I sat, fidgeting with the pen in my fingers, my book lying flat. The rest of the class were whether sleeping or not paying attention.
I wished that I could fall asleep so easily.
The disembodied voice of my teacher droned on as a idea popped into my head. I raised my hand.
"Yes, Alex?" She seemed annoyed that I had interrupted her important rant on the bodies immune cells and white matter and frontal cortex or whatever the else the white markings on the board said.
"May I please use the bathroom?" I asked politely, just to not piss off my teacher.
My teacher sighed. "Make it quick."
I stood and waltzed out the door, when one of my fellow classmates snickered.
"Need to take a poo? Don't die on the way out-"
"Shut up, Jakey!" One of my friends said, throwing a ball of paper at the back of the other classmates head.
My teacher sighed and opened her mouth to get started just as I closed the door.
Thankfully, I wasn't going to the bathroom to pee or poop. Just to skip class. After all, there was a bathroom at the back of the school no one went to, which was pretty useful for my situation. I figured no one would find me as I made my way through the halls.
When I arrived, I made my way to the last stall and immediately turned on my phone. Not even four minutes had passed since I started grinding for the flame sword had something bothered me.
I saw a red light beep outside and a voice came over the intercom.
"LOCKDOWN. LOCKDOWN. ALL STUDENTS GET INTO THE NEAREST CLASSROOM AND TURN OFF ALL THE LIGHTS."
I didn't believe it was real, so I went back to the tedious boss battle I was doing to max out my aura.
Of course, someone again interrupted me.
I groaned as the lights turned off and I got a message from my friend.
{Bro, are you shitting? Everyone's asking where you are! It's a real lockdown!}
My heart skipped a beat as I turned down the brightness and turned off notifications and set my phone on silent. I nervously bit my lip, my heart thudding. I even lifted my feet off the floor.
{I'm currently in the bathroom. I was skipping class... What happened?}
I transitioned to biting my nail as I waited for a few minutes. What broke the silence was a gunshot not too far from the bathroom, along with a ringing in my ears.
'I can go out the window and escape... But it's too risky.' Even though I was rather close to the window in this bathroom, I was also pretty high up, so it would be a free fall.
Finally, I got a reply.
{It's said that there's a crazy dude with a gun banging on doors and asking to be let in.}
{Oh god he's here}
I watched the two messages in horror, and then I heard more gunshots.
{Buddy?}
{Bro?}
No reply.
My heart nearly jumped out my throat as I immediately turned off my phone.
Suddenly I heard footsteps, rapid footsteps. The door to the bathroom busted open. I covered my mouth with my hands, shaking. I was on the brink of tears.
"Hey. I know you're in here, Alex Carman. I want to play a game."
'My name! How did he....' I saw boots come into view under my stall and pause in front of my stall. On what seemed sheer whim, the door flung open to reveal a dirty man with piercing blue eyes and shaggy hair, completed with what looked to be wealthy... rags? He held a gun, which was pointed at me.
"No one else wanted to answer the questions, so they died. Answer truthfully, please." Even though he looked homeless, his voice was refined and pleasant, as if he was a rich businessman talking about the weather.
Now, with a gun pointed at me, I nearly started to sob. It was truly too much for me to take. 'I... don't wanna die...!'
"Hey. Shut up. Lets play a game. I will ask you a question. You will answer. If you lie, I will shoot you." The man said.
"If I lie….?'' I muttered, shaking from fear at this point. How would this lunatic know if I'm was speaking the truth or not? This was sick. A sick, twisted fucking joke at my expense.
I was a coward. My entire life I had been a coward. But…. but…. if I was going to die anyway… at the whim of some cruel, deranged psychopath then….
I felt the cold metal barrel of the gun brush against my skin as I yanked it out from his hands. I hastily pointed the gun towards the dude, my heart hammering my chest as I primed himself to shoot. Oddly enough, despite never having shot at a living target or even held a gun before there was no hesitation in my actions.
A gunshot rang out and with it came the onset of tinnitus. The loud, beeping sound in my ear would normally cause great alarm, but at that moment I could barely care.
I didn't fire the shot.
With dread in my eyes, I angled my gaze downwards, hoping for a miracle.
Utter shock flashed in my eyes as I patted my chest for a wound, but found none.
"Wait-," I muttered, realizing that my hands were free. Where was my…
I swiveled my head to the left, having noticed a blur of moment in that direction. The gun lay lodged in the man's hand, a steaming bullet visibly floating in the air between us.
'The man had… he had shot the firearm out of his hand as the bullet was shot?'
'How… the fuck.. was that even possible?'
Struggling not to hyperventilate at this point I slowly creaked my neck to face the bearded man, who stood there, his pristine visage still placid, unmoved by my actions.
'Was this… was this a dream?'
