Rhinestone Murderer

by

Laura Sim

Mondays have never been the favourite day of anyone. They are dull, slow, and reminders that the two days of freedom just experienced have passed, and a routine, conforming and cantankerous, has just begun again. Sometimes, Mondays are livened up a little. Take, for example, the accounts of the Blemonth Institute high school, on Monday, October the seventeenth.

At the end of the day, nine people were dead, many others were wounded, and over two hundred bullets had been fired.

Kalissa Darter, or rather ‘Rhinestone’ for the amount of fake jewels embedded into her bands and bracelets, disliked Mondays to a massive degree. It was five in the morning, and her stomach was gnawing at her. Two hours, and she’d have to get up to go ahead with her day. Maybe there was still time to get sick, but Kalissa’s hopes were not high. Stifling an upset sniffle, she rolled out of her bed and hit the cold, concrete floor that covered the cramped basement where her bed and belongings resided. She arose onto her feet, rubbing at the sore spot on her shoulder, and grabbed a nearby sweater that was lying in a wrinkled heap upon her floor, the sleeve still attempting to keep hold of the overflowing laundry basket in the corner.

Without turning off her alarm clock and shutting out the cheap eighties music from some nasal signer, Kalissa shuffled over to her closet, slipping the sweater onto herself, already dressed from having passed out on her bed without even changing the night before. Placing a steady hand upon the doorknob, she twisted and carefully balanced upon her toes, reaching with both hands to the top shelf. Long, sleek, cold and emotionalist, the rifle her father had given her for Christmas was the closest thing she had to relate to. The bullets were loaded quickly, quietly with practised ease, and more bullets were stashed in her sweater and pants pockets until they were heavy and she had to adorn a belt to her body to keep her breeches from falling. With a slow turn, Kalissa ambled to where her empty knapsack was, kicking it to the side as she grunted while putting the riffle down her left pant leg, suddenly realizing just how useful thrift stores really were.

Finally finished with her preparations, she grabbed her backpack, combed her straggly brown hair with her fingers, then sat upon her bed with straight legs and waited until the still-wailing alarm clock informed her it was eight. Kalissa walked up the stairs quietly so as to not alert her father she was there. He’d yell that she had gotten up too late, woke him up, never mind the fact that his drinking from the night before had probably not ceased until the moment he spotted her.

Once out the door, she slowed her pace, a calm, collected feeling coming over her as she reminded herself how sure she was. Nothing was going to change her. Nothing was going to break her. Rhinestone smiled much too sweetly for a sixteen year old girl with her mindset.

Chester, on the other hand, was much more lackadaisical in his approach to arising with the sun. In fact, it wasn’t until eight thirty that his eyes crept open and peeked through the folds of his blanket. It was much too warm to get up, and being home alone in the mornings was quite the blessing for one as lethargic as Chester. Yet it wasn’t easy to admit defeat, and so Chester sat up slowly, stiffing, and yawned with a gaping mouth. He set his feet upon the floor, flexed his toes, and leaned forward so he overbalanced and stood up. Still stretching, melodramatically, he slipped a shirt over his shoulders, ignored his tussled hair that flashed angrily in the mirror, and warmed his feet with some mismatched socks. The entire process took the better part of an hour. By the time he finished his breakfast of lumpy porridge and found where he had thrown his schoolbag the day before, he was more than thirty minutes late for his first class.

When Chester left his apartment, lazier than the cat that had been waiting all night for someone to let it out from being locked in the den and had settled for messing the carpet up, his thoughts were drone in the elevator. His lateness would turn into something far more significant than simply missing out on the dull voices of his teachers.

Blemonth Institute, a very regular looking high school until one got up close. Brick and stone, with ramps and stairs leading from the sidewalk to the doors, were all drawn from the eye when one noticed the black bars across the windows. They were not there because the neighbourhood was terrible; instead, they were left there from the days when the school used to be an asylum. Indeed, the walls were still white within the high school and some of the classrooms had glue markings where padding had been ripped off and not painted over.

