I met this new darkness with my own as my eyes clenched shut. I felt one eye close while the other one seemed to drift from my body. The feeling of half my face suddenly was numb and nonexistent. I tried to raise my hands to my face to see if it was still there, but a tight grip around my wrists prevented me from lifting it a few inches from their original position. I began to kick and flail at the darkness. I could feel my body again, I could feel restraints. I opened the only eye I could control. Blinding light forced me to clench it again in reflex. I blinked until the light subsided and the room around me came into focus. Tile ceiling above me, but a different kind of tile than the one in the school. The lining in between the tiles were white instead of black, and the texture of the tiles seemed flatter than the school tiles. I looked around the room. I was in a bed with leather straps on my wrists and ankles with one across my abdomen as well. Beside me was all sorts of hospital technology and an I.V., which led my eyes to the tube sticking out of my arm. At the foot of my bed rested three chairs against a wall facing me. On the wall was a white board with something I couldn't make out scribbled on it. I blinked more trying to feel my left eye again, with no success. Suddenly, a door in the fat right corner of the room opened and a woman in hospital scrubs walked in. She seemed to be mumbling to herself while looking in a folder of other papers. She walked about 5 feet into the room and looked up to meet my gaze. I saw surprise and I saw horror. She clutched the folder to chest and marched out of the room looking at the floor. The silence of the room continued. My mind fluttered with a familiar feeling of hopeless confusion. Time passed, and I had rubbed my wrists raw where the straps held me. The door swung open again, this time I was met with two officers and a man in a suit. Behind them was a man I assumed was a doctor due to his white scrubs and the questions he asked.
"What day is it?" His voice was tender and stern.
I was petrified and shaking. I shook my head instead of answering.
"Do you have any pain at all?"
"No." The word came out of my mouth shapeless. I opened and closed my mouth feeling the numbness around my lips and jaw.
"That would be the morphine. Do you remember anything that occurred before you woke up here?" I thought of telling him of the school and the darkness and how I was the only survivor, but instead my reflex's forced my voice.
"No." Again the word came out like someone else was answering for me.
"What about your name?" He asked carefully.
"Hunter Patricks." I said immediately. He proceeded to ask me my family's names and my address. I answered him the best I could, finding it hard to say certain syllables. He eventually scribbled something down on a paper and walked out of the room with the two officers. The suited man walked to my bed side.
"Mr. Patricks-" he said scratching one eye "-I'm your provided lawyer, David Cray, but you can call me David."
"Why do I need a lawyer?" I was dazed and still shaking with fear and confusion.
"Because you 'allegedly' brought a weapon into a school and shot a poor girl in your class." I flinched in my fixated place on the bed.
"What?" My voice was shaking almost as bad as my hands were. It was like he hit me with a brick.
"A girl named Bethany in your class. They say you brought your mothers 22 pistol from a safe in her closet and, during a presentation, you pulled it out of your backpack and shot her in the forehead." I closed my eye tightly and pulled at my braces. "Then you put the same gun in your mouth and attempted suicide." I opened my eye wide.
"What?" I wheezed in terror. He rubbed his eyes and walked to a table of hospital supplies beside the headboard of the bed. He lifted something and examined it. "What did you say?" I repeated louder.
"You seem to be a little forgetful of the situation." He ignored my question and stood beside the bed. He held a mirror. I saw myself, what was left. The entire left side of my head was wrapped in bloody gauze, in my gaped mouth I saw the missing teeth and the gap on the gums. I must've not been able to feel it with my tongue since it was numb fro the drugs. I wheezed hard, yanking the straps on my ankles and wrists. On the side of my face I could feel, the tears chilled my cheek. I tried to scream but could only let out a hard painful wheeze. David nodded and sat the mirror down.
"Do you remember the girl?" He asked adjusting his collar.
"Beth... any..." I wheezed desperate to get free from my constraints.
"Bethany. Bethany Ruth. I grew up with her father actually, Barney Ruth. Yeah..." he stared off into the distance. "He's devastated. He's told me I should let you go under the tires of the justice system and be put to death, but I told him that as my job as your defendant I can't let that happen." He stopped staring at the wall and changed his gaze to me. "It's my job to help you." He chewed on the inside of his cheek. "But why her? You left everyone else live, except her. Why?" I looked up at him, weeping with my one eye. I shook my head violently. He grabbed my shoulders tightly and got close to my face.
"Why the girl? Why? You walked in. You stood in front to present. You shot the girl and yourself. Why?" He began to shake me.
"I don't know!" I shouted in response. I was crying hysterically.
"Think. You pulled the gun out and shot her then yourself. Why? You ended her life. Why? The last thing she ever heard was not the voice of her father or her family hat loved her. It was the bang of your gun." The room stopped shaking. I remembered in a flash. I remembered presenting. I remember the plan. I remember her smile. She smiled at me. That's what threw me off. I had the gun in my hand and saw her smile. I shot her without thinking, then felt the regret. Her smile. No one ever smiled at me before, not like that, not like her. She smiled at me and I killed her. The only thing that my mind told me to do was to take myself out. It was all so fast. It was because of the smile. Her smile...
"She smiled..." I said it out loud.
"What? What was that?"
I looked at him through the blurry tears. He held a scalpel he must've grabbed from the table. He had a clenched fist a fury in his face. "Your sick!" He move fast to jam the scalpel into my chest. I flinched and closed my eye. I heard the door open fast and hit the concrete wall hard. I opened my eye to see the officers wrestle David to the ground. "You sick fuck! You'll burn in Hell!" They pulled him out of the room as he screamed. The doctor ran in and began checking my chest and vitals, making sure my supposed lawyer hadn't harmed me.
I sobbed for hours. I cried when the officers came back in to tell me I was going to be given a new lawyer. I cried when my mother came in, accompanied by an officer for her safety, only so she could criticize me for taking her gun and ruining her name. I cried when the doctor turned the lights off and I drifted into a morphine induced sleep. I didn't dream, I only fell into a familiar void. This time it was the only comfort the universe seemed to offer me and it was cold as hell.