Finally

Trigger warning: mental illness and drugs

The worst part isn't the gunshot, nor was it the thud of another lifeless body. It was the blood-curdling scream of the girlfriend. It was the hair-rising smash of the bestfriend's wine glass. They were deafening.

Fine, the gunshot was also deafening, but it was a good type of deafening, like an upbeat concert type of deafening, you know?

Yeah, yeah, whatever. She shouldn't have brought a gun, she shouldn't have pulled the trigger, but does anybody ever think of why she brought the gun? Do they think of why she pulled the trigger?

No. Nobody cares.

She looked down at her hands. Wait, why did she pull the trigger again? 

The steel pistol slipped off her hands and into the chlorine-fused water of the pool. She stared back at her reflection. Why did she do it? Why did she kill her brother? She could've sworn she did it accidentally, but she would be lying to herself. 

Ah, it finally came back to her; if only brother dear didn't tattle to dad about the drugs in her room. Why couldn't he shut up for once? 

'Amelia! What have you done?' screamed a young girl across the pool. Who was that? Oh right, those curly blonde locks gave it away. That's brother's girlfriend, Aurora.

Amelia shrugged at her, then turned to the exit. Nobody stopped her, nobody dared. Maybe it was the knife at her belt, or maybe it was the other gun in her pocket, but nobody moved a muscle.

Nobody, except Aurora. She ran like the wind across the room, pushing off all the silly petrified human beings around and slammed Amelia to the floor.

'Are you all stupid? Call the god damned police!' she shrieked. Tears were flowing steadily out her beady blue eyes, and her voice didn't sound like hers, it was far too croaky. Amelia struggled to get up, but by then, two other men were pinning down her arms and legs.

What a shame really, she was very, very close. Almost a bit too close. You know that feeling of getting a 99 in an exam? It was like that. What would you do if you got a 99? Bribe the teacher? Ask for a 98 instead? Do the lousiest thing to do and just accept it? Well, Amelia wasn't that type of girl. She would've threatened the teacher with a knife, honestly. So she then did the next most impossible thing in her list of impossibilities to do-- bite the man holding her right arm down.

The man screamed in agony, releasing her for a couple seconds, but seconds enough for her to reach the other gun. Now nobody would be able to stop her.

She pointed it to everyone, who backed away immediately. Ahhh, the sweet smell of victory. Amelia took a deep breath and started running away from the sirens, away from the blinding red and blue lights. No, they weren't going to get to her, never again.

She ran past the wrecked living room, the humongous puddle of spilled fruit punch, and past a couple of boys on the couch in drunken stupor. She decided she liked them.

She ran past some toppled statues and vases and leapt across some other limp bodies, probably high. Then she finally reached the back door.

Hoping against hope, she opened the great oak door, but alas, the police were already there, ready for her.

‘Suspicious minds’ by Elvis Presley boomed in the background. Oh yeah, she was really caught in a trap alright, she didn’t need Elvis to remind her that.

Amelia shot the loud speaker behind her, how annoying. The police yelled at her to stand back and raise her hands or whatever, but she wasn’t listening. All she could think of was not going back to rehab.

Her mother wasn’t at the scene yet, thankfully, but Amelia knew she’ll be there soon, so she had to make a run for it, before she could convince her to stop the violence. The police weren’t going to shoot her, oh no, they knew about her alright.

‘Don’t shoot!’ a female officer shouted from the front of the group, as Amelia had expected. ‘She has psychopathic personality disorder!’

Yikes, how rude! Amelia wanted to yell at her and tell her to shut up, she wanted to shoot her and tell her to go to hell because who in their right mind would say such a thing? Amelia was totally fine! That is, until she realised she could just shoot her— so she did.

A couple things happened at once. The officer let out a painful shriek and clutched her legs while a few others advanced onto Amelia. They were scary, but she wasn’t scared, they just made her want to shoot more.

She didn’t have any room to run then, for the officers thoroughly surrounded her. The sirens seemed to get louder and the men around her seemed to get larger. Their yells and orders were very much overwhelming, and all Amelia wanted to do was explode.

She threw her hands onto her ears and fell to the ground. Her legs seemed to have failed her, that was definitely not good. All she could do was scream, so that’s what she did.

‘Amelia!’ a very gentle voice called out beneath all the ruckus. It sounded far too nice to be any of the officer’s voices, it sounded far too familiar.

It was her mum.

The pressure of the hundred different voices and blinding lights were still overwhelming, but with that voice, they all dissolved into a big strand of mist. Her mother was crying, but she was not crying like usual. It wasn’t just a soft stream of tears, it was intense sobbing and hiccoughing.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, it’s me, it’s okay, you’re safe now,’ she said. Her soft brown eyes touched every nerve in Amelia’s body and her voice was like cat’s fur—soft and comforting.

‘Oh mum, I killed Jason!’ Amelia cried. She felt no remorse in it, but she understood that her mother was sad, because apparently it wasn’t the norm to kill others you dislike.

‘I know,’ she said, simply.

‘What am I going to do?’ Amelia asked her. ‘I don’t like these officers.’ Her mother had always taught her to say what she wanted and didn’t want, rather than act it out, so she did, but only to her. Only she deserved it.

‘Come with me, they won’t harm you,’ she sobbed. Her eyes were bloodshot red and her face so pale it made Amelia feel a twinge of guilt. It was a very easy way out, just follow in the steps of her mother. It was far too easy, but Amelia was also far too exhausted to do anything else.

She took the gun from the cold marble floor and pulled the trigger one last time.

Boom.

Finally, nobody can annoy her anymore.

Finally, she can feel her mother’s hug again.

Finally, she was free.