who’d taken her beautiful little girl away from her. She would read it until she was shaking and crying from the anger. Bullied at home. Alcoholic father. Nothing that gave him the right to do what he did, not that anything could justify it. She would stare at the screen and wonder why why why. 

“You’ve got to stop torturing yourself like this.” Her husband would say.

“You don’t understand! I have to know why!” She would cry back.

“Why do you have to know?” “I have to. I have to do it for Elise. You don’t get it. You don’t care” 

“Hey, she was my fucking daughter too!” 

“Then fucking act like it!”

Sauer was feeling particularly down. It was one of those grey days that dragged on endlessly, so she booted up her computer to do a little blogging, get out her thoughts and feelings. Oh, what’s this? The blog was gone. Damn internet, oh no, oh fuck. She wasn’t good with computers. Where was it? She clicked around a bit. Nothing. Damn, damn, damn this machine. She looked through her drawers, the address was written down somewhere. She pulled them out one by one, digging through them fast, scattering papers everywhere. She clicked around more on the screen but still couldn’t find it. Fuck fuck fuck. Not like this, I can’t lose my Elise again. No, no, calm now. She figured she could search for it. She searched for Elise. 25 million results. Okay, okay. Hans Richter. Still millions of results, mostly news articles. Elise Sauer. Fewer news articles now, and then her blog halfway down the page. Thank God, she sighed and went to click on it. Just under the link was another one, HIGH SCORE - HANS RICHTER - VICTIMS. What was this? She hadn’t seen that before, and she clicked, almost by impulse. 

A list, a list of names. Eleven names. Eleven names with pictures next to them. There, near the top of the list, her little girl, Elise, name and photo, and a comment by the side.

This tasty little blonde bitch thought she could outrun ‘LITTLE DICH’ RICHTER but he managed to gun the cunt down. She’ll be sucking cock in the afterlife now.

No, no, no no no. Sauer was wailing, pushing her chair back as if to put as much physical distance between her and the screen as she could. Why? Who would do this? Who would say that? She turned her face away, tears rolling down her face, mercifully blurring her eyes. 

She was in the kitchen for hours, pacing, sometimes crying, sometimes cursing. She could see the website was still open on her computer in the living room, but didn’t dare look further. What could she do? Send a message to the website to get it taken down? Call the police? Smash her PC? All of the above? After several drinks she was calm enough to consider going back and closing the website, but first she had to let them know how disgusting they were. They had to know how she felt. 

She tried to ignore what it said about Elise, and tried to find an email address so she could send them a plea to take it down. She couldn’t find one. The more time she spent on here the worse she felt, angrier and angrier. Her teeth were grinding, now more in frustration at this damned website. She hit return at the top of the page. It was a full page on Hans Richter. She hadn’t seen it before, odd. She scrolled down a little bit, a full picture of Richter sat alongside a Bio section. She read it before she even realised she was doing it. 

HANS ‘LITTLE DICH’ RICHTER tried out for the high score at his secondary school in Germany. DEAREST HANSY had a perfect opportunity to take the top spot, low security, packed classrooms, and his daddy’s illegal rifle. But ‘HANS ON DICH’ fucked it up like the virgin faggot his was, killing himself after only taking the lives of eleven cunts and sluts, not even touching the top twenty scoreboard. DICKTER blew his load early like the pussy he was, and even in death he disappoints. 

She couldn’t look any longer. Who was saying this? Who would be so cruel and heartless? She copied down the url on a little piece of paper and then wrote it out in an email to some of her former police colleagues. “Investigate this. This is sick.” She wrote. She went to turn off the computer, but stoppeed just before pressing the button. She needed to tell her husband, surely? If not him, then who? She needed to tell someone, she needed someone to tell her how fucked this was, someone had to make sense of it. She sucked on her thumbnail. Well, maybe someone could? She had no idea why the name came to mind but it made sense. She went back onto her browser and found that psychiatrist’s website. She took down the email and sent a link to him as well. 

