Hey everyone! So I feel like I'm becoming a broken record here, but once again I apologize for the delay between school and work I've been a mess lately. But as always, thank you guys so much for being patient with me and for reading and an extra big shout out to everyone that's being reviewed, love ya guys :)
Anyways just a quick little side note, the next fourish maybe threeish chapters are going to be a tiny bit repetitive just because I wanted everyone to get their own POV chapter so I apologize in advance if that messes with anybody's head. So carry on and I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 6
The Walking Wounded
(Artie Abrams)
When Artie Abrams awoke alongside his blaring alarm clock early on the morning of Friday, June 4th, 2010, he, unlike the majority of his fellow classmates and peers at William McKinley High School, already knew that today was the day that his life was going to change.
It was 7:00 a.m. on the dot when Artie was brutally stirred from a previously peaceful slumber, roused in exactly the same manner by which he had been every other morning in preparation for his prospective school day…
By the time he had gotten settled around his dining room table for breakfast, it was already 7:10, by the time he'd finally managed to pull himself into the shower, 7:20.
But it wasn't until 7:45 that Artie Abrams was finally dressed, packed, and completely ready for yet another routine day at William McKinley High School, although of course, Artie already knew that today was going to be anything but yet another routine day at William McKinley High School… at least, for him anyway.
No, in fact, today might very well actually be just about the least routine day that Arthur Benjamin Abrams had ever had in his entire life.
Sure, his mother was going to help him gather himself into the family van just before eight a.m. in order to drop him off in front of the main entranceway of William McKinley High School, just as she did every other morning. And yes, he would find himself attending first period geometry class, followed immediately by second period chemistry, and finally, band practice right before lunch… And undoubtedly he would find himself sitting with his fellow glee clubbers at lunch, eager to discuss the fabulous news that he was prepared to share with them…
So perhaps maybe, just maybe, if you merely glimpsed at the first half of Artie Abrams' day without so much as a second glance, you might be fooled into believing that today would indeed be yet another routine day at William McKinley High School, but if you looked just a fraction of a second longer, just a little bit harder, anybody with two eyes and half a brain could tell that it was in fact more… much more.
This was because at 11:31 a.m. in the late morning hours of Friday, June 4th, 2010, Artie knew that the school bell would ring just as it did every other day, signaling the various students consuming the last bites of their lunches to drag their feet back towards their classrooms; the ending of their briefest moments of freedom cultivating in the exact opposite meaning for Artie toady…
Because today, to Artie Abrams, 11:31 a.m. in the late morning hours of Friday, June 4th, 2010 wasn't going to represent the end, but rather, the very beginning.
Today, 11:31 a.m. in the late morning hours of Friday, June 4th, 2010 was the time that his parents would be parking the wheelchair-accessible van that had been in his family ever since his childhood back in front of the main entrance of William McKinley High School. It was the time that he would carefully situate himself securely amidst the various seatbelts and locking mechanisms that had held both him and his chair sturdily in place for the last eight years of his life.
It was the time that he would be driven across town to the doctor's appointment that he had been waiting all his life to attend.
It had all begun no more than two weeks ago; a man by the name of Dr. Paul Bender had reached out to contact Artie and his family in regards to a series of human trials that he was beginning on young paraplegics between the ages of fifteen and twenty five in his office, a mere twenty miles outside of Lima.
He'd been experimenting with mice using stem cells to regenerate the connections between the various neurons of the spinal cord for the past decade, and within twenty four hours, Artie had found himself sitting face-to-face across from this mystery man, this godsend that seemed to Artie to have come directly from heaven itself for an informative meeting to discuss the details.
By the time he had exited the vast office, he found himself escaping into the sunlight with a new-found hope and an appointment for him to begin his preparations for treatment scheduled for 1:00 p.m. sharp on the afternoon of Friday, June 4th, 2010.
His day progressed carelessly, each passing second bringing him closer and closer towards achieving his most wildest of dreams so that Artie couldn't help but find himself walking on air, so much so that he didn't even seem to mind as much as before that while the rest of the student body of William McKinley High School shuffled lazily towards the cafeteria on their own two feet, his locomotion was restricted to a few sets of wheels and the support of his disproportionally muscular arms.
None of that seemed to matter anymore. A new pang of confidence seemed to ring its way down the length of his savaged spine and beyond, extending straight into his feet so that if he closed his eyes at just the right moment and concentrated hard enough, it was almost as if he could actually feel them again already.
In fact, he had found himself so overwhelmed, so incredibly overpowered by this feeling of indestructible greatness that he found himself poised with a great difficulty in maintaining a concentration on any single outside source, which today included his fellow glee clubbers as they carefully gathered themselves at their usual lunch table, talking animatedly around him about their excitements of the day, all of which seemed to pale in comparison to Artie's.
"Hey, Artie, you're awfully quiet today?" Tina pulled his attention back into focus, her voice forcing his head upwards in an effort to scan across the multitude of faces of his various friends, all conveniently pointed directly at him so that he couldn't help but to think that if now wasn't a perfect time to relay to them his exciting announcement, he wouldn't know what was.
