Hain

Hector stood over his timing rig with the cigarette loosely hanging from his lips. He squinted in the twilight of the new building, so new he could smell the power tools still in the air over his cigarette smoke. He turns the tackle box detonator over and apart attaching each of the leads to his explosives, then reconnecting them to his power source. He muses that he would go out in a bang.


Just think, this was the golden child of the school. He was an outstanding student, good grades, popular with the teachers, yet look at him now. He is driven to this terrorism. Why? He was caught with pot.

This girl more beautiful than music invited him to her locker. He has liked her for so long… dreamed of her… wrote her poetry. Her image filled his conscience and made him the better. Made him work harder, try harder, maybe then she'd notice him. He rarely could work up the nerve to do anything but finally this week he put some poems of her in her locker. She sent him a note to meet her. As he approached he saw her locker open and with many of his poems taped in the locker. An overwhelming joy fills him. He saw such wonderful shapes and emotions cross his mind, all parts of this great beautiful picture. He never had time to really date a girl, his studies get in the way of that. His father left him and his mother when he was young--and he “has to be somebody!” as his mother always commanded through her cigarette and waitress apron.

As he came to the locker she came up behind him and whispered in his ear. He had never expected this, and was caught off guard. Her breath was so warm that it made his knees weak. He did not do anything, just was so surprised and it showed on his face. He turned to look at her and she had the worst kind of smile on her face. He never had seen such a smile before on her and it scared him. The hall ways are to crowded for him to escape.

He doesn't want to remember this. He barely made it away from her without crying he was so embarrassed. It became the task of another student to ease his pain. He came up to Hector and said, “you look like you can use this. I’ll sell it to you cheap…” Hector really hated himself for believing that that girl was decent… Why would she?

“I'll buy it... but I've... never...”

“Don't hesitate, quit stuttering! You have to be somebody!” Flashed through his mind. A calmer but resistant Hector finally spoke, “I've never smoked before.”

The other student just looked around and waited that everyone is left for the gym. “Follow me,” he said as he guided Hector to the back of the locker room—to the entrance to the newest section of the school.

...
Hector took a “hit.” Something was wrong because he never felt that before. The other boy just laughed and laughed as Hector began to twitch on the ground, later to be described as rolling like a hooked worm.

...
“Wake up! Get the fuck up!” is the first thing Hector heard as he gained consciousness. The events just blur together here, still high from the drugs. All he can understand is something of “X pulled.” His mother came in and he feels a faint shaking of his arms... he thinks his mom is hugging him... hugging him tightly.

...
SLAP!

“How the fuck can you do this! I work eighteen hours to get you into a good school! You piece of shit! Just like your father!” She howled at him. She had this twisted frown on her face… it looked like the girl’s smile only upside-down.

“But mom she—” She slapped him across the face, so hard he saw the tears fall down from his face. She drags him into his room, knowing that he has more drugs hidden there. Just like she always knows. She frantically tore apart his room looking for more… and he kept telling her that the drugs are wherever she asked. He just gives a nod and awaits for the next slap. As he stares at the ground all his dreams of being a doctor, a teacher, a politician—all disappear from his mind…

All his life he spent in those books. Great books about Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, William Blake, Martin Luther King Jr, Allen Shepard, JFK, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi. These where the men that were somebody... and she is just tearing every one of them... before his eyes.

“Each page is a spec of that reality the author chooses. You see there is a grand picture... where all literature, movies, art, reality, dreams, and fantasies all come from. We all, each of us have it within us to create such amazing things. It is this picture that we all share. And at times you too can feel it...” Hector vividly remembers presenting to his class...

But he didn't see that anymore... his mother is tearing apart those single specs, the only specs of the world he has. His face contorted in a snarl as he released a wail and pushed his mother. She turned as she falls and he sees his face in her eyes as her head hits the bed pole. He bolts from the room, the tears falling from his face as he ran so fast.

...
How he got to the alley he can't remember. He sat in an alley behind a strip mall. No one can go back there and no one could see him behind the bushes.

“I have nothing left…” he said into the failing twilight. He sat in the alley and sobbed quietly. As he kicked at the ground, sending masses of pebbles into a small pond he watched the ripples intensely move across the surface. In the twilight it was like watching glass melt. He ran to the school.

...
It was easy to pick the locks at the new entrance. They did not have the security card passes yet, and with a rock and paper clip he picked it with ease. Amazing what you learn in books. The layout of the school was to his advantage. Not only that but the security was also built almost with his plan in mind. Being such a good student, a guard once told him that the school cameras only take snapshots of the halls at 15 second intervals. He waited at his watch and when the time was ready he dashed down the hall to the art room.

