Disclaimer: This novel contains adult material including sexually explicit activities, strong language, homophobic language, extreme violence, suicide, depictions of trauma, and more. Reader discretion is advised.
The Dominance of Abigale Quinlan
Shard 10: The Oransen High Massacre
I went from feeling nothing one moment… to feeling everything the next. My heart was racing, my legs were moving, and I felt a considerable weight resting on my right arm. I tried to stop myself, but my body moved on its own, and as I tried to speak, I was met with the sound of silence. From the weight of my person and the sound of my breathing, I could tell that I was myself. And as I saw my pale left hand wipe the sweat off my brow, I knew that I was not only myself, but myself from some time before this transformative week.
It was then that I recalled what happened before I arrived to this dream. I was in the weight room. I was assaulted. And even though I did not see my assailant, it had to be Yuccot.
“Cripes, that guy’s just the fucking worst,” I said to myself, but the words did not leave my lips.
My body’s eyes darted around as I made this unspoken comment, offering me a better view of my surroundings. I was in Oransen High… but something was wrong. The lights were out, emergency lights were shining, there was a distinct lack of people walking through the halls… and there was an alarm blaring. A crunchy digitized sound, followed by a prolonged high-pitched chime.
As I made these observations, my body ran into the nearest restroom. Much like the halls, it was dark, lacking even emergency lights. As my body noted this, my hands fiddled with the machinery in my arms, toggling some sort of flashlight.
My body then sauntered to the stalls, shining the light through the sizable gaps emblematic of American restrooms, checking to see if anyone was hiding in there. And… there was. Before I could so much as see their face, I felt my finger press against something, and heard a loud concussive burst echo throughout this small room.
I would have fallen over if I heard something so loud, yet my body stood tall, and the light remained shining into this stall. The light shined on a female student with blood across her chest, panting, before a second burst of noise erupted from my hands.
At this point, I realized several things. The object I was holding was a firearm. An assault weapon of some sort. I was wearing a long-sleeve dress shirt and blazer. And that… I had seen this tragedy before. Just never quite this way.
This was the Oransen High Massacre of December 19, 2014. The day when ‘Jad Novus,’ launched a terrorist attack on the students and faculty of Oransen High. Through the use of homemade explosives, a toxic gas, and several weapons including an axe, an assault rifle, and a shotgun, ‘he’ ended the lives of over 100 people.
I then felt the weights against my back— the axe and shotgun— attached via straps. I smelled a distinct chemical substance that, wherever it originated from, lingered in the air, possibly spread through the ventilation system. The inciting incident had already happened. The attack was still underway. And… I just experienced what it was like to kill someone with a loaded firearm.
“W-Why am I here? Why am I back here? I left this world! I… I destroyed this whole damn building!” I said, but my words did not travel through my lips.
As I attempted to verbalize these thoughts, I felt my lips curl, and my teeth clench together. My body then made its way to a nearby mirror, showing me as I was circa December 2014, dressed in my uniform, and brandishing an assault rifle. Blood stained my blazer, my face, and even my hair.
“Why, hello Mister Novus,” my body said against my will. The voice was deeper than usual, and every syllable was exaggerated.
“You!” I tried to say, but my words, yet again, failed to escape my lips.
“It appears that my little body jack program had a few bugs. Well, maybe not a bug. This is more of a feature. Because now, you can witness the destruction first-hand.”
She could understand, or somehow ‘read,’ my thoughts. Kind of like how I could mentally communicate with Peatrice. It was strange, but I tried to respond to her words, ‘thinking’ them at her instead of ‘speaking’ them.
“Of course you would brush aside such failures as successes. Why would I ever expect Abigale Quinlan to show even the slightest bit of humility?”
“…How in the hell do you know my name?”
“I’m from the future, you monster. If I could, I’d stop you… but I guess I can’t do shit. I can’t do anything but watch… and suffer.”
As I said those words, I felt my penis harden, pressing up against my briefs. I knew that Abigale was twisted, but this was just obscene.
“Indeed, you cannot do anything to stop me. Your fate is already sealed, Jad. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the fireworks.”
