Fan Fiction ❯ Fade to Black ❯ Fucking School ( Chapter 7 )

Chapter 7: Fucking School

My alarm clock woke me up at 6:45 Monday morning. After this weekend of vandalism, I was seriously debating whether or not to skip school. Finally, I got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom to shower. I got out of the shower and quickly dressed for school.

Outside, the air was damp with the morning dew, which glistened in the sunlight off the blades of grass of my front lawn. It was 7 o' clock and I climbed into my black SUV. I keyed the ignition and put in my Sex Pistols CD. Anarchy in the UK started playing. I pulled out of my driveway and headed towards school.

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I was sitting in my first period class, dreaming of a life that less involved school and teachers and faggots who piss me off. As I was sitting there, contemplating how much I actually hated school, I looked up. For no reason, just one of those things, I looked up. And spotted my good friend Chuckles. He was sitting two rows to the left and about four seats in front of me. He was glaring at me, anger apparent on his face. I just smiled real big and went back to doodling in my notebook and thinking. Thinking about Sarah, specifically. She's just so goddamn amazing and I'm lucky to have her.

The teacher at the front of the class droned on and on about God knows what. I couldn't wait until this day was over. I had work tonight at my Hey-work-whenever-we-call-you job at Blockbuster. So I couldn't really spend time with Sarah after school. At least we had lunch and we got out early so that provided opportunity..

Four periods later, Sarah, John, and I were sitting at our usual table. Sarah was right next to me and John was across from where I was sitting.

"Hey, remember that big fucking asshole from Friday? Chuckles?" I asked them.

"Yeah, what a stupid prick," Sarah interjected as she opened her Diet Coke. I really don't understand diet soda. It's the same basic fucking thing, except it tastes like shit and is real sugary. Drink the regular fucking soda, I think.

"Yeah, I remember him, Jo," John replied, looking up. Sarah and John waited for me to swallow my bite of sandwich and continue.

"Well, the fucker is in my first period class. The guy was giving me a look the whole period. Like he wanted to tear my balls off or something," I explained.

"Sounds like a jovial fellow," Sarah said mockingly.

"What's `jovial' mean?" John asked.

School let out early because of some teacher workshop thing. It's basically when people who run the school district or whatever come to the school and make the teachers do group work to develop teamwork. Like all the teachers join hands and have to pass a Hula-Hoop all the way around the circle. From what I hear, the teachers just screw around like we do in their classes. Stress release or something, I guess. It all sounds pretty stupid to me.

It was around 12:30 and I pulled my car into the parking lot of the Western Heights Mall. John, Sarah, and I got out of my truck and shut the doors. The sky was overcast and the wind was whipping my trench coat around behind me. The cool wind blew Sarah's hair around wildly, veiling her face in blonde locks. Across the parking lot, dusty fall leaves blew, making their eerie rasping noise. In the air hung that sweet smell of decaying leaves, the smell of fall. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one and took a drag. The three of us started towards the entrances to the mall, across the pretty much deserted parking lot. As we neared the entrance, we noticed the Halloween decorations that were there since September were replaced with Thanksgiving ones. I took a last drag on my cigarette and threw it to the ground, then opened the door. We stepped inside.

We were welcomed with a comfortably warm blast of air and the smell of…well, I can't really say what the smell exactly is, but we were welcomed with that mall smell. You know what I'm talking about. The mall was a sprawling single level structure, with many different stores, most of which I was morally opposed to. Like, say, Abercrombie and Fitch, Old Navy, American Eagle, etc. There were several small desk things in the middle of the walkways of the mall, like the Piercing Pagoda, Sunglasses Hut, and other stupid little things that weren't good enough to be a real store.

The three of us walked through the mall, talking occasionally about what we should do. We noticed that despite the empty parking lot, there were a good amount of kids from school here. Granted, ones that I hated, but there were still kids from school here. There was a generally happy, contented vibe going through the structure and you could feel it. It electrified the air around us. It was present because we knew we were supposed to be in school, but that we were released from our prison early.

We walked a little longer, then stopped into The Wall. Sarah and John wandered off to browse the aisles of CD's and I went to look for the new k's Choice CD. It already came out in the UK, so I figured what the hell; maybe it'll be in the States. It was not, and I left The Wall disappointed as John and Sarah carried their purchases with them.

"So what do you want to do now, Jo?" John said.

"Hmm… I have no clue. Sarah?" I replied.

"Ummm, hit the factory?" she suggested. I considered it for a moment. I do love my factory. And I should probably put those firearms to use.

"Yeah, that's a good thought. I have some shit I kinda want to do. How bout it, John?" I answered.

"Sure, let's get fucking going, you have to work at four," John said. We all moved towards the exit of the mall and got into my SUV and head for the old factory.

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"Ok, Sarah. This is the action. Just pull it back to send a round into the chamber," John instructed. We were teaching Sarah how to shoot guns. All in all, I believe that being adept in the use of a variety of firearms is a useful quality. We had set up several beer bottles on a shelf at the end of the factory floor, making a kind of nice firing range.

