Sunny

His name was Sunny Sanguine and there was no subtly to the irony of that. He used to walk around our high school like a ghost, a characterless achromatic blur compiled of worn knit wear, thick glasses and a bland, vacant face. I didn't even really know his name until that day. It was a generic Wednesday, I'd had fish fingers for lunch - sat crammed into the crudely graffitied toilet stall to avoid judging eyes, like I always did. Also according to routine, I spent the rest of the lunch break attempting to revisit them through means of a carefully angled piece of cutlery and my all too stubborn gag reflex. I left the toilet feeling sorely disappointed and this increased into a mild, charring depression about the time I realized I had a ragged piece of toilet paper trailing behind my battered sneaker - like a sad homage to the 'just married' wagon I’d never ride in. I slunk down the middle of the empty corridor, my feet echoing behind me like a phantom companion, the shadow of a true friend. Lunch break was over but there was no one around so I assumed my fish finger escapades had made me tardy. The further I walked towards the library the heavier the air felt, it was as if some kind of intense atmospheric shift had occurred and every particle around me was pushing down, screaming in warning. I ignored my unease and listened to the comforting methodical thud and squeak being produced by my determined stride. It wasn't until I turned the corner towards the library that I saw it. It's hard to comprehend something that twisted when you first lay eyes on it. It took me a good ninety seconds to realize it was a human being, it took me a further thirty to process the slumped stature, the utter, formidable stillness and to take in the pool of blood surrounding it on the otherwise immaculate floor. It only took me a fraction of a second however, when my eyes first perceived it, to realize it didn't have a face. Instead replaced by mangled sinew and exposed veins, it appeared as if the face had been shot, chopped or blown off. I lifted my gaze to the bulky library doors, and becoming vaguely aware of the muffled sound of teenage voices coming from within it - I lurched forward. Sketchers landing in the clotting pool I ran full pelt ahead, unable to entirely see through the wave of confused tears that clouded my frozen vision. My breath burning my lungs with every step, knotting and loosening like a busy hangman's noose I struggled to proceed.
'MAN WITH NO FACE, MAN WITH NO FACE' a voice screamed through my psyche. I revisited the image with every unwilling blink, as if the body had been so phosphorescent that, like oxidized mercury, looking directly at it had caused it to be forever burnt into my eyes. Not even 3 feet separating me and the library doors, I threw myself through their excessive form in order to be caught in an embrace by the salvation inside. Only there was none. Upon my entry I was met by five people on their knees facing a boy I only half-recognized. His hair was slightly over his face which was twisted in a grotesque attempt at a smile, the result however was closer to a grimace.
'Come to join the party?' he snarled. He lifted his head so he was facing me but I could not see his eyes, a pair of classic 'Ray Bans' obscured them from me. He raised a hand and curled his fingers into his palm, beckoning me. With no accountable explanation I felt myself rise to my feet, a shocking dull pain passing through my knee from my outlandish entry. I dragged my heavy feet towards his patient towering form, and as I did so he lazily raised a scantily clad arm and with that, I was staring down the barrel of a gun. 'Kneel.' he commanded, his voice encrusted in malice, so I did. He walked over to me and placed the nose of the gun against mine, face to face with the weapon that had no doubt created what I'd fled from in the corridor. The cold metal was soothing against my face, now hot with panicked tears. I closed my eyes in readiness for what was about to become of me, accepting my fate and being thankful I didn't have to fight. As the metal strayed to my furrowed brow I exhaled a heavy sigh, releasing my tension through my forced breath. I opened my eyes slowly, pushing against the fear which was  forcing them shut. Looking around I saw the boy had pushed his sunglasses up into his grease-slicked mess of hair and now I could make out his sunken, haunty eyes. Crystal blue and listless their gaze shot through me like arrows of flaming ice. I tried to look through them, look past them, look anywhere but into them - but I was trapped. Everything he was feeling rushed into me, the hysterical fear, the pure chaotic rage and the dull, murderous regret and in that moment I recognized him. This boy had leant me a pen. This boy had sat behind me in psych. This boy had a gun to my head. Sunny Sanguine, typical nobody. They say don't they, that it's always the quiet ones that are the first to snap. The ones no one expects, the unadorned, the loners, the rejects. Sunny Sanguine,  a boy so faceless he had no choice but to steal his own. He broke our stare before I had found the courage, distracted searching for it in the depth of his irises. He placed his hands over his ears and bent, releasing a blood-curdling scream as he did so. Once standing erect again he motioned at me with the weapon.
