Moe! Part Two

Nothing could have gone more wrong in those last few moments inside the school hallway. I fired. There was blood. I fired again. Lots of blood. Screaming from every direction and chaos. Just complete and utter chaos. A chaos that was created by my hand. I looked down at the white paper suit that I had been forced to put on inside the hospital, where the police had taken my clothes, shoes, backpack, weaponry and ammunition as evidence. I had been taken to the hospital after the school resource officers were forced to deploy their tasers against me when I raised the rifle and attempted to fire at them inside the school. The rifle was empty. All of the ammunition had been fired in an attempt to take the lives or hurt as many of classmates as possible. I wanted them to shoot me. I fucked up and forgot my pistol in the closet that I waited in prior to me opening fire at Cole County High School.

That we shared classes was the only common thread between the rest of the students at Cole County High School and me. Nothing else was the same. They had the best of everything. Designer clothes and shoes. Expensive cellular phones, vehicles that they crowded the streets and school parking lots with, and everyone seemed to be dripping in jewelry.

It wasn't that they owned those things; everyone has a right to own nice things if they've worked for them. It's that they all let me know that they had those things, and I didn't. Parking their new cars in the student parking lot, right where I had to walk to enter and exit the building all the time. Gathering in groups with their cell phones, tablets and laptops during lunch, and laughing at me while they pretended to watch stupid cat videos on YouTube. I sat alone at a cafeteria table and watched them toss their school lunches in the trash while laughing at me on the way out because I never had any money for lunch.

They laughed at me when I cried because my mother died of cancer. They laughed at me when I cried because my father shot himself in the head shortly after my mother died, unable to live without her but he felt free to make me live without him.

I wasn't aware of the ride from the hospital to the police station until the car slowed, made a right turn and stopped in front of a large metal garage door. "STOP! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!" was painted in black, in contrast to the drab grey of the door itself. The officer that was behind the wheel of the cruiser rolled down his window and pushed a button on a black box next to the driveway where we sat. It was only a few seconds before a disembodied voice cracked through the speakers.

"Can I help you?"

The officer responded quickly.

"I have one male in custody. Clean and controlled."

Without any further dialog or hesitation, the large metal door roared to life and seemed to be eaten by the ceiling above it as it raised to allow room for the cruiser to safely enter. It seemed like milliseconds before the door began its descent, closing the world out, and me in. I was ushered out of the car and through the hallways of the building until we reached a grey metal door emblazoned with the word INTERROGATION and just beneath that, another that read OCCUPIED. The officer swung the door open and led me inside.

The room was small and was furnished with a single heavy hardwood desk that had been bolted to the floor. There were two drab green plastic chairs in the room, and the walls were the same drab grey of the door, save for a black painted chair rail that ran horizontally around the room. The carpet matched the walls and the door. All four corners of the room had cameras, and there was a large steel plate with a ring attached in the floor between the two chairs with a chain and shackle attached. I was encouraged to take the chair furthest from the door and one of the officers hooked the free end of the chain that had been secured in the floor around my ankle. The ankle shackles, belly chain and handcuffs came off next, and without another word, the officer disappeared.

Before the officer's shadow cleared the door, Detective John Absheron breezed into the room. He had a big smile across his face, and his voice was over-friendly and full of energy when he asked me if I needed anything.

"Ha! Run down to the evidence locker and grab me a blunt. This has been a fucked-up day."

He laughed, I laughed, I'm sure the bastards that were listening to and watching my interaction with Detective Absheron laughed. It gave me a second to think, and I asked for a Pepsi and something to eat. I hadn't had breakfast or lunch that day. I also didn't have anything for dinner the night before. Or lunch. Or breakfast. It was my normal practice to wait until everyone had left the cafeteria before I would sneak back in and steal what was savable and edible from the trash cans. I took a few bites for myself and took everything else home for my brothers. That we all managed to get a little discarded food from school each day kept us fed and made for some pretty good meals some nights. The weekends were the worst. If one of us couldn't manage to steal something from the corner grocery, we didn't eat on the weekend. All of us were starved by the time we got to school on Monday each week and it always made the day so much worse. We were at the mercy of my tormentors, and there was nothing I could do about it. Until now. I found something I could do about it.