My hand drifted into my pants pocket, clenching a small remote covered in over a dozen tiny buttons. Without looking, Abigale pressed my thumb against one of them. The sound of combustion and shattering glass flowed into this restroom, and a jolt of electricity sparked up my spine. My body then ran out the room, and to the impact site. A classroom overflowing with smoke and fire.
With the door decimated, my body ran into the room. Desks were toppled and burning, nearly twenty student corpses littered the floor, and in the corners of this room stood the survivors, a total of three. They stood at the furthest corner of the room, shaking in fear as they struggled to process what they had seen. An explosive placed the night prior, hidden above the ceiling tile, suddenly detonated, spreading shrapnel and fire onto those unfortunate enough to be in range.
They were not behind cover, their reaction time was stifled from this sudden act of destruction. They were easy targets, and Abigale wasted little time taking aim at their heads and firing, killing every one of them with a single shot.
“Aiming’s a real bitch in this body, but I make it look easy. Wouldn’t you agree, Jad?”
“My hate for you knows no bounds. You are the reason why I’m like this. You and your fucking alter ego have been haunting me for months. And this is what my subconscious does? I swear, my brain is trying to get me to kill myself.”
Abigale twisted my face in response, but said nothing. She simply walked out of the room, and immediately saw someone trying to open one of the windows surrounding the front entrance. I remembered that the doors were sealed with explosives, jamming their locks. So windows were the only true means of escape. It’s how Maxxie, Zoe, and Shiaka survived. Except, instead of looking for a locked window, this student was trying to break 3-centimeter-thick glass by throwing a chair at it… only for the chair to bounce off of the metal frame.
“FUCK!”
As the student screamed, Abigale aimed down the sights, and plopped a bullet in this student’s head. Their body then crumpled down, folding in on itself in an uncanny manner. It was a morose and disgusting sight, but Abigale merely chuckled before walking over to her latest kill. She kicked the body to see its face, and while she merely smirked at the sight, I recognized this student. Their short dirty blonde hair, their stout proportions, and the wide eyes on their face. It was Yuccot Kikansky’s body.
My mind flashed back to the military base Raiyne escorted me to. The harsh stone-faced man who greeted me, and shot me repeatedly. Raiyne told him my name in an effort to garner some sympathy. But instead, his only reply was: “…Jad Novus killed my son.” He then shot me, assaulted Raiyne, and our shared hope of getting aid from the military died then and there.
I told myself that this all could have played out differently if Yuccot wasn’t so brash and stupid. If he just remained hidden or tried to escape through a window that he could actually open. I told myself that but, deep down, I knew the outcome would’ve been the same.
As I stewed in sorrow, Abigale made a dash through the halls, searching for her next victim. As she did so, I tried to distract Abigale, shouting and making nonsensical remarks, but she ignored me as she continued her assault. She traveled from room to room, shooting those who chose to hide instead of run, and planting a bullet in all who dared to cross her path.
For all the horrors I saw when I walked through the demolished Oransen, I had never witnessed the horror of seeing life leave a body. Seeing a body lose all sense and balance of structure as they crumple onto the ground like a sack of meat. Seeing the blood gush out of a person as a bullet penetrates their being. Seeing humans burn and become blackened husks.
Then there was the smell. The aroma of blood, of gunfire, and smoke, all mingling in to create this scent that I would normally only associate with war, but this was not war. This was merely an act of leisure conducted by a deranged individual who wanted nothing more than to see humans clamor and panic as their assumed security collapsed right before their eyes.
After passing by almost ten classrooms, I found my vision looming over the library entrance. It was both a good and terrible place to hide. It was large, expansive, there was a lot of room and visual clutter. But there was only one main entrance, the floor was flammable, and even a dictionary couldn’t stop a bullet.
Before entering, she brought my hand to my pocket, and produced her detonator. She looked at it and smiled… before pressing each button one by one. Some caused distant explosions, some seemingly did nothing, but one caused the ceiling in the library to burst open, spreading fire that lined the carpet, and would surely spread across the wooden furniture, consuming everything in an inferno.
She manipulated my vocal cords to cackle at this destruction, while waiting from outside. A few students rushed out, but her shotgun blew all away. She obscured herself, placed her back against a wall, and waited for more easy targets to flood out. Then, after thirty seconds of silence, she ventured into this fiery den of knowledge.
