Warning: non-consent scenes!
Directly after this, please read "The Westfielder, Version Two" to get the full effect. Together they are a set of Violate stories that I wrote, inspired by the "Columbiner" blogs on tumblr. I found that such blogs fall into two very distinct camps: those who fetishize the percieved evilness of school shooters and those who empathize with their perceived sadness. I wanted to give a voice to both.
Which version do you relate to most? Which is your version of Tate? Please comment!
One of my followers on tumblr posted his senior photos. He appears on my feed in his forest green button-down, crouched and smiling by fake foliage somewhere. Even then the camera loved him, and he is flawless in that 90's proto-photoshop-his hair clean, his dimples even, his features picture-perfect. He must have been already planning.
I read his diaries, his autopsy report. It's odd to think of his body as dirty and human like that-the bacteria in his mouth, the tangled hair beneath his belt buckle, the bubbling gastric acid in his gut. If anything it was an unfitting vessel. I think about the way he grinned before he shot them, the way he said that he wound masturbate. My computer chair is wet. I think of him, my brilliant boy, all flaxen-haired and godlike, jerking off. My hand goes down the waistband of my skirt and I rock on it, whining. Psychopath, psychopath, psychopath, I think until I come.
Tate. He is in boots and his steps are heavy ascending the stairs. On top of me he is shower-fresh, the cheap masculinity of his shampoo and the heavy chemical freshness of sport deodorant. He looks at me with big dry eyes like mirrors; he grins and mutters bang. Undoing my buttons he is almost tender, like the remnants of humanity betrayed by his teenage form, and then in an instant it all goes gray beneath him.
If I wept, it wouldn't matter. If I wept, he wouldn't stop or comfort me, no pressure gone between my legs or cloth pressed to my face to soak the tears up. I don't weep.
Killer, killer, killer, though, I think. And for weeks afterward, all I want is to go back there, back up that narrow staircase to kiss the spot where I flopped on his bed like a shot bird.
At school now I am different. My clothing tells lies. The loose dresses and cardigans make me deceptively childlike, but beneath them my hips curve gently and my breasts are full, wide and swollen.
I join the track team to be closer to him. After practice I make sure to get to the locker room early and I unwrap myself like a birthday present, peeling off my sweaty uniform. Leah and Courtney and Chloe all stare as I peel off my gross socks, my little feet clammy and rank on the cold, dry tile, and I saunter to the shower stark naked like a prize. I shoot them a bored look, a challenge, soaping my hair up, and I know that they all want to ask if I'm fucking Tate Langdon, but they don't.
I see him, though, out on the deserted track afterward. I'm swaddled in Soffe shorts and my team hoodie, my hair thrown up in a clumpy bun and smelling of hand soap. He is wearing his track shorts and a black trench coat, the pockets heavy with ammunition. He grins, all spite and beauty, and I take one to the chest.
In his diary once he said that he had feelings, claimed that he was remorseful when he thought about his family. I was never quite sure if he meant that or not. I try not to think about those parts, in this eternity now. I think about the golden light around him, so fucking godlike, Darwinism humanized and then made angelic, as he weeded out the feeble and the lame.
He rips my track team sweatshirt and beneath it I wear red; I'm cleavage and a bullet hole in all of my junior-year splendor. He traces it for a moment, slasher-smile.
My Violet, he whispers, all Clorox teeth and dead all-American eyes.
He cradles me like his favorite possession and thrashes me down like a rich, spoiled child out to destroy something expensive. I watch his hair catch the light above me and I hold onto him like a lucid nightmare, teenaged and fevered, thinking psychopath, psychopath, psychopath.