An Unfortunate Unfolding
Crouching on the toilet in the locked stall, Ruby’s breaths grow closer together. Her mind is racing, wondering where Silas is, wondering if he is okay. Another shrilling pop-pop-pop echoes from outside the concert venue bathroom, each growing nearer. Screams follow. Tears well up in Ruby’s eyes, and she adjusts her position. Her black heel almost dips in the clogged piss water as she clutches the toilet paper dispenser for support. A full blown panic attack consumes Ruby. She tries all of the breathing exercises that she’s practiced with Silas, nothing helps.
The bathroom door swings open, slamming against the wall and bouncing back off to a close. A body hits the ground, still screaming and sobbing, begging for mercy. The girl’s sobs come nearer as her palms squeak, dragging herself across the floor. Everything falls eerily quiet except for her cries, growing quieter by the second.
“... my soul to take. Amen now I lay me down to sleep, I’ll assume I’ll rise rested and at peace. For I know all day-” An even more blood curdling scream rips through the air as the door opens and loud, heavy footsteps approach her. “Pluh- pl-please n-n-no! No! No-oh-oh!”
Pop-pop-pop clink-clink-clink boomed through the air. Her desperate pleas abruptly cut off by the bullets lodged in her upper body. Ruby cups her hands over her ears and bites the collar of her coat to hold back her whimpering. At this point, she is shaking so violently that the toilet seat shuttered under her weight. He has to know I’m in here, she thinks to herself. She triple checks to make sure she locked the stall and starts to recite her own prayer silently. The buzzing of fluorescent lights from above become deafening. Her opposition moves, standing right outside the stall door. Ruby can sense him staring her down, but not moving at all. Tears uncontrollably streaming down her face, she raises her chin to meet his gaze, eyes empty and dark. His expression remains stone cold, unwavering. Ruby silently repeats the word “Please”, examining his exact description, in case she somehow makes it out alive.
He’s in his mid 30’s a black bubble coat, dark jeans, and ill fitting black boots, looking as if he hasn’t slept in days. A classic shooter outfit. His hands clutch an AR-15 tightly to his chest, a strap double securing it around his shoulder. In this moment, Ruby is certain she is going to die. She will never see Silas again, this is how they’ll both go out. But instead of blasting her with 17 metal bullets, a grin plays across his face, sickly sweet. His unkempt, scraggly facial hair framing his rotting teeth, his upper lip curls underneath itself. On one heel, he spins and marches out of the bathroom. Instantly, as the door slams shut, the repetitious sound of gunfire resumes.
Ruby takes deep breaths and counts to 10 before she tries to unfold herself from her cramped position on the toilet seat. Afraid to face the body on the floor outside her safehouse stall, she dials 911. Bringing the phone to her ear, there is only silence and then a tone signaling “no service”.
“S***, s***, s***, s***, S***!” she screams, irrationally chucking her phone into the toilet. Overwhelmed, she runs her fingers through her long, dark hair and slowly slides the stall lock out of the jam. Whatever buzz she had worked up from slamming the overpriced, underwhelming mixed drinks at the concessions had long wore off. And the sight to see outside of her temporary haven would be even more sobering. She takes one last deep breath and steps out of the stall, having to choke back a sob as she gapes at the blood pool stretching across the gritty tile floor. The woman’s face no longer recognizable. Ruby gags over the sink, nothing coming up.
“You can do this. You need to find Silas. Collect yourself- 20 seconds. You have 20 seconds,” she whispers to herself before feeding herself handfuls of the room temperature sink water. She splashes the water on her face and counts down, “Three, two … one.”
Ruby steps over the unfortunate corpse lying in her way and puts on a look of fearlessness. She needed to find Silas before it was too late. Her impulsive decision to chuck her phone in the toilet wasn’t going to save her any time. The area outside the bathroom had been fairly quiet since Ruby started to pull herself together. It took her at least 5 minutes to squeeze through the crowd on the floor of the venue, another three to find the drink concessions, and then another few minutes to find the restroom after slamming her sixth drink. And this was all before the chaos begun. He could be anywhere, but Ruby had to narrow down her options. She pushes open the bathroom door a couple inches and peeks her head out, looking both ways. It’s dimly lit and figures were lumped haphazardly leading toward the main corridor. The blood puddles weren’t obvious due to the maroon carpet lining the walkways.
She drew up her hood and walked as quietly as she could around the bodies. All of the commotion seemed to be coming from the entrance of the venue as people were trying to escape. This being the first instinct of most people, she knew Silas wouldn’t have taken the traditional route. He was probably frantically searching for Ruby as she was for him. Ruby keeps her eyes glued to the floor and starts to jog as fast as her heels permit her.
A panicked whisper interrupts her jog, “Ruby! Ruby? Oh my god, is that you?” She jumps and whips her head to the right and sees an unlikely sight. Celeste, Ruby’s new boss, crouches behind a concession counter. Broken glass from bottles of alcohol surround her small frame, the stench similar to nail polish remover gag the two of them. Ruby isn’t particularly fond of her boss, so it was surprising to see her in such a fragile state. Despite her need to find Silas, she wasn’t going to just leave her boss kneeling in alcohol, bleeding.