"Would you like a pizza? I can order you one. With a Pepsi, of course."

Good. That was perfect. I would eat a slice and send the rest to my brothers.

"If I don't eat it all, will you make sure my brothers get the rest?"

Detective Absheron's face flashed an emotion I didn't recognize before quickly hiding it with a smile.

"Your brothers are here. All of them. They said the same thing, you know. They wanted to eat a slice each and see that you got the rest. We told them to eat their fill, and we would get you your very own pizza. They did eat! Ha! All of the pizzas are gone. There isn't a can of Pepsi left in the building and right now they are devouring double chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup and whip cream. Let me get that ordered for you, and I'll be back. Okay?"

I kept my head lowered, wiped my eyes and nodded yes. I didn't trust my voice at the moment. I sat alone in the room for about forty-five minutes before Detective Absheron returned. It gave me time to think and collect myself. I didn't have a "plan B" for this situation. I was supposed to be dead, not sitting in an interrogation room. While I waited, every movement was captured from four different angles. Every sound captured by the high-tech microphone that hung from the ceiling and just above and between the chairs in the room. I went through every emotion imaginable and settled on jovial relief. I was just going to tell them the truth. The truth would be far more shocking than anything I could make up.

We made small talk while I devoured my pizza. I washed it down with a Pepsi, then a Sprite, and finished it off with a Mug Rootbeer. I had never been so full in my life. A bathroom break later and it was time to get down to business. Detective Absheron cleared his throat and began to speak.

"Ollie, we know what happened. What we don't know is why. Why Ollie? Why did this happen?

"I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't let them pick on me. I couldn't let them pick on my brothers. Nothing had ever happened to any of them. None of them had ever suffered. I made something happen. I made them suffer."

The detective nodded his head in agreement. By the look on his face, I could tell I REALLY made them suffer.

"How many did I get? Fifteen you said? Did I off fifteen of them?"

Absheron took a shaky breath and exhaled sharply. It took him a moment before he began to speak.

"You hit fifteen. Eleven of them are dead. Two are in critical condition and may not survive. Two more sustained critical injury when they were both shot and then trampled by the students that were attempting to get away from you."

I took a deep breath and prepared to tell Detective Absheron something that would change the moment immediately.

"So, my total is twenty-one then?"

The detective's breath caught in his throat for a moment before he was able to speak.

"Twenty-one Ollie? Who are the other six?"

My smile could not have been bigger when I answered him.

"You should go to the Williamson house. You know the pastor, Michael Williamson?"

He could not get his things together fast enough as he excused himself and hurriedly left the room. I heard the dead bolt drive home and his footsteps faded down the hall.

The world would never laugh at us again. Ever. Not when they see what I did inside that house.

Father, Forgive Me.

The Williamson home sat on a corner lot and was massive. The basement was finished and housed a small apartment before they purchased the home and reinstalled the stairs to the main floor. A washer and dryer, chest freezer and the pastor's office were all situated in the basement. The bathroom that had once been an integral part of everyday life for an apartment dweller was now designated as the office bathroom, the shower for the pastor's occasional all-nighter with the college-aged kids he mentored.

Up the steps and through the door and you would find yourself in a hallway. To the right was the living area and front door, to the left two bedrooms, a bathroom and entrance to the kitchen. Turning left into the kitchen from the hallway and one would find the back door to the right and the dining room through a short hallway to the left. Left into the dining room, left again through the living room and into the hallway and an immediate left onto the stairs leading to the top floor of the house. At the top of those steps and to the left was a bathroom and then a bedroom. To the right, another bedroom and a massive playroom between the two.

