Evil Breeds Evil

TW: It's a story about a school shooting.

Corey broods in his room alone after his only two friends unfriended him on social media, completely severing ties with him.

“He’s such a dork. I don’t know why I hang out with him,” he heard his friend Patrick tell his other friend Zac when they thought Corey wasn’t listening.

“Me neither. He makes it hard to meet girls. He’s such a loser,” Zac responded.

People don’t realize that Corey hears everything. Now their voices echo through his head, talking over each other, insult after insult.

“He’s stupid,” his mother says on the phone to his grandmother.

“He’s lazy and worthless,” his father says to his mother.

“Your son isn’t going to amount to anything,” Mrs. Wells, his school counselor, tells his mother.

“If I was such a pathetic dork, I’d kill myself,” Marcus says to the other guys at his lunch table, making everyone laugh at him as he searches for a place to sit.

“Look at his face. If I had a face like that, I’d shoot myself,” Misty tells the other girls at her locker as he walks by her in the halls.

“What a weak little pussy,” Calvin says to his buddies after knocking him to the ground and stealing his air pods on his way home from school.

Corey turns on some music to drown out the voices, the louder and angrier the better. He throws himself on his bed, burying his face into his pillow and screams. Visions like TikTok videos run through his mind.

His father hitting him.

His mother refusing to comfort him.

The neighbor kids refusing to play with him.

His sister getting him in trouble for her own amusement.

School kids knocking him to the ground, kicking him.

Being slammed up against lockers and threatened.

His belongings being taken from him.

Being laughed at in class.

Having food thrown at him.

The view from inside a toilet.

With tears of anger, Corey thrusts himself out of bed and inserts a video game. Video games are how Corey copes with the stress of his everyday life. He plops down in an old rust colored beanbag chair and begins playing a game where you drive around recklessly, running over people, fighting, buying drugs, and screwing hookers. He gets bored with that game, so he puts in a war game. He runs down a mental checklist of everyone who causes him pain and suffering in life as he shoots digital images, getting lost in the game, feeling more relaxed with each imaginary kill. Before Corey realizes it, he’s sitting in the dark with just the light of the television illuminating his face.

Corey goes downstairs to get some food. His family always eats without him, but there are usually leftovers in the fridge. He grabs a couple pieces of cold fried chicken, a bag of Dorito’s, and a couple Mountain Dews and returns to his room.

He tries to do some homework while he eats, but he has trouble reading. He’s dyslexic and has fallen through the cracks. On top of that, he has trouble concentrating. His mind channel surfs, switching from one thought to the next uncontrollably. He probably has an attention deficit, but nobody has ever cared enough to have him tested.

He pulls a notebook that he uses as a journal out from under the bed. He writes about the day’s events, then turns to a page where he finishes a sketch of a building’s blueprints. Then he marks certain locations A, B, C, and so on. He closes the notebook and puts it back under the bed.

Corey takes his plate downstairs and puts it in the sink. His mom is sitting at the table making a grocery list. Corey takes the chef’s knife from the butcher’s block and walks up behind his mother like he normally does when he wants to talk to her. Before she can turn her head to look at him, Corey grabs her forehead, tightly pressing her head against his chest. With one fluid motion, he slits her throat. She lets out a gargling sound and starts to slide out of her chair. Corey catches her and lays her quietly on the floor.

In the living room, his father is snoring on the couch. Corey stands over him, envisioning what is about to happen. He hates his father with a passion. He brings the knife straight down into his dad’s chest. His dad’s eyes fly open. Corey stabs him a few more times and begins twisting the knife as his father rolls on top of him, putting his bear sized hands around Corey’s neck. Corey continues to twist the knife, his face turning red. He feels like he’s about to lose consciousness, so he withdraws the knife from his father's chest and plunges it into his eye. His dad lets go and stumbles back. Coery pounces on his dad’s back and stabs his father until he quits moving. He backs up against the couch, breathing heavily. He wipes the blood from his eyes and looks up the stairs. “One more to go,” he tells himself as he gasps for air.