'Get over there.'
I shuffled over to the rest of the people in the room, joining them as yet another hopeless hostage. Another set of limbs and possibly transferable organs to add to the five already present. Six hearts, Six brains, Six souls. The devil present in our grotty, state-funded hell. I turned my head to the woman kneeling next to me. I assumed her to be a librarian - the crow’s feet framing her slanted eyes a tell tale sign of her advanced years, her heavy lids dropping like miniature guillotines I recognized one of the people next to me as Justin Neecus, a boy I'd once thrown up on at Holly Jan's 17th. Silent tears were rolling down his flushed cheeks and as he turned to me I was taken aback by the sheer volume at which his face screamed; I do not want to die. Next to him was a timid looking girl of about fourteen, with dirty blonde hair tied in a braid. Her pretty face showed no expression, her eyes empty and lost. The ghost tracks of tears ran through her mascara and down her cheeks, pooling at the corner of her mouth. I turned back to Sunny who was still holding the gun at me and offered him an apprehensive smile. The utter confusion on his face in any other situation would have been mercilessly comical, in this moment however, I simply retained the weak smile and rubbed my aching knee. 
'Don't move' he growled, cocking back the hammer of the revolver. I gingerly raised my hands up, palms forward, in a sign of acceptance to him. My heart was beating so fast in my chest I thought it might burst through my calcium happy ribs and fly out the window, offering me a wave as it left me behind to die. In one faltering beat and with a twitch of my hand Sunny redirected the gun towards the woman next to me and with a deafening, cruel bang - he shot her through the eye. She fell forward in a heap, face to the floor and knees still bent her inanimate stance resembled a lecherous baboon begging for sex.  Someone to the right of me breathed a scream, repressing it's full need and allowing it to simply fall from their mouth. Justin had stopped crying, his face frozen in morbid shock. I looked back at Sunny who towered above me, his features twisted between ecstasy and horror. We all stayed where we were, frozen in time by what we'd just witnessed for what could quite possibly have been an eternity. With no concept of the moments passing except how we each individually perceived it. Some of us feeling the seconds of our lives rushing by towards death, others dragging along, a bitter extended torture. Eventually someone spoke;
'Sunny Sanguine. This is the police. We have you surrounded boy. Release the hostages and come out with your hands up.' Everyone in the room simultaneously averted their eyes from the lifeless body of the wrinkled librarian and turned their heads to the south window, to the source of the artificially magnified voice. 
'Shit, shit shit.' Sunny chanted, knuckles and gun to his temples.
'Well what did you expect ya sick fuck,' the boy kneeling furthest from me had begun to speak, I watched as he ran a hand through his barely-there spikes of hair and scowled 'course they done found you.' 
'Shut up Leon.' Sunny retorted, scowling just as hard back. The boy named Leon began to stand.
'What are ya goin' to do about it Sanguine. You ain't never done a goddamn thing in all ya life, look at you, ya think all this here shit is going to make people remember you exist? Ya'll always be a loser, a sad pathetic nerd.' Leon stood,  eyes locked with Sunny's. We all watched as sparks flew between the pair, an unspoken battle with only fluctuating dilation of the pupils as weapons. Eventually Sunny flickered his eyes lazily at the lifeless librarian and then onto the gun and in silent understanding; Leon sat back down. 
