1 - "I can't breathe"
“Can’t breathe.” The words popped up against the black background in fluorescent white. The oxygen in the room seemed to thin. My eyelids felt heavier. The shock and silence ripped through the room like a lightning bolt. Even faster than a lightning bolt, my keys hit the keyboard. “Are you serious?” It took me nearly twenty seconds to type due to the shock. Other shocked messages flooded the chatroom. “I can’t breathe. Help.” The message sparked even more reaction and rapid, panicked messages & messages questioning if he was joking or not continued to surge rampant through the chatroom.
“Fuck this.” I said to myself. I lived only five minutes away from him on foot. I slammed my laptop shut and stood up, banging my leg on my desk, nearly breaking it. I didn’t care. I pushed my chair away and ripped open my bedroom door. My parents weren’t home so I could run through the whole house without being bothered. My shoes were sitting on the floor of the foyer, tied from when I last had them on right after I got home from school. I picked them up, the long laces grazing my hand. I tried to rip the knots out of the laces, causing me to drop the left shoe on the floor. The adrenaline was coursing through my body. I could barely hold the shoes without dropping them. Despite this, after some trial and error, I managed to get them on before sprinting out the door.
I nearly tripped down the short flight of stairs outside of the door but I didn’t fall. I couldn’t fall or he would die. I refuse to let him die. I sprinted up the driveway, motivated by nothing but pure adrenaline and willpower. I reached the top of the long driveway. I can see his house just one kilometer down the road. I began sprinting. Sprinting faster than I ever have. I was sprinting like there was a murderer behind me. I probably looked insane. I reached the stop sign at a four-way intersection. There it was. Just a few hundred meters away. I was going to make it. In the midst of my adrenaline-filled sprinting, my foot connected with a piece of stray asphalt from the road and I fell.
My body collapsed to the ground, limp. The pain was unbearable. It was like a million bees were all stringing my body at once. Despite only hitting my toes, the pain radiated all over my body. My body was nearly completely dead on the ground and the bones in my right foot were probably completely destroyed but that didn’t phase me. I got up and continued sprinting. I could hear audible crunching from my foot crushing between my body weight and the asphalt. I didn’t care. I was determined to save him. I reached his house in immense pain. My foot was nearly bursting out of the shoe from swelling. I ripped the door handle and… nothing. The door was locked.
I grabbed a rock that was nearby and I chucked it through the window. I climbed through the window that was covered in glass shards, a glass shard piercing through my torso. I had to find him. He has to be somewhere around here. I was feeling very short of breath but that didn’t matter. I nearly dove down the stairs and ripped open his bedroom door. His computer was on and the chatroom was left open. I looked around his room but he wasn’t there. Upon closer inspection, I see something on his computer; a message that was never sent. I couldn’t read it though. It was hard to read because of my vision becoming blurry and my eyelids starting to get heavier. I collapsed to the ground, short of breath. The glass shard in my chest being forced deeper into my torso. I reached into my pocket, gasping for air. I felt a presence watching me but I couldn’t see anyone. All I could do was send a message to the same chatroom. My body began sliding across the room as if I was being dragged. My bloodsoaked fingers tapped the screen to spell out three simple words;
“I can’t breathe.”
