|
FREEDOM: Class Warfare
Part Five
The Countdown
By Razor7826 (Copyright 2008)
Thoughts? Encouragement? Email me at Razor7826@hotmail.com. I’m always interested in hearing from my readers.
This story in no way reflects the views of the author. It is intended for the eyes of legal adults only.
There is no doubt in my mind that eighteen years of age is not old enough to make such monumental decisions. When pundits and philosophers sit down and wax poetic about the right of humanity to determine it’s own fate, they aren’t imagining hormone addled eighteen year-olds. As a high school teacher, I think I can truthfully say they’re a bunch of morons.
-Luisa Aldridge, English Teacher, Sexton High School
++++
The countdown began, leaving the last few survivors of the team from Seven Saints in shock. Like the sudden unforeseeable death of a loved one, each of those students faced a gaping wound in their life for which they could barely envision the consequences.
“That’s… it?” asked Mindy Holdings as she stared up the timer overlaid onto the image of Judy’s degradation. “We lost?”
Keith Hayes voice shook with rage. “Shouldn’t have trusted that bitch.”
Mindy turned to admonish his swearing, but stopped. If there were any time to be angry, it was now. In an instant, everything had changed, and frivolities like swears didn’t matter any more.
“How about one last dance, Julia?” asked Keith.
“Wha… what?”
Keith pulled Julia closer and kissed the base of her neck. “We might as well do it while we have the chance, you know?”
But Julia Wurtle wanted no part of the hoodlum’s antics. “No! I’m not going to do that!”
He whispered into her ear, “You’re going to lose it anyways, honey, so you might as well give it up willingly.”
“Stop that!” she yelled as she jumped between Keith and his prey, but a swing of his arm knocked her back and onto the floor. She steadied herself, but Keith had already lifted Julia from her feet and sprinted for one of the side rooms.
“Help me, Mindy!” yelled Julia, her words muffling behind a door as it slammed shut.
Mindy Holdings threw her weight against the door, but it did nothing. The combined weight of Keith and Julia held it shut. “No…” She was helpless to answer the pained whimpers from mere feet away. No matter how much she pushed and slammed, the door would not budge. Defeated once again, she sulked away to one of the rooms upstairs and contemplated the state of her existence.
Only hours remained to her life as a free woman. She thought of her deceased parents, the couple of famed writers that had squandered everything in their dying years, leaving their only daughter alone and broke after their deaths. Mindy cursed them under her breath, but knew it was not entirely their fault; the literary world had changed beneath their feet, and their income completely dried up as they joined the long list of forgotten authors.
Her thoughts soon drifted to her friends, or the lack thereof. Just as in her family life, the social life of Mindy Holdings was desolate of anybody that actually cared. Year after year, she sat in the back corner of her classrooms, writing prose in emulation of her parents’ style, making no attempts to befriend her classmates or participate in classroom discussions.
In the end, her lack of effort paid off, and at the age of eighteen she had not a friend in the world. When Judy Goodheart made that impassioned speech to rally the troops to defeat Rowan Prep, Mindy was the first to make up her mind. All she desired was the prospect of money, fueled by a distant wish to return to the splendor of her parent’s successful youth. She had become greedy in her isolation and would soon reap the consequences of her sin.
But despite the doom that hung over her life, there was still a good deed for her to perform. She grabbed her cattle prod for self defense and visited the rooms where the losers of both teams were kept.
Walking from victim to victim, one by one, Mindy Holdings made her amends, unsure if her words meant anything but still apologizing profusely.
“I want you to know I’m sorry for what my team did to you,” she said, over and over to each of the men and women that had spent days getting abused as part of a misguided strategy. “I tried to get them to stop.”
Would her words do any good? She knew it was unlikely. Her life would be theirs, and there was no reason for any of them to show mercy in exchange for platitudes. But still she pushed on, resolved to do everything she could to right her wrongs while she still had the freedom to try.
When her rounds were complete, the clock showed only thirty-eight minutes remaining. She tried to think of what to do with her last half-an-hour of freedom, but could think of nothing.
And so, she ran. Ran out of the lodge, into the woods, as fast as she had ever run in her life. There were limits to her flight, she knew, but with so little time left to be free her destination didn’t matter. A final act of freedom.
Two miles out from the lodge, her collar shook—a warning against the encroaching barrier. But she continued to run, her feet flying through the air weightlessly.
Another mile out, and the collar began to shock her. The barrier was coming close.
She sprinted deeper into the woods and the shocks grew longer and harsher, but they were not enough to stop her progress.
Only when she crossed that invisible barrier did the her motion and the shocks stop. The sedative quickly crippled her body and sent her stumbling onto her side. Alone for miles around, she rested there in the twigs. Though helpless, she could still savor the peacefulness of the natural world. The end would come any minute now.
Sirens blared, just as they had with the attempted murder of the prior day. Seconds later, a second set of sirens overlapped the first, beating through the woods with an ominous whir. The game was over, but something else had happened.