Barry Coleson - The Aftermath

[LadyMakaze†]

Before and after the worldwide terror known as SOTF, there was very little, if anything, different about Daphne's everyday life. People always avoided her as usual, if not even more so since the event, but really, it was better that day, wasn't it? Casting her fearful looks, creeping away from her as she silently made her way through the halls...yes, for someone who was a direct victim of terror, Daphne appeared, and was, perfectly fine.

Well...perfectly fine according to her standards...

New scars would remain with her, her vision will never again be as it used to be, but really...what was the point of worrying about that? She'd already collected a number of scars and bruises over the years of her childhood...

And now, Daphne had retreated to one of the far, distant corners of the library, away from everyone else, nose buried in a history book (Children at War, on Underage Military Recruitment in the DRC. How lovely.) As she caught the sound of a newcomer shuffling along the aisle, she looked up in slight irritation.

She blinked once, though her expression remained calm and emotionless. She instantly recognized the boy as Glenn Hughes... a person she had run into twice during her stay on the island. The boy had threatened to kill her, as she remembered, seeing her as a threat. But also...he had spared her life.

And Daphne supposed...that it was because of him that she was alive now.

Did such knowledge have any importance? This Daphne wondered to herself. It couldn't be that important, surely. But for some reason...the very knowledge that he had spared her life some how struck her as something...Daphne couldn't find the word to describe it.

Demurely, she looked back towards her beloved text, taking in some of the more graphic images in her current page.

"That's the world history section, if that's what you're looking for."

[Buko]

Vince Samsa obviously had a lot on his mind. Nodding lightly, Lyndi only half listened to what Samsa was telling her. He seemed depressed, and angry. Then again, many students had been through what Samsa himself had gone through. Some had actually had it a lot worse. Closing her eyes momentarily, Lyndi reopened them again just in time to notice a very familiar looking figure stepping through an aisle of library books. A faint smile formed on her face as she slowly stood up.

"Hey Samsa, I'm sorry. I'll be back..." she muttered quietly, almost completely disregarding the boy.

Heading in the direction in which the figure disappeared quietly, she caught up in time to hear the voice of an unfamiliar student inform him of which section he was currently in. A small smile crept across her face as she placed her hands on her hips and called out in a semi-quiet voice.

"Think you're too good to speak to us now that we're back home?" she inquired playfully.

Upon further inspection of the Hughes twin, however, Lyndi's face flashed a bright shade of red. The figure standing before her was most certainly not Fred Hughes. Rather, it was his twin brother, Glenn. Blushing heavily, Lyndi backed away a few steps.

"I'm so sorry," she apologized quickly, "I thought you were..."

Her voice trailed off. It was almost painfully obvious who she had thought the young man was, who else could she have mistaken Glenn Hughes for? Still standing there with her jaw practically agape, Lyndi was far too embarrassed by her current situation to utter anything more.

[riserugu†]

Chewing slowly against her lower lip, Lucinda found herself unable to listen to the words that where screaming in her mind to just run to her class right now. But her feet where planted, and why the hell not, she had worked up every little courage in her to say, why not stay around for the response. Though she already had a good idea of what was to come, she still found herself unable to turn around fully and run to her French class like a bat out of hell. Listening lightly, though keeping her head down as Ryan began to talk she found herself fiddling around with the hem of her knee-length skirt.

She blinked in a somewhat surprised manner when a quick rejection didn’t come, though he seemed be more stunned by her confession than anything. ‘But really Luci, what were you expecting?’ She muttered in thought, frowning a bit as she finally found it in her to look up. Watching as he glanced off to the other girl that he had called over, she blinking before a sad smile formed on her lips, watching more as he turned back to face her again. Speaking out again, she blinked again listening to Ryan’s words, before she shrugged. “It’s alright… really…

It’s just; I didn’t see a point in not saying the truth. Though if that’s the best thing or not… after all that’s happened, I just… well… I just had to get it off my chest.” She answered as clam as she could, now playing with a shard of loose hair along her face absentmindedly.