Michael and Dawn occupied the first bedroom on the main floor of the house. It was centered on the home's eastern wall and just beyond that was the room of Chloe, 12 years old. The upstairs bedrooms were filled with Simeon (ten years old) and Abraham (thirteen years old) on the left and Moriah (fourteen years old) on the right.

My brothers and I were temporarily placed with the Williamson family after our dad committed suicide, while we waited for our aunt to come and retrieve us, so I knew that while the rest of the kids were completing their required classes for home school, Dawn would have the two youngest at the YMCA for their swimming lessons. Michael would be off on the campus of the local university, where he was the campus minister. That just left Moriah and Abraham at home. You should have seen their faces when they happily invited me in, offered me a drink or something to eat and were met with silence and the working end of my twenty-two caliber pistol.

Moriah was first. One shot to the middle of her throat and she fell, grasping her throat, blood pouring from between her fingers and dramatically gasping for breath. Abraham was wide-eyed and repeating his sister's name over and over as he made his way across the kitchen floor and into the dining room, where Moriah was lying, dying and bleeding everywhere. There was so much blood from that one gunshot, it actually surprised me. The smell of her blood mixed with the sulphur smell of the gunpowder from my pistol filled the air immediately. My ears were ringing despite the ear plugs that I had the foresight to bring with me, but I could hear Abraham's screams getting louder as he crouched over his bleeding sister.

I raised my arm and aimed the pistol at Abraham's head.

"Stand the fuck up!"

Abraham's head swung around until he was looking at me, raising his hands in surrender.

"God no! Please, please no!"

Abraham's hands were raised, palms towards me, and he was attempting to retreat to the living room. Blood covered his hands and dripped down both of his arms. A blood smear ran across his upper lip and mixed with the snot pouring from his nose and the tears streaming from his eyes. I took a step towards him as I began to speak.

"The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in his steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation."

The look of confusion crept through the look of terror on Abraham's face for just a moment. Church boy didn't get it. He didn't understand yet that his sister had to die, he had to die, his family had to die because of the sins of his father, Michael. While we were placed in their home, we learned who Michael really was. He hid behind his bible while he abused my brothers and me. The smallest infraction of the house rules brought his children a time out. It brought my brothers and I smacks to the back of the head, bruises from pinched skin and all of us had to shave our heads so that Michael couldn't pull our hair anymore. We tried to tell someone, but nobody believed that the pastor would do such a thing. They wouldn't listen then, but they would listen now.

I aimed and fired once, striking Abraham in the right knee, just below where his purple camo shorts stopped. He dropped to the floor, screaming and holding his knee. While he held his hand over the hole in the front of his knee, blood poured from the hole left in the back of his knee when the bullet I fired exited the other side. Abraham began to roll from side to side in an attempt to handle the pain. I fired once more, hitting him in the back, just below his left shoulder blade. I was starting to freak out a little. It was nothing like I had seen on television and in the movies. I thought I would fire, and they would die. I didn't know they would still move, breathe or die slowly. I also had no idea how much I would enjoy it.

Abraham rolled to his back, his eyes wide with terror, clutching at his chest. There was no new blood on that side of his shirt, but blood filled with tiny bubbles started to pour from the side of his mouth, pooling below his head and turning his dishwater blonde hair bright red. Every breath he took was a bit more forced and shallow. The gurgling sound that came from his lips as he attempted to breath struck me funny and I started to laugh. I was laughing so hard at the sound Abraham was making that I almost didn't hear Dawn return with the Chloe and Simeon.

I had to hurry. I had to make it downstairs before Dawn was able to get the kids out of the car and into the house through the basement door. Since the house sat on a large hill, the access through the front door required steep steps and a lot of them. It was just easier for them to come through the basement door, and that gave me an advantage in this situation. I could deal with the newcomers before they had the chance to find out their family member were dead and dying on the floor upstairs. I took one more look at Abraham, satisfying myself that he was on his way to death. His lips were blue, and his skin was starting to turn a grey color. The sound he had been making was barely audible, but the bubble filled blood was still flowing. He wasn't dead yet, but he was on his way.