Fairly ironic, considering it housed a few hundred rowdy teenagers, and their frustrated instructors.

Miss Ranger, or as her students affectionately called the lax, timid teacher, ‘Squeaky’, was once again having difficulties keeping her class in order. This was a usual occurrence, and one she should have been quite used too. However, word spread fast, and when one student sensed the motherly weakness in their soft-spoken science teacher, there was not one student in the entire school that hadn’t heard that Ranger was a softy, a push-over, and more interested in being friends with the kids rather than disciplining them.

“Please, be mature. You’re grade eleven students. Seniors! If I can’t say anything pertaining to reproducing in a Biology class, you’re-“

“Screwed?” A student in the back hollered, much to the amusement of the rest of the class. Ranger hung her head and pinched the bridge of her nose, poorly disguising a grin of her own.

“So to speak…now, come on, please. Really now. Just get your work out and turn to page eleven in your text books; it’s a quarter to ten and we haven’t done anything but take the attendance.”

At that moment, it was highly inconvenient that a rusty-haired, freckled maniac meandered into the room with a tired expression on his face.
“Chess!”

“Chester, welcome home.”
“Take your seat, Chester, and get out your textbook and work.”

Chester looked at his teacher, yawning openly and expulsing foul, hot breath. He winked and shrugged. “Don’t got it. Didn’t do it; had other crap to take care of yesterday.

As usual, Miss Ranger pointed to the door with narrowed eyes, and with such a degree of first-hand-knowledge, Chester let out a bark of laughter and walked out the door with no intentions of visiting the office he had been banished to.

Three minutes left of class. Rhinestone looked up long after the redheaded git had left her class. She had her head resting in the crook of her arms upon her desk, staring ahead with a very dead gaze from what might have been pretty blue eyes had they not a strange glint to them that morning. She started when her daydreaming of forwarding the clock forward came true; the bell rang, echoing for a moment after it finished. Biting her bottom lip, she took a deep breath and reached down her pants.

Chester was laughing quite happily with his long-time friend, a tall, lanky kid named Donahue. The noise suddenly filling the hallways blocked the shots ringing from his former class-room, most students figuring the loud noises to be that of dropped textbooks, slamming lockers, and kicked display cases. But the screams, once they started up, stopped everyone in their tracks. Chester and Donahue turned to look down the hallway and stared curiously as a door was swung open violently and students came pouring out, sobbing, screaming, bleeding…

Panic took over. Something had obviously happened, and those kids with enough initiative began calling for people to run to the office, to get teachers, to get out of the way.

“That’s my class,” Chester swallowed quietly. More loud bangs. A silence that was broken only by the sound of a desk sliding against the floor and hitting another one.

“Gun!” someone hollered, and the bullhorn crackled.

“Everyone, please get into the nearest classroom, or leave the school as quickly as possible if an exit is closer to you. This is a lockdown. This is not a drill; I repeat, this is not a drill but an actual lockdown.

Chester and Donahue were frozen for a moment until the announcement cut out. The girl who everyone called Rhinestone was walking calmly out of her classroom, red splattered across her face and torso from close-range hits. Clasped tightly in her hands was a long rifle, black and gleaming with a malicious cleanliness. The boys looked at each other slowly, unblinking, and then turned to run.

But boys can not outrun bullets; not easily, at least. Chester was the slower of the two, and for some reason he was missed. Perhaps Rhinestone figured him to have less of a chance to escape, and she aimed for Donahue in front in hopes that the dead body would trip up the red-haired laze. Chester did trip, but he did not fall; he kept going, the panic inside of him forbidding any moment of grief to slow him down. He whirled around a corner and fled down a stairwell, deaf, mute, and terrified. When the bullhorn crackled, it echoed through empty hallways and dead still classrooms.

“S’not looking good. A few of the students that made it out and across the street to some of the houses say they didn’t see many of the students come out of the first classroom, and some others were getting shot in the hallways as they escaped.”