'I'm going into the toilet to look through the tinted windows, check out the cop situation.' Sunny breathed 'If any of you even THINK' his voice rang out around the library, echoing through the silent books 'of leaving this room you will have to scamper past me, and you will end up like this bitch' He raised a Doc Martin and punted the corpse of the librarian. She slowly descended onto her side and not unlike a mighty tree she created a dull thud with her impact. Mouth hanging open in silent scream, one side her face gone, the other side whole and frozen. Pupil fixed and her lid half closed she reminded me of a stress toy - a rough squeeze and her eye would bulge out, tongue lolling, a squeak emerging from her center. I fought the urge to place a finger in her mouth. 'So stay silent kiddies. Understand?' We stayed stunned, Justin shuffled awkwardly and someone coughed. 'Good.' He skulked out the room, keeping his narrowed eyes fixed on our collective mass. What followed was a familiar moment of expectant hush, the instant before a silence is about to be broken against an order, the calm before the storm almost - a communal intake of breath. 
'Well... What's our plan?' Leon was standing now and strode over to us all. We all stayed frozen in fear of being caught but slowly we began to loosen and adjust from our kneeling positions - like the pious catholic sneaking a peak of a playboy, fearful and exhilarated against our wills. 'I've played enough COD to know he don't have enough bullets left in that there revolver to shoot us all. I reckon we make a run for it, he'll probably be so goddamn confused he won't even have no time to get us.' Leon's face had lit up with excitement as he surveyed us all. Justin's eyes flicked to the door Sunny had just walked out through and then they roamed back to Leon. 
'Are you really willing to risk it?' Justin spoke shuffling back onto his knees 'I'm sure as hell not. Call of Duty is not real life, we don't just' he raised his arms to form antagonizing air quotes. '"Respawn" if he catches us. If we die, we're dead. It's not something I'm willing to risk because I have the lung capacity of a fetus and I can't climb the rope in gym and I don't have any muscle mass, my dad calls me a string bean and I won't be able to run fast enough so I'll get shot and I have a rare blood type, they probably wouldn't be able to save me even if they did get to me in time which they just won't..' 
'Justin.' I placed my hand on his shoulder as he spoke, tears back in his dark eyes.
'Yeah sorry,' he looked down at my small hand lightly touching his corduroy jacket, I recoiled it sharply like his vision had burnt it. 'I ramble when I'm under pressure' he continued. 
'You have a point though, some of us would of course be shot.' I offered.
'Listen to ya'll, do ya really think we's gone be survivin' this anyhow? I am gonna be in the US marines, I ain't afraid a-death. I ain't afraid a-nothing' He looked at us, behind the determination on his face I could see the distress, the nightmarish desperation peeking from behind the stony, insane courage. We averted our eyes in shame, aware of what he was about to do with no intention of stopping him. His eyes pleaded to us, and as he turned to face the door he let out a punctuated sigh. Then, bent low, he ran flat out towards the door. It didn't take very long, perhaps fifteen seconds, after Leon pushed through the doors for us to hear the bang and thud of a life ending, it seemed so small - so insignificant a sound for what it represented. I winced, my heart leaping from my chest and relocating in what felt like my throat. I could not believe how easy it was to die here, and how afraid I was. After months of starring at a bottle of cough medicine praying for the courage to drink it down - here I was, fearful for my life. That morning with the fish fingers. That morning with the pure, consuming self-loathing. It all seemed so trivial now, so far away. I looked over at Justin, he looked over at the other girl in the room. We all began furiously knee-crawling our way back to our original places. Seconds later Sunny burst into the room, he stumbled towards us, Leon's body being dragged behind him by a single foot. Sunny was crying. Tear after tear formed rapidly in the corners of his Icelandic-sea eyes and died just as quickly at the base of his pointed chin. 
'I told you... I told you not to leave.. I' His words punctuated by heavy sobs he dropped the body at his side, pressed both gun and knuckle to his temples again and once again bent-double and screamed. His scream cut through me, the anguish of it breaking my heart. 
'Why are you doing this?' I asked softly. He looked at me, the ice in his irises melting. 
'Because I have to.' Was all he said, his eyes glazing over - the liquid lost to me. He came over to me and knelt in front of me. His eyes locked to mine but they were closed now, there was no getting past that. He gingerly lifted the gun to my face, touching it to my cheek. I grazed my cheek against it like a cat nuzzling it's litter. Sunny was so close to me by this point I could feel his warm breath against the corner of my jaw, he pushed the gun further into my cheek, forcing my head closer to his awaiting mouth. 
