was a large green lizard, a basilisk, on the center of his shirt. It had a sail-like green casque on its head, back, and tail; a bright red eye set in the center of its face. Grabbing his well-worn Falcons cap from where it hung on the post of his bed, he slipped it over his damp hair, turning it backwards and bending the rim just how he liked it.
Turning, he stepped out into the hallway, passing the room where his parents still lay lifeless in their bed, their warm fluids cooling as they soaked into the mussed covers. There was no expression on his vacant face, his eyes fixed directly ahead, unblinking. Shuffling along the hall, he eased down the stairs into the entranceway. He stopped at the front door, opening the closet just to the right and pulling a jacket off of the rack, his backpack from the floor. Closing the door, he slid back the deadbolt and opened the front door, stepping out beneath the overhang onto the gray slate-tiled front porch.
The sun rose behind the thick storm clouds, the snow falling even more heavily than it had been for the last twenty-four hours. The snowplows had been out working all through the night, shoving the amassed accumulation from the roads into high piles at either curb, coating the scraped layer of ice with a thin dusting of sand and gravel. Falling flakes swirled and danced off of the warming roads, a thin layer of fog hanging just beneath the amber glow of the street lamps.
There was only the vaguest outline of the mountains straight ahead of him against the slowly lighting sky as he walked down the front stairs and onto the driveway. The flakes battered his face, slamming coldly against his exposed skin, freezing there momentarily before turning to liquid on his fiery-hot flesh.
He turned right and walked straight down the street toward his bus stop, not the stop he had been using for the last two months, but the one closest to his house, just at the end of the culdesac.
He could see them, standing there on the sidewalk, the shapes of their bodies just darkened silhouettes beneath the early morning sky. As he drew near, he could hear their muffled voices trail off as they all turned to watch him approach. Shouldering right up to them, he stared off towards the hill to his left, the rumbling sound of the bus’s engine echoing up from the valley below. They began to talk again, whether directly to him or to each other he couldn’t tell. Their words just floated up above him into the thin air.
The yellow top of the bus appeared, cresting the hill, a cloud of exhaust swarming from behind and then engulfing them as it rolled to a grinding halt. The stop sign behind the door on the side of the bus swung out with the squeak, the two red, circular lights flashing as the door popped inward.
Matt clambered right up the steps and past the driver who stared at him momentarily, trying to place his face. He sat down in the first seat to his left, tossing his backpack beside him on the green vinyl. He stared straight ahead, watching the others as they passed him, looking directly into his face, his hollow eyes appearing to see right through them.
Slowly, the bus began to inch forward, fighting for traction on the icy road, before finally gripping and heading east, turning right down the enormous hill that led out of his neighborhood. There were still two more stops to be made before finally heading off to the school. Matt had receded back into his mind, allowing everything that went on around him to fade into a mere scene that rolled in front of his eyes like a movie, involving him so little that he barely noticed the rest of the world around him.
Each person to board the bus stared scrutinizingly at him before passing to find a seat. He could hear the voices growing louder and louder, the driver turning up the volume on the radio in an effort to drown them out. Small wads of paper nailed him in the back of the head, bouncing off and falling innocuously to the floor. He didn’t even feel them. He just stared straight ahead through the large front windshield of the bus, watching as the large flakes of snow swirled in front of the large yellow mass of metal that rocketed across the frozen roads. A thin smile traced the course of his lips, his eyes narrowing to slits.
Today was going to be a good day.
The ride passed in the blink of an eye, and before he knew it, they had crossed the Air Force Academy and were pulling up in the large parking lot behind the gray brick school. The door opened with a pop and a whine. The driver settled back in the seat and stared out the side window at the other drivers who stood outside of the busses, swilling steaming mugs of coffee in a small circle as they prepared for the return trip back to the school district staging grounds east of town.