"Actually you guys, I do have some kind of big news that I think you all should know…" He started slow, easing into his revelation as he attempted to concoct his announcement into terms that they would all actually be able to understand before speaking aloud… "Well… the thing is, I think that I'm going to be able to walk again, guys… soon - real soon, actually."
Artie recognized the boldness behind his statement instantly upon the reaction of his friends; a reaction that wasn't quite as he'd expected it to be…
Sure, his single sentence had been laced with a plethora of what-if's and when's and how's but still, the shocked faces slowly turning upwards and towards him, silent in their attempts to process the exact impact of his words hadn't exactly been what Artie had anticipated so that suddenly, he'd found himself scrambling for an effective follow-up.
For the briefest of seconds, his friends merely stared, mouths open and eyes twitching awkwardly as they battled with their inner uncertainty as to whether Artie was being serious in his statement or whether he was just being plain naïve.
"I got a call from this doctor a couple of weeks ago…" He continued in his explanation, hoping that some clarification would ease the incessant glares, "He told me that he picked me specifically as a candidate in a clinical trial using stem cells to try and fix damaged spinal cords… He says that it's looking promising, that I could be walking again within the next couple of years or so."
The small table, previously filled with so much uncertainty became a sudden uproar of congratulatory approval as the collective realization that this idea of Artie's might not actually be as crazy and farfetched as any of them had originally believed it to be settled inward and around them.
He appreciated the support, he appreciated the enthusiasm, but with his head hanging upwards and in the clouds as much as it was today, he couldn't seem to bring himself to stop all of this daydreaming that he had seemingly committed himself to.
Across his mind, fleeting images of him dancing, of him walking just like everybody else filled his head so that the only thing that he could manage to respond with was an empty-eyed, broad smile that seemed to radiate across the entire length of the table before him.
In fact, at the rate that Artie seemed to be going now, it seemed that nothing was going to be able to distract him from the projected greatness of his vastly changed future…
But of course, in what seemed to be a reoccurring pattern in his life, Artie had found himself wrong to assume that his plans could proceed completely unhinged. He had been wrong to believe that his life would finally steer in the right direction for a change…
It was a reality, harsh as it may have been, that struck him suddenly as – for the first time all day – Artie found himself not shrouded with optimism, but plagued with the understanding that today, he had been positively wrong about absolutely everything that he had ever believed in.
It hadn't been the sharp, sudden noise that had ultimately captured his attention but rather, the prominent reactions of his fellow classmates, because it was just so unusual, so blatantly unheard of for a crowded high school cafeteria to fall completely and utterly silent that Artie couldn't help but to glance upward in response to the noise - or more accurately, the lack thereof.
In a gradual progression, Artie recognized the buzz of conversation slowly creeping back towards its standard dull roar; students playing off the distraction as if it had been nothing although the truth was, it had left them all with the same sinking feeling that sent the very pits of their stomachs into a prominent freefall.
"What was that?" Brittney's voice contributed to the nervous chatter, but one of the many curious whispers currently bouncing off of the concrete walls enclosing the cafeteria's perimeter…
But whether or not anybody ever answered her inquiry, Artie couldn't be sure, because his mind blanked, the knowledge that he didn't have the capacity to provide her with the answers that she was looking for allowing him to turn his well-trained ears away and towards the air above the heads of a thousand poised students, listening for the sound again, this time prepared should it make its sudden reappearance.
But just as his fellow classmates had done, Artie also made the fleeting attempt to simply pass off this occasion, discard its importance as if it had been nothing, but despite his best efforts, he couldn't help that feeling of nausea, that pang of discomfort that bubbled its way into the pit of his stomach.
His body was screaming at him, begging him to stand up and run straight out of here so that the only thing that he could think about was that maybe, just maybe had his doctor's appointment been one day earlier, that option would have actually been available to him.
But Artie was trapped, trapped inside of himself so that that nagging feeling of dread continued to linger un-acted upon, only enhanced upon watching Finn jump up so suddenly from his seat at the head of the table that for a second there, Artie had been convinced that somebody had electrified the metal underneath his ass.
"Finn, where are you going?" Artie's ears were cloudy from their continuous strain towards the direction of the hallway but still, he'd managed to catch Quinn's words as she yelled up towards their male lead, who was moving so quickly that he was already halfway through the cafeteria doors by the time the inquiry reached his ears.
"Get out of here." His single, ominous tone was the only response that Finn had to offer as he spoke not only to his fellow glee members, it seemed, but to the entirety of the cafeteria around him, although Artie doubted that anybody truly heard him, the fact of the matter being, even the loudest, the most important words of advice had a tendency to fall mute upon deaf ears when they were being emitted straight from the very heart of the loserdom of glee club.
But Artie had heard him. And as he did so, he did it with the distinct feeling of the world around him beginning to spin instantly upon its axis…
What the hell had Finn meant by that?
Finn's warning had been eerily vague, threateningly uncertain, but if there was one thing that Artie knew, it was that he had never once, in all of his years of knowing him, seen Finn Hudson nervous… until today, that was.
