Inescapable Escapism

“Obviously,” the tutor, Hannah, said from the front of the classroom as she paced back and forth slowly, “guns are generally illegal in this country which is why you will also be having training on some other, less effective but also legal, weapons.”

I looked around the room quickly. I won’t sure how much time had passed but I’d definitely fallen asleep in the real world. After the appointment with the doctor where he asked me questions that felt… pointed, I didn’t want to stay there. I didn’t want to miss the firearms training though and it seemed like I hadn’t which I was glad about.

Guns still scared me, obviously. I couldn’t forget how it had felt in my hands. The weight of it, the jolting recoil… I still felt it. The thud too. I was pretty sure I’d heard someone hit the ground after I’d fired when I was with Mitch. Had I killed someone? There was no way of knowing for certain, I knew that, but that made it worse.

“For some missions, you will be required to carry them, despite the laws,” Hannah continued, drawing my attention again. “It’s easier when it’s international missions where they’re legal but for local ones, we do have procedures to make sure that you’re protected and released swiftly, if necessary.”

That caught my attention. I hadn’t really considered the realities of it before but it made sense that, if we were caught in the UK with an illegal weapon, we would get into trouble. The use of the word ‘released’ was what my brain got stuck on though. It indicated that we could be caught. Arrested.

I'd never been arrested before, I'd never even come close. I didn't know how I react to that, how I would react to police officers. The mere thought of it scared me which didn’t bode well. What would happen? And what were we meant to tell them? We couldn’t exactly explain that we were spies, they’d never believe us. Plus, it felt too risky. We couldn’t go around telling random people that the government recruited and trained a bunch of underage officers, that was far too dangerous. They might tell others, the secret would get out.

“But, that will be covered later or in your other lessons. And, unfortunately, the type of ammunition that you are allowed to use is restricted whilst you are in the induction period,” Hannah said with a heavy sigh. “You will not be able to handle live rounds for a few weeks, minimum, and even then we need to start you on low impact which seems ridiculous to me. Yes?”

She nodded at someone behind me and I turned to look as another girl, Nora, started to speak.

“Why?”

“Why do I find it ridiculous?” Hannah clarified, continuing before Nora had a chance to confirm that she meant that. “Because you need to get used to being around live ammo. The rubber rounds we’ll be using for now can still kill a person but it’s unlikely and therefore pointless. Sure, you might need to use them on an assignment at some point but it’s unlikely which means it is unnecessary to spend weeks working with them.”

She spoke so passionately that I found myself almost wanting to agree with her immediately but I stopped myself. I shouldn’t want to use guns or real bullets. They were too dangerous, too scary. Despite her warning that rubber rounds could still kill, I was grateful that we’d have a more gentle introduction to guns. Maybe it would allow me to move on and stop flinching every time I remembered what it felt like to fire a gun.

“But, unfortunately, we must follow the rules here, even if we don’t like them,” she said with a smile. “Now, have any of you held a gun before? Hands up.”

I started to raise my hand automatically before freezing. It was a stupid mistake and I hurried to scratch my face, pretending that I had lifted my hand for that reason alone, as I silently berated myself. Holding a gun in a fantasy was not the same as holding a gun in real life. But then, I wasn’t in real life in the spy school either so maybe it did count.

No, it didn’t because what would happen if they were to ask when I had held a gun? What if they questioned me about it because guns were illegal, as Hannah had pointed out moments before? Surely, they would want to know who had a gun and to do something about that. I couldn’t exactly tell them that I journeyed to another world in a daydream and hunted down the remains of the lost library of Alexandria before fleeing with some treasure and maybe shooting someone on the way out.

That sounded so ridiculous. I could feel my face colouring even as I thought it. The concept of telling someone that, of sharing that with anyone, made me want to crawl into a hole in the ground and cry from the embarrassment and shame.

They’d kick me out if I told them. I mean, the doctor had asked me about my daydreams and imagination before but that was for a reason, surely. If they thought that I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was my imagination… I’m not sure that I would just get kicked out of the academy.