--------

Glenn blankly looked at the large grouping of books before him, rubbing the back of his head a bit as he looked to the paper and then to the books, repeating this a couple of times. After having helped out here so many times, you’d figure he’d know his way around… course not, they just had him checking in the large number of books have the time. So when the female voice close by spoke… he at first didn’t register it, though blinked as he glanced over toward Daphne. A frown of sorts crossing his features…

That girl had been the cause of a death or two on the island herself, he had been there for them… he himself had come close to killing her, but in the end left her with her life. For one he found himself unable to pull the trigger of that pistol and kill the girl… Shortly after though was when they had been rescued and he hadn’t thought of her since, more worried about his brother and friends. “Yeah, this is what I’m looking for though I just can’t seem to find the book itse—“

The sentence was cut-off mid-way when yet another voice broke out, he turning to look at the girl he had since when he had first entered the library talking to that football player, he all but grinning when she noted her mistake. Folding his arms about his chest… “You thought I was…”

“Me.” Another once mused, this coming from behind Lyndi as Fred grinned, though yawned after a moment.

“Reason for you actually being a library, I know you don’t read.” Glenn teased, looking his list over once more.

Fred shrugged, “They’re studying or something for some test, teacher sent me here to catch up on the two I missed, and for this one.” He sighed, cleanly not enjoying the thought of such. Though none the less smiled again, “I see you met my annoying younger twin Glenn.” He muttered, keeping the grin.

“And you already seem to know my idiot of an older twin.”

[Megami†]

As Glenn turned around, clearly amused by Lyndi's mistake, she flushed an even brighter shade of red. Brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face, Lyndi tried to simply shrug off the incident like it was no big deal. However, she was kicking herself internally all the while. As another voice echoed out from behind her, Lyndi twirled around to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, whose voice she recognized with ease. Shaking her head in dismay, she looked at the two young men and began laughing.

As the two conversed between themselves, her embarrassment lightened. It had to happen all the time, right? It was an honest mistake. A five second glimpse of one of the twins did not present enough time to actually tell the two apart. As Fred directed her to his younger brother, she could not help but laugh at the two.

"Yeah... I seem to have met... Glenn," Lyndi mumbled quietly, still laughing to herself, "And as for your... idiot... of a brother, Glenn... yeah. Back on the island... well, you know. The reason I'm here right now is because I ran into him, or at least, that's what I think. Couldn't have survived on my own, you know."

Her face flushed somewhat red again, and she looked toward the ground. After a moment, the bright smile once again returned to her face and she looked up at the two boys. Running her fingers through her loose hair slowly, she bit down on her lower lip for a moment before continuing.

"But... are you two doing alright?"

Her attention turned to Fred, and she nodded toward his torso. Back when she had first stumbled across him, or shall we say, vice versa, on the island, he was in pretty poor shape. She distinctly remembered the bullet wound that she had patched up on his stomach before they had moved off the dirt path on the island.

"I know you were looking pretty worse for wear there for a while," she stated quietly, "But everything's okay now, right?"

Okay. Nothing was okay, in reality. Adjusting to life after Survival of the Fittest was proving to be one of the hardest challenges in Lyndi Thibodeaux's life, and she was sure that it was the same for most, if not all, of the other students who had witnessed the chaos and horror of SOTF. Never again would Barry Coleson High be the same. For that matter, it had made a deep impact on the whole country. Despite that, Lyndi desperately wanted to cling the the appearance of everything being "okay".

[Buko]

Vince watched how Lyndi left him, how everyone had left him. He shouldn’t have felt so bad, he had been alone since he was born…he had been alone since he was born. His mother left him, it should be no surprise that Lyndi had left him. When he had left Survival Of The Fittest he had told the men that he had dropped his weapon… he told them it was a jump rope, and it was no surprise that they had found the jump rope at the Light House. Vince Samsa had kept something special with him, hidden…something that no one would take away from him. He left the Library and went to his locker.

