Hello, everybody! Hope your holidays went well, I just got back to New York after spending Christmas with my insane family in Ireland so now that I'm home again I'm (not quite) ready to get my ass back to work :)
Anyways, this is the Prologue to Part II of this story which is basically just the immediate aftermath. I'm not sure yet how many parts there will be, right now I'm thinking three or four, but once I get started I usually can't stop, so knowing me it will probably be about ten in reality haha.
Hope you enjoy, I'll try to get the next one up sooner.
Prologue – Part II
Friday, June 4th, 2010
(Afternoon)
It's difficult to properly assess the concept of what chaos truly is until you manage to catch a glimpse of it for yourself.
You can read all of the dictionary definitions, scrutinize over all of the eyewitness accounts, but until you yourself have become trapped inside of your own frantic mind, with the very portrait of destruction dancing directly before your eyes, it is impossible to know what the true meaning of chaos actually is.
Chaos was a school full of children; its occupants running frantically in every which direction except towards the one that lead back inside towards a building they once believed to be safe.
Chaos was students, teachers, faculty… people who didn't even know each other embracing, sobbing into one another's shoulders as they were circled by SWAT teams and guided into safety.
Chaos was the puddles of blood diluting inside of the residual rain water scattered about the campus, the oceans of parents screaming the names of their missing children, their necks stretched to the absolute threshold in an effort to scan across the sea of heads.
Chaos was the fact that no matter how many ambulance, no matter how police cars actually arrived, there never seemed to be enough…
Chaos was the absolute portrait of safety being shattered, being taken away from every which direction that you turned.
To those on the outside, they couldn't help but wonder whether or not the children of William McKinley High School had gone to class earlier that morning knowing that dead was dead; knowing that once you died, you would never get the opportunity to return, you would never see the things that you were bound to miss, the outcome of what could have been the rest of your life…
You didn't get an opportunity to take it all back. You didn't get to have a second chance.
They were wondering whether or not these children had gone to class earlier that morning thinking that death was something that they could control; a group of naïve teenagers who, just this morning, believed death to be the ultimate answer before they were harshly reminded that in reality, it was really just the biggest question of them all.
But meanwhile, on the inside, the picture had become a much different story than that on the out…
The question that was currently being asked, the question on the minds of all of those left to pick up the pieces, those left to put the puzzle back together once more was not why, but how…
How was it that these two impossibly rogue students could have carried along with their normal, everyday lives, unnoticed by any, as directly behind closed doors, they had been plotting a methodical plan, months in the making; a plan who's effectiveness had only become too obvious; the evidence in the body count, climbing rapidly with each passing second.
Twenty two; there had been twenty two kids thus far confirmed injured, three of them currently being classified in such grave condition, that they weren't even expected to survive the next couple of hours, let alone the night.
But still, they had been the lucky ones.
Fourteen; fourteen people had lost their lives inside of William McKinley High School this morning – eleven students, two teachers, and but one of the two suspects…
Jacob Ben-Israel; the deadliest of the two shooters based entirely on purely eyewitness accounts and ballistic evidence…
He had been responsible for the majority of those that lay dead here today, including himself, sprawled against the cafeteria floor with his brain stem blown clear out of the back of his head, and the barrel of a Remington .12 Shotgun still lodged underneath what was left of his chin.
And within a pristine plastic bag of evidence, and a scrutinizing glare, they had all evaluated Jacob Ben-Israel's final rite to the world, his last words upon contributing to the majority of the slayings that had left thirteen of his fellow peers dead.
Re-evaluate your heroes. This was never my fault.
Jacob Ben-Israel had known from the very second that he had stepped inside of his high school earlier that morning that his peers, his classmates, the individuals who, in his own twisted mind had caused this massacre, would be recognized as the martyrs of this tragedy and him, the villain…
He wanted to make sure that they knew that while they had managed to ruin his entire life in sixteen short years, he had managed to ruin theirs in sixteen short minutes…
So in the end, who was the one that was really laughing now?
It was hours later that the entirety of the country before them slowly began to understand the extent of the horrors that presided that day inside of a small town in northwestern Ohio; their eyes glued to their televisions blaring the midday news as they struggled to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy.
It was hours later that the sun beat down brightly at its peak in the sky, obscuring the continuously flashing emergency lights of the seemingly thousands of vehicles with its blinding glare.
It was hours later that the last of the living had been escorted from inside of the school; a small group of four cramped in darkness inside of the janitors closet, too terrified to check whether or not it was safe to move.
It was hours later that the final body had been removed from inside of the cafeteria, that the efforts to return this high school back into what it was before the haunts of fourteen ghosts had been left to permanently roam the halls began.
And directly outside of the empty shell that had once been a high school, parents searched tearfully for their children, desperation prominent inside of their eyes, longing for information confirming that their child was not one of the fourteen that they had heard about on the news.
Students firmly embraced one another, tears sweltering across their eyes in the recognition that some old friends were safe while still, others were not.
Crowds that were equipped with candles and personalized posters, flowers and stuffed animals stood shoulder to shoulder across the packed football field; gathered by the thousand in order to pay their respects while meanwhile, inside of the senior parking lot, five cars that would never be driven by their owners ever again were turned into makeshift memorials.
It was within a matter of minutes that an entire town came together, reeling in their pain, burning with their questions as they remembered the dead, they prayed for the dying, and they struggled to comprehend just how anything could ever possibly be construed as normal ever again.