Otto Sheridon Ormand-Cohen had woken up to pleasanter words in his lifetime. The Royal Australian Army lieutenant had in fact seen more pleasant scenes than what was on the news at that moment. Waking up to his beloved’s nuzzling and strands of her bedraggled blonde hair tickling his face was quite fine and dandy, but when Sara handed him the phone that’s rings he had slept through, her face turning somewhat grave knowing his leave would be cut short, Otto blinked two deep brown eyes in confusion.
“Wot?” he grunted into the receiver, still partially taking the phone from Sara, sitting up as he hooked two fingers into the actual machine, bringing it into his lap so as the cord wouldn’t pester his woman. There was a pause from the sniper’s end before he erupted out into a disbelieving bark.

“S’not possible!” He leaned forward, shaking his head slowly as he rubbed his unshaven face anxiously. “I don’ believe you…”

“What’s happened?” Scottish accent, lovely even when croaked from fatigue; Otto glanced over at Sara and held up a hand, stopping her from talking for the first time his memory could recollect.

“Turn the news on, then, lieutenant. The telly’ll tell you everything I have. Only, ah, less. So, get a uniform, we’ll have everything ready for you when that car gets its arse o’er to you’re home.

“Roight…but wot about posse comitatus?” Otto grunted, licking cracked lips as his thick accent almost melded his words together in his heavy unease and abruptly alerted senses.

“We’ve been given the pollys’ permission.”

A heavy sigh emitted from the large Australian before he muttered an affirmative response, hanging up slowly.

“What’s happened?” Sara’s soft voice cooed to him and Otto shivered, running a hand through black hair that he’d have no time to mend.

“Copper don’t have any sharp shooters. Small town and all that…so…”

“Where?” Gently, Sara rested her head upon Otto’s shoulders, closing her blue eyes. They snapped open in disgusted horror mere moments later.
“Blemonth High School.”

Michelle Ranger had just wanted to be a teacher; to educate the youth, to have fun nicknames from students, to laugh when they graduated and recalled their favourite moments in dear science class. Instead, she was curled up, bleeding from her stomach and barely able to sit up. When her own student had opened fire and struck her with one of the first bullets, Michelle Ranger had stumbled back and sank into her chair painfully, still and unmoving with the pain, unable to help the screaming kids.

Wheezing, crawling along the ground, she left a dark red trail along the slick floor that was beginning to become a shallow pool of blood. The closest student she could get to wasn’t alive any more, nor did they have much of a skull left from the point-blank range shotgun blast to the side of the head. Helpless, beginning to sob, Miss Ranger almost missed the sound of running from outside her classroom. More shots rang out, a bell rang to signify the beginning of lunch.
Had she been bleeding for so long? Had it taken her so long to drag herself from her desk to a corpse? Her eyes closed tightly, tears squeezing out as she finally broke down. Silence, though; there was too much pain to make any noise. Michelle Ranger took a deep breath, and looked up just as something more orange than red hit the ground outside her classroom.

Chester was crouching just behind the door of the boy’s washroom. Rhinestone had already let loose a volley of lead into the lavatory; bullet holes in the wall and porcelain sinks were such testament alongside crumbled plaster that had been ripped from the wall and broken, pierced pipes spraying into the room from all directions.

His heart was beating incredibly loudly, shaking his unbalanced body. His breath clenched as he heard slow pacing down the hallway, and whistling. The person doing the whistling was not concerned that the techno beat was much too complicated for them and they couldn’t keep in tune or the proper speed of the song, leading Chester’s panicking mind to shut him down completely so he wouldn’t make a noise. Darkness enveloped him, but only for a few moments. He was still crouching, though leaning heavily up against the wall, when he came too.

There was silence outside the door, and without debating whether to do battle with his fight, flee, or hide instincts, he bolted from the washroom and flew down the hallway, catching the attention of a one Kalissa Darter, who whirled around and pulled the trigger eighteen times before she realized her gun was out of bullets.

