That morning he had awoken with a shake.
The shake brought Tom back to the land of the living, out of that dark mysterious world of dreams. Where had that shake come from? He thought he heard something… something loud, close to his ear, deafening yet far off. He looked around his room, surveyed the walls. He scanned the corner of the windowless dark blue walls where his bed was, then the walls opposite his bed, of bright yellow-white, on which the window was seated, directly opposite where he lay. No one. The sun shone through the cracks of the blinds. Tom rubbed his eyes and sighed, glancing at the clock on the dresser beside his bed. 7:00 a.m. Well, whatever—or whoever—had woken him had given him plenty of time to get ready.
Tom arose from his resting place and moved to his bathroom across the hall and brushed his teeth and showered. He came back, he looked at the clock again. 7:20. He was making good time.
He trudged over to his dresser, still rubbing his tired eyes. He looked through his clothes and threw on an outfit: dark-black khaki cargo shorts and a bright plain white t-shirt. He moved into the bathroom once more and examined himself in the mirror. His hair was half-made, half-unmade; it swept to the side but looked haphazard, still messy from his bed. His jaw was rigid and defined, yet soft; his nose was slightly rounded with a hard bridge. He stared into his own eyes. They were peculiar; they always had been. One eye, his right, was a bright blue-green, while his other held the same shine but was half overtaken by a deep and dark brown.
Deciding he looked good enough, he went back to his room once more and lay on his bed after opening the blinds. He let the bright rays of the sun bathe him, felt the warmth on his skin. He looked at the clock. 7:30. It’s still enough time to lay around, he thought, but I guess I might as well get to school. Nothing to lose, right? It doesn’t matter anyways; it’s all the same. I’ll end up in the same place eventually. He forced himself upright and sat quietly for a moment, resting in the quiet of the sun, the quiet of his solitude; nothing could quite describe how he felt: anxious, yet calm, existence and non-existence. It felt as if he could just fade away and never affect the world, like he could just lay there forever.
Something dark moved out of the corner of his eye, almost like someone standing in front of the window, a shadowed face glinting in the sunlight walking out the room, but disappeared almost instantaneously. He looked over, saw nothing, blinked a few times, and convinced himself he must be more tired than he thought. He closed his eyes. Yes. It’s all the same anyways.

***

When he finally arrived at school he came in through the back door by the parking lots as he always did. He looked at the clock as he stepped onto the bright white tile floors: 7:50; it was almost time for class. As he gazed about the commons standing at the end of the hall, he couldn’t help but notice how many people were there. Hundreds of bright and vibrant faces, all talking, most laughing, some by themselves and others in groups, some on their phones and others not. The life could be felt; as if he was walking through a forest, the life surged around him. It was tireless, eager, and beautiful. Sunlight came in through the skylight of the commons and bled over the crowds as Tom weaved through the clusters; no one noticed him, no one spoke to him. He reached a dark oak bench on the far wall, out of the sunlight, away from the masses. He took a seat, resting his backpack on the floor beside him.
Tom pulled a notebook out of his bag and flipped to the most recent page and examined it: a few notes scribbled here and there, hastily, illegible; it seemed out of place on the pristine white pages. The notebook was for his psychology class. One note stuck out, a perfect line amongst the chaos of unreadable words at the bottom of the page:
What is my purpose?
The question rung in his head. He had been thinking about it all night. Why was he even here? No one ever seemed to acknowledge him anyways. He closed the notebook, slowly, and gazed at all the people before him. What was their purpose? Why are they all here? Surely they knew, they understood, with how happy they were and how full of energy they were. They were like candles lighting the room with their souls, illuminating the darkness.
He listened to their laughter, their chatting. It was loud and random, yet for a moment he was sure they were all speaking in unison, that they were all talking to one another in one giant conversation. He closed his eyes and just listened; this was life. It was never ending, full of radiance. What radiance he could not quite put his finger on, but it was there. How peculiar, how marvelous, and yet how frightening.
The laughter and talking grew louder and louder with each passing second, but then… he heard something—what was it? Someone else noticed it like him, stopped talking, then dismissed it and kept talking to the girl in front of him. Maybe I imagined it? No it was definitely something… and there it was again, closer this time, in the direction of where he first came in to the school. A firecracker? A—A fire… cracker? What was someone doing with a firecra—
Bang. The first scream filled the room.
Time froze. Tom sat, bewildered, looking with the crowd, everyone stopped, everyone transfixed on the direction of the scream. Silence. And then the first person ran.
They sprinted, really, from the hallway opposite where Tom was sitting. He was holding his arm—why was he holding his arm? Tom squinted to see across the bright floor and sea of people; something dark, shiny ran down the person’s shoulder as he ran. More followed him; soon the whole room was in chaos. The firecrackers went off again, so loud this time, like they were inside the room with them, reverberating off the walls, bouncing around Tom’s ears. He stood, rivers of people flowing around him, ignoring him, as if he wasn’t even there, like a rock in the midst of a torrential stream. Where was the noise coming from? Why were they running?
