Everything looked wrong. His misshapen hands, the disjointed movements he made, the reddish tinge to his vision. It looked off. Fake. A parody of reality formed by an addled mind. The childish description of a toddler's nightmare.

But everything felt real.

So sickeningly, horrifyingly real.

Arthur watched, a passenger in his own mind, as hands he didn't recognise expertly handled the weapon he held. A Colt Cobra 2nd Issue 38. Beautiful in design, deadly in execution. A collector's item coveted by any avid pistol collector and Arthur was about to sell it. It was almost sad that he was giving up such a nice tool, but money was far more valuable to him. It always had been, always would be. A lesson taught by a harsh reality in a world that didn't care about the struggles of an older brother. Starving wasn’t something he wanted to face again and hospital bills didn’t come cheap.

Not in America, the land of the free.

Arthur watched, horrified, as his hands passed the colt over the desk to the entity rubbing its hands in glee. A featureless mass of shadow and darkness, it was only vaguely human in appearance, devoid of detail and warmth. Emptiness incarnate. A crack in the world that shouldn't exist.

That's how it always appeared in Arthur’s dreams.

A caricature of life that had stolen the one most precious to him, his greatest mistake, the demon that would haunt him for the rest of his life and the reflection that stared back at him every time he looked in the mirror.

What he had become?

Arthur screamed, he shouted and raged at himself, trying to reach out and take back the instrument of death.

DON'T DO IT! DON'T DO IT! DON'T DO IT!

TAKE BACK THE FUCKING GUN!

It was an exercise in futility. Arthur had no control here. He was only a passenger, a witness to the crime that would take everything from him. It was depressingly poetic, the punishment he deserved but never received. His guilty conscience made manifest to remind him of the single greatest mistake of his life.

He could hear it already. The noise that always accompanied his nightmare. The incessant beeping of a ringtone with a backdrop of police sirens getting louder by the second. Barely noticeable at first but on its way to intolerable levels.

The anthem of his guilt.

WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP!

Arthur tried to force himself from his nightmare to little effect. He didn’t want to see what came next. Didn't want to answer the call. Didn't want to feel the anguish of regret. It was futile.

Arthur watched in abject horror as he picked up the phone. He was no longer sitting behind his desk, suddenly standing in the middle of a white hallway that stretched into eternity.

“We need you to come to the hospital.”

A detached monotonous voice that spelt out his doom.

“A school shooting took place in Westfield high…”

“We need you to identify a body….”

“Your sister was pronounced dead on the scene…”

 

Arthur woke up in cold sweat, his face wet with tears. He felt sick to his core and grief gripped him in a vice tighter than any of the Muay-Thai holds he knew. His hand spasmed and he dropped them to his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists as he took a steadying breath, trying to get his racing heartbeat under control.

You can’t do anything about it now. She's not coming back. It's...it’s not your fault.

Arthur repeated the words to himself internally, the last thoughts sounding hollow even to him. A lie so loud he could hear it. In his dreams and his every waking moment. Following one of his therapists' many pieces of advice, he started to recite the alphabet backwards, something that was sadly becoming far easier lately, until his mind became blessedly quiet. By the time Arthur was ready to face the important day before him, the blood on his palms had already dried up and the crescent-shaped scars were starting to scab over. Arthur looked at the time.

7:28

An hour before his exam. He was going to be late for his midterms. Something he'd tried so hard for. The only thing that had held his life together.

He couldn't find it in himself to care.

Despite his guilt-ridden state, Arthur had tried to reassemble his life after the crushing loss of his only family. He hadn't been altogether successful, though he had made a little progress. It had been six months since then and he was finally starting to move beyond his tragic past.

Arthur rushed into the shower, hastily dried and dressed for the day and started running towards the train station. Moving meant he didn’t have to think. Keeping himself busy was the best way to escape his thoughts. He’d skipped breakfast of course, not sure if his nerves would be able to handle a full stomach.

Arthur barely made it in time, the train doors just about to close as he jumped onto the vehicle. He couldn't be late today. It would break him. Just the final nail in the coffin to finish the job.

The exam he’d been preparing for wouldn’t take itself and he didn't want to invalidate all the hours he’d spent studying by turning up late. Arthur opened up his text textbooks, hoping to keep his mind active. Cramming in a few more minutes was just an added bonus.

‘The types and usages of anaesthesia in surgery.’

He quickly lost himself in rambling text detailing the nuances of surgical procedures. The train journey was blessedly uninterrupted by any delays and he managed to arrive at the university a half-hour ahead of time.

Stepping through the iron gates into the huge premise, Arthur took a deep steadying breath. Come on, you can do this. He’d missed several lessons but had more than made up for the lost time with the hours he’d spent outside of class. His inner musings were interrupted suddenly by a high-pitched shout.

“Arthur, Arthur. Hey Arthur!”

The last call had been directly shouted into his ears, and he winced at the loud noise.

“I’ve been calling you for a minute now, Art,'' Elizabeth grumbled, a frown on her face, her hands firmly planted on her hips.

Arthur turned around to take in her short but imposing 5-ft 4 frame, smiling as he saw the familiar face of his longtime friend.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” he tried to calm her down, “I'm just so caught up in all this stress.”

Elizabeth’s frown steadily faded away until she beamed at him with a dazzling smile.