I hurried down the basement steps and made it to the landing at the bottom just as Dawn opened the door and rushed Chloe and Simeon through and into the basement. I stood on the landing behind the wall that blocked the stairway from the rest of the basement and held my breath as the foot steps grew closer. Chloe and Simeon decided to race up the steps and Chloe, being in first place, rounded the corner and bounced off of me, landing on the basement floor and leaving both of us in a state of shock. Dawn's voice was loud and obnoxious as I remembered it being when she noticed Chloe on the floor.

"Chloe! What are you doing on the fl..."

While she was speaking, her eyes moved from Chloe on the floor, to Chloe's look of shock to me. The moment her eyes met mine, I smashed the pistol down hard on the bridge of her nose. Simeon and Chloe started to scream, and I had to get them under control before someone heard and ruined it for me. I grabbed Chloe by the hair, wrapping my hand around it twice before pulling her to her feet. I jammed the pistol underneath her chin and looked at Dawn, who was holding her broken nose and attempting to slow down the bleeding from the gash the pistol had left where her once perfect nose was.

"Shut this little bitch up or I'll take her fucking head off right here! I'm not going to hurt any of you. I want your husband. You husband is the reason I am here. Now shut her the fuck up before I kill her!"

Dawn forgot the pain in her nose when she saw the fear in her daughter's eyes and my finger on the trigger.

"It's okay Chloe. It's all going to be okay. Simeon? Simeon, it's okay. Just do what Ollie asks you to do. He won't hurt us if we just do what he tells us to do."

Chloe and Simeon both started to calm themselves and I relaxed my grip on Chloe's hair. As soon as I let her go, she ran to Dawn and Simeon, who had already gathered on the floor and were in one another's arms. How cute. Family unity. It was in that moment that I noticed there were zip ties on the workbench in the basement. That is when the plan changed. I wasn't just going to kill them. I was going to torture them and make the others watch. I would kill Dawn, Simeon and Chloe and kill Michael last. I wanted him to see his family suffer in penance for his sins.

I handed the zip ties to Dawn and told her to put them on her kids. Palms together, hands behind their backs. Tears streamed from her face and she apologized to her kids over and over while she did what she was told. Once their wrists were zip tied together, I made Dawn sit Chloe and Simeon back to back and zip tie their arms together. Once she was finished, I made her turn around and place her palms together and then applied two zip ties, just to be sure. I connected six more zip ties together, connected one end to her wrists, ran it between her legs and the other to a zip tie I placed around her neck. She would have to sit perfectly still, or she would cut off her own air supply.

Without another word, I placed zip ties around the necks of Chloe and Simeon. The zip ties hung loosely around their necks, but Dawn was panicked, nonetheless.

"You don't have to tie them around their necks. They aren't going to go anywhere. Look at them! They are scared to death!"

She was right. I didn't have to tie them up any further. That was never my intention, and I told her as much.

"Okay Dawn, this next part is going to be tough to get through, but we are going to get through it. Okay? Remember when I told you that your husband was abusing us? What did you tell me? You told me that he gets a little carried away every now and then. His job is stressful. It's only when he drinks. He doesn't mean to be like that, it was the way his parents raised him. You asked me not to tell, that it would ruin your family, but you did nothing to stop it. When you could have acted, you didn't. Now, you will want to, but I won't let you."

I reached down and grabbed the end of the zip tie that was around Simeon's neck and pulled. I pulled it tight until it was biting into the skin and imbedded pretty deep. Without hesitation, I did the same thing to Chloe. Both began to struggle against their bonds, and their faces reached a blue hue in just a matter of moments. Dawn tried to scream, but couldn't. The air seemed to be knocked out of her. I saw her struggle to take a breath before her eyes rolled in the back of her head and she passed out. I knew she wasn't dead because the zip tie around her throat was cutting her air off just enough to make a whistling sound at each breath. It didn't take long before Simeon and Chloe were dead. I knew this because the room suddenly filled with the smell of urine and feces. That's another thing the television and movies do not prepare you for. Nobody ever stopped in a movie to say how much a murder scene stinks!