“13… 12…. 8…” he whispers as he tries to pick the lock. “7… 6…” The lock isn’t opening! He begins to panic, frantically jamming the clip into the slot. “5… 4… 3...!” He slips into the room and calms down. He fumbles and feels for the paint in here. He settles for the glaze he finds, instead of some sort of spray paint.

He awaits the 15 seconds to come up again. This time he carries a large stock of pain in a bag, not going to need to rush through the halls this time. It is not like anyone is here to look at the cameras to see that it is him. But he doesn’t want anyone to know that it was him. Sure they’ll find out… but for now this is his last academic challenge. A terrible grin crosses his face...

As he walks through the halls he throws jars of the ceramic paint onto the cameras, blinding them from taking pictures of him. He headed for the electronics lab.

...
Rapidly he gathered up the breadboards, resistors, chips, diodes, transistors… etc. With learned easy he created a timing circuit. This is what his school taught him: how to make electronic detonators. The solder smell fills his nostrils, exciting him to ponder new things about personality. Never before has been so clear in thought an action, “It is my finest hour.” What a spectacle every one has made out of him all these years. Now this is his time to do back to them.

He realized the difficulty to carry his board assembly. He searched around through the room for something to carry it in. He started at the different workbenches but found nothing in them. Strike that—he found a pack of cigarettes in the bench. Hector had never smoked a cigarette in his life but he never smoked pot before either. He took one out of some student’s desk and lit it.

He violently coughed but continued to smoke them. Didn't matter where he was going any ways. He still could not find a means to carry his timer. It suddenly struck him. He walked back to the schimmied closet he opened and threw the tackle box that contained all the circuitry components. After emptying them he walked back to his bench and began to insert each circuit board to a different level. He had such a speed with his motions that it was like he was working from a plan that he once made in a previous life. A series of events today awakened his past life and he imagined such terrible things that that man destroyed.

...
He walked out of the room carrying his tackle box and his next stop was the chemistry lab. That was not as easy to break into. There was a card slot on the door. Having brought some of the electronic tools with him, he professionally removed the card reader and began crossing the wires in the system. “The light is green, security is clean.” As he enters he smiles a terrible smile as the chemical reactions went through his mind.

Thermite, the oxidation reduction between iron oxide and aluminum started by a heat source: magnesium How perfect was this destruction going to be. First he’d use the thermite to burn the supports of his new school, then blow the whole thing up, and best yet explode a corrosive chemical to melt it beyond recognition. He was sure there was enough here. He found enough to break his school as it has broken him repeatedly.

...
Hector stood over his timing rig with the cigarette loosely hanging from his lips. He squinted in the twilight of the new building, so new he could smell the power tools still in the air over his cigarette smoke. He turns the tackle box detonator over and apart attaching each of the leads to his explosives, then reconnecting them to his power source. He muses that he would go out in a bang.

Climbing endless amounts of stairs and bleachers he rigs the whole gym to explode. It will be magnificent. First the thermite is placed to each at the weight bearing beams of the first wall with the chemical bombs right in between to melt anything left standing.

Hector finally pauses to wipe his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. His shirt is covered with the sweat of work and solder. He feels coated in smoke and metal. It is a grimy feeling he likes. He imagines how he must look with the cigarette limp in between his lips, hair sweat slicked back, his gate as he walks to his central detonator. He sees himself as the definition of power, fear, and everything he never once had.

...
“Watch me... I fucking am somebody,” he says into the night. He punches a wall and it crumbles beneath his fist. He punches it again and again and again, not feeling the pain slicing his knuckles into shreds. As he stops from boredom he wipes the blood onto his shirt. It leave large battle smears like those of Indians. He wipes some of his blood onto his face--war paint. The timer is filled with lights: three columns of six LEDs each. He presses the final engaging button and the last column of lights begins decreasing. When it reaches none, one light is taken from the next column, and it restarts; an amazing, user friendly, universal, idiot proof display. And only 215 seconds to count with, left him with little time to marvel at his weapons.

He sits atop his tackle box... his box for this is his gym. He deeply inhales a cigarette. He looks out at the bombs and the wires that grow to his box. It looks like a weed, a large gray weed that has grown in the center of his gym. C'est la vi, it is a self destructing weed.

A cold wave covers Hector and he shivers. His cigarette falls from his mouth as he stares up at a creature. It is not completely inhuman, as it wears a black trench coat. However it is not a human face. Hector doesn't move away, he can't move away. This is his box...

But Hector is just cowering in front of this demon...

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