"Are you done?" He asked, his words tinged with an air of finality— a veiled warning, if I ever saw one.
"Ye-yes sir," I hastily replied, raising my trembling arms in the air to show that I was not a threat.
"Very well, listen carefully then. I shall only ask my question once. If you fail to answer….," the bearded man pressed the barrel close to my head, the cold metal making me wince upon contact.
"My first question," He stated. A bead of sweat ran down my forehead as I begged my mind to operate at full, no beyond full capacity. I hoped dearly, prayed to anyone who was listening, that the psychopath would pose a question I could answer.
"You are walking through a crowded marketplace. A black SUV drives past you, crashing into a streetlight. An armed man slams open the car door. His eyes are bloodshot as he scans the area. He unholsters his gun, a pistol and points it at the crowd. The man is an escapee from an armed robbery and he is looking for a hostage. The crowd begins to flee and the man screams at them to stop. You have concealed yourself behind him, the only weapon in your possession is a shotgun. It does not have the range to shoot from this distance. The man is about to shoot into the crowd. To stop him, you need to charge at him and unload a shotgun slug. But the odds that he will hear your footsteps are high. Alex Carman, what would you do in this situation?" The man said.
"What would… I do?" I repeated the question aloud, stunned by it's oddity.
"You have sixty seconds to answer," the man retorted coldly.
My knee jerk instinct was to reply brusequly that I would repeat what I had done just now. That I would charge at the armed man and shoot him dead. Why? Because that's the answer that this odd victorian man most likely wanted to here. The whole get-up smelled of someone with a fetish for justice and I had almost convinced himself that it was the right thing to say.
But….
When I looked into the man's crystal clear blue eyes….. Those were not the eyes of a deranged man. But those were definitely the eyes of a killer.
'If you lie, I will shoot you.' The man's words rang out in my mind, causing me to twitch. I couldn't lie. My tells would probably be too obvious under such duress. The man had to be ex-military even though he didn't look the part. That would make sense, sniffing out a lie shouldn't be difficult for him with such a background.
So what would I do?
'Who was I? Someone who worked minimum wage in a convenience store. Someone who had given up his ambitions at the first signs of setbacks. Someone who was too afraid to get close to others, for fear of abandonment. Someone who had lost once, and was too afraid to lose again.'
Someone who blamed the world for his problems.
"I would," A tear trickled down my flushed face, though I did not consider it to be due to the stress, "stay hidden," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Trash," the bearded man muttered with disdain, spitting on the already dirty bathroom floor.
I winced.
"You passed the first question," he added after, causing me to sigh in relief. Though I didn't know why I was relieved, this lunatic would kill me either way.
"For the second question, look into my eyes," he blandly stated.
This time, I really began to cry. The bearded old man really was crazy after all.
My vision began to blur because of the tears, but nevertheless I complied.
A wisp of terror flashed through my eyes, as for a moment I felt like a small star in the infinetesmal universe, a mere ant in front of all existence.
The next thing he knew, I was walking down a crowded marketplace. The stores had colourful displays in what seemed to me like Japanese, with hundreds upon hundreds of pedestrians milling about the crowded streets. This couldn't be a dream, because I had never been to this place in my life.
But I found himself involuntarily walking forward down the crowded street, having lost control over my body.
The next second panicked screams rang out behind me in a language that I had never heard before, but somehow understood. 'Japanese, then?'
People all around me began to run away as I heard the screeching of car tires behind me, but I remained rooted on the spot, as if I was shocked still.
A black SUV skidded past me, and I watched as its brakes failed. It crashed into a streetlight, causing the metal pole to smash against a storefront.
Adrenaline finally clicked in, and my 'avatar' moved, taking cover behind a car that was a few meters away from me.
A heavily tattooed man of asian descent walked out of the car, clutching at his abdomen. My angle was a concealed one, and though it was a glimpse, I saw that a glass shard was embedded there.
That was bad. It meant that the man was desperate.
On the other side of the street, a stampede had begun to form as people tried to squeeze through the narrow streets on either side. I watched with horror as a little girl tripped, a churning sensation in my stomach as I saw her mother being swept away by the crowd. Thankfully, nobody seemed to be collapsed on the ground in the stampede, but the girl….
The tattooed criminal walked, or rather limped towards her.
I felt the control over myself loosen, finding myself able to move again.
At the same time, a voice rang out in my mind.
"Dying here means dying in the real world," it stated coldly, belonging to the bearded old man.
My hands started trembling again, but I noticed an added weight to them. My grandfather's old shotgun, a relic that was probably a hundred fucking years old, was clenched in my hand.
I peeked over the car's cover, seeing that the tattooed man was half way to the injured girl, whose ankle seemed to have twisted.
'Just stay here' A part of me whispered. 'This isn't real. This can't be fucking real. But that old man will really kill you.'
