And as soon as Elie and Donovan enter Dr. Peltzer’s office, they spot Sylvia, lounging on the former principal’s chair with a slight twirl, messing around with their iPod all the while. Its still attached to the PA system. On the next turn, Sylvia grimaces at the sight of them both.

DONOVAN: Sylvia?! What the hell?!

SYLVIA: I fucking knew it.

ELIE: You! (Elie draws his shotgun and walks over to meet Sylvia at point blank range) Drop my iPod and say your prayers!

SYLVIA: This better be good, boy. What’s your excuse?

Elie’s shotgun goes off, but due to Donovan’s intervention only manages to blast the chair, sending it for a spin or ten, and Sylvia with it. Sylvia gets out of her wince, skids her chair to a stop, and makes herself comfortable again as she watches Donovan wrestle Elie’s shotgun against his throat.

ELIE: Fuckface…

DONOVAN: Sylvia, go home. You’re not on our shitlist.

ELIE: Fuck you, Donovan, she’s in mine!

Sylvia sighs and sits forward.

SYLVIA: What the hell happened to you, Donnie? You used to be cool. You used to keep your bullshit to yourself. And now? You’re as dead to me as all those brats you just slaughtered.

Donovan unhands Elie, taking his shotgun as well.

DONOVAN: You told me once that karma’s a wimp’s excuse to keep from getting even.

SYLVIA: What are you saying, Donnie? That the two of you started this by misinterpreting a twelve year old’s cloud talk from, what, 3 years past? Do you really think I meant what I said, then?

DONOVAN: You could have reported us at any time. Why didn’t you?

Sylvia places her forehead on both her hands and lightly claws it, as if to fight off the urge to yank her own hair off.

SYLVIA: You had to have been bluffing, Donnie. It sounded like just another revenge fantasy. Everyone gets those. Me especially. (Sylvia leans back on her seat) Or maybe I’m just in denial. These lives are as much in my conscience as they are in yours.

ELIE: I’ll tell you why you didn’t do it, Sylvia. You were looking forward to this.

SYLVIA: Uh… huh…

ELIE: You were sick of it all too. All the liars. All the bores. And these self proclaimed god given asshats, sleazy lot that they are. You wanted them all dead. Everyone does. And maybe, just maybe, you were afraid that you too were becoming one of them. Maybe, deep down inside, you felt you deserve nothing better than leaden redemption. And that’s why you’re here. Waiting patiently. Like a deer for a semi.

SYLVIA: How cute. I bet that took you all morning to memorize, too.

ELIE: Fuck you. Don’t act like you wouldn’t kill anyone in a fit too. What if you had a gun? What would you do?

SYLVIA: Like I’d own a gun in the first place.

ELIE: But shit. What if you were in our situation? What if you reached your limit?

SYLVIA: What if, what if, what if. What if I was raped by a gang of neo nazis for the so called greater good.

DONOVAN: Well, I wouldn’t put it so metaphorically, but yeah.

Sylvia spins on the chair again and directs her attention back to the iPod.

SYLVIA: You’re both full of it.

Elie is trembling with rage. Donovan tugs at Elie’s shoulder.

DONOVAN: Elie, let’s just go.

ELIE: Not until that cunt is dead.

DONOVAN: Very funny. Let’s—

ELIE: For fuck’s sake, Donovan, as long as your girlfriend’s got our fucking iPod, she is ruining this moment for us. She is wasting our killing time, and I sure as fuck am gonna gut her for it!

SYLVIA: WAH WAH WAH WAH Shut the fuck up! God, you’re annoying!

Both Elie and Donovan glare at Sylvia. Sylvia straightens up and clears her throat.

SYLVIA: I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up over, Elie. With all the ruckus you two have caused, someone must’ve called the cops by now. If you two don’t want to spend the rest of your young lives shitting blood, I suggest turning those guns on yourselves now. This ipod’s useless to jailbirds and dead men anyway, so don’t get so attached.

Elie says nothing, but unholster’s Donovan’s revolver, firing it into Sylvia’s right arm. Sylvia’s scream echoes through the halls.

DONOVAN: Elie!!

ELIE: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!

Elie approaches Sylvia, slowly and menacingly. Sylvia clutches at her shoulder, and glares at Elie. Her eyes are bloodshot and filled with enraged tears.

ELIE: That was quite the scream, Sylvia. There’s something about it. It’s the kind of scream that seems to say “Fear of God.” “Insanity from the pain.”

Elie presses the gun against Sylvia’s head.

ELIE: “Awe of the gun”.

Sylvia reaches out and flips him off, sticking the finger in his nostril in the process. Elie brushes it off and cocks back the hammer.

ELIE: I’ll look for you in Hell, you cu—

The report of a gun is heard, followed by bloodsplatter. When Sylvia opens her eyes, he sees the now headless Elie collapse, revealing Donovan behind him with a smoking shotgun. Smiling at Sylvia, Donovan turns the gun on himself, aiming for his chin.

Sylvia falls off the chair and onto the bloodpool. She staggers back up, picks up the iPod and hobbles over to the exit. Before she gets the chance to put her headphones on, the report of the shotgun sounds out, followed by a splatter and thud. Sylvia curls on the floor at vomits at the sound of it. Five steps later and Sylvia blacks out.

edited 15th Aug '11 3:25:24 PM by Schitzo

Parts of the dialogue come off as more '90s action hero than school students.