"What?" By the mere tone of his voice, it seemed, Puck had been just as confused towards Finn's shockingly cryptic message as Artie had been, but still, Finn didn't even so much as slow down in response to Puck's beckoning, instead, turning over his shoulder as he ran, he just shouted, even louder the second time around, the confirmation that they had been looking for all along.
"Just do it!"
And with that, Finn Hudson was gone, the entirety of his gigantic frame disappearing straight through the double doors of the large cafeteria, leaving being in his wake, nothing but a handful of very confused singers, and a thousand painfully unaware students.
"He's crazy…" Puck sighed out loud, trying to bypass the fact that Finn's words had left him with as much of a sense of doubt as they had Artie. "It must be from dating Rachel; I think that she's starting to rub off on him."
A handful of their friends chuckled nervously towards Puck's best attempt at an explanation towards Finn's unexpected behavior, but Artie couldn't find it inside of him to be amongst them.
He tried to pay attention, tried to mimic all of his friends and neighbors surrounding him as they laughed, talked and carried on without so much as a hint of worry behind their tones, but that fear, that sense of expectant terror just didn't seem to want to leave him alone.
Before him, all faces slowly began to blur around him, their words drifting in and out of focus so that their distinct features started to disappear behind a veil of budding panic.
He couldn't help but to find himself checking suspiciously over his shoulder every couple of seconds or so, simply to ensure that the cafeteria life surrounding him was carrying on per usual with no sense of suspicious activity prevailing around him…
One more time,
His thoughts rang with the assurance that his suspicions were unwarranted; trying to convince himself that he was just being overly concerned due to the heightened emotional state that the day's events had left him with.
Just check one more time, and that's it… Everything is going to be okay Artie, you're going to be okay, and you're going to walk again, so man up and check just one more time.
His self assurance ran through his head as he strained his neck instinctively, rotating back towards the double front doors that Finn had disappeared out of mere moments ago, watching as students lazily shuffled in and out through them, casually embracing the freedoms of their lunch break.
In fact, there were so many kids cluttering around the entranceway that by the time Suzy Pepper and Jacob Ben-Israel made their way through them, for a second there, nobody really thought anything of it.
Artie saw the blood before he actually heard the gunshots, he processed the screams before he'd actually noticed the chaos, but as his vision began to focus once more, his eyes contracting and clearing of their watery sheath of a tearful fright, he saw it; Dr. Benjamin L. Roscoe, Artie's physics professor, and perhaps greatest mentor in this school, the man who just so happened to be assigned lunch duty on the wrong day at the wrong time, dead where he lay; sprawled across the cafeterias entranceway in a manner that left his body, riddled with successive bullet markings peppered across his torso, blocking the main doors behind him.
His gut sank lower than he thought possible, his eyes dancing between intermittent stages of dilation and contraction; focusing like a professional camera lens on the elongated rifle grasped firmly between Suzy Pepper's sweaty palms, its business end smoking in a trail that lead directly back towards his teacher on the floor; so full of life mere moments ago, now lying motionless in a puddle of his own blood.
His eyes lingered only briefly upon the man before shifting onto the gun… then back towards the man, and back once more onto the gun… Back and forth and back and forth they shifted, his pupils dancing so rapidly within their sockets that he was starting to get dizzy, the subsequent silence that had suddenly and so unexpectedly filled the room only increasing his nausea to nearly uncontainable levels.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. In fact, it seemed as if nobody had even the slightest of ideas as to what the hell it was that they should be doing as they watching two of their own classmates ascend into their cafeteria with weapons in hand and an ominous glory on their faces.
Artie hadn't even noticed that he was holding his breath until he felt his lungs give a painful lurch from inside of his chest that left him gasping and spluttering in an expression that emitted much louder than what he would have wished for underneath the tremendous weight of an otherwise silence; a silence that didn't linger as a crack flashed across the still air like none which he had ever heard before.
His body jumped involuntarily in its response; his upper body facilitating a movement that reverberated straight down into his useless legs as he was launched upwards and into the air, solid inches separating the distance between his ass and the seat of his wheelchair before he landed back downwards once more, his eyes automatically affixing themselves onto the source of the noise; the looming form of Suzy Pepper, gun resting casually upon her shoulder, smoke still emitting from the barrel in response to having just been discharged.
But whether or not the shot had simply been accidental or else, a purposeful act of warning, Artie would never know for certain because he wasn't spared the time to linger as the subsequent reaction to the shotgun shell lodging itself deep within the cafeteria's ceiling launched the student body into instantaneous pandemonium.
Screams pierced the very core of his eardrums, still ringing with the echo of a gunshot, noises filtering and meshing along the thick air to create a harmony by which he had never heard before, by which he had never previously believed capable of emitting from a human mouth.
Artie struggled desperately to remain upright amidst the trampling stampede of students, his muscular biceps, toned from providing his primary source of transportation for all of these years, only able to provide him with so much stability as his worthless body was jolted continuously back and forth across the crowd.
He strained his neck as far as his muscles would possibly allow, desperate to gain enough height over the shoulders of his peers to catch a glimpse of any of the friends that had been seated next to him mere moments ago…
But his efforts only ended him in failure, his stature presenting him at a mere waist-leveled height with even the shortest kids in the school, ensuring the fact that the only thing that he was truly able to see was a thousand pairs of scampering legs as they sprinted towards escape by any means that they could possibly think of.