Corey climbs the stairs to his little sister’s room. He kicks in the door, startling her. She sees him covered in blood with a malevolent smile stretching across his face, knife in his hand. She slowly backs up off the bed, putting it between her and him. Corey goes around the bed and his sister goes over it and out of her room. Corey doesn’t run after her. He knows exactly where she’s going. He finds her in their parent’s room, on their father’s side of the bed, frantically typing numbers into a lockbox. The box beeps. She opens it, expecting to find a pistol, but it is empty. “I took that,” he says, startling her. “If it wasn’t so loud, I’d be using it.”

His sister cowers into the corner. She begs for her life, apologizing for everything she has ever said or done. Corey isn’t having it. He raises her up by the hair, throws her on their parent’s bed, and stabs her until there is no life left in her.

With his family dead, Corey shuts off all the lights, takes a fast shower, and goes to bed.

*

Corey wakes and gets dressed. He puts on camouflage cargo pants with his Chuck Taylor All-Stars and an oversized black t-shirt. He puts the nine-millimeter he took from the lockbox into his waistband, pulling the shirt over it. He goes to his dad’s gun case and opens it up. He selects a second nine-millimeter and a couple clips. He grabs his dad’s M-16, loads it with a fresh magazine, and throws it over his shoulder. Before he leaves, he throws on a trench coat.

Despite only being fifteen, Corey decides to drive his dad’s truck to school. He doesn’t want anyone interfering with his plan. He parks on the far side of the lot and goes around to the north entrance instead of the front entrance where everyone else enters.

It’s a nice day, so the doors are open. Corey stands just outside the doors, taking a moment to assess the situation. Teenagers fill the halls, gathered in their groups and their cliques. They’ll be easy to gun down. But in a way they look innocent, just a bunch of kids like him. Kids like him who happen to enjoy their lives. Corey wishes he could be a part of that, experience it for just one day, but he knows that if he backs out and walks in there like any other day, those innocent looking kids will abuse the hell out of him for their own amusement. And those teachers standing outside the classrooms aren’t much better.

Corey flings off his trench coat and grabs the M-16. No one notices. He opens fire on his first choice of victim, Misty Waller, who happens to be at her friend’s locker. Her head explodes, blood and chunks of skull and brain splatter the locker, and her friend. Her friend’s scream is the first of many.

After Misty, Corey fires at will. He sprays bullets through the hallway like he’s spraying pesticide on a lawn. He smiles maliciously as his classmates trample each other. He laughs at the sight of teachers putting chairs into the door handles to save themselves as the kids are left to face the horror.

Corey doesn’t care who he hits. He doesn’t care if he kills them or maims them at this point, but the bodies are piling up. He takes a right down the west corridor, spraying bullets until the rifle clicks empty. Then he switches to pistols. He comes upon Calvin Miller. He shoots him in the leg so he can’t run. He gets up nice and close to Calvin, pressing the gun against his forehead. Calvin trembles and pleads for his life. Corey looks at him sadistically as he does. Corey gets bored listening to him, so he pulls the trigger, popping his head like a zit.

The crowd has thinned out, but he wants to put a bullet in a few certain people, starting with that bitch Wells. Corey runs to her office and finds it locked. Corey looks at his watch. He realizes he doesn’t have enough time to hunt down the individuals he wants to, but he has enough ammo to make his statement loud and clear. He goes back the way he came. Any people that are just wounded, are killed.

*

Corey takes a seat on the steps at the front entrance to wait for the cops. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper that he wrote on and reads it one last time:

You cannot treat people the way I have been treated. Evil breeds evil.

Corey puts the note back in his front pocket as squad cars pull up with flashing lights. He stands up with two pistols hanging at his sides, watching the cars lineup defensively. The officers get out of their cars. They get behind their doors and aim their guns at him. An officer demands that Corey drop his weapons.

Corey looks up into the sky, lets the wind blow through his hair. He takes a deep breath and wonders what life would have been like if he wasn’t him. Then he raises his pistols, and a hail of gunfire brings him down.