That wouldn’t be enough, surely. Maybe they’d send me away to somewhere else. Somewhere with more doctors and specialists who would talk to me about my fantasies and daydreams and probably see just how messed up I was. Then what? I wasn’t really sure. I mean… I wasn’t, like, seeing things or hallucinating. I knew what I was doing was fake, a fantasy, nothing more. I just… didn’t want to stop. I wanted them to be real, it was wishful thinking more than anything else.

“Ah, that makes sense,” Hannah said, looking at someone else now. “I didn’t expect anyone else to raise their hand but I thought I’d ask anyway.”

She smiled kindly at someone and it took me a moment to process her words. She made it sound like someone had put their hand up. Someone in the class had held a gun before.

I looked around quickly, my eyes finding Seth immediately. His hand was still moving. Lowering. He’d had his hand up which meant that he had held a gun. People were looking at him worriedly but he didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was pointedly fixed on Hannah, ignoring the concerned looks that he was getting.

There was something about his expression that made me feel bad though. It was too careful, too controlled. He was fighting to keep his face neutral, to not show how he really felt. It didn’t work though. The boy sitting next to him shuffled away slightly and a wince crossed his face.

Some people were still staring at him and I knew that I was too. I felt bad. I should have looked away because I was adding to the judgement, to the pressure, but I couldn’t. I wanted to know more. Him having used a gun didn’t scare me as much as it should have. It might not have been for a bad reason. He could have been in the same situation that I was in when I had shot someone. It was probably self-defence, a life or death situation where he had no other choice.

I mean, that’s what happened to me so I couldn’t exactly judge him for doing the same. Plus, surely, if he had used a gun and killed someone, they would know. Hannah sounded like she already knew so it was unlikely that he’d used a gun to kill someone, it must have been self-defence. The academy wouldn’t have recruited someone who was dangerous, not like that.

But then… spies were dangerous. That was kind of the point. We were meant to be dangerous, to be able to kill people like that so maybe it wouldn’t have stopped them from recruiting Seth. Maybe it would have made them want him to join more.

No. I couldn’t believe that. I’d barely spoken to Seth but he seemed so sweet, so kind. He wasn’t a killer, I was almost sure of it.

Hannah continued talking and most of the class looked back at her but I couldn’t. My gaze was still fixed on Seth. After a few seconds, his eyes darted towards me. His expression was timid, almost scared. I think he expected me to look away or to be scared of him but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. Instead, I forced my lips to lift in a slight but supportive smile.

“No volunteers?” Hannah said, her voice barely breaking through to me. “Well, I expected that much. You lot are brave but not stupid. I’ll just have to choose one then. Okay… Grace. To the front of the class, please.”

My head whipped around so fast that my neck clicked and I stared at Hannah with wide eyes. I’d not paid attention to anything that she had been saying for the last few minutes so I had no clue what she had chosen me to do. My heart was pounding with fear. I wasn’t used to that, I didn’t ignore my teachers that much in real life so I didn’t know what to do.

“What?” I heard myself ask, the word sounding unsteady.

“Come up here,” she said with a smile. “You’re my volunteer for this part.”

I tried to work out what I had been selected for but I couldn’t. There was nothing on the board behind her, her hands were empty and the class were watching me fearfully. They looked relieved too though and that scared me. Why were they relieved?

I couldn’t fight it. My body started to follow her orders, even though I didn’t want it to. Soon, too soon, I was standing at the front of the class, facing her.

“Great. So, as I was saying, part of the training is learning how to act around guns and normalising it because, at some point when you’re on assignment, someone will pull a gun on you. It’s also fairly likely that you will get shot at some point,” she told the class.

I felt ice start to grip my heart. Was she going to shoot me? Was that what I had inadvertently volunteered for? My hands started to go numb and I couldn’t do anything other than stare at her.

But then, surely, she wouldn’t shoot me. They couldn’t get away with just shooting people, could they?