“Celeste? Are you okay?” Ruby expresses her concern, pushing aside her recently growing envy for Celeste for snagging what should have been her new position as Chief Designer.
“Yes, yes. I mean, actually no. I’m f***in’ bleeding all over the place, I’m knee deep in booze, and I have no idea where my husband is,” she stutters, exasperated.
“I’m missing Silas, too. I was just goin’ to the bathroom when I heard all the gunshots. I have no idea if he’s okay. Oh God, I hope he’s okay,” Ruby’s thoughts begin to tumble into a downward spiral. She avoids the wave of emotion and remembers her promise to herself to be brave.
“Okay, what happened though? Why are you bleeding?”
“I have no idea, probably one of these broken bottles,” She takes a quivering hand to her forehead and pulls it away to look at the blood. “I have some first aid stuff in my purse, but I lost it somewhere between my seat and now.”
Gunfire rings out again, coming from the balcony somewhere. The duo both cover their ears and head as if that would help protect them from an automatic weapon’s relentless parade of bullets. People were still frantically scrambling and screaming, but more than half of the original crowd had either escaped the venue or were apart of the less fortunate. “Okay, Celeste. I’m gonna help you get patched up here, but I gotta find Silas soon. I’ve already wasted too much time. And I threw my phone in the toilet, so I can’t even try to reach him,” Ruby’s eyes widen with an idea, “Oh my God, can I please use your phone to try and text him quick? I just need to make sure he’s okay.”
“Uh yeah, of course, hun. Here,” Celeste hands over her phone shakily in pain, blood dripping onto her coat from the gash.
“Let’s get that fixed up first,” Ruby looks around to find something to improvise to disinfect the wound and patch it up. Grabbing one of the few bottles of vodka that isn’t broken, she rips some fabric off her thin cotton shirt to use as a bandage.
“You’re going to put vodka on my face?!” Celeste exclaims in disbelief.
Ruby, taken aback at her lack of common sense, responds, “Celeste, just trust me.” She tilts her head back, liquid trickling onto the wound, wetting her hair. Sticking her tongue out with concentration, Ruby ties the fabric behind Celeste’s head, so it looks like a headband. “There you go, sweetheart. Now I really gotta go find Silas. I hope you get ahold of your husband.” She gets off her knees and musters the most reassuring smile that she can.
“Don’t you wanna text him still?” Celeste asks looking like a lost puppy, holding out her phone, “Can’t we just go together?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I’ve already wasted enough time,” Ruby replies more bluntly than she intended. She puts the unbroken bottle of vodka to her lips and takes a long pull. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, shivering from the strong taste hitting her stomach, she gives Celeste one last nod before heading back to the corridor.
The amount of time between the rounds started to increase. Ruby had completely lost track of time. It had felt like seconds but also hours since she came face to face with the shooter in the bathroom. Ruby makes her way down toward the stage, assuming, hoping, praying, that Silas was hiding somewhere down there. Her heels clicked against the concrete stairs leading down to the floor of the venue, now turned blood pool. Sounds of people weeping and whimpering increased as she made her way into the action.
“Silas. Silas? Where are ya, hun?” she whispered, trying to see resemblance in the bodies on the ground. A teenage girl lies there, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. A boy clung to her, crying.
“Silas?” panic rose in her voice, it was becoming harder to keep a brave face. Her heart drumming in her chest, her stomach jumping into her throat.
“Ruby? Is that you?” a familiar voice breathes out. She can hear the pain in his voice before she whips around and sees him lying on his stomach, cheek pressed to the concrete flooring.
“Oh my god, oh my f***in’ god! S-Silas. Silas!” she rambles, overwhelmed to finally have found him.
Silas is silent, the color continuously draining from his cheeks. “I don’t know if-” he tries to push himself up, but fails. “It’s in my leg. I’ve already lost so much. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I love you always, Ruby. Even if I don’t.”
Regret for ruining her phone and stopping to help Celeste start to consume Ruby. “Syl, this is all my fault. All my f***ing fault. You didn’t even wanna come tonight. This was my idea. I should be the one-” uncontrollably sobbing, she keeps spewing nonsense as Silas slips away.
More gunfire resumes, Ruby, in her fragile state, doesn’t even care if she falls victim. In fact, she almost hopes she does.  Instead of laying next to Silas, playing dead to stay alive, she just crouches there, holding his hand and weeping. She watches people around her turn into corpses as they fall to the floor, her ears ringing. Disconnected from the situation, in a slow haze she hears two more gunshots. Each coming closer to her in a sluggish time. Her thumb strokes the side of his face, as she hears the third and final round she would hear. She smiles slightly as tears pour down her face looking into Silas’s empty eyes.
“I love yo-.” A rapid and electric pain hit her skull, seemingly traveling faster than the bullet itself. As the warm liquid pooled on the floor and in her hair as she gasped for air. She was facing Silas, coughing and knowing they’d be together soon. She began to hear a faint familiar sound as her vision started to tunnel. A dreamy voice came from somewhere far away.
“Ruby, come with me.”