The majority of the students proceeded in a mass, lumbering towards the main double doors; pushing, kicking, punching, biting, doing absolutely anything that they possibly could in an effort to escape from becoming the next target of a mad man's bullet, however the unmistakable sound of shattering glass told Artie that a few strays had resorted towards an attempt to escape through the cafeteria's back windows…
Directly in front of him, a second gunshot rendered Artie's blood, previously cold as ice, frozen solid, but it hadn't stopped there; instead there was another one, and then another one, more and more all blending together so that after a while, Artie lost count on account of the fact that he could no longer distinguish between them.
To his left, a splatter of blood shot through his peripherals as it flew through the air, nearly poetic in its motions as it traveled with the momentum of the speeding bullet that had pushed it from its original source.
The simultaneous sound of bare skin striking the linoleum flooring confirmed to him that somebody had just gone down, and by the sound of things, they had just gone down hard.
Through the smallest of gaps created between the hoards of rushing legs, Artie managed to identify the body of the senior class's most notorious burn out, Rebecca Andrews, thrashing against the floor below, struggling to right herself upwards again as she clutched desperately onto her freely bleeding arm until finally, a small group of students managed to clasp their hands around her and pull her to her feet, practically dragging her out of the cafeteria alongside them…
But just as quickly it seemed, as Rebecca Andrews had been lifted upwards another body was tripped up and slipped to the ground below, striking face first as if there had been an established quota of injured students that needed to be fulfilled to satisfy the parallels of the universe…
Jason Ruiz was a kid in Artie's grade… Artie knew him solely due to the fact that they used to play T-Ball together all throughout elementary school until Artie's accident had sidelined him permanently…
Jason used to pick on Artie because he was scrawny and wore large glasses, but now as Jason Ruiz lay vulnerably on the ground below, bleeding from his face as he found himself continuously trampled underneath the feet of an endless stream of panicked teenagers, it didn't seem to Artie as if Jason Ruiz was going to be making fun of anybody for any reason anytime soon.
His eyes danced sporadically across the cafeteria, mere flashes of the scene before him being the only thing his over-sensitized vision managed to process as splattered blood trails traced the maze of bullet casings rolling up and down the chaotic scene that had housed a normal high school cafeteria mere moments ago.
With each successive gunshot, Artie seemed to marvel in the manner by which he found himself rendered more frozen than the previous one had left him. His brain was shouting at him to find a way out, to do something, anything rather than simply wait for the next bypassing bullet to engrave his very own name into the steel.
But he found himself unable to do so, unable to tear his eyes from the scene before him as he watched the remaining students make one final, sweeping effort to leap through the broken windows lining the back walls while others decided to test their luck by ducking underneath overturned tables for cover, protecting exposed body parts with a suit of armor created from loose chairs and cafeteria trays still littered with uneaten food. Hell, he'd even seen one kid climb into the freezer that the school used to sell ice cream out of…
But despite their very best efforts, it seemed that the amount of bodies dropping to the ground like flies before them merely increased while all the while, Artie was left stranded in the middle, left to wonder whether or not the next bullet was that which was destined to strike him.
BANG!
A student's ankle exploded into a cloud of blood, her foot seemingly hanging by a single lingering tendon as she crumpled to the ground below.
BANG!
A young freshman intercepted a bullet directly between the shoulder blades, her ever muscle tensing briefly in response as she expelled a single, guttural scream of pure agony before falling limp, face down onto the floor.
BANG!
Blood spouted from the sophomore basketball star's hip as she fell in absolute silence, leaving Artie to wonder what it might feel like to run from a bullet hoping for the best but expecting the worst as you were left to merely pray that you held the capacity to move swifter than a speeding slug only to find out the hard way that you just couldn't.
BANG!
Artie was only vaguely aware of the fact that this time around, the noise had registered differently to him that it hadn't actually appeared to have originated from the barrel of a gun…
It was only when he'd felt an agonizing pain blossom across his face accompanied immediately by the feeling of blood flowing freely down his chin that he identified the previous explosion as the unmistakable sound of bone-on-bone contact; a stray elbow, maybe even a knee, who knew, connecting harshly with the bridge of his nose..
His stomach dropped, accompanying his bracing for a sudden plunge as his wheelchair tilted to the left in response to the contact, teetering briefly on two wheels before plummeting to the ground, catapulting his useless body from his seat and across the slick floor.
He landed with a dull thud and a small grunt of pain as a sharp ache radiated instantly up the length of his shoulder.
The slight tinkering of broken glass filtered through his ears as his glasses slipped from the bridge of his broken nose and struck the floor below him with a resounding crack that resonated deeply as he scrambled in his attempt to right himself up again, only to fail, falling back against his wounded side.
The noise of heavy gunfire continued prominently behind him as he tried desperately to turn his head in order to see what was happening, but he was blind without his glasses, immobile without his wheelchair, and he knew it.