This one thing would be the Arcus 94 he had received from Danya, the Arcus 94 that had saved his life. He had snuck the gun into his locker earlier today; the halls had been cleared long since he put it in there. He took the gun out of his locker and put it into his pocket quickly, he walked back to the library in complete silence and as he walked to the back of the Library he took it out. Chad Andrews was a normal guy; he was a senior so he wasn’t involved in the whole SOTF thing…thank god to. As Chad walked to the back of the Library amongst the books he noticed a large boy with a gun!

Vince stared at the young man with ice blue eyes, his innocence still intact, his life so beautiful. At this time in his life Vince wanted to destroy something beautiful, he unloaded three shots into the boys chest, killing him almost instantly. The shots should have been heard by now, and as he saw the Librarian come towards him and scream Vince couldn’t help but smile…he shot her two times in the chest before putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger.

“You think you know me doc…” Vince said to his new psychologist “and what makes you think I don’t Vince? You are surrounded by violence…Survival Of The Fittest didn’t fuck you up…you are fucked up.” the psychologist said this quite bluntly.

"I used to go into a funeral homes to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing." He said smiling and then he got up and left…this was his third psychologist in the last five years.

People where starting to gather around the three corpses now, to stare at the handy work of the once popular Vince Samsa.

“Hey dad!” an eleven year old Vince said happily “What is it son?” his dad asked. “I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see that we're all manifestations of love?
I looked at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything..” Vince’s father stared at him curiously and said calmly “You are going to another psychologist”

But, it didn’t matter anymore…because Vince was dead, but despite what everyone will say in the next few days…Survival Of The Fittest wasn’t responsible for another causality…life was responsible for another causality.

[LadyMakaze†]

Daphne was startled out of silence by the sound of gunshots ringing through the library. Looking mildly surprised, she looked up from a picture of a twelve-year-old holding an assault rifle and gazed towards Vince Samsa, holding a gun, standing over the form of a fellow student, now fallen.

She blinked in surprise as another gunshot rang through the room. The librarian was the next to fall. A shame...Daphne had wanted to check out this book in particular. Now she would have to wait a while.

And the first person to snap is this guy. Later than I'd expected, but....nonetheless....

A third shot ripped through the room, this time taking the life, and a good part of the head of Vince Samsa. The boy had ended his own life, in an explosion of blood and bone and brain matter. Daphne watched with mild fascination. There was blood everywhere, staining the carpet, the shelves, even the books. (Not the history section, to Daphne's relief) Three corpses now adorned the once peaceful, quiet environment of the library.

Daphne shrugged and looked back towards the pages of her book.

"Doesn't he know? You're supposed to be quiet in a library."

[Megami†]

The conversation Lyndi Thibodeaux had been having with the Hughes twins was suddenly cut short as not one, not two, but three gunshots echoed throughout the silence of the library. It was enough to send Lyndi cowering, but aftering being put through the hell known as Survival of the Fittest, the sound of gunshots were nothing new to her. The sound was almost surreal, and Lyndi stepped past Fred, who had previously stood behind her, in an attempt to find the source of the noise. Surely, not here... not in this place... it's over now, right?

Much to her dismay, Lyndi's fear was confirmed. There, in the floor, lay the bloodied bodies of Vincent Samsa, the librarian, and another student. Tears brimmed up in the girl's eyes as she shook her head, unable to form a coherent sentence. Vince Samsa had gone on a miniature killing spree. He had taken himself out, along with two innocent bystanders. Those two people, they had lost their lives, simply because they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. As odd as it seemed, the corpses lying on the ground did not send the girl fleeing in horror. Rather, she just stood there in a mixture of awe and shock, staring vacantly at the hollow shells left on the ground.

