Because You Exist(3)

As I made my way back into the hallway, I started to notice all the things I was too busy to notice before. I needed to find out this was all a joke so badly, that I never saw how truly messed up everything was.

Most of the windows were busted, but I heard no noise from the busy street outside my school. Numerous lockers were opened and emptied like it was the last day of school, and no one bothered to tell me. The trophy case, filled to the brim the last time I walked by it, empty as well—sprayed across its glass doors in large red aerosol letters:



THE ONLY CERTAINTY IS DEATH!



I shuddered.

This wasn’t any ordinary nightmare.

I could see the shock reflected on my face as I stared into the vandalized glass of the trophy case. Gone was the calmness I felt moments before in the closet. I could hear my own voice repeating inside my head that this was a dream, but I could see in my expression that I didn’t believe it.

The smells. The roughness of the dirt in my mouth that felt more and more like eating fish that hadn’t been de-boned. The bright red of the words sprayed onto the shiny glass of the one place I made a point to visit every time I entered the school. These things all felt too real.

Too damn real.

My mind wasn’t able to create something like this.

I stumbled away from the trophy case and turned my body toward the exit. I wasn’t above running. Dream or not, I didn’t want to be there. As I ran, pushing my legs as hard as I could, I came up with a million explanations for everything. Each explanation felt more forced than the next.

Maybe I was in a coma, forever trapped in some messed up world. Though how I got in a coma seemed to be a bit of a problem to work out. It’s not like the Bard had ever been known to place someone in a vegetative state.

Maybe someone did slip something into my coffee, and I was having the worst trip ever. If so, I’d be drug free for the rest of my life the minute I woke up. No matter how cool reruns of That 70’s Show made smoking up look.

Maybe this was just simply a bad dream. Though never had a dream felt so real. Never had the smells or sights seemed so vivid—besides, most of my nightmares involved Jenna’s dad shooting my balls off.

Maybe it was real.





Chapter 2





My hand almost reached the door when I collided with someone.

The presence of another human being in the deserted school caused me to let free a very unmanly yelp. I was about to make some excuse, joke off my nervousness when I saw who it was.

Scary Carrie.

Not a very creative nickname, but I gave it to her in the fourth grade—give me a break.

My heart began to pound at the sight of her. There was no way I’d dream of her. No, freaking way. Scary Carrie looked like she always did. Wild, red hair that curled beautifully or frizzed disastrously depending on the weather. Jeans. No makeup. Hoodie pulled over her head. Complete lack of effort. Scary Carrie’s signature style. Scaring the penis away since 1996.

I quickly tried to think of the last time I saw her but came up empty. She looked like I remembered her with the exception that there was an actual emotion on her face. She looked petrified.

Scary Carrie took a step away from me. “I...I thought I was alone,” she croaked out.

I didn’t want to hear her speak. It made her presence all the more real, and that was the last thing I wanted. Her being there with everything else I saw made it seem impossible it was anything but real. But if it was real...

The stench...

The body...

What had happened?

I couldn’t bear to look at her one second longer.

I felt it calling to me. The outside world. I wondered, wildly, insanely if it still existed. Was it possible that it didn’t? Where was all the noise? The students? Why did the school look like it hadn’t been in used for months? Why had that janitor hid in that closest with all those supplies?

I felt dizzy. I was on the brink. The edge. The whole world ready to slip away. I turned away from Carrie, pushing open the doors to the outside.

Destruction.

Ruin.

Absence.

The Wendy's across the street, the 7-Eleven on the corner even the I-HOP down the road. All destroyed. Had a nuclear war somehow happened in the midst of my freak-out? If so, someone should have bothered to tell me. It would have been the polite thing to do.

Every building that covered the streets surrounding my school—my kingdom—lay in ruin. Rubble. The silence was the most disconcerting. . Silence, despite popular belief, has its very own intruding, suffocating noise. It fills your ears and crawls its way down to the pit of your stomach, the place that alerts you to any heightened emotion: love, lust, disgust, fear.

My stomach was turning in on itself. There was no way what I was seeing could be real. It wasn’t possible. The same dust that covered the floors of my high school draped itself over the rubble of Virginia Beach. There were no people. No movement.