'They told me to do it' he rasped, his voice closer to silence than sound. He was shaking. The metal against my cheek vibrating as panic overtook him. 'They said they'd leave me alone if I did. No one hears them but me. They're everywhere all the time and I can't...' a child-like whimper escaped his lips followed by a high-pitched whine 'I can't function, they just won't leave me alone. They won't shut up.. they won't shut up... they won't shut up.' His voice was growing louder in my ear. I could feel his tears of frustration falling onto my exposed breast bone. He moved his head back a fraction, his quivering lips close enough now to kiss. Turning his face to the side I noticed I could see straight through his pale irises, as if they were made of glass. I began to wonder what would happen if I pinched them, if perhaps they would shatter in my hand or simply squash between my fingers like all other eyes. He removed the gun from my face and stood up, shielding his face with his hands - using a sleeve to venomously clear it of tears. He cleared his throat and suddenly his face contorted with rage 'Get up' he hissed. We sat dumbfounded by the sudden change in him. A Jekyll-and-Hyde like transformation, he beckoned at us with a precise hand. 'I said, up' he raised the gun and angled it in between the blonde girl's eyes. She rose to her feet, me and Justin followed suit. Sunny stared me dead in the eye, his face devoid of tears and emotion now. His mouth twisted once more into that same malicious smile as he growled; 'We're going on a little trip'.
     We all ambled behind Sunny like a sad death day parade. Feet shuffling in union so as not to draw any unwanted attention, the collective two-step creating our own funeral march . The blonde girl behind me was whimpering quietly like a wounded animal being led to the slaughter.
'Hurry up.' he commanded, ushering us into the men's toilet. I still felt the exhilaration of rule breaking as I crossed the threshold of the restroom, despite the dire situation. 'Pick a stall kids' he mocked, a low chuckle rising from his stomach. We each surveyed the stalls, eyes soaking in the battered paint and the generally illegible graffiti.Unspoken surrender uniting us, we each chose the stall nearest to us to avoid unneeded movement. 'Good now lock the doors.' he growled, three squeaks of the hinges and three awkward clicks from the rusty deadbolts followed 'and wait here.' We heard the toilet door creak open and then breeze shut once more.
'It stinks of shit in here' Justin mumbled in the stall leftwards of mine.
'Well it is the men's bathroom' I said, nonchalantly.
'I don't deserve to be here.' a timid voice came softly from my right.
'None of us do.' Justin retorted.
'No, you don't understand. I've never done anything, my entire life has been school, ballet, school, ballet. I was preparing, to get a good job you know, to get a job and live. I've never smoked, I've never had sex, I've never even had a beer. This isn't fair. I do not, I do not deserve to be here. I was going to do it all after you know, go crazy at college. I wanted to be one of those spring break chicks with daddy issues who flash cameras and let freshmen do shots off their stomachs. I wanted to do it because it was so not me. No one would expect little Sophie to 'go wild'. Now I'll never get to be anything but the frigid little girl who goes to church and isn't allowed to watch 'Skins'.' On the last word her voice broke, huge great gasps and sobs breaking through her. In front of the stall, I heard someone laugh, a poisonous cackle filled to the brim with scorn. Three more deadbolt clicks and three more squeaks - my door swung forward, lightly colliding with my breast.
'Well that was the most pathetic thing I've ever heard.' Sunny stood, chest shaking with repressed laughter. His face hardened suddenly, the laughter ceasing as insanely as it began, and he pointed the gun at Sophie. 'Let me tell you something baby; life isn't fair. You wanna live then do it right now; you wanna drink a beer? We'll drink a beer. You wanna fuck? We'll fuck. But the thing is you never would have done any of those things, you would have stayed dull until the day you died. The only reason you're even thinking about how little you've lived is because I've got this gun to your head. You're not here because you've been a bad person or deserve karmic retribution or anything like that. No, you're here because you were in the library during lunch. That's right, your thirst - your farcical longing to be better than your peers, to simply achieve - that's what's killed you.'  a look of excitement passed across Sunny's face and I heard a sharp intake of breath to my right.