Using all of the power that his uninjured arm possessed, he pulled himself behind an adjacent overturned table, carefully avoiding the bullets as they flew relentlessly above his head and becoming more and more conscious of the sound of falling bodies now that he no longer held the capacity to identify exactly who they were.
Resting on his side, he pressed his heaving back as far against the table's wooden frame as he possibly could, exhausted in the combination of physical exertion and terror as his struggling brain attempted to process the capacity of exactly what the hell it was that was currently happening around him.
Subconsciously, he shifted his body weight slightly, positioning himself at the edge of his makeshift barricade in an effort to better glimpse at the scene before him.
It wasn't a second later that he'd heard it; the splintering of wood accompanied by a whooshing gust of wind as it brushed past his ear with an overwhelming force of heat, leaving him trembling as his eyes tilted instinctually upward, his gaze resting upon a bullet hole that had pierced the table's wood above him in the exact same position that he'd been resting his head against not five seconds ago…
Spluttering stupidly, the recognition of how close he had just come to death struck him like a blow to the head so that stars instantly began dancing in front of his eyes, laced with flashes of his past, beginning with the slightly humorous image of Jesus Christ himself standing at the gates of heaven, greeting him with the warning – "Welcome to your next life, I hope you came prepared" – before shooting him straight down to hell, and changing with each successive crack of a gun.
BANG!
He was in kindergarten, running across the soccer field at recess as he played with the rest of the boys in his class.
BANG!
He was eight years old, lying in a hospital bed as hordes of pediatricians and specialists surrounded him, prodding at his legs continuously with their fingers and their needles… but he couldn't feel a single touch.
BANG!
He was thirteen and being fitted for a new wheelchair because puberty had struck him like a flash of lightning, causing him to spring upwards a solid foot in under a month so that he had outgrown his old one.
BANG!
He was sitting in the nurse's office on his first day of high school, watching through the windows as the rest of his classmates ran carelessly across the fields during gym class.
BANG!
He was back in the cafeteria, his shaking, immobile body trapped behind the confines of an overturned, circular table, frozen from both paralysis and fear as the bullet hole lingering dangerously close to his head continued to smolder in its freshly siphoned form.
The sounds of the room were ironically filtering more in their detail now that they were dwindling… The sounds of the footsteps pounding against the linoleum had dissipated completely, leaving behind in their wake only the whimpers of all of the students who had not been so lucky as to manage escape.
Behind him, a single gunshot skewed a shrill scream before fading into an echo, falling ultimately into a silence that left Artie painfully aware of the fact that whoever had been screaming before wasn't screaming anymore…
This was it; everybody who was going to get out of here had already gotten out, while everybody else… well everybody else could merely cross their fingers and pray to God harder than they had ever prayed in their lives.
Tears streamed subconsciously from Artie's face as he wracked his brain, trying desperately to remember all of the Hail Mary's and Our Father's that he hadn't recited in years from behind the sanctuary of his lunch table.
"Hi, everybody!"
The sickening sound of Jacob Ben-Israel's voice, exemplified by the nearing of footsteps forced Artie's stomach into a series of flip flops that left him struggling to keep its contents from spilling out of his mouth.
Play dead.
The thought rang rampant throughout his mind as more and more gunshots caused his eardrums to tingle unpleasantly, the simultaneous cries of his fellow students making his heart lurch with pain.
He'll leave you alone if he thinks you're dead… Just play dead.
The tactic was valid enough; he was after all, lying limp in a pool of his own blood with his face swollen and bruised to the extent that maybe, just maybe, upon a quick glance, it could actually pass as a fatal gunshot…
"No, please don't do it, please! No!" The painful familiarity of the voice he couldn't quite identify shot a jolt of panic that burned like fire down his spine, leaving him scrambling desperately to put a face to the sound of one of classmates pleading for his life. "Don't shoot me, please. I don't want to die, please!"
Extending the fingertips of his good arm to a proportion that nearly pulled the joints of his shoulder apart, Artie stretched to reach his glasses, a tidal wave of success flushing across his entire body as he managed to finally clasp his fingers around the frames and lift them to his face, his vision clearing instantly despite the large crack smearing across the length of the right lens.
Craning his head carefully around the corner of his table, the only thing he could truly distinguish was the fully loaded arsenal strapped to Jacob Ben-Israel's body as the mere boy hovered tauntingly over the table that Artie happened to know for a fact had been claimed by the football team at the beginning of today's lunch period.
And then, Jacob had shifted to his left, the slightest of movements confirming Artie's initial beliefs as he recognized the terrifying, spluttering, and trembling body of William McKinley's head gorilla, David Karofsky, as he groped desperately for cover underneath absolutely anything that he could find, praying to God that should the bullets start flying, he wouldn't be the one to be hit by them.
"Please man, I'm sorry, I…" His final, dismal plea was cut short unexpectedly by the piercing ring of a single shot as it emitted from the pistol held steadily between Jacob's hand, his finger flexing against the trigger without so much as a warning, releasing the bullet into an accurate trajectory straight through David Karofsky's left temple.
With his eyes wide and breath falling heavily against the thick air before him, Artie watched in apparent slow motion as David Karofsky's skull exploded like a watermelon, the navy blue Cleveland Indians cap he'd previously been adorning blowing clear off alongside the majority of his head.
