The sounds of bad weather fill the early morning air as I walk to my bus stop. The air is warm and humid, the kind of air that makes it difficult to breathe. It’s just beginning to drizzle, but the rain is picking up. Soon it will be a fully fledged storm. I expect to hear thunder by the time I reach the school on the other side of town. It will be nice to watch the rain from my classroom window; one can see the treetops from the second floor, swaying back and forth from being pounded by heavy rain drops. But for now, the rain is pure torture, as it threatens to soak my clothes, make my makeup run, and curl my hair, which I had just spent half an hour straightening between two hot plates.

I have my umbrella positioned close to my hair, as this is the one part of my appearance that I value most. My clothes will dry, and I can always reapply my makeup in the girls’ lavatory before the bell rings for first class, but I don’t have access to a flat iron anywhere else than in my own home. I refuse to go the day without pin straight hair if I can help it, so an umbrella is vital to me, even when I can only feel a few drops at a time. The children at my bus stop do not understand why I feel so compelled to use the cumbersome object, so already they are looking at me quizzically. There is no chance that they did not notice when the wind blew hard in my direction, turning my new umbrella inside out.

The evil laughter fills the air as I continue walking to the stop. I hear the bus coming behind me, so I try to close my now useless umbrella. But, I am not used to it just yet, and I cannot seem to manage closing it into its portable state. This time, it is not only the few people at my stop, but the entire bus population. The driver is glaring at me, and I know I must do something quickly. I can think of nothing else to do than to snap the handle in half and carry the two pieces. Even with this solution, it is still cumbersome, and it gets stuck on a few seats as I try to find an unoccupied space to sit, stirring even more laughter. I sit on the first empty seat I can find, and proceed to continue breaking my umbrella into smaller pieces. A few girls in the very front steal glances of me and burst into laughter every few seconds.

I am filled with hatred directed at every student on the bus, but no one more than these girls. I find myself wishing terrible injuries upon them; a slow painful death for each one would surely be a wonderful sight. For a few minutes I imagine a car swerving on the highway, hitting the front of the bus, causing no injury to me or those behind me, but taking the lives of the girls in front of me. I sigh, knowing that this will probably not happen.

I look down, noticing the top of my umbrella. The wires holding the red fabric that were once uniformly curved down are now straying in all different directions. The points of the wires are no longer softened by the edge of the fabric. They are now exposed, and very, very sharp. Someone could easily be hurt if they got too close. I look at the girls in front of me, still loudly snickering. They are seated so their faces were turned towards me, waiting to exploit my next humiliation. They are close, so close that if I reach out my hand, I could probably touch their backpacks. Using the top section of my umbrella as an extension of my arm, I could surely reach their faces.

Quickly, as to not give her a chance to escape, I thrust my umbrella forward, hitting the loudest girl directly in her right eye. With the force of my shove, I puncture her pupil. I take my arm back, pulling the wire out of her eye. She quickly replaces it with her hands, and she is shrieking in pain. Although I do not turn around to check, I can feel the flabbergasted stares of the people behind me, all of them witness to what I had just done. The friends of the injured girl are frozen, eyes widened in horror. This just makes my targets that much easier. I go for the sister of the first girl next, and I hit her in the left eye. Now they are both pressing their palms against their faces, screaming with what I am sure is the most intense pain of their life.

The other three girls finally revive from their comatose state, and rush to get out of my reach. They have nowhere else to go than the very front of the bus. The driver is already calling for order, but he has not yet found a safe place on the highway to pull over, so he is still forced to focus on the road. When the remaining girls reach the front continuously for help, however, he loses his focus. Just like I had imagined of a car doing to us earlier, he swerves off the road, right into a 16-wheeler truck in the next lane, We collide intensely, and the glass windows on that side of the bus shatters, hitting each row of students. Most are either dead or bleeding from the shards. But not me. I was protected from the fabric of my broken umbrella. It stopped all the shards before they reached my flesh. I am the only one unscathed!

I am shaken out of my daydream at the sudden hitting of the brakes. We have reached the school. I look down at my broken umbrella. There are no glass shards in the fabric. I look at the windows. Save one small scratch on the one in the back, there is no damage done to any of them. I look around at the other students on my bus. They are all getting up to exit the bus and go into the school. No one is dead, and no one is bleeding. I gather my things and get up, prepared to run the short distance between the bus and the school doors so as to be hit by the least amount of rain possible. In just a minute, I will be far away from my bus mates and thrust into the rest of the student body. I will find a trash can for my umbrella, and I will go to class. I will say good morning to my teacher, and open my notebook to a clean page. I will begin my work just like everyone else, with not one person aware of my disturbingly homicidal fantasy I had created on my way here this morning, all because of a broken umbrella.