'Killed me?' Sophie whined, and with that; the third gun shot was fired before my widened eyes. I recoiled my foot to rest on the scuffed toilet seat as Sophie's pool of wasted blood ebbed closer to me underneath the divide of our stalls. My angry tears forming clear bubbles where they fell into the ever expanding collection of gore. I raised my head to the ceiling, craning my neck in an attempt to see past the plaster blockage and into the heaven above, to beg for it's existence. I allowed Sunny's manic, nervous laugh to wash over me as I shut my eyes. Squeezing them closed, until my lids almost merged together, I prayed I'd open them and be somewhere else; my bedroom, the classroom, the depths of hell - anywhere but here. But alas, once pried apart I saw what I knew in the back of my mind I always would; the gaunt cackling face of Sunny Sanguine.
'Come on you two, get in here.' he sang, voice mimicking a coach to a winning team, light and playful, with only a hint of instruction. He motioned to us towards the stall at the bottom of which lay the lifeless and mangled form of Sophie the blonde. 'Gotta keep my flock all in the same place, like any good shepherd aye?' He began chortling again, choking on a segment of laughter as it passed his abnormally defined Adam's apple. His joy extirpated by his symbol of manhood. As he choked I saw his features return to the scared corrupt boy who'd cried against my face in the library - that poor lost lamb. He attempted to force the smile back on his frightened face, and failed, instead settling somewhere in-between; a clown-like snarl made of but teeth and gum. 'Just stay here okay?' he mumbled, jabbing me harshly in the back with the gun and forcing me to step over the fresh human corpse laying before me and into the toilet stall. He curled his hand around the frame of the door as he shut it, his fingers creeping like the skeletal legs of an erratic daddy-long-legs. With that he was gone. We had no way of telling whether  or not he was simply standing outside the door listening again, a new part to his sick human experiment, but we didn't care. We looked at each other long and hard, barely breathing - but like children playing an intense game of 'hide and seek' our eagerness to repress breath only caused our intakes to grow and push our rib cages higher. Justin's breath had grown so furious I could feel the ghost of it on my pale cheek. I moved my foot painfully to the right, trying to avoid Sophie's crumpled body. A morbid game of twister, right foot; red. Our eyes met awkwardly, I suddenly felt very aware of his dark eyes, his full lips, his waiting hands. He cleared his throat and sat on the closed toilet lid, breaking our gaze. 
'She had a point you know.' he growled, lightly grazing over Sophie's hairline with eyes. 'We haven't really had a chance yet have we? To live, I mean.' I thought about all the things I had yet  to do and all the things I was proud I'd done. Both lists seemed so small and bland, perfect little cliches to secure my peace of mind. 
'I think I've done okay, for me anyway.' I breathed, my eyes back at the ceiling trying to signal to Heaven once more. 
'So you're saying you'd die happy?' he inquired.
'No one's ever really happy Justin.' More flawless platitudes, 'Not for long anyway. We're all either content or madly struggling to get there.' 
'That's a cheery thought.' I moved my eyes back to him, swaying a little because of my oddly arranged feet. He had a strange look about him, like he was struggling with something. His mouth was hanging open slightly,  his lips parting and forming as if he was making imaginary bubbles appear, like a dumb-struck goldfish. He twitched slightly in a grotesque fashion and his eyes bulged with the effort involved in spitting out his words. 'You know..' he croaked, clearing his throat once more he continued 'I've never even been kissed.' I stared at him. My heart was beating in my esophagus again, this time for all the appropriate reasons. I felt the sweat on my palms and balled my fists to stop it from showing, not wanting him to witness this unappealing masculine trait. My chest was heaving, breast swelling with every intake and I couldn't stop it no matter how hard I tried to repress. There was a flipping in my stomach and the more I thought about what I was about to say the more it turned - pounding around like kneaded dough, hitting the acidic walls at every turn - so I stopped thinking. 
