• THE ENDING AGAIN V
    By UC Poika




    Now when we got to the mall there was this ladder, you know. And a guy had just gone up it with some sort of a thing in a bag—you know like a guitar only it was skinnier. Anyway he went up this ladder and I said to Auriki, “He’s some sort of a mad gunman!” You know like the guys that shoot up colleges and stuff. Well she laughs but I’m running with it, and I say that I’m not going in there because I’m thinking what if there really was a mad gunner in the mall? What would you do? There isn’t much you could do. Then she’s got all the answers, right? And she says, “Well maybe you’ll get lucky and he won’t shoot at you at all.” And she’s laughing right? But I’m not. I’m getting into this so deep that it’s starting to feel real, like there really is going to be a shooter in there. So I have this bright idea, you know, like, right it all depends on whether I’m lucky today whether I live and die—not whether I win five bucks on a scratch game, but like life and death. Scary! So I get this idea to walk under the ladder because I hear it’s bad luck for some, but I always have bad luck. I mean if anybody is going to have bad luck, I am. And so I’ve figured I have better luck if I do things that would ordinarily cause other people bad luck. I mean like, you know, I have really good luck, like with boys and stuff when I see a black cat. I mean, like I really do and it so weird. But anyway I walk under this ladder because that’s supposed to be bad luck. So Auriki is sure I’m going to have bad luck and she’s mad at me for being really stupid, you know. But as soon as we get in the mall the guy locks the door, and we’re thinking, ‘Whoa!’

    “I’m sorry Sir,” I said. “Why are you locking the door?”

    “Nobody in,” he said. “And nobody out.”

    “Even us? We just got here!

    “Nobody in. Nobody out. That includes you.”

    Then he starts walking away and I say, “Did you know there’s a ladder outside and some guy just went up it with a gun?”

    “Where?” he says and puts his arm under my arm and starts leading me away.

    Well I’m not like that. I start resisting and pull away from him a couple of times.

    Then he says to me, “You’ll have to come with me and I don’t have time to explain!” And then he starts doing the same thing to me again.

    But I pull away again and I yell at him, “She’s seen it too! Can she come?”

    “Fine,” he says with a sign of disgust.

    And I yell for Auriki to come with me. But at first she doesn’t want to. So I yell to her to just come and this time she does.

    So we’re going down this hallway and this guy is really being rough—more dragging me than walking with me. And I’m trying to get away and all. And Auriki is yelling at me to just stop fighting him. But finally I get away from him again. And I say, “Stop pulling on me! You’re hurting me!” He wasn’t really but I didn’t like it, whatever he was doing. “Just let me alone and I’ll follow you!”

    Well he’s upset and he reaches out to grab me again. But, ‘No way! I’ve had enough!’ I’m thinking and I start running away down a different hallway. He doesn’t give up yet and grabs me a couple of times. But in the end I break loose and am running free when all of a sudden I feel this pain in my chest, and all of sudden I can’t breath. I put my hand on my chest and it’s all wet with blood. I can’t believe it, I am shot. I can’t breath! I fall down! And all this blood comes pouring out of me onto the floor. I never even heard it. It just hit and then that was it.

    Then I sort of just get up, you know. But I can see my body lying there on the floor of the hallway all still like and blood all over the place. I don’t even scream. I just start walking away, looking at the guy who tried to stop me checking my pulse. And I’m like, duh! What did he expect with all that blood? That my heart would be beating? Moron! And I look at Auriki and she is crying. Her hands are over her face but she’s crying really hard. And, I’m a little freaked out. I’m surprised she feels like that. I don’t know why. I just am.

    Then I turn and there’s a cop standing there with a gun. I can tell to look at him he never expected me to be hit. And there’s a crowd of people but they are all gathered around other people some lying on the floor and some sitting. But everybody is like bleeding and crying and screaming. It’s a real mess. And then I see this girl and she is walking right passed me. She doesn’t even see me, she’s so busy looking around. It’s not like I really want to but something tells me to follow her. So I do, you know. But she heads right for the door me and Auriki came out of, but I know it’s locked so I just keep following her thinking she will stop. When she gets to the door though she opens it like it was never locked in the first place. And I’m like amazed! How could she just open it, just like that? Well she walks out into the parking lot, and I’m right behind her even though she doesn’t know it, right.

    Then I look up and the stars are out but I am all by myself. The girl is gone. The mall is gone. And the lights are off and everything. And there I stand looking up at the stars. Did you ever just do that? I’ve always wanted to. And I would have once too.

