A door to a yellow mini-van swings open by a gray arm, and whoever’s holding your legs up tells whoever’s holding your arms up to pull you in head first. Whoever’s holding your arms loses her balance as she tries to yank you inside, and smacks your arm into the door, before tangling your pointer finger and thumb in two separate seat-belts. Your forearm stings, something metallic-gray inside of it whispers through bright yellow, almost white, teeth, “I’m not killing you, people are killing you.”
The driver breathes heavily, her hair showing an almost orange sheen in the moonlight, acting as though she’s speeding despite driving incredibly slowly in order to maneuver between the endless stream of fleeing and falling bodies. She starts to sniffle in a way that only your mother could when she’s about to cry, still sounding strong but so small. She turns around and her hair becomes brown again to look at you with familiarity, and squeezes your hand, letting out the smallest tearful giggle with a glance towards your tangled hand. It screams in response, “this is incredibly uncommon!”
The televisions buzz yellow with mixed reviews of the musical onslaught behind you. Your mother looks up, her hair yellow under fluorescent light bulbs, as a man next to her pushes her elbow off their shared armrest between the seats of the waiting room. He looks her straight in the eyes, and sneers, “You should’ve been able to protect him.” The television seconds him, “if only the audience was allowed to be armed.” She lets her head nod back down into her lap.
A soft beeping is heard amongst the urgent voices of doctors and nurses, poking and prodding at your arm and the semi-gray object that no one initially thought hit your chest. It shouts defensively, “I was in a safe place before now!” The doctors don’t lift up x-rays and check clipboards like the movies. One sits down and rubs his eyes. The beeping slows; he stands up. He mouths something to the nurse before lifting his yellow surgical mask over his lips, saying aloud, “I don’t know how much blame we can really put on whoever did this; it might’ve just been a distraught person.”
You let your eyes start to close, thinking of how your mom’s hair always seems so much darker the instant it hits October. She runs in, her voice sounding muffled amongst her tears, so you let your eyes open slightly as an attempt to start to read her lips. She’s naming off your favorite things, from mac and cheese to the word “boondoggle,” and you release a wheezing chuckle. A gray-haired hand lands on her shoulder as she gasps for air, the situation drowning her. She doesn’t bother to look up at the man as he whispers, “You can’t regulate evil.” A voice on a far-off television yells back, “It would be premature for us to discuss that!” The gray-hand lifts up and away.
The beeping continues to slow as you allow your eyes to close again. The warmth of your mother’s hand the cold of today’s set of metal bangles around her wrist absorb the numbness of your own. You’re dry-heaving, wheezing, and then you’re not. The beeping stops. “I’m calling it,” breathes an exasperated nurse. Suddenly, you gasp for air, shooting forward into a straight-backed seated position. Your eyes burst open, your chest heaves, your arms spasm, yet you utter calmly, coolly, “Man, I wish that guy didn’t have a gun.”
All eyes in the room shoot towards you, the bodies attached to them start to blur, losing color, but you can still hear them all state clearly, in unison, “Let’s not politicize a tragedy.”
Your eyes shoot yellow. You die.