My day volunteering

The wind howled through the quiet hall of the school as the setting sun reflected light from below. The scent of metal billowed throughout the foyer as I dragged some wet garbage across the slippery floor and threw it into the trash can. 

My name is Aleko Reyes. I’m 13 years old and I repainted the school. Though it was hard to get enough paint all on my own since everyone else was too lazy to help me, I managed to succeed all on my own! I gathered enough paint to completely coat the walls in my favourite colour. 

Red.

You’d think that a boy as young as me would have had trouble painting an entire floor in one single day but with this paint gun my dad got, it was easy. Just a single shot was enough to cover an entire section in red although the weird smell the gun left behind certainly left something to be desired. Smelled like old meat and rotten coins.

I walked across the floor, admiring my handiwork. Despite the fact that school ended ages ago, many students were left by the lockers. Looking back on it, I should have gone over and brought them outside but that would have been too much work. I may be a master painter but even I have my limits when it comes to handling people.

The walls I graced with red reflected the sun so that everything basked in my favourite colour. Red made me feel powerful and in control. It caused a fire to build up inside me that couldn’t be extinguished and I savoured that feeling every chance I got.

Since I spent so long on it, it should have been dry by now but I was wrong. When I reached out and touched the paint, the thin liquid wiped off and stained my fingers. Liquid dripped from above the smear and crudely covered the vacant spot in an ugly display. Thankfully, there were buckets of paint left by the lockers. I took a pallet knife and pierced through the lid of the bucket, splashing it onto my face and clothes. I didn’t really care. All that mattered was that I had enough paint to fix my mistake. 

While I worked, a new sound accompanied the scratching of metal against the stone wall. Sneakers squeaking down the stairs. 

“Eek!” I darted behind a wall peeked out. A girl older than me buckled down the stairs, her hair a frothy mess. Clothes more akin to pieces of cloth with holes in them concealed her upper body while her legs trembled with every step. 

“Oh! It’s you!” I recognized her. She used to bully me a lot but, when I started to become more active in the community with projects like this, that all stopped. 

Once I called out to her, she ran into a classroom with a distinct Click! following suit. 

“Wait! I just want to talk.” It’s been a while since we last interacted. Last time we saw each other in close quarters was the day of my little sister’s funeral and I wanted to talk to her again and get some closure. Unfortunately, the classroom was locked. 

I sighed. “What a pain. Maybe I can just ask a teacher.” 

The teacher’s lounge was a hop, skip, and a jump away from the locked classroom. When I knocked, the door simply swung open. Inside, a teacher sat, pinned to her chair with a coffee mug glued to her hand. 

She was actually the first one I went to when I told her about the bullying and she told me to ignore it and so I did. Although my sister ended up dying at the same time I really tried to distract myself with projects that involved the community like bonfires and paint jobs, I still owe it to Miss Akane for telling me to ignore the bullying and move on.

“Miss? Can I please borrow the key to your classroom?”

She bowed her head and used it to point to the desk where her paint-stained keys sat. 

“Thanks.” 

When I grabbed them, she collapsed onto her desk. Makes sense that she would want to sleep after dealing with the problems of people like me.

I grabbed the keys and used it to unlock the classroom. Ringing phones replaced what should have been total silence. Still-drying paint stained the air and made the once fragrant Home-Ec class melt into a metallic stench. I walked along the floor, students at my left and right either perched onto their chairs or asleep on their desks. The frayed-hair girl sat in the corner. 

“There you are, Alice.”

“Wh-what do you want, Aleko? Leave me alone!” She pushed me aside. Just like she always did. “I-I told you I’m sorry about teasing you, okay.”

“Teasing? Oh, yes now I remember. You see that’s not why I decided to take up this painting project.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Painting project? You ki-”

I placed my finger on her mouth, staining it red with paint. “Now’s the time. Now it’s finally the time where you listen and I talk. I had to listen to you tear me down day after day. Night after night. I never bothered you at all but you still managed to turn the whole school against me. Why?”

“I-” I shut her up again.

“That was rhetorical. You even -for some unknown reason- threw my cat into the train tracks and then you left its blood-soaked collar in the same spot.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Th-that was yours? I’m so sorry!”

Anger threatened to explode out of me but I kept calm. “And how does that make it any better? I guess you can just go and throw any random cat into oncoming traffic since they don’t belong to me?” I stepped back, mending my composure back together. “Sorry for the outburst. Nevermind that part. Anyways, I do have something else to mention. Did you or any of your friends talk to a little girl lately? Did she ask about any cats?”

Her fingers trembled without end but she managed a gulp. “Y-yes.”

“You wanna know what happened?”

No answer was needed. 

“One of your friends told her that the cat got lost in the trains. She left a note on the table saying she was going to get it. Guess what I found when I caught up to her? Streaks of red paint splattered all over the road.”

Tears broke out of her eyes. Alice gagged again and again until she threw up on the ground, her vomit mixing with the red paint everywhere. “Please forgive me. Please. I’m so sorry that that happened to you. And you deserve your revenge but please leave me alone.”

“Aw.” I knelt down next to her, placing my hand on her frozen shoulder. “You know I believe in second chances.”

She exposed her face, rotten green eyes glinting with tears. “R-really?”

I nodded with a smile and patted her messy hair. “Yes.” At the same time, my palate knife slid out of my sleeve and into my hand. “Unfortunately, there are still portions of the school I need to finish painting.”

“What are you doing?” Alice squirmed but couldn’t escape my grasp. Her curly hair on her white skin reminded me of a porcelain doll. Fragile but pretty.

“I said I believed in second chances but not in giving them. For that, you should ask my little sister.” 

“N-no. Please stop. Wait! I’m sorry! I’m sor-”

With one motion of the palette knife, I obtained a new bucket of paint. 

Pulling the bucket along, I even painted the floor red. I dragged the new bucket out and into the hallway. This time I was going to move it away properly. 

The buckets leaning on the lockers collapsed to the floor with a harsh splat, paint pouring out of holes in their sides. Sure was a testament to the efficiency of my paint gun.

As we passed the teacher's lounge, I peeked in once again. With the things pinning her up slowly popping out, Miss Akane’s body slipped off her chair. Her mug shattered in her hand and stabbed through her skin. Super glue really is strong.

When we got to the foyer, I went back to the wet garbage can. Its contents stuck up like fleshy grass, refusing to let it close properly. Not my fault people’s arms can be so long. Thankfully, breaking the arms’ bones with my fist made everything fit together perfectly.

Once I finished with my work, red and blue flashed outside of the school. 

“Oh? The police are here. Perhaps they’re curious about my little projects around town.”

I stepped into the cool outside. The sun was replaced by the flashing red and blue of police cars. One voice stood out among the rest. “Freeze! Put your hands where we can see them.”

They all pointed their guns at me. The one I used to paint the school was exactly the same.

“Aleko Reyes. You have been found guilty of three cases of arson and one case of mass murder,” one cop said.

Another cop broke through his. “Just who are you and what did you do?”

I smiled and dropped my palette knife. “My name is Aleko Reyes. I’m 13 years old and I repainted the school.”