" Ok I got it," Sarah said. She held the pistol in the weaver stance and aim at a bottle. The gun trembled slightly. After a while, Sarah squeezed the trigger and the gun discharged. Miss.

"Goddammit, " Sarah said.

" It's ok, " I said," It takes some getting used to." Sarah smiled and threw me a cute `Thank you' look and turned back to the bottles. This time she squeezed the shots off three at a time. Three bottles shattered by the time she emptied the clip.

" See, I told you so," I said, moving over to wrap my arm around her waist and kiss her forehead. She wrapped her arms around my waist and we watch John destroy the last of the bottles with his rifle, to which he had attached a nine-power scope. He went back and replaced the bottles.

"Take `em out, Jo," John said. I pulled away from Sarah after she looked at me questioningly. I reached into the duffel bag we brought the weapons down in and pulled out my Tommy gun. Sarah eyes grew wide and she smiled.

"Holy shit," was all she offered. I grinned and racked the bolt of the submachine gun. I turned to the line of ten bottles and leveled the gun at the leftmost bottle. I took a shallow breath and held it, then squeezed the trigger. The factory floor exploded in a frenzy of automatic fire. Sarah and John reached up to cover their ears as I began raking the fire left to right, shatter the bottles and punching two-inch deep holes into the concrete wall behind the bottles. I didn't stop firing until the drum was empty. Shiny brass casings settled onto the floor of the factory. I looked down and they were surrounding me. Sarah grinned.

"That was fucking awesome," Sarah said in a low voice, smiling.

"Thanks," was my reply.

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It was 9:30 and I was putting up copies of Gladiator up on shelves at the Blockbuster I work at, near the Western Heights Mall. It was a pretty slow night and after putting up these copies, I have nothing left to do. I finished with the tapes and made my way back to the front of the store.

"What's up?" Jimmy, my coworker said. Jimmy was a pretty nice kid and I enjoyed talking to him. He always had something interesting to say or do.

"I finished putting up those tapes so now I have absolutely nothing to do, "I replied. I grabbed a bag of Reese's peanut butter cups off the candy rack and tore it open. I set the bag on the front desk and took an iced tea out of the drink display case. I sat there eating my peanut butter cups and drinking my iced tea. I looked over at Jimmy. He had this thoughtful expression on his face and his brow was furrowed in concentration.

"Let's go outside for a minute," Jimmy finally said. I quickly drained the rest of my iced tea and was about to throw it in the garbage when Jimmy took the bottle out of my hands and picked up his backpack.

"Dude, what are you doing?" I asked.

"You'll see soon enough, Jo. You're gonna love this," Jimmy grinned. We stepped out into the almost empty parking lot of the strip mall across the street from the real mall. Inside the strip mall was an Ames store, a Weiss store, and a Pharmacy and other shit like that. Jimmy opened up his backpack and took out a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner and a role of aluminum foil. I watched curiously as Jimmy filled a 20 ounce soda bottle halfway with the toilet bowl cleaner. I noticed the name of the cleaner. `The Works'…very ominous sounding title for a product. The bag Jimmy had pulled all this shit out of was a Dollar General bag. I tucked that little information away for later use. Jimmy rolled up two tubes of aluminum foil and then broke them in half, giving him four, five-inch tubes of aluminum foil. He placed all of these into the bottle, capped it and then shook it violently.

"Ok, check it. The toilet bowl cleaner has, no shit, hydrochloric acid in it. It eats away at the aluminum foil and then reacts with the broken down particles, superheating the mixture and melting the bottle. At the same time, while the plastic is soft and pliable, the mixture releases hydrogen gas, which blows the bottle up, making it really fucking big until it just explodes. Put it near a flame when it explodes and you'll have a nice sized fireball," Jimmy explained. He set the bottle down on the sidewalk and we backed up against the wall, about 15 feet away from it. After about 60 seconds, the bottle started to release a pale white gas. A few seconds after that, the bottle started to expand.

"Holy shit…that's cool," I said in excitement. After expanding to twice its size, the bottle violently exploded in a cloud of white hydrogen gas, sending smoking pieces of the bottle in two different directions. The explosion made a loud bang, making my ears ring slightly. I smiled.

"Nice little trick, huh?" Jimmy said, grinning wildly and then collecting all the supplies he used to make the bomb.

"Yeah, I'm going to have to take up this little hobby, "I said as we walked back into the building so we could continue our shift.

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Midnight. My shift ended and I walked out into the parking lot towards my truck. I got in and keyed the ignition. That's when I noticed the writing on the back window. In big, red letters "Faggot" was painted on my back window. I got out of the truck and looked around, trying to find out who could have done it. No one was around. Muttering under my breath, I opened the back hatch and took out a rag and a bottle of windshield wiper fluid. I didn't have any water and this was all I had so I figured it'd do. I closed the hatch and liberally dumped the fluid all over the back window. The paint came off fairly easily, which meant it was recently done. I cleaned up the rest of the window, leaving it clean, and drove off towards my house. I knew who did it. And pretty soon I'd know where he lived.