Always Together

He’s looking this way again. I purposely, resolutely, ignore him as always, well since the first time that is. Try and ignore him I mean, as he creeps me out, and he is always in the corner of my eye. He declared that first time, his undying love for me, in glorious poetic prose, loudly and astride a chair in the school canteen. He called it ‘Catriona my reason for Living’. I can only imagine the colour I must have become. I’m sure I could have lit up the whole school. My friends doubled up and I could get no sense or help from them. I or my friends don’t find him funny anymore. The coffee he is drooling into is doing a terrible job of blocking the smell emanating from his armpits. For flip sake has he no friends or family to tell him.

He has in one way, or another pestered us all. Collages of him and I have ended up in our lockers. Wedding and baby shower invitations, all from me, Catriona O’Dwyer and him Marcus Ryan. Anyone of the male persuasion he has spotted, daring to even glance in my direction, has been warned of he is an expert at cock blocking. He makes me feel guilty when I’m the innocent party, as my words bruised a lot more than my fists ever could. Whispered insults, loud titters, anyone who didn’t know what was happening would have thought my friends and I were the aggressors.

He has taken some days to just issuing a plaintive cry, now and then. His latest offering to me, poetically, was ‘Catriona my reason for Dying’. He is getting creepier daily. We have reported him to the Headmaster, Counsellors, anyone we thought would help him or us, but he hasn’t stopped. All the detentions, talks, may have slowed him down, but that’s all. The police were never called as apparently, he hadn’t physically touched anyone so far it was just a case of a boy mooning over a girl. I at one time thought that he may have been special - as in deficient - and to be pitied. He may indeed have some personality disorder which will take someone more qualified than I to discover. Academically he is in the top five of the whole school. I am an average student so it’s not my brainpower he’s after, I know that for definite.

All of a sudden, he stands upright, so abruptly that his chair falls to the ground, disrupting anyone in the vicinity that may have been having a sneaky doze. Marcus does not do embarrassment so there’s no scarlet hues or muffled apologies. In two long strides, he appears in front of me and like a cat leaving a present, deposits a single rose. I don’t acknowledge his presence anymore and lifting the rose as if it were a decapitated mouse left by the aforementioned cat, I deposit the rose in the nearest bin. I hear him take a sharp intake of breath, I don’t know why it still affects him so, he should be well used to my reaction by now.

I leave the canteen head held high my friends trailing, giggling, behind me, although these days its more out of nervousness than badness, the giggling that is. He turned his hands into the shape of a gun and picked us off one by one. Once I’ve left, I’m told by others that he just sits back down and resumes eating as if nothing had happened. I have thought of leaving the school and starting again but then that would mean he’d won. It’s not worth losing the great friends I’ve made because of one cretin. I will have to get on to the school’s social committee again though and make sure they never lift his barring order. It’s my only escape from him when at school, and I don’t think I could stay if he started turning up at them.

Our prom is coming up and I had hoped someone would have asked me by now. Maybe he’s put the word out that no-one should. I open my locker and streamers, Papier-Mache love hearts, and an abundance of glitter lips all pour out onto the floor. I sit despairingly in the middle of them, one of my friends hands me an envelope, I knew before I opened it would be from him. It was an invite and a picture with Marcus and I our faces superimposed on a couple emblazoned with banners and crowns declaring them the new king and queen. I tear it up and Lydia says “You should have kept that for evidence”. I turn on her spitting my words out tinged with malice “I’ve told you they will do nothing, unless he physically harms me, how many times do you have to be told that”. One look at her crestfallen face and I am instantly apologetic and open my arms wide. In two minutes, it’s forgotten about, but we have a mess to clean and a plan to forge. Something has to be done.

That night I toss and turn and in the morning the idea that had hijacked me the night before hasn’t gone away. What if I ask him to the prom on the proviso that afterwards, he leaves me alone and never bothers me again. I look in the mirror and remonstrate with myself, that he’s finally done it, I’m as mad as he is. It makes sense though, he’s getting what he’s asked for the last three years, a date, and a chance. Fate is resourceful. She's given him a sliver of hope. What could go wrong? All my friends and the rest of the school will be there. They’ll probably insist on a chaperone or two, it’s just about the safest place I could ever meet him. You never know, maybe, once the thrill of the chase is over, he may not want to know any more. We’ve never had a conversation, not a proper one, he may find me boring as hell, I certainly intend to give it a good go. I send a text to my friends asking them to meet me. I’m going to tell them about my plan.

“Are you insane? Seriously, have you been assessed? There’s no way any of us is going to stand idly around and let this travesty happen.”

Lydia’s outburst is greeted with silence, she is flabbergasted. “Can someone please agree with me here, we can’t allow her to do this, for starters its social suicide, and secondly he’s madder than she is”.

John shushes Lydia, “Actually, Catriona may be onto something here. I’ll help her with it if she agrees on a double date. How’s about it, Lydia. Me, you and the delightful couple, Catriona and Marcus”.

Lydia has gone every colour. She has always had a soft spot for John, she won’t turn this chance down. Everyone’s attention is on her right now and I’m glad of the moments reprieve.

“Okay, I’ll do it but only if you promise to never leave me, not even for a second, alone with creepy Marcus”.

“I promise to never leave your side all evening, madam. I shall pick you and Catriona up, and then we’ll all go and get Marcus. Safety in numbers and all that.”

I decide to not hang about and that evening I pen an invite to Marcus asking him to the prom. Next day I give it to one of our dodgier friends and ask him to make sure it gets in Marcus’s locker. The fact that he doesn’t ask me anything about it, lets me know that the school’s grapevine is working as well and as quickly as always. The crowd gathering in the vicinity of Marcus’s locker is cruel and I tell them so. I ask them to please let me try and sort the whole thing out with at least embarrassment to me and him as possible. Sighs and murmurs abound, this is better than throwing a Christian into the lion’s den for some of them. They are practically licking their lips in anticipation.

They just sneer and gather even closer. I hate my fellow humans sometimes. Marcus arrives earlier than usual I had been hoping I’d be well out of the vicinity by the time he got here. His face lights up when he sees me and if I could open a hole in the ground, I’d happily go into it.

He takes my invite out and looks like he’s going to come in his pants with excitement there and then. The jeers and hollers start, and he sinks to the ground and starts crying. He looks at me with a look I’ve never seen before, disgust. He obviously thinks I planned all this, I run to his side, trying to explain, and he opens his rucksack and shoots me in the forehead. I die on the spot and levitate, somewhere, I don’t know where but watch as he kills everyone around him.

It ends when the police arrive and they shoot him on the spot, no attempt at talking him down. He flies over to me, takes my hand and says, “Hello, my love, now we're together, forever.”