Tom strained to see forward past all the people. Across at the hall where he had first walked in he saw one person walking, alone behind the chaos, a slow even pace, arrogant and purposeful, heavy and blunt. In either hand he held something black, his arms outstretched and upraised towards the crowd. He wore a black, cloth ski mask and black goggles; a shadowed face but for the glint of light across the sheen of the goggles. It was then that Tom understood.
The shooter opened fire once more. With either hand he shot, with either hand he let out the angel of death, only pausing to reload his weapons, his magazines draped across the sides of his vest. People began dropping near the edge of the crowd, dark pools forming on the white tiles, people around Tom, all dropping. Red mist spread with each hit, spraying the floor and spraying the others beside them. One girl was hit in the back; she stopped directly in front of Tom. Blood seeped through to the front of her shirt as she held the stained spot, tears flowing from her eyes at the realization. She dropped to her knees, and Tom rushed to support her, crouching down beside her as she sagged into him. Her head rolled, and her gaze met his. Lifeless. Death.
He let her go, set her gently on the ground as more people surged around him, the constant shots ringing around. He stayed low, under heads, to keep out of sight of the shooter. He moved with the crowd, saw everyone racing for the exit doors.
The shooter was running now, in his direction, towards the mass and herd of people. They were all sheep led to slaughter to him; they had no purpose. Tom looked through the legs of the hysterical sheep to the devil in the black mask, the wolf among them, then back to the exit doors. He would never make it in time. He stood, and sprinted towards one of the rooms that ran down the length of the halls. More firecrackers, then silence as the angel of death reloaded. Maybe if he could reach the room in time he could lock it and wait there until help arrived, or smash a window to escape and maybe—just maybe—he could get out of this.
He heard the impacts of the bullets when they hit their targets, felt the smack of the concrete walls when they didn’t; the solid walls cracking with each pound. What monster could be doing this? Do I know him? It felt as if his feet splashed through blood on the floor with every step, staining his feet with their innocence as if he was in step with the killer just thirty yards behind him.
When he finally reached the room, he crossed through the doorway and slammed the door shut, latching it in hopes that no one could get in. No one had followed him, no one had seem him slip inside. He could see through the small window on the door people streaming by, watched two more souls leave this world. The muffled firecrackers ensued, only pausing to let the demon reload his vile mechanisms.
Frantically, Tom looked back about the room, searching for something, anything. Only desks with the seats attached, no window. There was nothing to do but wait. He switched off the light and grabbed a pair of scissors on the desk of the teacher and sat with his back to the door and did just that; he waited. Clutching the scissors to his chest, he listened to the screams and horror just on the other side of that small barrier. More firecrackers, more smacks, more splashes. Why?
Soon the rushing of feet could no longer be heard, only silence. Tom pressed his ear to the door and listened; he heard the faint steps of one person, he heard the faint spittle as he stepped through the puddles. Far off sirens could be heard outside of the school. He rose and looked out through the small portal on the door. The shooter in the black mask stood just outside the doorway, his back turned to it, as he gazed at the lifeless bodies that surrounded him, looking at the dead SRO Officer who tried to defend those innocent lives, those flames snuffed out too soon; all the light of their lives had faded, darkening the world.
The shooter looked about Tom’s size, wore dark jeans and a white t-shirt like Tom, except for the vest that covered it. Maybe I could subdue him? His back is to mine, maybe I could? Tom mulled over the option in his head. The shooter could kill more students throughout the school, they couldn’t have all made it out in time—some had to be hiding like he was, and what if he found them? This was his chance to stop him once and for all. Maybe this is my purpose. He unlatched the door.
As if on cue, more running could be heard—another group of about twenty made a break for the hallway opposite, the one the shooter had come down through in the beginning. The shooter began to raise one of his hands towards them, but Tom burst through the door and tackled the assailant, stabbing his arm as he did so, blood secreting from the fresh opening. Dropping the scissors as soon as he made contact, Tom felt a pain in the same arm.
The shooter dropped the gun in his upraised right hand, but still held the one in his left. They crashed against the wall, and both fell to the floor, Tom on top. Tom raised his right fist to strike but lost his balance as the shooter writhed to be free and struck him with his right hand in the gut. Tom tumbled off and the demon quickly pounced on top, using his legs to hold Tom’s arms with just above the waste, punching again with his right hand, dazing Tom with his strong strike as he moved his left hand to deliver a fatal shot to the head. Tom lifted his knees and struck the shooter in the back, not enough to jar him but enough to knock Tom’s arms free; the shooter shot off his weapon in surprise, hitting Tom in his lower right side, splattering blood on the floor and staining his pure white t-shirt, pieces of tile crumbling and soaring away like shrapnel.