At the remark of one, Daphne Rudko, Lyndi did not even bother to cast the girl a second glance. The remark had been so cruel, so heartless, so uncaring. Then again, if even Lyndi herself was almost hardened to death, she could only imagine what sort of condition the students who had not been quite so well-off were in at this point. They had seen death, the majority of them had killed at least one person. In that aspect, Lyndi still held her innocence, but now, looking at Vince Samsa's lifeless body, her feelings were more of remorse and pity than anything else.

Finally, Lyndi exhaled audibly and cast a look back at the Hughes boys, whom she had all but forgotten were there in the moments that had passed since Vince had killed himself. Shaking her head slightly, she brushed the tears away and bit down on her lower lip. Vince Samsa had snapped, and this was the aftermath of his insanity. Somehow, Lyndi figured that there would be more to come. After all, did the government, society, everybody... did they all think that things would just go back to normal after what everyone had seen and been through?

"They didn't do a thing, but he killed them," Lyndi muttered quietly, "It... might be one of us next time, you know. I don't think this is over... he's probably the first of many to come. The next person might shoot up the entire school..."

As she spoke, a tone of panic overtook her voice. Still, she spoke the words quietly, asphyxiating her gaze on the corpses lying in the library floor. Blinking back another set of tears, she continued on.

"Maybe mom was right... about everything..."

She hesitated. Her mother had indeed argued with her about returning to this high school, especially after all the events that had unfolded, and given the number of known killers who now freely walked the halls of the school. But... if her mother had been right about Barry Coleson High School, had she been right about the other things too? Casting a distraught look at the twins once again, Lyndi tried to shake the thought from her head as she finally broke her eyes away from the bodies.

[riserugu†]

Fred mused a small grin as Lyndi questioned on how things had been going since their time on the island; he watching out the corner of his eye as his brother shrugged his shoulders. Rubbing his arm a bit where the cut was a bit as he seemed to be have more interested on the books on the book self than anything else as he grabbed at a book, looking it over before tucking it under his arm. Looking at the small piece of paper in his hand, before grabbing at another book. The older twin turning back to fully look at Lyndi;

“I’ve been fine… I’m not going to be able to play soccer this year though because of the wound in my chest. But… that’s about the worst of my problems.” He muttered, leaning back against one of the selves against the wall crossing his arms about his chest as he looked over the girl before him, smiling a bit. He was really happy to see that see was okay, he hadn’t seen her since the helicopters and they had been separated when they had arrived at the hospital.

But as he opened his mouth to ask how she had been doing, he found the once silent environment of the library being destroyed by the sudden burst of gunfire. He moving forward past the row of books that blocked the front of the library from being viewed from where he currently stood he came to witness the scene of the three dead bodies staining the carpeted floor of the room. The bodies of Vince, another student, and the librarian where the reason of the mess, Fred stepping back a bit away from the sight… he figured that once he had gotten out of SOTF he would never have to see any of this again… but here it was. Both his, and everyone who had been involved in the event’s fears coming to life here in there own school. A place where they where supposed to be safe when they where away from home…

Gulping some, Fred glanced to Lyndi as she talked, not being able to help but agree with her words to some degree… unable to think of anything to say, and instead kept still pressed against the book self again. Hardly noting the comment made by the only other girl in the room at the moment, Glenn too stepping up beside the other two as he looked to the scene briefly before turning away from it, shaking his head some. Only briefly glancing at Daphne, narrowing his eyes in anger lightly at the girl’s comment before he just went to his thoughts.

He didn’t know Vince, or the other students, and he had spent a number of school hours here in the library, so he knew the librarian well… but now… all three where dead and bleeding on the floor. He found himself listening lightly as the door leading into the library burst open, the gunfire no doubt probably heard from downstairs as one of the campus police came in, his own gun wielded in his hand. Voice demanding that everyone kept still, as he went about looking over the scene itself.