AN: I got a review. I'm so happy!
Anyway, to ( ), I think that it's going to be soon. There'll be this chapter, at least another, maybe one more, and then he'll crash, sort of.
We had all been ordered to assemble in the assembly, which wasn't as simple as it sounded. This school, was tiny. This school, never had assembly except for when our principal on a whim decided that we needed one, which didn't actually happen that often.
As it was, those a year below me, and some small in my grade, sat on the floor. Gina and I, sat on the chairs, while John and Simon sat at our feet. Gina and I felt like king and queen. I, at least felt like it.
"Isn't that cute?" I asked Gina.
Cute? It makes me nostalgic...
"That they're sitting at our feet?" she giggled. "Oh yeah, it really is."
"Can you two shut it?" Simon asked.
"Why?"
"You're sitting at our feet, we're your king and queen," I said.
"No, you're a freak," Simon said, pointing at me, "and you're big," pointing to Gina.
"Am not!" she retorted. Simon ignored her.
"Johnny, could we change place? Ben's legs aren't the nicest around, in fact, they're fuckin' awful," Simon asked.
They changed place, and Simon leaned against Gina's legs, looking as if he was high, and said: "This is heaven. Because your legs are round, and his are sticks."
"Are you saying that I'm fat?" Gina asked.
"Course you aren't," I said, because as amusing as it was watching Gina and Simon fight, this just wasn't the place.
But it would be so much fun...
"There has been a sad fall for us. First, our favorite coach," you could hear a collective snort coming from everyone," has a heart attack, then one of our brightest students," yet another snort," unfortunately gets overrun by a car. And that is alright," sniggers," because it was accidents, but now, yet another has died." The principal looked grim now.
He's looking as if somebody survived...
I couldn't help it, I smiled.
"One of our students have been attacked, his name is, and soon, it will probably be was, June Harris."
My smile fell, and I think that we all felt a bit bad, I mean, who hadn't been mean to him? He had, after all, been gay. So, maybe that wasn't his fault, but...
"Yesterday," the principal started, again," he was attacked, because of his homosexuality."
Now, I imagine, everybody felt twice as bad as before. I think that I felt even worse. And now, our history teacher stood up, and replaced the principal.
"June Harris was a bright student, and we were glad to have him. Us teachers felt like that at least. Unfortunately, June Harris was bullied, by you. It's a lot of people's belief that homophobia disappeared at the turn of the century, but they're wrong. In fact, it's just like it used to be. Now, I'd like all of you to be careful about what you say, as to not offend anyone, or commit homophobia."
"Am I the only one feeling bad?" Gina asked us, at lunch.
You've already talked about it once, and now you're doing it again...
"No," Simon and I said at the same time, while John said "Yes."
"And why the hell aren't you feeling bad?" Gina asked.
"Because I never said anything mean to him, and, for that matter, did you?"
"Sort of," Gina said.
"Yes," Simon said. I nodded in agreement.
Feeling bad is so you...
"Hey," Mikhail said, opening the door.
"Hey," I replied. "Can we talk?"
"Yes."
We went to a park, and bought hotdogs. No, actually, Mikhail bought the biggest hotdog there was, while the lady who was manning the hotdog cart, looked at him strangely.
"I thought that it was gone," I told Mikhail.
"What, homophobia? What sort of rock have you been living under?" Mikhail said with a bitter laugh. "What are you gonna do about it, though?"
"Stop calling people gay, unless I have a reason to, like with you."
"What, you can't be sure that I am, can you?"
"Yes, I can. Saw you in action."
"Did you, honey?" he leaned into me, smiled and batted his eyelashes. "Did you think it pretty?"
"Yes, honey, I did," I said and smiled at him.
Then Mikhail put his hand around my waist.
For some reason I didn't like it. In fact, I felt bad.
There was Mikhail, short, blonde and dressed in a uniform, and being held at gunpoint by another soldier. Several others in fact. Mikhail had his hands up, but a smirk on his face that made me surprised that the soldiers didn't run the other way.
He raised his fists and went down on the soldier in front of him. Actually, he didn't use his fists to hit him, but he instead took his hands on the other soldiers' cheeks, on the face, and kissed him, on the mouth.
He was shot in the head, and was dead. Mikhail, that is, was shot.