Tom screamed in pain as the shooter cried out in blind rage, but used the momentary unbalance in the shooters attack to wrestle free and reach out with both hands to grab the gun, thrusting the shooter off to the side. Both rolled on the floor, fighting for the gun; Tom kept an iron clasp on the vile mechanism and punched with his left hand, clubbing with his right knee. He struck repeatedly over and over, the shooter only able to block the vicious onslaught with his forearms and occasionally strike back while holding on to the gun. It seemed for every blow that Tom gave out, he too received. After several left hooks that connected with the shooter’s face, the menace let go, tired and beaten.
Scrambling to stand up, Tom wrenched the gun away and stumbled and stood, pointing it at the shooter, who was now propping himself upright with his arms. Tom kicked the other gun on the floor away, sending it skidding across the dark stained tiles, cascading over the settling blood. He covered his wound with his left hand, feeling the blood seep out from where the flesh had been torn away, all the while keeping the weapon fixed on the shooter. He felt for an exit wound on his back and found one; the bullet had gone through.
The shooter coughed, and looked up at him, down the barrel of his own deliverer of death. Tom breathed heavily, tasted blood in his mouth, and examined the shooter, looked over the bringer of terror that had snuffed out so many lives. He too, had a bullet wound in his right side. Probably from the SRO officer, Tom dismissed. He had done it. He didn’t know how, but he had overcome the demon. He looked at everyone that lay askew around them. He counted 27 bodies, among them five teachers; 27 lives and purposes that had been taken away in the blink of an eye—that had been taken away at the start of a normal and unsuspecting school day. And there they stood amongst the wreckage, Tom’s shirt stained with the blood on the floor, the students’ blood on his hands. The Wolf and the Lamb. Tom and the demon. Tom saw the clock. 7:57.
“How,” Tom coughed, wincing at his own peculiar wounds. “How could you?” He listened to his own breathing, his wheezing, in sync with the beaten shooter on the floor. There was no reply. “How could you do this?” he screamed. Still silence but for the resounding echo of those furious words. How could you do this? Tom removed his left hand from the wound and realized that his right arm had been punctured during the fight, and it too bled, the same arm where he had stabbed with the scissors. He reached out towards the shooter. He had to know who he was. He was met with no resistance.
The goggles were the first removed, shining and reflecting the light as Tom threw them aside beside himself, into the puddle of his own red life force that dried on the white tiles. The shooter had dark and deep sinister brown eyes, but the left eye was half-overtaken by a bright blue-green. Tom stomped on the goggles, stared into those cold eyes. They looked strangely familiar, like eyes he had seen before; he felt a sense of deja-vu as his own bright eyes looked into the dark eyes of the killer. He reached for the mask and slowly took it off.
Slowly it slid off of the demon’s head, revealing first his mouth and then made its way up and off over his head, a gradual reveal of the mysterious wolf that hid his face for so long. He was smiling, devilishly gazing back at Tom. His hair was half-made and half-unmade, swept to the side; it looked like he had just arisen out of bed, his jaw was rigid and defined, his nose slightly rounded with a hard bridge.
Tom lowered the gun a few inches. His mouth hung slightly open, his lips parted in disbelief. A tear welled in his eyes as he felt his mouth go dry. The shooter was him. Tom stared into his own eyes.
The Tom on the floor laughed, and then coughed, spitting blood back onto the floor. The Tom with the gun wiped away his tear, and scowled, anger welling inside him. “Yes, I am you,” the Tom on the floor spoke, with scorning arrogance. “Don’t be so surprised.” He laughed, looking back at himself, back into his own soul.
“Shut up…” Tom mumbled, still in disbelief taking half step back. A look of anger drove over his face as he thrust forward once more, shoving the barrel of the gun onto the dark Tom’s forehead, arm stretched out as he stood away. He never looked away from his own merciless eyes. He screamed, the echoes following each outcry of pain and anguish, horror and disbelief. “How could you?” How could I? “What have you done?” What have I done?
“You know how to end this.” The other Tom coughed again, laughing, low and agonizing, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, from his lip, torn away by the beating. “There’s only one way. Finish it.”
The Tom with the gun still never removed his gaze, stared straight into the contrasting eyes of himself, straight into his own dark unfathomable soul, into the depths of his darker self. He felt the blood on his t-shirt, his own blood seeping from the corner of his own torn lip. Tears of anger streaming down his cheeks, he understood what he must do—the wounds, the blood. He understood now. This is my purpose. He removed his gun’s nozzle from the Tom on the floor’s forehead to his own temple.
“This is why I am here,” he whispered.
 For a second, an instant, Tom almost smiled.
Without hesitation and without removing his eyes, with a single breath, he pulled the trigger.