6. "for men will be"

I don't have a fear of needles, but in no way will I ever admit to liking them or tolerating them in the least. The idea alone of a needle entering my skin made me wince, and you could imagine it was embarrassing to have to inject myself with a needle in front of five people that I haven't known since I was born, but I had to go through with it. I could blame absolutely no one for making me go through this. Nobody besides myself. I'm here because I wanted to be. Not because anyone told me to be.

And technically, I could back myself right out of it too, but that took a lot more strength than it took to get the second a needle would be poking into my body over-with. How funny would it be to travel halfway across the world only to disappear out the door because of a needle?

Not funny for me. Funny for everyone else.

Just a pinch, they said. It'll be fine, they said -- and for a while, they were right, until the time came that they weren't. The time came that they were very, very wrong. Far off, and they couldn't have been further.

We stood in a circle for a good while in peaceful chatter, for the most part. Someone would talk about the time they slipped in the middle of the grocery store and half the apples came tumbling down, then someone couldn't help but to mention the time they played couple with a random person in their first period course and a marriage counselor, timing it until they could find out they had no idea who the other person was.

Someone would bring up the reason why they absolutely despise summer, and another would bring up why their opinion is statistically wrong, and why winter is the one humans are meant to hate. Someone would even have to go on a sudden rant about how we were idiots to trust the school to give us life-long careers amidst what we just went through, when the tile was uneven and were worn down for years without care to be fixed.

We thought that was the most we had to worry about.

But after about fifteen minutes, the room started to spin, and we realized that there were a lot more things to freak out about besides whether tulips or sunflowers are superior, or whether the concept of romanticizing snow and cherry blossoms was overused in novels or in movies. Not when we could hardly stand without collapsing, running into something, or our vision turning entirely black on us.

"I'm not the only one who can barely see, right?" Ryan's voice came about. With my eyes open wide, I could make out his blurry stature and outline somewhat, but I relied more on my hearing than my vision to make myself convinced that it came from him. If I had only my vision to trust, I couldn't have been sure who it was. Not even to tell whether he was a man or a woman.

"Yeah, you're the only one. We're just stomping about in random directions or we have our butts glued to our chairs for the fun of it. No crap, Sherlock. None of us can see," Nova barked. She was not amused whatsoever, not even to the man she's been so infatuated with for years, and here I came to find out that when she fell into fear, her immaturity drove back up into the sky. From there, there were no exceptions, including the people she loved very much. Everyone became victim.

"Nova--," I called out her name. I've put up with her attitude several times before, but in a condition like this, I wasn't about to put up with even more stresses. Nobody wanted to hear anything like that ever, but most definitely not now. This wasn't the time for it. We didn't have miscellaneous minutes to nick-pick at people.

"Calm down, guys. The instructions mentioned that there would be side effects. This is probably one of them. It'll wear off. Give it a second, " Jayvee tried to be consoling, and she was. She did play her part in helping everyone to calm down, but it wasn't near as powerful as it usually was. We didn't realize it before, but we had to now -- seeing someone makes a big difference as to how strong they come through. Gesture and expression does so much in language, and without that, we were near to lost. We held onto our ability to hear for dear-life.

And for someone out there, that wasn't enough. They intended for us to hold on for dear-life, period.

Out of the blue came the bang of gun fire. Being too packed with anxieties, not one of us could tell what direction it came from or who could have possibly picked up a gun so quickly, and worse than that, we couldn't tell which of our weights fell to the floor with a thud. What we did know is somebody did, and when they fell they fell hard, without any level of consciousness to brace themselves for the impact.

"What the heck was that?" Jared bellowed. It's been a while since I heard his voice, or it felt like it, and when it finally came out I nearly fell over. I felt for a chair to sit back down again, chanting to myself promises that forbid me from ever trying to stand up. I was in denial. I wanted to believe that I wasn't effected and that if I walked around a bit it would wear off like I did with the "crown" of iron deficiency, but this wasn't that. This felt permanent, and it was petrifying. When it came, it forced itself to be accepted as a new reality for as long as it would be there.

It's as if it was telling us that it was here to stay forever, even if it wasn't.

Then Jewee screamed, a long, high pitched scream that any language would understand. Right there, we knew he gained sight back before the rest. He didn't have to talk for us to know that something went wrong, and that something was still terribly terribly wrong.

A nightmare was unraveling for the worst, but here we were, without a single idea on just how bad it was, until our vision allowed us to focus down on the man at our feet. We begged for our vision when it was taken away, but when it returned, we didn't want it back.

