A Really Disturbing Short Story

Michael sat at his desk. It was almost embarrassing how seemingly mundane his life was. He was a living cliché of one of those inspirational films where the main character lives a boring life, but then he dramatically quits and finds a girl and invests in a small company that hits big and blah blah blah. For Michael, it ended at “a boring life.” He wasn’t young like one of those characters. This was his life for… He didn’t even allow himself to do the math.
But he knew. 37 years.
His desk was stark naked besides the keyboard, monitor, stack of post-it notes, and an overly expensive pen. The pen seemed to taunt him every time he put it down. You don’t deserve me. I’m better than this. I’m supposed to be for an important person, not you. You’re not important.
He only kept the pen to go against what it seemingly wanted. Perhaps he thought one day the pen would be content, and he would make it big. Michael wrote. He wrote stories, countless stories. If someone other than him would walk into his apartment, he/she would be shocked of the neatly stacked piles of paper all over the floors and shelves and tables. They all had one character in common. Him. But that was the only constant. While in each story he was a pretty popular guy, none of the secondary characters every returned.
He wondered why he refused to repeat even a name (he even kept a checklist of them, and had started to become desperate. Most of the names used even he didn’t know how to pronounce.). He figured it was because it was always a different story, one about love, one about happiness, one about believing in yourself. Only one story had a sad ending. He wrote it the day his wife died. In it, everyone Michael knew was slowly tortured for the whereabouts of Michael, and after all of his friends had been pushed to death, it was realized he merely took an unscheduled stroll in Central Park. Needless to say, he wasn’t feeling very rational that day.
“How’s it coming with that-” His coworker stopped mid-sentence, peering over the thin wall of their cubicles, when he saw his face. Michael was looking at him with the amount of anger that the coworker hadn’t been exposed to before. He sat down again. If looks could kill, this look would kill not only the coworker, but every one of his relatives.
Michael stood up. What now? He knew. Both the passport and the gun sat uncomfortably in his otherwise empty desk drawer. He opened the drawer, the rolling sound usual to his ears, as it was a common sound here, in this building. This prison of a building.
What should he say? Nothing, the voice told him. The voice was… his friend? Maybe it was, after all. Why was it always a problem before? The doctor said it was problem, his wife said it was a problem, and he thought that it was a problem, up until now. Now it was a friend, now it was a partner. First, he took the passport and put it in his empty pocket. He stared at the gun for a moment, just as people began to stare at him.
How was he going to let them know? He took the gun and walked up to his boss’s office. He liked his boss; he was always fair and understanding. But almost everyone he knew was this way, so why should his boss get special treatment? Hell, being the first was special treatment.
The door opened easily. The trigger went easily. The boss dropped to the floor without a sound, but the blast from the gun still rang in Michael’s ears. Michael saw the boss’s face as he fell from his expensive little chair. He didn’t understand it. It did not seem surprised.
It did not matter. He had to quiet the office, full of screaming and running. He walked out the door and shot the two people closest to the door. They thudded against the floor in the exact way he expected, the way the movies and the books would depict it. How satisfactory, to know that Hollywood got something right after all. Now he said his first word of the day:
“Silence!”
And, almost miraculously, there was silence, but in his head the voice was shouting. Yes! Yes! More must die! If you’re alone, let them be alone in hell! And let their loved ones be alone here, only to find them again in damnation! Hah! It’s funny, can’t you see? A sense of humor is vital, my friend.
“Vital for what?” Michael said out loud. The people stared at him with even more confusion. Some looked at each other understandingly. He’s gone insane.
Do you see what they’re thinking? Can’t you see? They think you’ve lost your marbles. They’re thinking that you are below them. Kill them.
Was he still a cliché? Did this sort of thing happen in stories often? He didn’t even know anymore, but he did know that this would be on the news, and people would know his name.
Don’t let them forget your name, Michael. Make them remember.