    There was this boy and he was really good looking and all. But we went to the country some place. I don’t know where, but he did. And we get out and walk out into this great big field. He called it alfalfa or something like that. I forget. Anyway he says to me something about how beautiful it is just to look up at the stars when there are no lights of the city to interfere with their light. And I start to look up but he’s like all over me, kissing me and touching me everywhere you can think of and I’m suppose to be enjoying all of this I assume. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to look at the stars like he said. Well, I got mad and made him take me back. I was so mad I never even looked up hardly at all, and what I did get to see I didn’t care about because I was too busy giving him a piece of my mind. It breaks my heart when a boy gets like that. I mean if he would just take it easy. We could have had a really wonderful time, you know?

    Well anyway, it was like that—not the fighting time but starry night type of thing. It was like God made all of heaven just for me. But this wasn’t heaven! I knew it because the longer I looked the farther away the stars got. Then I realized I was sinking or going down. The ground right under me was giving way and I was beginning to go down. Then the ground completely gave way I began to free fall. The stars were gone. The ground was gone. And there was nothing in all directions but dark night. I was scared. And I mean not just scared, scared but really scared. So scared in fact I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to look anymore. I didn’t want it to happen. I thought I was going to hell and I didn’t know why. It wasn’t right. That’s all I could think of. It just wasn’t right that I’d go to hell. I wasn’t that bad. I mean, really, I wasn’t.

    Then I hit the bottom and there were these horrible black things, like monsters sort of only you couldn’t see them exactly. They were like black figures in the dark. Sort of like one time when I saw a black cat sitting in the sidewalk when I was walking to my boyfriend’s house when he used to live in town. Even though it was night and he was in the shadows—the cat I mean, not my boyfriend—I could make him out plain as could be. But even he thought he was hid though. Anyway these dark figures I guess you’d call them, they scared me so I started to run, but I had no idea where to run to. I just ran and ran and ran. I don’t know where, or why. I just ran because they scared me and because they were chasing me I guess.

    Then I saw these lights that moved sort of like campfires. And I went towards them expecting to see devils or demons, or some kind of monsters, but there were just people there. Just ordinary people like you or I and they were just sitting around these big campfires. So I thought, ‘Neat, this isn’t hell.’ And when I walked up there to them no one said anything. I mean, you would think someone would have said something. And that was the eerie part I noticed right away like that. They were not talking. They all just sat there looking at the fire.

    Then all of a sudden this girl. She must have been about fourteen. She just let out a scream and ran and jumped right in the fire! Well, I jumped to my feet and ran up to the fire and tried to grab her and take her out of there, but I couldn’t even reach her. Her hair caught fire and was whisked away as if the fire was the wind blowing a wig off or something.

    Nobody else even said anything or moved. They didn’t seem to care in the slightest while she screamed and yelled as the fire consumed her—I like that, the fire consumed her! It did too. There was nothing left of her at all. She was completely gone.

    I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. And I wanted to talk to someone but no one there had said anything so I figured maybe they didn’t care to talk to me.

    Well, anyway, I was just about to sit down again then when two great big bruisers came up to where I was going to sit. Then I realized it was my turn. Either I run and jump into the fire or they would throw me in there clothes and all.

    “Okay, okay!” I said not wanting to get beat up. “I’ll go!” I said but I was lying because I was hoping someone would save me—you know, stop them somehow. But nobody did. They followed me right up next to the fire and when I saw no one was going to save me I tried to run through them. But of course they caught me and between the two of them threw me in the fire.

    I remembered how ridiculous it seemed as I just ran right back out toward them. ‘They can throw me in the fire all they want,’ I was thinking, ‘But they can’t make me stay in there.’

    Then to my surprise you know what they did? They punched me right in the face and I landed back in the fire flat on my back. I couldn’t get up. And God did it hurt. There I was burning alive in this huge campfire and I was in so much pain! Well it lasted a long time, but in the end it was just like in the mall when I got up out of my body. It never hurt at all anymore. And I just walked out to where I had been and sat down under a tree by myself. And that’s the way it is here. There are people all around but nobody feels anything but the pain when they jump into the fire. That fourteen year old girl, you know, that jumped in the fire before me. She didn’t do it because she was crazy. She was just bored. I’ve done it twice now. You can only tell how you got there so many times in so many ways and finally even you are bored to death. Then there’s nothing to say. I don’t even talk to the nubes anymore. I’ve seen so many wind up in the fire it doesn’t bother me anymore. I just wish I was like one of them, you know. Like it is so boring here. I would do just about anything to feel something—even agony. I wish sometimes I had gone to hell. At least I would be feeling something, anything. Agony? Torment? Is it any worse than nothing for forever? Duh! I think not! It’s always the same here. It’s only the ending all over again forever.


    THE ENDING AGAIN