One of the other soldiers said "Saumensch", which made the others laugh.
In the carnage all around them.
"God." I said.
"Honey, you okay?" Mikhail asked, and looked concerned, but you could still tell that he really wasn't.
"You're dead," I said. That did make him concerned, so he led me to a bench and pushed me down, then sat beside me.
"Yes."
"You killed yourself," I said.
"No, I didn't, they shot me."
"But that was only because you wanted them too."
"They were still the ones who shot me."
I turned to him.
"Why the hell did you kiss him? Did you have a death wish?"
"Yes."
"But I don't get it," I said.
"No, you don't do you?"
"But could you explain it to me, then?"
"Calm down, I was the one who had to live through it, not you."
"That is not reason enough to not explain. Why the hell did you kiss him?"
"Because-"
"Couldn't help but hear you talk," a woman, out of the blue, said.
"Course you fuckin' could," I said.
"No," she said with a smile on her face."Anyway, I just wanted to say that when someone, kisses another someone, in this case you," she pointed at Mikhail,"and some other boy, it's because they think that it is enjoyable. There's no death involved."
"You wouldn't mind doing me the favor of walking away, would you?" Mikhail asked.
The woman huffed, and went on her merry way.
"Could you explain now?" I asked, sour.
"There was a law, so to say, well, actually, I think that it was. Basically, if you didn't go down fighting, they would kill your family, no, not really, but they wouldn't be nice, and I didn't want that seeing as I had ten siblings, and four uncles, all with wives, and they had a big number of children. They were all most likely starving, like the rest of the population, but I didn't want them captured, so I had to get killed, and decided that kissing one of them would be fun for me, and they would also hate me enough then to kill me," Mikhail explained.
"That's..." I trailed of.
"A very good explanation, I know."
"Honey," I dragged out the word.
"Yes?"
"That wasn't what I was going to say."
"It wasn't? Well, then, I don't agree if you say something else, honey. You don't happen to have any candy, or something?"
I dug out a chocolate bar.
"Could you give me the short version, and then you get the chocolate bar?"
"But I'm hungry!" he complained. I rolled my eyes. "Fine, the short version is that there was this law, that said if you were a coward your family would suffer for it, so I killed myself by making them hate me. Now can I get that chocolate bar?" I gave it to him, and he ate it in, like, one second.
We just sat there for some time, staring out into space, my head feeling like the inside of a drum.
"I need more food, I'm starving," Mikhail said.
"I'm not starving, but my head feels like a drum. I'm going home."
When I got home, I immediately headed for the bathroom, where Jamie was drowning matches.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Getting a painkiller."
"We have no killers in that box," Jimmie said, and gestured vaguely towards the cabinet.
"It's called a cabinet, and they're just called painkillers, you fuckin' idiot." I pushed him away from the sink with my hip, and he crossed his arms and glared at me, while I took a Tylenol for the headache.
"Has grandma said that you can eat that?" he asked suspiciously.
"No. Have you asked if you can kill the matches? For that matter, have you asked the matches what they feel about it?"
"I just don't want Joanie to burn up my toys," he said, then he pushed me from the sink, and glared at the matches. He picked one up, and snapped it, with some effort.
"Where the hell is she, then?" I asked.
"She's gotten a new friend," he said, sulking.
"So, you're not sucking each other off, anymore? Well, that's sad, for you mostly."
Then Jimmie's eyes started tearing up.
"Know what you should do now that you no more can be with Joanie all the time?" I asked, smiling and acting like a big brother.
"Be with you?" he asked with a mischievous grin.
"No. Be with mom, you'll love it."
"You suck," he said.
He detests you...the Source said gleefully.
AN: Right, so i'm proud of this chapter, and here comes a long author's note. first off, the law that mikhail talks about is like this:
Order number 270. I order that: 1) Those that remove their insignias... and surrender shall be seen as a evil deserter whose realitives shall be arrested as relatives to a oath-breaking and a traitor to the Soviet Union. Those deserters shall be shot at sight. 2) Those that gets surrounded shall fight until the last drop of blood...those that prefer to be taken shall be executed in the best way at hand and their families loose all support.
quite mean, really. and the 'i', indicates stalin. saumesch is the german equivalent of bitch.