I walk into class late to find the teacher absent. The kids are in an uproar of volume, some are sitting on desks, throwing paper airplanes around the room, laughing and in midst of conversation. I take a seat in the first row at the front and rest my head on my arm.

Ten more minutes passes. Unfamiliar coming from my teacher, Ms. Knights. She has never missed a period since the beginning of the semester, where is she?

I daze off when I am awoken by the classroom door closing. A man walks into the room, he looks fairly young, maybe in his early twenties. He has blonde hair messed against his face, he's wearing a basic coloured t-shirt with a pair of jeans. Not very professional looking at all, I am guessing he's our substitute? I look above his head and see an orange orb. An average life.

I can see orbs of colour above the heads of living things. It took me a long time to figure out what it meant, it was on the day my mother died from Cancer when I realized. She was green before she got sick. She turned orange for two years. I sat by her hospital bed holding her hand as she turned red in her sleep, there was nothing I could have done. When her heart stopped beating I now knew.

The teacher reached over to the door, and he locked it.

"I don't want to be interrupted. Your teacher isn't here, she had a bit of an accident. I am here now."

He walked slowly to the front of the room, his boots hitting the ground with a thud in each step. He stood by the window with his hands in his front pockets, silent.

I turned back to laugh at a friend who was sitting the row behind, as to say, "what a weirdo." As I turned my head I froze. The class.

Red. Red. Red.

What once was made up of green and the rare orange became something much more sinister. I couldn't see my current colour, but I am assuming it was the same. My forehead broke out in droplets of sweat, I swallowed deep in my throat.

That was when the alarm began, sounding similar to one that would play once every year, the drill we had to practice.

This wasn't a practice.

Code red.

There was an intruder in the building.

Everyone flips their desks forward to hide behind. A girl screams from the back, another boy begins to cry and the classroom is in commotion.

"Aren't you going to do something?!" Yells another, referring to the teacher.

He nods. "Yes."

His hands pull from his pockets.

He has a gun.

There is no time to blink, he shoots fire.

He darts toward the back, I think quick on my feet and crawl toward the front of the classroom and wedge myself in the bookshelf out of sight.

I can see through the crack of the door, he's going past desk by desk and the reds are disappearing as he shoots them one by one.

There is one last scream before the sound stops.

He brings the gun underneath his jaw. Red.

He fires.