She made her presence known as she blind fired, shooting through several rows of books, and taking aim at all who thought they had a chance of escaping with their lives. She had the opportunity to gawk at her kills, but she did not bother. She merely went deeper and deeper into the library.
Once at the other end of this room, she let out a satisfied smile and looked at the encroaching flames nearing the entrance. She twisted my face in a snicker as she looked over this sight, contemplating her next action, when it happened.
In this instance, this one moment of hesitation, someone ran toward my body and rammed something into the back of its neck. It was sharp, cold, and caused my muscles to clench up, but not enough to incapacitate my person. My body then spun around on its heels, shotgun in hand, and my vision fell on a short female student, possibly a freshman, who looked at me with terror in her dark eyes.
She had a lot of courage attacking an armed terrorist like this, but Abigale’s reaction time was faster than hers and, before the student could even take another step, Abigale fired a shell into her chest. As blood sprayed and bones shattered, she fell to the ground, her eyes clenched shut from pain, but her body still twitched with life all the same. Abigale took aim for the student’s head and pulled the trigger yet again, leaving behind nothing more than half a skull and an unrecognizable pile of viscera.
The recoil knocked me off my feet, and I could tell I wasn’t getting up anytime soon. With a groan, Abigale tossed the emptied shotgun away, bouncing it against a wall, before moving my hand to the back of my neck. In a quick pain-wrought second, she pulled out a blade from a pair of scissors. Sending my other hand to the wound, I could tell that the blade struck bone— it didn’t rupture any organs, let alone my throat— but the blood was gushing down my back at an alarming pace.
Abigale then moved my body to the nearest wall and propped it upright. I could feel my vision fogging up as the blood trickled down my back, and in this moment of desperation, I heard the voice of Abigale Quinlan appear in my mind.
“It’s a shame that this rampage had to end so soon. Good thing this is merely a prologue to what is to come.”
“Yeah. When I wake up in your body, right?” I thought back to her.
“I would ask how you know such things, but both of our consciousnesses shall end in a matter of seconds.”
“Like I said, I’m from the future. What, you haven’t figured out mental time travel yet? And you call yourself a genius?”
“Truly? Well, grant a dying woman a last request. How much damage did I do?”
“Do you seriously expect me to honor a dying wish from a monster like you?”
“No, but the tone in your voice tells me all I need to know. And for that, I thank you, Jad Novus. Thank you for making my life a touch more interesting.”
My hand then drifted to the bloodied blade that was within arm’s reach. My arm was jittery, but my grip remained solid as Abigale brought the improvised weapon to my face. She made me stare at it for several seconds, as if contemplating something, before finally jamming the blade into my right eye.
After a flash of pain, I felt my senses die, and I was immersed in nothingness yet again.
I thought this would mark the end of this nightmare. Instead, I heard her voice yet again.
“I have read through the archives of your mind, and I think I truly understand you now, Jad Novus. To think that my plaything not only acted in such a spectacular manner, but they have been suffering for months. However, I do not believe we are quite done yet. Oh no. Our story did not end when we were separated by the hand of God. For your trauma— your obsession— has granted me life anew. And as a reward for such devotion, I shall manifest your greatest desire unto reality.”
The Dominance of Abigale Quinlan Main Page
Shard 00: The Novus Logs Volumes 1 & 2
Shard 01: 108 Days Later
Shard 02: Melancholic Mundanity
Shard 03: Another Day; Another Doubt
Shard 04: Fractured Family
Shard 05: Troublesome Tuesday
Shard 06: Despair And Die
Shard 07: The Enigmatic Sickness
Shard 08: The Erotic Fantasy (Osananajimi;Myself Part 3700)
Shard 09: The Egregious Downfall
Shard 10: The Oransen High Massacre
Shard 11: The Dark Metamorphosis
Shard 12: The Dominant Reflection
Shard 13: My Life As Jadigale Novus
Shard 14: Fade Unto Dusk
Shard 15: Re;Birth Unto Jade
Shard 16: Gender Reveal Party
Shard 17: Enter The Three Wives (Psycho Bullet Festival 2222 – Bout 21-2)
Shard 18: Novus X – Ten Years Later