Hello Monday

Part 6; 3:13 pm

"Wait."

We stare at the boy who continues, "Halt. What are we going to do with the guy? He has a gun; we don't have anything."

He's not wrong.

Mr. Emmett, who has been quiet for quite a while, decides to speak up. "I cannot believe I'm saying this," he pauses while rubbing his eyebrows, "Whack him, Mr. Jones, whack him." We look at Mr. Emmett dumbfounded. Well, I am met with a lot of new things today.

"As much as I love peeling the layered onion that is Mr. Emmett, I am afraid that we do not have much time. His friends might come back soon, so we need to act fast," Dr. Sanders dismisses the other troop with a flick of her wrist.

Dr. Sanders and Mr. Emmett spends a good five seconds looking at each other, ending the staredown with a nod. With trembling hands, Mr. Emmett then proceeds to open the door with his keys, fumbling with it for a minute or two. Finally putting the key in the lock, he turns it to the right twice and places his hand on the knob. With one last look back at Dr. Sanders and I, he turns the knob and pushes the door open. He is soon easing himself past the doorway, followed by fourteen pupils who are in a single file. In any other situation, I would have laughed and said that the resemblance with a mother duck and her little ducklings is just uncanny. This is not any other situation, though; I am stuck in a room while a man holding a gun is out there doing who knows what.

Closing the door behind the last person, Dr. Sanders looks at me, eyes filled with worry. I take her hand and squeeze it, letting her know that we're in this together. "Ready, Doctor?" When she gives me a nod and places her hand on the doorknob, I slowly start a countdown.

"Three," I whisper.

"Two," she continues.

"One."

We stand up from our crouch simultaneously. A warm bust of air greets us upon opening the door. The silence is so prominent that the sound of the door roughly opening resonates through the entire hallway, earning us the attention of this unusual man in an off-white henley shirt. I'm still not over the off-white henley shirt, forgive me.

The first thing I notice are his eyes. The ones that are right below his thick caterpillar eyebrows. His eyes are brown and exactly the shade that is easy to describe. It is an average dark colored brown, nothing more and nothing less. His eye color isn't the one that intrigued me, though. Rather it is the intensity that burns in his eyes. The emotions he hide behind his eyes. Surprise, confusion–probably because a should-be empty room turned out not to be an empty room, and... disgust? Disgust is faint but still detectable, regardless.

What's his problem?

He carefully approaches us who are standing in the middle of the hallway, side by side. I cautiously eye his gun, watching out for the slightest movement. If ever his gun moved by as little as an inch, I haven't the faintest idea of what I would do. I would probably act on impulse, and that would be to run in front of Dr. Sanders because that is how much I value her life, more than mine.

Not stopping at all, this man threads dangerously towards us. He is getting closer and closer. Dr. Sanders protectively shoots out a hand in front of me, giving me the slightest push back. Hasn't it been twenty seconds? Where is the second troop?

When he is five steps away from us, he stops and squints at Dr. Sanders. "Dr. Irene Sanders?" he asks.

Right at that exact moment, a face that fills my body with relief bursts out of the other room where the second troop is. Anthony stealthily makes his way to the man-bun man. Before the man-bun man could react, Anthony whacks him (as Mr. Emmett puts it) on the head with... a wooden DNA model? It did not create the reaction we had hoped for, though. Instead of making him lose consciousness or anything of the sort, that first hit starts the fire in his eyes. He is angry, alright.

However, before he can turn around to retaliate, Anthony strikes him the second time, breaking the model in half. Then a third time, and a fourth time. I feel so bad for wanting to laugh, but I think that's disrespectful, so instead I opt for a cough instead (yes, while hiding my smile behind a fist).

My smile falters when I see blood trail down his forehead, though. The repeated blows and the splinters from the model must have caused a puncture wound. "Oh goodness, when did we turn into murderers," I say under my breath, my face full of horror.

Although the guy didn't fully faint, he looks as though he is about to. So when Anthony pulls him into the room, he barely puts up a fight. Mission accomplished.

Dr. Sanders and I follow them into the classroom to see the other students seating Mr. Off-white-henly-shirt man on the floor against the wall. We close the door behind us. Anthony takes the gun off of him just to point it right back while others pat him down, checking for anything he may have stashed. When they find nothing, they shake their heads at Anthony and move away from the guy.

Anthony advances towards Mr. OWHS man while shoving the gun at his face. "What do you want from us?" he yells at the man's face. Swoon.

How could I not swoon? That looks very attractive. I'm not big on guns or anything, but I have never thought that seeing him hold a gun would look this attractive. The way his muscles bulge out of the uniform as he carries the long gun with both hands? Magnetic.

I am pulled out of my daydream when Adam Jones whispers close to where I am standing. "That–" he starts slowly, "Isn't that an airsoft?"

"What?" I throw the question at him.

"That," he points at the gun Anthony is holding, "That's an airsoft gun."

"Jones, what are you trying to say? What's an airsoft gun?" I ask, getting impatient.

"I'm saying that those things they're holding? I play with them, too."

I furrow my eyebrows, standing there dumbfounded. My eyes widen as realization dawned upon me. "So they never had the intention to kill?" I conclude with a question.