Artie begged himself to turn away, begged his gaze to rip away from the scene that seemed to have emitted straight from one of the various horror movies he used to love to watch so much, but he just couldn't seem to bring himself to look away…
Instead, he could only stare, watching with a horrified awe as stray ribbons of skin and blood flew through the air like confetti, peppering the various members of the football team cowering behind David Karofsky's still body as they scrambled in their terror for, at the very least, an aura of safety.
An unnatural scream filtered across Artie's ears so loud, so high-pitched that it physically pained him… It took him an extra moment or two to recognize the fact that the noise had originated from within his very own throat…
Leaping in his alarm, he slapped his hand quickly over his mouth out of the fear that the involuntary noise might expose his cover… But it hardly seemed to matter, his tormentors being much too preoccupied by the frantic football players, scrambling in their bid to escape their clear failure of a hiding place as they simultaneously wiped away at the insides of one of their teammates staining across their varsity jackets.
The various athletes scattered instantly; some staying behind, frozen in their shock while others risked the run, tripping and falling over their friend's dead body as they emerged from underneath the table before darting towards the door.
There must have been at least five or six different guys running for safety, but somehow, Artie had only managed to lock eyes with but one of them, instantly identifying the grief and anguish ridden face Azimo Addams…
He ran in a zigzag, clamoring and stampeding like a maniac so that Artie couldn't help but wonder whether or not his brain had been scattered into pieces in the exact moment that David Karofsky's had been blown out of his skull…
But the broad football player hadn't managed to get very far in his bid for escape… In fact, the way he'd been running, Artie was rather impressed with the fact that he'd made it the five or six paces that he had managed before Jacob Ben-Israel ultimately caught up to him, turning calmly away from Karofsky's body as if he'd just held a casual conversation with the deceased athlete rather than having just committed an act of murder against him…
Picking a careful target between Azimo's shoulder blades, Jacob fired without hesitation, his horrifying accurate aim lodging three of the four bullets directed towards Azimo's crisscrossing frame straight through the boy's spine.
Sympathizing with his cause, Artie watched the towering giant stagger only momentarily in his final, defiant attempt towards freedom, achieving a mere handful of uncoordinated steps before ultimately falling forward.
His body landed with the reverberations of a falling tree directly beside Artie, his pale face and blank, glossy eyes positioned in the direct range of Artie's main vantage point so that it was all the smaller boy was able to see, ultimately forcing him to turn his head away just so that he wouldn't have to keep staring directly into Azimo's cold, dead eyes.
His limbs shaking despite himself in his fear, Artie curled himself into as much of a ball as he could manage, closing his eyes tightly against his surroundings as he prepared himself for absolutely anything that could possibly come next… anything of course, except for the sudden arm extending towards his general direction, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder.
He gasped sharply inward in his fear, simultaneously pushing out the smallest of screams so that the contradictory actions closed his throat temporarily with a painful constriction that literally stopped his heart from beating within his chest.
Fully expecting the suddenness of his shock to come alongside the searing pain of a gunshot, he squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, desperately trying to contort his body in a manner that would prevent him from leaving his most vital organs exposed to the potential dangers to come.
It was only several seconds later after nothing had come for him that he risked a peak, surprised to see that rather than the threatening barrel of gun, it was merely Tina hunched before him, surveying with a terrified gleam in her eyes, the bloody stream still dripping steadily down the length of Artie's face.
"A-Artie… are you o-okay." She stuttered out her inquiry but Artie knew that this wasn't the same stutter that had been produced falsely under her façade of social anxiety, but a genuine impediment of absolute terror…
"I'm fine," He lied, reaching upwards in an effort to quickly wipe some of the blood from his face with the back of his shirt, "Somebody just clipped me with their elbow, but I'm fine… really, I'm fine."
"Okay… okay come on, I'm gonna help get you out of here…" She lowered herself into a crouching position besides Artie, grabbing him underneath each arm before hoisting with all of the strength that she possessed so that Artie couldn't help but grimace with the pain that her actions caused his wounded shoulder.
"No, Tina… listen to me, you have to get yourself out of here." Artie begged as she positioned him into a seated position against the table, the smoking wood still warm against his back where the bullet had pierced through it. "I'm just gonna hold you back. Don't worry about me, I'll be okay."
"No, Artie!" She spoke so forcefully that Artie couldn't help but wince as he snuck a subconscious glance over his shoulder just to ensure that her voice hadn't attracted the attention of either gunman, "I'm not leaving you here, I… I can't leave you here."
She lowered herself into a seated position beside Artie, her actions emphasizing the finality of her insistence.
Opening his mouth in retaliation, Artie couldn't help but pause as their eyes locked, his breathing relaxed as he focused the entirety of his attention onto Tina's hesitant features and welcomed the sense of tunnel vision that allowed him to remove the rest of the world around him.
And, if even for just the split second that it actually lingered, Artie actually managed to retain an alarming sense of calm amidst the chaos.