It had been only a minute of two before Dawn came back around. As soon as her eyes focused on her then dead children, she began to scream. Once more, I used to butt of the pistol and drove it down hard on the top of her head. The blow knocked her out, but the sound it made on impact made me nauseous. The sound combined with the other death smells in the room culminated in me throwing up the milk I stole from the school cafeteria the day before and drank in lieu of breakfast that morning. The majority of the hot vomit landed on the face on Dawn. The milky white of the vomit mixed with the blood pouring from the new gash on her head and the previous one on her nose, ran down the front of her shirt and gathered in a pink pool on the floor between her legs.

I waited for Dawn to come to and when she did, I told her to focus on me. I needed her to understand what I was saying. Her eyes were swelling at an alarming rate and had already turned a deep blue/black.

"Dawn, I need you to pay attention to me. Do you know where your other kids are Dawn?"

Oh the pain in her eyes when she realized that I had already been in the house when she got home. All the noise that had been made downstairs they surely would have responded to. IF they had been alive.

"They are dead upstairs. Both of them. I just needed you to know they were dead before you die."

Before she could respond, I lifted the hammer I had taken from the work bench and smashed it into her head. I wasn't prepared for that at all. I used the claw end of the hammer and her head cracked like a watermelon. That's even what it sounded like. Grey gooey matter oozed from the gaping hole left in her skull. Blood was splattered everywhere. I left the hammer stuck in her head and waited for Michael to get home.

Nine-fifteen exactly, I know because I looked at my watch, Michael returned to the house. As he opened the door and stepped inside, his blue eyes turned to ice when they met the barrel of the forty caliber pistol that I had brought just for him. He lowered his head and smirked. He actually thought he was going to talk his way out of it.

"You don't have to do this. We can talk about it. Pray about it."

That pissed me off. He was always hiding behind the bible. He was always doing evil deeds in the name of his creator.

"Pray then Michael. I'll give you ten minutes to pray. Pray that God intervenes or you fucking die you pig. Now pray. Out loud. PRAY!"

My finger moved to the trigger as his eyes filled with tears.

"Our Father, who art..."

That sorry bastard couldn't even pray for his life. He prayed a prayer that most people know form the time they are little. It was all so automatic with him. So fake and scripted.

While I held the gun to his head, I made him start walking towards the stairs. The moment he saw blood, he turned white and stopped praying. As we rounded the corner, he saw his two children bound together, dead and discolored from death. Then he saw his wife, covered in blood with a claw hammer sticking out of her head. His knees crumbled, and he fell to the floor. I allowed him a moment to take in the sight of his dead family. The deaths that he had caused.

I forced him to his feet and up the stairs. As we rounded the top of the steps, Michael and I saw Abraham. He wasn't dead. He had crawled through the hallway and was trying to make it to the phone that was on the kitchen counter. Michael lunged for his son and I pulled the trigger. The blast was louder than anything I had ever heard. A pink mist appeared before my eyes and as it cleared, what was left of Michael's head and body landed on top of Abraham. That was good enough for me. If Abraham wasn't dead yet, his dad's dead weight on top of him would finish him off.

I went into the bathroom at the end of the hallway, undressed and stepped into the shower. I washed all the blood off my skin and scrubbed my hair twice to get out the blood and bits of brain that had stuck in it. I wrapped a towel around me, went through the hallway to Michael and Dawn's bedroom, looked through the dresser drawers and found the clothes that the cops took at the hospital. Walking through the hallway got blood on my feet again, so I went back in the bathroom and rinsed them off before I dried off, got dressed and walked out of the back door. I walked the twelve blocks to school and now here I sit in this interrogation room.

Did I do enough to convince them that I'm crazy? If I can convince them I'm crazy, I'll be out of prison by the time I'm twenty-one. When I'm released, I'll visit the church I grew up in. That should make for a much more interesting story.