Lockdown

1:25pm

Lockdown

1:25pm

"WE GOT ONE!"

It was like I was being hunted.

"QUICK! GET IT!"

More yelling. More screaming. More howling. All vaulted through my ears.

But my shoulder.

It was by far, the worst pain I had ever experienced.

It was by far, much more worse than I could have ever imagine pain.

In the movies when people were shot I thought that was pain. When I fell off my bike when I was little or when I twisted my ankle or when I disolcated my elbow, I thought that was pain.

But this pain...

It was something wrong entirely. Something so different. This didn't even classify as pain.

No, this was not pain. It was something else.

Something that hurt this bad could not be pain.

It was like having a chainsaw slice a thick gash, and then pryed open with burning, scalding 5 inch long nails, while at the same time having hot acid poured into the gash and bees stinging every open crevice. Knives and forks are being plunged into the crack. Cheese graters are shredding off the skin and electricity is sparking its way through the blood. Also nuclear bombs are exploding and swords are being stabbed and lava is flowing and huge tons of cement and heavy rocks were being dropped on me while at the same time it felt like a monster was trying to tear its way out of me...

No, it hurt a lot more than that.

And this was my left shoulder. With me being left-handed I knew that if I survived this, I would not be able to write or do anything the same with my dominant arm.

But I couldn't stop screaming. It was like all my vocal chords burst with all the emotion inside me and all I could let out was screaming and yelling. No words. I just had to scream.

I kept screaming. I was on the ground, wriggling in pain. Tears soaked my face. Or maybe it was blood. Something wet and sticky was all around me and I was pretty sure it was blood. But not just blood - glass. Shards of glass were poking into my legs and I was trying to sit up and get out of here but my mind didn't seem to follow my body.

No, I was in too much pain.

As I wriggled on the ground, crying and trying to stay sane, more screams and shouts yelled from around me. They were drawing closer. I could hear.

Whoever they were... They were the ones who had shot everyone else. Killed everyone else.

And now they would kill me.

I tried to stifle another scream but it flew out anyway. My shoulder felt like it had been twisted and torn off. I wished I would pass out or my arm would go numb so I wouldn't be able to feel the pain... It hurt so, so bad...

I didn't black out. My shoulder didn't go numb.

Instead, I continued crying and screaming. I couldn't stand this pain. 

I really, really did wish I was dead.

They were all dead.

How come I wasn't dead? What made me so special to live? Or was I just lucky? Since I didn't panic like everyone else?

As my shoulder exploded and burst into more depths of unbearable and unspeakable and unthinkable and impossible pain, I couldn't help but mourn over the loss of all my friends. Classmates. Teachers. How could they have lived? Why did they all have to die? 

And it was then that I realized...

If one more person had to survive from this fiasco, this torture chamber, this cruel world... It was Nickson Miles. He deserved it. Not I. Not anyone else- if only I could take his place. He'd get out of here alive. I know he would.

I tried one last time to sit up. My shoulder felt like a million poison bow and arrows were shooting into it while at the same time hyenas were chewing and grinding it up with razor sharp teeth.

I let out a cry of pain and fell back. 

And that's when a voice overwhelmed my consciousness.

"Robin?"

I gathered the energy to look up My legs felt like they'd been shredded up in a paper shredder, thanks to all that glass.

But then all my pain vanished when I realized who it was.

Nickson Miles.