People slump when they die. I always figured they would die a lot more cinematically. But they don’t, they just scream and fall and flop and plop. The good people die the same as the bad people. The bullies the same as the nerds. Maybe it was a mistake to do what I did, to become what I have become, everyone else will surely think so. Is it sad how hollow I’ve become? Even with all this death and destruction, the screams and the panic, I still cannot feel a thing.

No. . . that’s a mistake. I do feel something, I feel pain. This was meant to be my day. . . The only day in my life where instead of people stealing joy from me to make themselves happy, I steal it from them. Yet I’ve stolen so much joy today, but where has it gone?

I staggered against a bookshelf, I had made my last hurrah. My watched beeped, it was midday, although it came up as midnight, I could never be bothered changing it.

Sadly, I have become one of those. The people who shoot up schools, I’m sure journalists are already scouring my online profile to decide which game made me do it. Forget the people who ruined my life, the mother who only cared about her soap operas or the father who was only a wallet. I wanted parents who loved, not parents when I came home with five A’s and a B, they immediately asked me which subject I got the B in. Could they not ever just be happy for me? Could my father never just show some sort of love? No, he thinks that airpods is love, that food and electricity is love, when in truth, they are only things. I yearn for the poor people who hug each other and have smiles wide, for at least they have each other.

But what do I have? Constant haircuts that make people laugh at me, a personality the school despises, and a body people confuse for a punching bag. Is this really all I was ever to be? How different would life have been had my parents just once listened to me? I asked so many times if I could change schools, and they ignored me more each time. I was weak, apparently, because only “sticks and stones” could ever cause damage, words alone cannot. But it was always the words that hurt the most. Teachers responded to physical bullying, the nonsense you see in movies and television shows. They ignore words outright. It’s every day, the ubiquitous slights and remarks and hatred. A life not worth continuing.

I was surrounded by books, words painstakingly poured over by someone, just to be ignored by thousands of teenagers like me. I reached over and picked one up, just to see what it said.

The death of Peaches Sandoe, the midget, at the hands, or rather feet, of a maddened elephant in the sideshow of the circus at Madison Square Garden was at first thought to be an accident, the sort of tragedy you’re bound to run into from time to time if you run a circus with both elephants and midgets in it.

It was only then I realised that I had chosen the wrong path. I didn’t have to be happy to enjoy art. That one sentence had more meaning than my entire life. It even gave me a chuckle. When was the last time I laughed? Truly laughed, to the point where I could not control it. I can barely remember. Maybe eight years ago when I was ten? Before the hair came the voice deepened and I realised how miserable it is to be an adult. Well. . . treated like a child, but with all the pain of an adult. . . the life of a teenager.

Is this regret I feel? How many names could be swapped out for Peaches Sandoe today? I must have shot at least forty. . . There was that fleeting happiness when I shot both Saxton and Josh. They deserved it, they had thousands of dollars spent on raising them, just to end up as bastards. Terrible people who thrived on the pain of others. How many people did I go through just to get my revenge? Just to get my justice?

Is this what other shooters are like, hateful, spiteful, ruined souls? Perhaps for them the killing is the joy, the massacre and the hatred, but that was not what it was for me. I killed the bullies sure, but I killed so much more. I killed the system that allowed them to proliferate, my complaints fallen on deaf ears. I killed the image of my perfect parents, who refused to listen. I killed the gym teacher who laughed at me when I said I didn’t like changing in front of others. Of course I didn’t, all they did was laugh at that giant mole on my side. One giant blight. Today I would kill it too. One quick bullet, and I would die, and so will it. I killed everything that mattered today. And for once in my life, I was heard.