/lit/ - Literature

Columbus Day.
Short Story.

I

Silent library, hours past noon. The two were left alone, breathing heavily without muttering a word. The sounds outside, words of so many people from pleads to curses, lost themselves into white noise: voices, sirens and cries, became a faint murmur because of their mind's voice, so loud that their thoughts seemed to run as fast as they could, and yet stumbling at every step of the way.
The main doors fell. They counted the running steps coming closer: down the main hall, up the stairs, then through the hallway and to the library doors locked from inside with a desk and a broom. They raised their guns, first to their temples, then to each other – the cold sweat made it hard to rest against their temples without sliding off, the shaking hands made it likely to miss if they didn't. The steps reached the library and the group shouted once and again, throwing themselves once and again against the wooden doors.
“One!” both shout when the doors gave in with a thud. “Two!” when the group entered the room, running between the shelves, looking for anyone who may remain alive. “Three!” Two shots. Everyone stopped. Silence again. Nobody ran, no one said another word. Soon they found them where the windows, in the farthest corner, lying dead and proud on the ground.

>>7316583
II

Less than an hour from noon they arrived from the north-east, group of three with one missing to the lands of the school. Everyone else, students from juniors to seniors, were then in the back where the green fields extend, resting half-naked against each other, under the sun, letting the time fly by. They talked of whatever crossed their minds: “Oh, will you go to Taylor's party?” said one near the doors, “Have you heard?, hey, have you heard who was with Tommy last night?” could be heard nearby, and everywhere the small talk showed their worries and the scope of their sight.
“Go! Go!” shouted a voice across the lawn, and everyone turning the head understood in the beat of a heart, the deeds of the two coming fast. Most of them knew them, and thus they knew to the point of the fact what they wanted to do. Some of them were fast, fast enough to reach the main building and find shelter and hide, in its darkest places, until the time of their death. Those not fast enough remained right where they were, on the grass covered by light, and half-naked with a head full of air.
The inside building was easily locked, like with every window they found at the time. The inside hallways and classrooms where covered in black, with nothing to see besides two lighstreams that moved through the school, pointing at corners and unders, looking for lions turned to prey when left alone and far of the herd.
Rache, the first one. Hidden then in the toilet, the cradle of her fame just one year ago.
"Please no-, I'll-" before being silenced, with a single shoot through her head.
Three shots more followed to her dead body for no reason at all, just blowing steam off over her wrecked twisted face - just a girl known for not more that blowing people at school, no much was lost there (maybe a waitress, maybe a prostitute).
Eleven more followed: three in the classrooms, four where the staircase, then two in the hallway, then two kitchen below. Each one cowardly hidded and crying for help. Their end was like the end of a dream, which they waited with incredulous fear.
Everyone's dead, hopes nevermind.
It all ended, not even an hour since then.

III

The very same night all the noise faded. Everyone else was back at their homes, forgetting the fact of the events at midday, caring for dinner more than for what happened before. Some of the planted crosses as tombs, not knowing for whom, randomly at school. After the popular event new ones came by, and still do once in a while, that disappear as well in the blink of an eye.

You have to 1 minute to explain why you're posting on /lit/ but haven't read the following:
>The Iliad and the Odyssey
>The Old Testament
>Plato's Republic
>The Aeneid
>The Divine Comedy
>Hamlet, King Lear and MacBeth
>Paradise Lost
>Ulysses
>Finnegans Wake
>Gravity's Rainbow
>Infinite Jest
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