Round 4 Lynch - The Escapist

“Hold him still, will you!”

“He’s squirmy – you hold him and I’ll tie the knot.”

“I’ll do it, shove over.”

Splazmonnotroid watched with wide, fearful eyes while his fellow soldiers trussed him up like a Christmas turkey, powerless to stop them in their mad pursuit of justice. Not that he hadn’t tried – quite the contrary, he had put up the fight of his life, but there were just too many of them. When he hadn’t fallen for the ‘hey, let’s have a meeting to discuss our next move’ trick (and really, did they think he was an idiot?), they tried trapping him in the bathroom. That lasted about two seconds before he was running down the corridor, wailing his head off and trying to get to the protection of the teachers. He almost made it, too, but when he rounded the last corner, a group of Dragon soldiers was waiting and ready to take him down. Two students were assigned to each limb and the others cried out instructions; if nothing else, they were working as a team.

“You want to escape? Huh? Well I tell you what – we’re going to set you free! How do you like that?”

Splazmonnotroid couldn’t say anything, what with the gag, but he made a face that clearly said he wasn’t fooled.

“No, really, we are!” Hands lifted him up in the air as another student took up the expected pre-murder monologue. “Yeah, we’re letting you go…free as a bird…” Snickers from the rest of the soldiers. It was then that Splazmonnotroid realized what they were planning. They were telling the truth – they were letting him go. Out of Dragon Army, out of this crazy mess, out of Battle School. Literally.

They were going to throw him out into space.

He had believed he was fighting with all of his strength, but with this new knowledge he renewed his efforts, managing to free an arm and wreck havoc among his carriers. They had no choice but to scramble to an empty classroom and attempt to subdue him once more. Throwing him roughly into the chairs, three people sat on his chest while others held down his flailing limbs.

With so many people trying to hold him down, they simply didn’t notice that one of them was sprawled over Splazmonnotroid’s face, preventing him from breathing. It wasn’t until he finally went still that they realized something was wrong.

Not that they were sorry when they discovered he was dead – that was the intention, after all. That he had died in the process of being restrained seemed a pity, though. Justice dictated that he die in the same way as one of his victims, and Irony dictated that he manage one last bid for freedom. After all, the evidence, and his attempt at escape, clearly proved his guilt.

Didn’t it?

~*~*~

Graff knew he was being manipulated, but found it hard to care. The children were lying to him, he was well aware of that, but their lies made for such convenient reports. And so it was that the story of Splazmonnotroid’s death went down in his records as an accident rather than a murder. The other children, he wrote, were guilty only of attempting to prevent another suicide – an effort that was completely understandable given this week’s terrible circumstances. He waxed on about the trauma these children had received due to the string of suicides and accidents, and spun a pretty tale of one boy’s descent into a madness that led him to try to release himself into space. Then he told the heroic story gone terribly wrong – how the other students, when they realized what was happening, banded together to keep him from harming himself, and ended up killing him in the process of saving him.

It was, perhaps, the most elegant load of bullshit he had ever written.