Scenario:a female survivor of a High School shooting can now see spiritual warfare between angels and demons and evil spirits. The spirits also know she can see them.
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a female survivor of a High School shooting can now see spiritual warfare between angels and demons and evil spirits. The spirits also know she can see them.
I was in the bathroom when the shooting started.
At first, I thought it was a joke.
I’d been in the middle of washing my hands when I heard the first shot, and I’d jumped so badly that I’d splashed water all over my shirt.
It was only after the second shot rang out that I realized something was wrong.
Really, really wrong.
I could hear people screaming in the hallway, and my heart started pounding so hard that I could feel it in my throat.
I didn’t know what to do.
My first instinct was to run, but I didn’t know where to go.
The bathroom had no windows and only one door, which meant there was no way out except through the hallway, where the shooter was.
If I stayed where I was, he might not find me, but if he did…
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if he did.
Instead, I bit down on my lip to keep from making any noise and threw myself under the nearest sink, where I huddled into a ball and tried to become as small as possible.
My heart was pounding so loudly in my chest that I was sure the shooter could hear it, but he ran past the bathroom without stopping, and he didn’t come back.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, but it felt like hours.
Every time my heartbeat slowed, another round of gunfire would start up, and I’d be right back where I started, shaking with fear and praying that the shooter wouldn’t come into the bathroom and find me.
I didn’t know what was happening out in the hallway, only that people were screaming and dying, but I knew that I couldn’t leave.
Not yet, anyway.
Not until I was sure that the shooter was gone and that I was safe.
It was a miracle that he hadn’t found me already.
The bathroom was one of the first places he should have checked when he came inside, but he hadn’t, and I was grateful for that.
I didn’t think he’d had a chance to see me yet, but if he had, I’d been dead already.
I didn’t want to die.
Not like this.
I was only sixteen years old, and I had so much of my life left to live.
I wanted to go to college and get a degree in journalism, and maybe one day write for a big newspaper or travel the world as a foreign correspondent.
I wanted to fall in love and get married and have kids, and watch them grow up and have kids of their own.
I wanted to do all of those things, but if the shooter found me, none of it would matter.
He’d kill me before I’d had a chance to do anything, and all of my dreams would die with me.
I shivered at the thought of it and squeezed my eyes shut to keep from crying again.
If the shooter was still in the school, maybe I could get out the back way and run home before he came after me.
The school was only three blocks from my house, which meant that I could be there in less than ten minutes if I really ran, but even then, I didn’t know how much good that would do me.
The shooter had a gun and was willing to use it on anyone who got in his way, which meant that he probably wouldn’t have any qualms about shooting me in the back if he saw me running away from him.
I didn’t want to die that way, but if the choice was between running away or staying here and waiting for the shooter to find me…
…the choice was clear.
If the shooter was gone, maybe someone had called the cops and they were on their way right now.
I could hear sirens outside, but they were too far away to make out more than a faint wail, which meant that it might take a while for them to get here, but it also meant that they probably wouldn’t have heard me if I’d tried to call out for help, either.
I swallowed back a sob and wished that someone would find me, but even if they did, there was no way for them to know that I was still alive unless I made myself known to them, which meant that I needed to come out of hiding first.
It wasn’t safe yet, so I didn’t want to leave, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t stay here forever, either.
I needed to make a plan, but even though I knew that, my brain was too frozen by fear to think clearly, which meant that I needed to calm down first before I could do anything else.
I’d just managed to take a deep breath when something shifted inside me, and everything changed.
In that moment, I felt something like a cold chill brush against my skin, but it wasn’t coming from inside the bathroom or from outside, either.
It was coming from me, but instead of being afraid by it, it felt…
…comforting, somehow, even though it made no sense at all.
It was almost like being held in someone’s arms, only no one was there, which made it even worse because it meant that whatever it was, it was invisible, too.
I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood and tried not to scream out loud at the thought of it, but even though it scared me so badly that I wanted to run away from it, it also made me feel calmer than I’d been since the shooting started, which didn’t make any sense at all.
My mind was already teetering on the brink of losing control before this happened, but now it went completely blank for a second before snapping back into place again with such force that I almost cried out loud.
It felt so good to think clearly for once that all I wanted to do was think forever, but at the same time, thinking like this reminded me of how wrong everything else felt around me.
The gunshots were still firing somewhere nearby outside, only now they sounded more like fireworks than anything else, which made no sense at all because that wasn’t what they were at all.
The screams were still there, too.
I could hear them as well as feel them throbbing in my ears, but instead of being afraid of them now, they made me feel sad more than anything else.
It didn’t seem right that people were dying outside while I stayed hidden away in here all by myself.
It wasn’t fair at all, but I didn’t know how to fix it or what I could do to help.
I didn’t know much of anything right now except that I wanted this feeling inside me to go away.
It made my head hurt just thinking about it.
Maybe whatever it was would go away if I came out into the hallway where it could see me.
I didn’t know why I thought that.
It didn’t make sense at all, but it felt like something that I should try anyway.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself to get up when a voice in my head said:
“Don’t leave yet.
The shooter’s not gone.”
It felt like a hand on my shoulder even though there wasn’t a hand there, which made it seem even scarier than it would have been if there had really been one because if this thing could touch without having a hand, then who knew what else it could do that I couldn’t feel or see at all.
There were things in the world that I couldn’t see.
They were watching me right now.
That’s what it said.
I sat on the floor with my knees pulled up under my chin and waited for the shooting to stop.
It felt like a very long wait.
The next time something like this happened to me, it happened because I saw something that I shouldn’t have been able to see at all.
It was so dark that night that I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face until after the lightning flashed and then everything looked so bright for a second that it left spots in front of my eyes afterward.
The storm took its sweet time passing over us while I walked home from work through an awful lot of rain.
Even though it wasn’t cold enough to be unpleasant, I felt a chill run down my spine every time there was a break between thunderclaps because it sounded so close each time that it made my heart race with fear.
The only thing I could see in front of me was a thick, gray wall of rain, and it looked like there was even more of it coming.
I would have been drenched to the skin if I hadn’t been wearing my raincoat, which did a good job of keeping me reasonably dry.
It was unzipped, though, and my hood was down around my neck instead of on top of my head where it belonged, which meant that I was completely soaked through and shivering from cold by the time I reached home.
My coat and clothes weren’t particularly heavy or warm, and being wet made them feel even less so.
I hugged myself to keep from shaking and tried to walk as quickly as I could without slipping on a puddle or tripping over something in front of me that I couldn’t see.
Even though I was soaking wet, my hair was still dry because it was too thick for me to see through when it was down.
I felt like it was trying to shield my face from whatever might be on the other side of it that I couldn’t see, and I let it.
I had a feeling that I was going to have a lot to think about tonight when I went to bed, and I didn’t like it at all.
Even though I’d spent most of my life wishing that things could be different than they were, having them different now was scary, and I wasn’t sure that I liked it very much at all.
I was still cold and wet when I reached home, but I felt a little better after changing into dry clothes and spending a few minutes warming up in front of a space heater that I’d set up in my bedroom while I was gone.
I was sitting in bed and reading a book when I first heard them coming: two people walking down an alley outside, talking loudly and laughing like they were happy to be out in this awful weather.
I couldn’t see them from where I sat, but I could hear them perfectly because my windows were open to let in some fresh air now that it had stopped raining.
I was getting ready to go tell them to keep it down when I heard a loud noise that sounded like a firecracker going off, only there wasn’t any firecracker.
Then one of them screamed and all noise stopped.