Ryan was sprawled out on the floor, his still-crimson blood gushing from his skin, and yet I couldn't tell from exactly where. His shirt was covered in blood near to his stomach, but up by his forehead there were a couple of droplets dripping and smeared down across his face. His chest still rose and fell, but the five of us standing couldn't bring ourselves to take even a step toward him to understand better on what exactly had to be done, and we were too frozen for the first few seconds to pull out a phone to call for help.

I was going to be sick.

"Jared, what did you do?" Nova accused, staring down at the body and then back at the man she yelled at. Her signature sign -- her hands being folded into fists at her sides was back at it again, but it wasn't the same as it usually was. They shook and shook and shook and continued to shake yet it was unclear as to why. There were so many reasons she could be reacting that way. What I liked to think it was was out of being terrified, and as bad as it sounds to "like to think that way" it was a whole lot better than guilt.

"What do you mean, what did I do, Novs? Why are you so quick to accuse?" Jared fired back. His stance, though tall naturally, seemed taller than usual, and he answered in such a tranquil manner it's like he didn't feel any shock of what happened -- but only to the complaining girl, which in my viewpoint, was odd. Everyone reacts different to traumatic situations, but his was too little, I'd say. Of course though, he wouldn't agree with that. "You're the one with the child mind, crazy temper and a motive to want the worst for Ryan after he announced his relationship with Jayvee, and you have the gut to say 'Jared, what did you do'? Re-examine yourself, you hear?"

"Hey. I might be stupid when it comes to the ways of the world, and I know you're implying that I only have a brain academically, but I'm smart enough not to hurt someone. I'm more desperate for a career than any of you and you think I'm going to taint my chances of getting what I want?" she claimed, yet she stopped there. She didn't know what more to add. Inside, she was boiling for the words she needs to throw a dodge ball back at Jared that would also write 'motive' across his forehead. When she found herself giving up, she became uncomfortable with accepting that, and swiftly she had a finger pointing straight at the tip of my nose.

"He's the one that went to college late. I went to college early, I still have my entire life ahead of me, but him -- he doesn't have as much as I do or anybody else in the group for that matter, he's fricking elderly compared to us, and when another film major was among us, he must've felt some sort of competition that the program would only have one career in the industry and that they'd choose the younger one. There would only be one way to fix that, wouldn't there, Colby? Eliminate the competition."

"There is no way you actually think you can turn this on me because I have a common interest with him. It might not be as straightforward as mine, but I'm sure all of you have something in common with him, including you," I sighed, but saying the words wasn't my priority. Peering down at Ryan's body, helpless across the tile, anyone could tell we couldn't leave him laying there much longer. The helpless are the ones that needed help, and at this moment, that was him. We had to focus on him over the insanity racing through each of us after seeing this happen.

"I can't believe you, Nova! Do you not even have the ability in your body to be happy for me? Or happy for Ryan, at least? Why would you come between us? You're the one person here with a reason to do something so disgusting. You actually think that the rest of us would just start pulling triggers out of nowhere? You actually think that this would be up for discussion?" Jayvee, awoken from her surprise, and ever since gained the ability to accept that her boyfriend had been shot, targeted Nova with blame from the start as if she didn't hear anything else that came up among us. Maybe she didn't. Her closer-emotion for the man could've made her blank for a good minute as a coping mechanism.

Now, she had the energy in her -- barely -- to sit down beside the body and check for a pulse. By the look on her face, I wanted to assume that he was alive, but that she was simply afraid of how much longer he would be, or that she was concerned that we got him to a hospital. That would mean that we still had a chance -- that we still had hope, but when it sat there for too long, I knew that wasn't the case.

"H-he's dead," she stuttered, in attempt to hold back her tears, but to no avail, each of us had to watch her burst into the droplets of her sadness that collided with the red from his veins. As the streams of her waterfall went falling down her face, she turned to give Nova one last blazing madness of a glare. "He's dead because of you."

"I didn't kill him! You have to believe me! I didn't-- I wouldn't do this. I could never do anything like this. I don't have that in me, really, I didn't kill him. You really think that I could--? No, you don't understand. I didn't. I didn't kill him. Trust me. Believe me, please. I'm not a killer. I'm not a murderer. I would never do such a thing. I. Did. Not. Kill. Him!"

And then, convenient for the girl aspiring to be a web developer, and who was a master with the ways of code, the lights went out.

Everything went black.