All of the students clambered off the bus, passing Matt as he just sat there, still staring through the now frosted glass. A handful of bookbags slammed against the back of his head, resonating through his skull, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest. His smile widened as he slowly rose, passing the driver who didn’t even look up. Easing down the stairs, he stepped out into the snow. The wind ripped at him from around the bus, whistling between the buildings as he crossed the ice-covered parking lot and headed toward the main doors of the school.
Hundreds of other kids shoved past him, hurriedly stumbling to their lockers to situate themselves before the first class of the day. Matt just walked straight ahead, the grin etched crisply across his jaw. He could hear the voices of those who passed, taunting him, ridiculing him. The voices came from faces that he knew, as well as from those he didn’t, but the words didn’t even permeate the inner sanctum of his brain. He was impervious to anything they said to him, just turning to glance at them, a blank stare and a twisting smile his only retort.
The white-tiled floors were slick with brown, slushy footprints. Traction was tedious, but he just pressed on, walking slowly through the dimly-lit halls toward his locker, making eye contact with everyone and no one at the same time.
He was liberated. Not only could he not hear the words as they were thrown at him from every direction, but he no longer cared. He was of singular focus. Nothing mattered at all. His gaze just crossed them and he willingly accepted the fact that each and every one of these people was going to die. Many of them by his hand. They could snarl and shout and shove all they liked, but it no longer got beneath his skin. The words just bounced off as he entertained the mental visions of their demise, their bodies lying broken and bleeding in the blackness of his mind.
And it all starts today.
His smile widened at that thought. He popped open his locker and shoved his backpack inside, not even bothering to pull anything out or to grab any books. He just slammed the chipping, blue-painted door of the locker closed and headed down the hallway toward the courtyard. Pressing the lever on the door, he walked out onto the cement patio enclosed between the four separate buildings of the school. A cluster of students lingered in the center by a large metal trashcan, smoking and playing hackey sack. Killing time before the first bell that signaled the start of the day. He pressed past vacuous faces as they hurried to their classes; books tucked beneath their arms and cradled to their chests; heads down to keep the swirling snow out of their eyes.
Matt passed them all without even noticing as he crossed the courtyard, past the one lone deciduous tree that grew from a small patch of dirt in the middle of the concrete, and entered the building at the far end. Bounding down the staircase, he took the first right down a long, darkened hallway, heading straight for the door at the far end. He could see them through the thin, rectangular windows in the doors, huddled off to the side, a cloud of smoke lingering around them in the small cement cove, out of the wind and snow.
His heart began to pound in anticipation, his pulse thudding in his ears. Widening almost painfully for a moment, he forced his smile to fade and gripped the metal bar on the door. Shoving it with a clank, he opened the door and stepped out into the swirling wind.
They all turned to stare at him at once. By the surprised looks on their faces as they either tucked their cigarettes behind their backs or tossed them off into the snow, they hadn’t even seen him coming. There were five of them out there, just as he knew there would be. Scott leaned against the wall to his left; finally exhaling the drag that surprise had lodged in his lungs. Shane Corso was to his left, his wide eyes slowly narrowing. He pulled another smoke from his pack to replace the one he had thrown behind the building.
Jeremy Willis hovered straight ahead of him, looking him up and down. He produced the cigarette he had been hiding behind his back, cocking his head and clenching his jaw. Brian James and Tim Williams leaned against the wall to Matt’s right in their almost identical, matching black leather jackets, both wearing a look of surprise.
“Well, well,” Shane said, stepping forward and standing nose to nose with Matt. “If it isn’t the king faggot himself. What are you doing out here, butt pirate? I thought you knew better than to come out here where we straight guys hang. Shouldn’t you be in the bathroom watching guys peeing or something?”
Matt just looked at him and smiled. In his mind, he could see Shane’s battered body. Blood stained his dark blonde hair, matting it to his dented forehead. His tongue hung limply over the edge of his mouth, his jaggedly broken teeth punching through it as it swelled with the red fluid that ran down his chin and into the collar of his