'You can kiss me if you like.' His eyes widened in apprehensive excitement at my words, pupils dilating and lips moistening with a dart of the tongue he leaned towards me. I locked my eyes onto his, getting lost in their deep brown complexity. I could feel his hot breath hitting my dry lips like rhythmic waves crashing against a storm-weary shoreline, dampening them with every collision. When his patient lips finally reached mine I felt my entire body freeze with the relief of human contact. Electricity charging over our conjoining bodies I shivered all over. He touched his hand to my face, our lips meshing together furiously, finding escape in this show of affection. Standing above the body of an innocent we engaged in a moment she would never know - the fire of a first kiss. I could see our passion reflected in her eyes when mine strayed open, Justin's hands pulling my face closer I accidentally caught a glimpse of the bullet wound between her eyes - but I did not pull away. The inferno of our passion overcoming the putrid aura of death. It took a noise in the corridor outside to bring us back down from the mecca we'd been lost in. We pulled apart so quickly I saw a droplet of spit appear from where our mouths had been conjoined seconds before to then fall in slow motion onto the dead, void face staring blankly below us. We heard someone entering the toilet in an angry hurricane of noise, crashing, stamping and banging. We stood still, petrified between our passion and our fear, the two combining in an erotic charge of confusion I had never felt before. I moved my foot accidentally, it made a small splash as it landed in Sophie's blood - the movement outside the cubicle stopped. For the third time that day I heard a scream so hideous, so monstrous - it froze the hot thick blood in my veins. A scream so full of fear and hate - it caused the very breath in my lungs to cease. A scream of warning and of loathing, a scream of many voices. 
'Get out of my head.' he whined, voice growing louder and louder he repeated this command, we could hear him thrashing around like a panicked salmon out of water. He kicked open the door to the stall, it bounced back twice from us to the frame, barely making an impact with either. More air between the two than physical to form a collision. His flushed face was inhuman, twisted and contorted with so many conflicting emotions it barely even resembled a face anymore. 'Run.' he commanded, voice glacial. 'RUN' he screamed again this time with malice, bending double with his shaking hands against his temples. We saw the gun behind him but we did not reach for it, his command still hanging in the air like the smell of kipper on a lazy Sunday. We ran from the men's bathroom with all our might, our legs bent out of shape from awkwardly crouching in the stall. We worked through the pain, barely even able to feel it through the numbing fear. We crashed through heavy wood doors like they were made of air, hardly noticing they were even there. Never looking back to see if we were being followed we were almost out the library when we came to an abrupt halt. A fourth gun shot had been fired. We both stood in horror, not daring to check our bodies and find the wound. A few heart beats passed and neither one of us fell down in agony, neither one of us bent-double in pain. We were unharmed. We screamed our relief, turning to each other and crashing into one another in a glee fueled embrace. I looked into Justin's eyes once more, my soft smile reflected in his dark irises and his wide pupils.
'We did it' I cried, hot tears spilling down my face and landing in pitter-patter splashes all over the floor.
'We did it.' He repeated, leaning forward and placing a soft, barely there, kiss onto my tear soaked lips. I reached for the hood attached to his Abercrombie sweater and pulled it up over his head. 
'There we go, protected now.' We smiled blissfully at each other and turned to face the doors to freedom. 
We stepped through them together, I caught a glimpse of the green-blue tint of twilight touching the sky. A welcoming wave of cold air hit me and I breathed it into my desperate lungs, feeling them freeze and thaw in acceptance of my liberty. I decided I did not hate that lonely boy, Sunny Sanguine. I felt for him, I couldn't even understand how hard it must have been. I knew my share of issues but nothing quite like his struggle. A boy with so many voices, he had to silence his own.  I turned to smile at Justin, to once again be consumed by the perfect circles of hazel in his eyes. Instead however I found myself staring at a red circle. A blinding red circle. Hovering just between his eyes. I heard a shout, something about the suspect, something about Justin, something about Sunny Sanguine. All words I couldn't make out over the confusion engulfing my tired mind. I tried to speak, to vocalize my utter disorientation. But I couldn't, I knew what was about to happen.
And with that, the fifth gun shot was fired.