“Don't worry,” she teased, “Everyone knows you're going to come first anyway. With brains like yours, I wonder if you do anything besides studying, actually. Like how’s it even fair. You weren’t here for half the lessons and you're still going to beat me,” she complained.

Unsure as to how exactly he should reply to that statement, Arthur didn’t say anything. Taking his silence as a sign she’d said something wrong, Elizabeth quickly went over everything she’d said and her skin rapidly flushed with guilt.

“I'm sorry. I’m sorry. That came out wrong,” she tried to apologise.

“I didn't mean it like that, well I did- but- urgh, you know what I mean.” She mumbled, looking down at the ground, unable to meet Arthur's gaze.

Arthur sighed internally, taking pity on her embarrassing apology.

“Hey, hey. Calm down. I’m not a fragile minefield you need to walk around, not anymore,” he tried reassuring her.

I'm already blown to bits.

“Really? You sure.” She replied looking at him intently, guilt written all over her face.

Arthur shook his head wearily.

“Yes, yes. You don't have to worry anymore; you and Mathew both. I've told you so many times already,” Arthur sighed, exasperated, “I'm not that little kid you always had to take care of anymore.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Elizabeth replied, a familiar grin returning to her face.

“You won't get me out of your life that easily.”

Arthur sighed, again. He seemed to be doing that a lot today. Elizabeth suddenly grabbed his coat sleeve and began enthusiastically pulling him towards the university gates.

“Liz. Where are you going? Exams in half an hour,” Arthur protested, half-heartedly trying to escape her grasp.

“Exactly.” She called back carefully enunciating each word. “Half. An. Hour; we’ve got loads of time left.”

“This is why you've always been late for everything," Arthur retorted in frustration.

Elizabeth continued walking, seemingly oblivious to his protestations.

“Stop being such an old man.” She eventually replied, her voice quieter, shaking a little, “There’s this new cafe I’ve been dying to try out and I skipped breakfast today.”

Arthur could feel that something was wrong from the way Elizabeth was speaking but he still voiced his annoyances.

“And. What's that got to do with me?” He asked, pulling himself free of her grasp.

Arthur suddenly shivered. It felt like someone had just walked over his grave and a cold chill crept down his spine. Almost like he was under the scrutiny of a microscope, every cell and facet of his DNA up for observation. The moment passed as soon as it came but it left him with an acute sense of discomfort.

“I’ve waited long enough for you to open up,” Elizabeth interrupted his inner musings.

“You said you’d tell me why you kept blaming yourself for your sister’s death. It's stupid, you know. It's not your fault a crazy bastard decided to shoot up a school.” She shouted angrily.

Arthur was a little taken aback by the strength of her response. He did vaguely remember something along the lines of a promised explanation whilst enamoured in a medication-induced high, but he’d thought that Elizabeth would have forgotten all about that by now. The damn idiot had the best memory for remembering the most useless things.

“Where’s all this coming from,” Arthur eventually replied.

“It’s not like it really matters now anyway,” he added, instantly regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth.

Elizabeth was a real stickler when it came to your given word and she was positively livid that he was being so dismissive about something she obviously considered a big thing. Arthur sighed again for the umpteenth time that day. Things just weren’t going his way today.

Taking a deep breath, Arthur prepared himself to tell Elizabeth about the dark secrets he carried with him. Not all of them, never that, but enough to satiate her curiosity. A lie and a truth, something to take the sting away and keep him out of a jail cell. If she didn’t want to know him anymore after hearing what he was about to say, Arthur couldn’t blame her. Even he was sickened with himself, after all. Preparing himself to lose one of his oldest friends, Arthur looked down at the ground and began to speak.

“It’s because of the gun he was using…” He mumbled, quietly, waiting for the inevitable tirade of questions that would no doubt follow his ambiguous statement.

Arthur felt the familiar twinge of horror as he recalled the sight of the murder weapon the police had retrieved from the crime scene. It wasn’t something Arthur would ever forget. After all, that wasn’t the first time he had seen that particular pistol. Its unique model had a particular charm to it, along with the scuff marks depicting its history. No, that honour belonged to a time nine months prior when he had held its cold steel in his hands.

When he had sold it.

Arthur looked up in surprise when the expected questions didn’t arrive. Why wasn’t Liz asking him anything? It was then that Arthur saw a scene that would stay with him for the rest of his life. A huge airliner, about to crash down, the horizon around it alight with the smoke of numerous fires.

Elizabeth couldn’t ask him anything.

Of course, she couldn't.

After all, she was gone, simply disappeared without a trace. Poof. As if she'd never existed in the first place. Before Arthur could even begin to panic at the craziness of what was going on, he went flying through the air, soaring a dozen feet away from where he'd been standing. Arthur didn’t feel anything as he fell back to the concrete with a juddering crunch, the structure of his ribcage now an interconnected mess of flesh, bone and tissue. He’d lost all feeling long before then, all sensation gone the second the massive truck had crashed into him.

Delirious and dying, Arthur struggled to keep his eyes open as crimson, hot blood flowed from a particularly nasty gash on his forehead. A concussion was the least of his issues, however, considering the fact that his insides were mixing in a disgusting soup of blood, half-digested food and excrement, interlaced with a topping of pebbles.

As his vision flickered, Arthur saw a strange blue message suddenly superimpose itself over his eyes. He barely even registered what it said.

SYSTEM INITIALISING...