That Day
Just a girl.
I used to be a medical technician, until the mass murder. It was a regular Tuesday afternoon, I was having my coffee – two creams – and reading the paper. My job was relatively easy, but my boss always made me strive for more. I snorted into my coffee as my eyes skimmed the small newsprint. Maybe I should be looking for another job? Nah, I had it pretty good here.
That was about the time bullets started flying and blood started gushing. This was in the reception area, so I couldn’t see anything yet – but I could hear it. The screams, the pop-pop-pop of gunshots. I looked around for a place to hide, but there was nothing. I got up, spilling my coffee in my lap, sprinting for the doors that would lock behind me.
Somehow, I never made it. Something that felt like a bee sting in my back, then I was on the floor, feeling something warm and sticky spreading on the floor. Belatedly, I heard the pop that killed me.
I used to be a medical technician.
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Comments (3 so far!)
Jim Stitzel
I'm never quite sure what to do with stories like these. I always get taken out of the telling a bit when I realize the narrator is actually dead. In some genres, this isn't so much a problem, when there's the possibility of an afterlife or whatnot. And I guess technically something like that could be possible here, the narrator could be a brain in a jar hooked up to electrical diodes and recounting his story to whomever retrieved that much of his body. I'd be curious to see this one continued to find out how and to whom the narrator is talking.
- #2195 Posted 8 years ago
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ScrawlersSecret
I think the closing line is what takes me out of it the most. I feel that the previous sentence had more power to it, leaving the reader hanging with the realization they are dead.
Unless the person keeps repeating this to themselves because they aren't actually dead....
- #4205 Posted 5 years ago
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- Published 8 years ago and featured 5 years ago.
- Story viewed 16 times and rated 0 times.
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ElshaHawk LoA
This is written in a cold, distanced way that keeps the reader apart from the action, like watching a movie or recalling a dream. My favorite part was the description of the gunshot as a bee sting and the blood and the belated pop, not because I am morbid, but because it really seals the dreamlike quality of memory.