The AK-47 Suicides
"We're on a mission from God,” she says.
I look at the bleeding clouds: The towers mirror pieces of red glass to the sidewalks like a mosaic on the Manhattan asphalt, crimson and ginger and blue. Her voice is diamond, sharp and scarring into my ear, and her eyes flutter with fervor, widen with eagerness, water with odium.
“You’re insane.”
"Insanity runs in my family,” she says, her eyes flashing in the twilight. “It practically gallops."
“Fine. Where would you get them?”
“My boyfriend,” she says, and a cool warmness plays on my lips. She is looking at them and a chilly, wet breath smogs them like glass.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”
I watch as she lowers the shooters, kicking them down the stairs. They’re too heavy for her pale, feeble arms.
“We’ll change lives,” she says. "It's like in those films: If you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race."
I don’t know if I should smile or laugh, or say something. So I quiver.
We step into the hall and shoot everyone—everyone: stereotypes included, blonds and stoners and teachers—we don’t care. Her arm droops as she fires. In seconds, the hallway floor is one immense sunset, and she screams “Do it!” and I can hear a roar from the side of my face, and a rush of heat seeping into my shoes, and a stringy thud on my ankle. It’s her head, scarlet and little and sad.
I loved her.
I drop the AK-47 and a man runs and embraces me like a father, his elbow poking my neck, and I feel the air pouring in my chest like blood. I can see Mr. Sardon’s body, and Lauren Flash, and the principal’s face behind me.
They all look at me.
I wish I had never dropped the gun.
They all look at me, and I wish a million things.