But it was real. This… I knew my mind enough to know that I couldn't simulate an entire marketplace I'd never seen before in his life. That car, those tattoos, the girl, I had never seen them before.
What was that man? Was he a devil? The Supernatural?
Then could this world be real? Had he teleported me to Japan? Then was the girl real?
Wait!
The original situation, the one the man recanted to me didn't mention the girl. This was the second question! Instead of shooting into the crowd, don't tell me….
A sick, twisting sensation gripped my stomach as realization hit me.
The man was going to shoot the little girl.
I looked at the shotgun in my hands. The damn relic barely had a range of five meters. Fourty, perhaps Fifty meters separated me from the target. The man had a handgun. Even in his injured state, all it would take would be a second to kill me.
My grip firmed. My resolve flared.
This would be the stupidest thing I could do. For all I knew, the little girl wasn't even real. Merely a simulation. A figment of imagination. But if I failed, the man definitely would kill me.
Any rational man would stay down and admit that he couldn't save the girl, if she had even existed in the first place. I was no hero. I was a damn coward. I had worked a dead-end job his entire life and went to a crappy school and I would 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 amount to anything more. I couldn't fight a trained criminal on the run from the cops.
Yet… I stood.
A trained military operative would have chosed to move slowly, to muffle his footsteps and take the target down. But the tattooed criminal was three-fourth of the way there to the girl. And I was no trained operative. I was a coward and the rush brought by the adrenaline was the only thing that gave me the courage to charge forth.
50 meters… 45 meters… 40 meters…..
The distance narrowed till only twenty meters remained.
But my approach had been too loud.
The tattooed man swiveled on the balls of his feet, his eyes widening when he saw an me, american man rushing at him with the shotgun.
Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger twice.
The first shot grazed me and the second landed square in the gut. I stumbled forward for another five meters, my face painting the asphalt before I went still.
Tears streamed down my eyes. It felt like someone had punched me in the gut with such force that it had cracked all the ribs in my body. My vision oscilated between consciousness and unconsciousness, my breathing growing shallower by the second.
I had royally fucked up.
I was going to die.
In that moment, I felt no self-recrimination. All I felt was a burning desire and a hatred for the man, the predator that towered over the young girl.
I did not care about the fate of a faceless crowd. Tragedies happened all the time.
But this? This was fucking real.
So I forced myself. Strength flooded my arms, the dying embers of a dying man shining with one last burst of brilliance, perhaps the only brilliance I had to offer.
'Move!'
'Move, motherfucker, move!'
10 meters…. 9 meters… 8 meters… 7 meters… 6 meters….
The tattooed man finally noticed my approach, turning again to see me, a dying man crawling towards him.
But this time, I had expected it.
I screamed so loud that it felt as if I had torn every vocal cord in my throat, rolling my body onto my back.
The tattooed man's shot missed, poking a hole into the asphalt where my head had been seconds ago.
The last thing he probably saw was the bloodied visage of an american man who was maniacally grinning from ear to ear.
I pulled the trigger.
An ear splitting bang rang out, as the tattooed man's head exploded like a smashed tomato.
The next second, a white fog swept the world.
Towering above me was the bearded man who stood aloof in the world of fog.
I guess we were no longer in the bathroom.
"Your resolve is weak. Your approach is foolish. What would you have done if your shot missed? Instead of aiming for the body, you chose the head. Fucking idiot. When you said that you would have cowered behind a car in the first scenario, I believed you. The second question though, I didn't. I instanced you a thousand times you know? Each time you gave me the same answer. 'I would save the girl'. You really did fucking save her."
The bearded man landed a kick against my abdomen, causing me to cough out a mouthful of blood.
"Why did you save her? You would let an entire crowd of people die just to protect your insignificant life, but you're willing to stake your life for just one human? How does that make sense? Why are you grinning?"
"You….," I croaked out weakly. "...said her. She's real isn't she?"
The bearded old man remained stoic for a long minute, before finally answering with a curt "Yes."
I began to laugh, sputtering out blood every few seconds.
"I don't understand any of this. What… this is. Who you are. Why I'm bleeding out on a fucking cloud. But…. If you want to know why I saved her… that I can answer."
"So why?"
"Because… I'm selfish. Because when I saw that six foot tall piece of shit criminal inching towards an innocent girl with a gun in his hand…..," I aggressively spat out another mouthful of blood, "It fucking pissed me off, that's why! It reminded me… of myself. When I was huddled up, head buried in my arms waiting for …. It to stop, all I wanted was for someone to… save me. So I.. saved her instead."
"You…," the bearded man spat with disgust, "are illogical. Driven by emotions. Rash. Easily prone to anger."
"You are a Fool, a Coward, a Rabbit."
With that, the bearded man snapped his fingers.