High Score was a goldmine. Seriously fucked up, but Christ did it ever provide an insight. Harry had spent several hours already going through the threads. It was pretty simple, there was a top ten board on the front page that showed the most kills by shooter. The site seemed to make fun of everyone, shooters, police, victims, in a grotesque way. Everyone was a target and deserved it. Slurs all over the place. Each shooter had a profile, filled with information. Harry searched for the Korean shooter's name.

GUK JEAWON.

He clicked. 

GUK ‘THE GOOK’ JAEWON only saw one thing with his slanty little eyes - revenge. ‘GUK THE CUCK’ was tired of his big dicked classmates getting all the primo-puss around his university so…

Harry stopped reading. What the fuck was wrong with these people? He scrolled down a little, there were sections on the victims, all thirty of them, all still as crude. A little lower was a video of him screaming and being shot by the police. Harry hadn’t seen that before and reminded himself to look a little later to see what insight it might give him. 

A little further down was a section called ‘POSTS’. It was a screenshot of a comment posted on the forum side of the site. Whoever posted it said it was Jaewon’s post, claiming he was going for the high score and posting details of time and location. Below it were comments spurring him on or calling him out as a fake. The details did line up, Harry thought, but maybe that was a coincidence, or maybe to give the site some sort of fucked-up credibility. 

He saved the page in his bookmarks, making a note to come back for his research, and decided to check out the forum side of site, see if it really could give a better insight into the minds of these twisted people. Clicking around, all the posts were similar to the ones Jaewon put up. 

I’m going to do it - stay away from Ringfield High tomorrow. Check the news

With replies telling the guy to kill himself, or urging him to do it and take as many “cunts” or “sluts” with him as possible. Harry looked up the post date, but it didn’t correspond with any shooting in any high school, nor any school with the name Ringfield. Hmm, maybe it was just all bravado. He clicked through a few more postings, more of the same, warnings of an imminent mass shooting, cries to do it now and kill as many as possible, fantasists writing out mastabatory material on how they would kill their parents and bullies and religious figures and classmates. Maybe this was all just some sort of sick roleplay on a shock site? Why anybody would spend their time making fun of murder victims was beyond Harry, but he supposed there were darker corners of the internet with even darker people populating them. 

A post caught his eye while scrolling. 

watch the news, scotland cairnraggen primary. Going for the high score Got a rifle and ready to kill cunts before they grow up to be bigger cunts lol

Cairnraggen? 

No, but that was... Odd. He looked at the post time.

An hour ago. 

A fear came over Harry, something primal screeching from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, almost a seizure, a pure shot of adrenaline and cortisol hammering its way through his arteries, veins chilled to a stop by ice. A premonition, a psychic force, a raw spike of information into the mind that something is wrong and that you are missing that something. A slow burning fear, the sharp spike of embers. The view of disaster from afar, neck leaning like rubber sideways to see the car accident, the what if, the why them, the fear that something terrible is happening and you’re somehow connected. A single turn of the cog. 

Click.

He looked up at the clock. 11:36. 

Click.

He hadn’t seen Sam yet this morning, he wondered...

Click.

Harry was on his feet and dizzy. 

“Sam! Sam!” He shouted, stumbling through the hallway to the stairs. 

“Sam!” He shouted again up the stairs,

 “You up? Sam?” 

Nothing, absolute silence. 

Something in his mind was blocking the full picture from being seen, a sort of daze in front of his vision as he took each step as fast as he could, which under his weak knees felt like hours. He burst through Sam’s bedroom door into darkness. The bed was crumpled up and the curtains were still drawn. Nobody inside. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Harry grabbed at his hair and nervously chewed his lip. His head was clouded with pure adrenaline, fear, the urge to run away, to do something, anything, but he froze. 

Harry noticed the blinking light on Sam’s computer, and was drawn to it like an insect, letting the electricity pull him in. He shook the mouse and the screen lit up. The website was still up, and the words on the screen were damning.

Posted by YOU

Harry nearly threw himself down the stairs grabbing his phone and coat, tripping out the front door as he pulled it over his shoulder. Three steps out he had already called 999. Before a voice picked up he froze. Someone was speaking on the other side of the phone, but he wasn’t listening. Coming up through the valley, through the woods and the icy fog, echoing up the road, was the sound of a million sirens crying, and the faint smell of rust. 

END