“Damn,” she snorted, reached into an empty pocket, and then searched another before she found a bullet-full pouch on the back of her jeans. “I hate that guy; so freakin’ arrogant…”

Chester didn’t stop running until his torn shoes skidded upon the waxed floor and he fell exactly where he had started; when he looked up, the science room he had walked out of was glaring him in the face. The door was open, and he saw legs, arms, faces, all still and stained from the coagulating blood.

Then, without much warning, somebody moved from the classroom and grabbed him in a blur, dragging him back inside with them. The door was closed much more elegantly, locked, and Chester found himself sitting up against the barricade with a tear-stained Miss Ranger.

“You okay, M-m-mis-s-s-s-t-t…Ch-ch…?” Ranger spluttered, shaking. Chester nodded, knowing what his dying teacher was trying to ask him. The infantile need for protection when helpless and the socially-implanted need to protect the helpless welled up inside of him, and Chester broke down into choking sobs, hugging his biology teacher tightly.

“I don’t like Mondays,” Chester sniffled after ten minutes, rubbing his arms and nestling back against his teacher. “I’m going to learn all about main arteries an…and the human body after this, I swear,” he spoke softly, apologetically, smiling sheepishly yet sincerely at his teacher. Miss Ranger merely smiled weakly and told him to keep quiet in case Kalissa Darter heard them and wanted to re-enter the classroom.

“How are we going to get out? Of this…mess, I mean?” Chester asked quietly, a contemplative look coming over his usually grinning face. He began to wipe the red off of his hands and face, though his sleeves were already partially soaked, and the absorbed blood jut leaked out and smeared the colour around upon the boy’s skin. It took a few minutes, but when Chester realized the blood wasn’t coming off, he began hastily, frantically scratching at himself to rid the horrifying image off of his body until he began bleeding himself from the deep claw-marks.

“She’ll be taken out by the coppers…Stop that, now,” Michelle Ranger took her student’s hands into her own bloodied paws. Looking Chester directly in his eyes with her own, she leaned forward painfully and, straining not to wince and cause the kid more panic from seeing his teacher showing weakness. “You’ve already survived this.”

The military fashion show that was outside Blemonth High school was indeed a sight to see; municipal officers, provincial officers, and military soldiers and officers alike were buzzing around frantically yet in perfect order. Yellow tape blocked reporters and curious, nosey spectators alike who ignored the shouts that people leave immediately. Parents of students were occasionally dragged back when they got too close to the safety line, no one taking any chances with the panicking crowd.

“Lieutenant Cohen.” A sergeant with red and blue ribbons on his chest nodded and saluted to Otto in one single gesture, the sniper returning the movement with stiff posture and a deeply squinted right eye. He glanced around at the three other officers speaking into muffled radios, eyes trained on the school. Two soldiers, a corporal and a private, were awaiting orders.

“Anybody seen anything, sir?” Otto asked breathily, deep, gruff voice a near whisper as it seemed custom for him when he was asked to kill. Otto never spoke very loudly; ever.

“Affirmative. We’re putting you behind the tracks to the east of the school; most of the larger windows are on that side and the shooter has been seen passing by there more frequently; larger classrooms, larger classes, more targets.”

Otto refrained from wincing and glanced instead to where a train was loudly rumbling by, the steel tracks beneath it clacking and vibrating loudly. Swallowing, Otto began to reach for the strap across his shoulder, instead finding only sewn on officer bars and a missing rifle.

“S’in your hand, lieutenant. Don’t shake,” the sergeant growled, and then barked out, “You all know your mission. You know the consequences of failing.” Here, the sergeants hazel eyes turned sternly onto his sharp shooter, who frowned deeply at the reminder. “Private Retrad, Corporal Regnar; you will accompany the lieutenant here to the position we staked out at eleven-hundred hours. The perpetrator is sixteen-year-old Kalissa Darter. Eleventh grade senior. A photo, lieutenant.” The sergeant then passed Otto a picture of a girl who may have been pretty if she hadn’t look so tired when the photo had been taken. Her hair was frizzy and her skin was quite pale. “Dismissed.”