"Okay Tina, okay…" He nodded slowly in the recognition of Tina's firm stance, the movement forcing his eyes to focus past his girlfriend's shoulder towards where he recognized Mercedes, crouched a mere table away a cell phone clutched firmly to her ear and tears streaming from her eyes; one of his closest friends in a remarkably near proximity that he hadn't even identified with amidst the previous pandemonium.
Their eyes had only connected for the briefest of seconds, but within that seemingly miniscule time frame, Artie was certain that she had identified with his terror, because he sure as hell had managed to recognize her own..
He watched her as she offered him the smallest of nods before flexing at the knees, using all of the muscle power that her legs had to offer to pull herself up to her feet while still remaining semi-squatted behind the cover of the over-turned lunch tables as she shuffled closer towards him and Tina.
Artie waved her back silently, his spastic motions proving to be an inefficient form of communication in his bid to project towards Mercedes that he was alright, that she should stay where she was…
He watched as Mercedes froze mid-step mere paces away from him so that for one brief, naïve second, Artie actually believed that his efforts to stop her had been successful… But it was only upon watching her eyes widen, her spine straighten protectively that Artie realized just how wrong his initial beliefs had been…
From his position leaned against the underside of a table, Artie couldn't actually see exactly what it had been that had suddenly scared Mercedes so stiff, but he had a damn good idea towards the source of her fear, an idea that sent his stomach plunging so far downwards that for a while there, he'd managed to convince himself that the organ had dropped straight out of his ass against the floor below.
Everything inside of him was screaming at him not to look, that this wasn't something that he would want to see, but despite this mental insistency, his muscles rebelled openly against him, practically forcing his neck to twist in order to catch a good glimpse behind him where he saw Jacob Ben-Israel, standing so close that Artie could have reached out and touched him had he been so inclined… But despite his initial shock, Jacob's attention wasn't on Artie, not in the slightest.
Instead, his gleaming eyes glared daggers straight through Mercedes, his pupils running parallel along his outstretched arm positioning the barrel of a gun straight towards Mercedes' exposed chest so steadily that the only thing that could possibly manage to throw off his accuracy was the fact that Mercedes was currently shaking like a tree during a hurricane.
Artie's eyes locked across the scene, unmoving, unblinking despite his desperate desire to close them, despite his insistence upon clamping his hands over his ears, curling up into a ball in an effort to convince himself that this was a dream, that he was currently anywhere rather than where he actually was…
But instead, he took in every miniscule detail - He saw every motion of Mercedes' trembling body, he heard every desperate plea that she projected towards Jacob until ultimately, the loudest noise that Artie had ever heard in his entire life deafened event hat…
It settled even louder than the time that he had been forced to share a room with his colicky baby brother in elementary school, louder than the searing screech of metal-on-metal that had ultimately left him trapped inside of his chair…
Of course, in retrospect, the distinct click of Jacob Ben-Israel's finger pulling backwards the hammer of his Saur 38H pistol, locking the bullets firmly in place to be fired was the equivalent of a pin dropping against a bed of cotton in comparison, but for the intents of the moment, it had registered even louder than any of the deafening gunshots that had been plaguing Artie's eardrums for the past several minutes now… louder by a long shot.
"Mercedes, no!" Lingering stock-still in a painful squat that was supported entirely by Tina's body weight, Artie somehow managed to catch, through his peripherals, the motions of the scrawny, five-foot-nothing teenager that Artie just so happened to be able to call his friend as the boy took a tremendous leap of faith and jumped upwards from his previous hiding place in his desperate attempt to shield his best friend with the tail of the Marc Jacobs jacket that Artie was certain Kurt was wishing was made of bullet proof material right now… no matter how unfashionable that may have been.
But apparently giving Jacob just as much of a surprise as it had Artie, Kurt's sudden actions had enacted upon the gunman, the quickest jolt of shock that forced the finger, already poised against the trigger of his weapon, to contract instinctually, the residual gunshot slicing through the air moving in such a slowed motion that for a little while there, Artie had actually been convinced that time was literally standing still.
Directly beside him, Artie felt Tina stiffen and freeze in her response, leaving the both of them in an uncomfortably compromised position made worse only by the fact Tina's fingernails were digging deeper and deeper into the skin of his arms as her hands clenched subconsciously tighter around them.
Artie felt as if he could have literally counted the seconds between the time that the bullet was fired and the time that Kurt had staggered backwards amidst an eruption of blood escaping unceremoniously across his upper back… He felt as if he could have counted the absolute minutes between the time that it took for Kurt to actually fall to the ground, crumpled into an uncomfortable fetal position as blood spilled relentlessly through the barricade of his palm, clutched desperately against his wounded right shoulder.
His mind racing with a surprisingly still silence, Artie couldn't help but embrace the irony as various flashbacks danced across his vision of all of the times that he'd watched Kurt attempt so fervently to protect that exact outfit from succumbing to the inevitable destruction of an involuntary dumpster dive.