Erm... what lines in particular?

BTW As this is an excerpt, the shooters, who lets face it, watch a lot of movies, are wearing business suits, which would have been described fully given context.

edited 10th Aug '11 1:53:43 AM by Schitzo

Anybody but Tyler Durden or a Sin City character saying stuff like this makes me think you're trying to write Tyler Durden or a Sin City character.

I think there's some good emotion in the scene, but I'm not feeling it very well in script format.

edited 10th Aug '11 1:53:02 AM by melloncollie

BTW BTW: I really, really want to avoid two things:

• The OMG I'M SO EDGY bullcrap from stuff like Gregg Araki's films. I hate his stuff with a passion.
• The breathless emotionless thespian stuff you see in early Kevin Smith works. I love his stuff, but seeing that makes me CRINGE.

So knowing that, how can I improve this?

BTW BTW BTW: I'm a bit embarrassed to say I have been influenced a smidge by Chuck Palahniuk's work. So that may have something to do with their dialogue.

BTW X4: I've got to practice my novel narrative skills. This particular work has no real main character. It's part of this big series, so I can't really pick just one narrator. Maybe I'll have certain POVS for certain story arcs?

edited 10th Aug '11 1:57:35 AM by Schitzo

I'm going to nitpick the very first sequence: "Point blank range" means "so close as to be impossible to miss" range. A shotgun, fired at a person sitting in a swivel desk chair, from point blank range, is not going to miss them completely but still hit the chair hard enough to spin it all the way around once, let alone ten times or so unless the person is very tiny, and the chair is very big, and the shotgun load is a slug load rather than pellets.

Mm. Good point.

I need to work on my gun porn XD

"What if I was gangraped by a bunch of lovecraftian tentacle ubermench."

Sylvia confirmet to be Warren Ellis in disguise.

" Drop my iPod and say your prayers!"

That sounds like from cheesy action movie.

edited 10th Aug '11 2:18:53 PM by PrimoVictoria

"Point blank range" means "so close as to be impossible to miss" range

This is a common misconception.

When a bullet leaves the chamber, it follows a parabolic trajectory, going slightly upwards before it starts to fall (meaning you'll have to aim a little bit above your target). 'Point Blank' actually means that the bullet has still not gone below the elevation of the gun firing it, which (depending on the gun) can be a hundred yards or more.

Source.

edited 10th Aug '11 3:23:12 PM by TheEarthSheep

Well, if the person firing the gun has any kind of skill at all at doing it, he or she isn't going to miss at that range. Besides, who uses the proper definition of anything...?

"Point blank range" has more meaning when talking about archery, when it's the range at which you can hit what you're aiming at simply by pointing the arrow directly at it (requiring much less skill than judging an arc). In context of a gun, it usually is taken to mean 'so-close-you-can't-miss range', since the original definition of 'point blank range' is only really exceeded by snipers.

You'd be surprised, if you're aiming at a small-ish target from a large distance, especially if it's moving.

Besides, the average school shooter is probably not going to be the next William Tell.

The Sheep speaks the truth. Most of them would have been much more infamous if they were capable marksmen. (That's part of what made the Virginia Tech shooter backhandedly impressive; he was.)

@ Primo: ... is that a good thing or a bad thing for Sylvia? Never read his stuff, but from what I can see so far from his trope page, I'll take it as a good thing.

Also, yes, as I said, the shooters are movie obsessed, but that line can use changing. I'll think of something better.

edited 11th Aug '11 1:56:25 AM by Schitzo

I would usually say it's good thing, but in this case this sentence comes as rather Narmish and I don't think it really fits teenage girl to say something that sounds like generated by Talk Like Warren Ellis website. Don't get me wrong, I like it, but it sounds rather out of place in that situation. I don't know the character, maybye saying things like that is her quirk, but if it's not, I would rather change it for something less fantastic (maybye just "gangraped by Neo-Nazis"? Drives the point the same and sounds less out of place).

edited 11th Aug '11 5:05:54 AM by PrimoVictoria

That's much better, thank you. And no, I don't want her saying crap like that to be the norm (that's only turn her into Juno, another work I despise). She was acting hyperbolic, but I agree that the line could use some toning down.

As you can probably tell by her non chalant attitude throughout, she's something of a snarker/ snark knight *

Though her attitude towards both shooters is stone cold and biting, she still cares for them, deep down (possibly the only reason why she's even risking getting herself killed). In this case, she vomits at the death of the one she's closest with, while she ignores every other student's corpse in the hall outside the office (which I should have written down, actually ^-^;). Monkeysphere and all that crap, you know?

edited 11th Aug '11 10:02:37 AM by Schitzo

One more question: What could be a cutesie nickname for a shotgun? The revolver is being referred to as "Maggie".

I associate shotguns with farmers, so something like Betsy or Mary Jane is the first thing I think of. Maybe Marla, if you're going for a Shout-Out.

Hm. Possibly. I don't see the getting theme-named as easily like how the revolver has a girls name that fits its class of gun. So in that case, I'll probably just give them shout out names, like you said

Hm. Maybe I'd call it Ashley. Except that another character (male) has that name and—

Wait... THAT'S IT!

Thanks a lot, man 8D

edited 11th Aug '11 11:41:10 AM by Schitzo

revision: eldritch tentacle ubermench line changed.