Stiff backs, squared shoulders, chins up, and arms rising for a saluting hand; Otto and the two soldiers began a quick pace across the now-vacant train tracks. Shifting the rifle from his hand to his shoulder, the sniper’s right eye squinted deeply until it was just a slit in his face.

“Who’s the shooter, then?” Otto stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the photograph he was still carrying. In his mind, he simply could not believe a mere sixteen year old girl could create such horror.

“Below the tree, three degrees if you would, sir,” Corporal Regnar said through clenched teeth. He sounded annoyed, but in Otto’s mind, the only thing he could focus upon was shooting the grade eleven student if the negotiator couldn’t get there and the police couldn’t find her.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty!” Rhinestone chirruped, standing over the prone body of a small girl that bore a cat upon her t-shirt. The girl had been in grade nine. She had been in class, instead of skipping with her excited friends to visit the cute guy behind the counter at the coffee shop they had started going to. She had been able to answer most of the questions of the test she had been taking.

She had been shot, and she was dead.

Kalissa smiled sweetly, sickly so, and practically skipped down the hallway, the thrill of the kill settled deep into her mind so that she had quickly become conditioned to it and was no longer startled by the cracking of the gun and the thud as the body hit the floor. Strolling contently down the hall and running through her defence about how the movies and video games might have messed her up a little, the constant heckling from the other girls, the beatings from her father, the teasing of the boys, the segregation the teachers showed her…She could be the saddest girl in the world, if she wanted.

Walking by her homeroom class, she found herself, still grinning wildly, walking backwards as if in a state of slow-motion rewind. The door was closed; it had not been closed before. Had somebody hidden in there?

Whistling, Kalissa turned the knob and began to push the door open, only to find she could not. Realizing either people or desks were in the way, she peeked into the glass window at the top of the door and saw no protruding objects save for outstretched legs just poking into her limited line of vision. Backing up with pursed lips and a disappointed expression as if she were scolding a young child, Rhinestone suddenly bolted forward and charged the door. It burst open without much effort; the two people who had been blocking her from opening the door moments ago were huddled before the window on the east side of the classroom.

“Kalissa…” Michelle Ranger swallowed wearily, paler than what could have been considered healthy and standing partially in front of the redheaded Chester.

“Missis Ranger,” Rhinestone smiled and tilted her head until it rested upon her shoulder.

Otto perked up from lying stomach-down in the dirt by the train tracks. His eye squinted as he reached for his radio.

“I have a shot; the shooter has two targets. Permission to take the shot immediately.”

“Who are the targets?”

“It doesn’t matter, I-“

“Lieutenant…”

“But-“

“Otto!”
A grunt, an exasperated sigh, and then; “A teacher and a student.”

Rhinestone had the rifle up, her eye fixed through the sight, the muzzle pointed toward Chester and Miss Ranger. A steady finger upon the trigger, and she began to pull it.

Kalissa Darter was in his sight, his eye pressed lightly against the sight of his rifle, the crosshatch in the fix trained directly between the sixteen year old girl’s eyes. A still arm balanced the relaxed gun, Otto’s steady finger gently pulling back on the trigger.

Kalissa’s head snapped back, a large, gaping, empty hole in the middle of her forehead that drizzled with thick red and black blood, pink and blue brain leaking in destroyed, liquid-like chunks flaked with red-stained skull. She stood, torso twisted around somewhat and her shoulders crooked. Her body was relaxed, and she was smiling happily as the rifle slid from her hands. It caught on her finger still poised over the trigger, and when the weight tugged at it, the twisted metal launched a bullet that struck the wall feet away from where she had been aiming just a moment ago.

Rhinestone Murderer

Laura Sim

Nov 2006