One person in the room didn’t look the same as the rest. Michael couldn’t see many, no doubt many were hiding in their cubicles. The one person was the coworker that had tried to talk with him earlier. His face had the common anxiety and nervousness, but there was something else… effort. He was standing up entirely strange, and Michael couldn’t see his hands. He pointed the gun at him, and shot. It hit him between the eyes.
Michael walked around the room now, occasionally shooting, occasionally reloading. His other pocket was filled with ammo. Everyone in the room had begun to accept their fate. Everyone was going to die, Michael was going to make sure of it. Well, maybe he would spare one. Just to tell the story, to be lonely and without a job. Once about half of the office had been shot, he stopped himself.
Was this what he wanted to do? What was this going to accomplish? The voice somehow made it seem like something was going to come out of it, and for some reason he had believed it. He never was told what exactly. He knew that he was leaving after he was done. That would surely benefit, a new life somewhere exotic. But this? People dead? What was good about that?
But as he was thinking this he noticed that he simply didn’t care if they lived, and there was a bit of a rush coming from it all. He wasn’t bored, and he didn’t feel lonely. Maybe it was good.
He killed three more people and stopped again. How much time would it be until someone came to stop him? He didn’t know. Maybe he would have to leave soon. He sped up his process. How many left?
Fifteen people were left, either praying or staring at him.
“Would any of you like to live?” Oddly, they all turned to him and nodded at the same time. “Only five of you can live, so… five of you can volunteer to kill two people.”
One person stood quickly, and the others looked at him in disbelief. He grabbed the gun and shot two of the people he sat next to.
“Can I leave now?” He sounded as if he had some place to go, and this was only an annoyance. Michael smiled.
“Yup!” He heard someone mutter something, it was a female.
“What did you say?”
“I called that man an idiot.”
“And why is that? He’s alive, and you’re not going to live.” This time she smiled. The sarcasm in her lips was staggering to Michael. He shot her. “Next person only has to kill one!” How generous.
This time an old man stood up and took the gun. He raised it to his head and shot himself. Michael picked up the gun nonchalantly.
“You people are all very interesting,” he said. “Well, three more!”
Two others shot themselves. Michael was flabbergasted. They were all so stupid. They deserved to die. Michael was basically begging for it, and yet they seemed to go against his expectations just for the heck of it. Maybe this was how his pen felt.
The next man stood up and took the gun. The two people sat on the floor were praying. Neither of them had prayed before this. The man with the gun took it and pointed it at Michael.
“Finally someone gets it.” But Michael was not looking for death; he was looking for a challenge, or perhaps a surprise. He had practiced getting a gun out of someone’s hands, and so now he did it how he had learned. Except the man seemed to know what he was doing. He took the gun away from Michael and shot him in the thigh.
Michael fell over.
“You son of a bitch, look what you did to my pants.”
“Don’t you dare act as if your fucking pants are more important than the lives you took today. God will be glad to put you in hell.” And then Michael was shot in the heart. The man went around the office and called 911, although they were already informed of the situation. He and the other survivor in the office went around to the wounded people. They found a few survivors… and then more… and then more. Only three seemed to be dead. The boss, the man who had tried to reach for his gun, and the woman who spoke up. Everyone else was shot in the same place, right next to the heart, but they all seemed to come back to consciousness after a while. There was much rejoicing.
Michael’s body was dead. The passport was on the floor, splotched with blood. His blood allowed him to go someplace special, not where he was planning. He was going to Hell, and he was going to be reunited with the three who had successfully killed. Did he try to kill the others? Who knows? When he reached hell, he was given the sentence of many years, and once that was over he was going to have to go through the act of dying, being killed by those whom he had killed.
What did it mean? It meant that the voice was wrong. And now that he finally had company, he did not enjoy it.

(Note- I wrote this from 11:30 until 1:30, so it isn't exactly my best short story. But anyway, it's all good practice.)