The cloud of the distant memories lingered in front of Artie's eyes, dancing peacefully in his desire to travel back to such a seemingly simpler time until the flash of a second gunshot fired callously from Jacob Ben-Israel's still-smoking pistol shattered his perceptual delusions abruptly…
His flawed reflexes delaying him incomprehensibly, Artie barely managed to process the scene before him so that the next thing he knew, he was watching without warning as Mercedes' face contorted into an expression of pure, unadulterated pain before instantly fading into nothingness – no expression, no emotion, no life whatsoever…
For the briefest of seconds, she retained her stance impressively, her firmness naively allowing Artie to believe that she had merely been stunned, that the close-range bullet had missed her entirely, and that maybe, just maybe she was going to be okay…
But it was within a matter of seconds that to Artie, felt like hours that she finally fell, succumbing to the laws of gravity as it pulled her lifeless body downward where it landed with a dull thud directly on top of Kurt, who grunted audibly in his pain as the wind was knocked straight from his already fragile body.
Somewhere deep within Artie's unconscious thought processes, he somehow managed to recognize the fact that his body had been rendered irreversibly stiff…
He could merely watch, his body physically defying his every insistence to assist Kurt as the smaller boy tried desperately to shift his weight beneath Mercedes', shaking her violently with his uninjured arm in an effort to force her to move, to force her to wake.
He committed to absolutely everything in his power, did anything that he could think of in an effort to bring the girl back to life, but her body was limp, her eyes closed alongside the realization that this was something that Kurt would not be able to reverse… that nobody would be able to reverse.
Moving slowly, Artie's surroundings steadily began to refine around him, manifesting in the form of a dull throb radiating across his upper body that made him all too aware of the fact that Tina was still clasping at his arms with a painful restriction, stilled in the midst of her attempts to lift him from the ground so that his ass was dangling uncomfortably mere inches off of the ground.
Stationary as a wax figure, Artie couldn't help but wonder briefly how Tina's feeble muscles allowed her to retain such an awkward squat before he drew the conclusion based on a mutual understanding that with the amount of cortisol currently running rampant through her veins, she probably wasn't able to feel much of anything at the moment, let alone some mild discomfort…
But amidst the variety of his senses sparking relentlessly; a million electrical signals firing across his brain all at once, it was but a single, physical sensation that he couldn't immediately place that ultimately pulled him back into his surroundings entirely…
It was only after Tina's hands had slipped entirely from his forearms, filling Artie with a sudden whooshing that forced his stomach into his knees that he recognized the fact that her catatonic fingers could no longer function in their efforts to keep Artie upwards…
He slipped into a freefall, a drop that felt as if he might as well be flying from the top story of a towering New York City skyscraper rather than falling the mere inches that he knew actually separated his body from the floor below.
It was the sudden rush of the wind in his hair, the uncomfortable nausea that settled into his uneasy stomach that snapped his body back into focus, forcing his brain to submerge from its previous tunnel vision so that he retained his complete grasp on reality just in time to slam into the solid ground below, coughing and spluttering as he landed face first into the small pool of blood cumulating around Kurt and Mercedes' injured bodies.
His breath caught amidst the center of his throat, emitting a painful-sounding exhale in the form of a ragged sob that echoed across the temporarily silent cafeteria, linking everything together all at once.
Suddenly, everything was starting to make sense to Arthur Benjamin Abrams.
Suddenly, he knew that he had been correct all along in his lingering knowledge of the fact that at 11:31 a.m. in the late morning hours of Friday, June 4th, 2010, the school bell would ring just as it did every other day; representative of the ending of their briefest moments of freedom…
Of course, he could have never correctly guessed that today, this end would ultimately be the end… a bitter finality for all of those students who hadn't been as lucky as their fellow classmates still capable of standing back up and walking out of this school, a bitter finality for all of those forced to develop anew around the shattered sense of safety surrounding their old.
Suddenly, for the first time all day, Artie realized that he had been wrong all along to believe that his life could ever possibly retain even a hint of a sense of normalcy…
Artie was never going to walk again, he knew that now… Clearly fate just didn't seem to deem it important to include him in any of its plans; not today, not tomorrow, not ever…
But this bubbling idea, this illusion of self pity merely made him feel selfish, unappreciative, because as he finally lifted his head from the floor which he had fallen out of fear that he would positively drown amidst the pool of blood below him, he followed the trail with his eyes back up towards the cold, lifeless form of the girl that had mere moments ago been congratulating him on being one step closer towards achieving his dream of voluntary locomotion so that he suddenly realized that sure, he might never have the opportunity to walk ever again, but hell, neither would she…
So okay, maybe he would never be able to feel his legs ever again, and yes, maybe he would simply have to accept the fact that movement below his waist was just a distant memory of a past life that he could barely even remember anymore, but at the same time, here was Mercedes, and David Karofsky and Azimo Addams and Dr. Roscoe who too, would never be able to feel their legs, who would never achieve movement not only below their waists, but anywhere else…
They would never achieve their dreams, they would never fall in love, they would never get to live ever again…
Realization sank amidst Artie's insides, lingering deeper than any bullet ever could so that he was left pained with the understanding that yes, he had woken up bright and early at 7:00 a.m. on the dot to a blaring alarm clock already knowing that today was the day his life was going to change…
But had he understood the terms of such a dramatic transformation from the beginning, he would have simply preferred everything to stay exactly the same as it had always been to begin with.