“I know, it sounds very scary and it is at first but that’s also something we need to work on. One of the things we teach you to do here is to not be scared of gunfire because, if you are, when someone pulls a gun, you’ll panic. You need to get to the stage where you know how to react, how to disarm a person, how not to flinch too much when someone starts shooting and how to deal with a bullet wound. But, of course, that last one will be covered in your first aid class,” she told us with a smile.

My mind was racing as it tried to keep up with what she was saying whilst also trying to predict what she was going to do to me. She didn’t appear to have a gun on her, as far as I could tell, so she couldn’t shoot me, it had to be something else that she wanted from me. But then, what if there were guns stashed somewhere in the classroom?

I looked around the room, trying to spot where they could be and my eyes fell on the teacher's desk. My heart felt like it stuttered. It would make sense for the guns to be in there but I couldn’t see the drawers from where I was standing. They’d have to be locked, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t just leave a gun out for anyone to use, that felt like a recipe for disaster.

What could I do? I tried to plan something, anything. I could leave the world, escape before I found out whatever Hannah had planned. That was the safest option by far. I could leave this world and never look back. Never find out if I was about to be shot or how to use a gun or whatever else we were going to learn in the academy. That was fine. I could live my life without knowing that.

But then part of me did want to know. Part of me wanted to train and learn and become a spy. It sounded so fun, so cool, even if I was terrified and shaking as I stood at the front of the classroom. I had to deal with the fear for now, ignore it. there was no other way.

Leaving felt too weak, too easy. It was an option and I knew that but if I did it, I wasn’t sure that I would ever return. It would feel like I was running away from things again, just like I had with Mitch. I had gotten too scared there and ran away so that I wouldn’t have to find out what happened. If I did that again… it could become a pattern. I could spend my life finding things that excited me, things that I wanted to do, before running away at the first sign of something scary.

It was weak, cowardly. I didn’t want to be like that, I couldn’t. I… why even live like that? I’d never actually do anything that I wanted to do, never actually achieve anything. I’d spiral, running away sooner and sooner each time until I was nothing and did nothing with my life. I’d cower away in my bedroom, stuck at home forever.

I could almost see it now. It would be a miserable life. Yes, my dad would probably love it. He worried about me and liked to know that I was safe and as happy as possible, I knew that, but it meant that I’d need to put up with my mom forever. I’d spend every day for the rest of my life in the same house as her.

That thought chilled me but not as much as my next one. What if that was exactly what happened to her? What if she fell into a pattern of fear and running away whenever things got too scary? It would make sense. I mean, she told incredulous stories about herself, of her being offered the world. According to the tales, she’d almost married foreign princes, been offered jobs running huge companies, but she turned them all down.

Why? For my dad? No, that wasn’t it. She didn’t care about him like that, she wouldn’t have turned anything down for him, I knew that. It must have been something else and it would make sense if it was because she was scared. Because she didn’t want to push herself that far. I mean, the stories could have all been an exaggeration anyway. I would have believed that too but there was probably a small kernel of truth to them.

That realisation steeled me. I would not be like my mom. I would not run away from this. Lifting my chin higher and taking a deep steadying breath, I looked away from the teacher, examining the class. Most of them were watching her but they were shooting fearful glances at me. They were scared too, worried about what was to come.

That was fine. I would let myself feel fear, I couldn’t exactly stop it, but I refused to let it control my life.

“Okay,” Hannah said, finally turning towards me. “So, we’re going to jump straight into your training today. You all need to get used to being around weapons, as well as becoming accustomed to the noise and, for you, Grace, the sensation. How does that sound?”

She raised her eyebrows at me expectantly but I wasn’t sure how to answer her. I had to, I knew that, but what could I say?

“Alright,” I said cautiously.

She was going to shoot me, I knew that, but at least it was going to be a rubber bullet, I was pretty sure. She said that they could still kill a person but… I would not leave the fantasy. I refused to run away.

Hannah’s smile grew.

“Great. Because it’s your first day and you’re unused to this, I’ll get you protective wear,” she told me. “The bullet, if it hits you somewhere it shouldn’t, can still do quite a lot of damage and because you’re so new to this, you might flinch still and I don’t want to have to send you to the hospital wing so soon!”

Her tone was so cheery. It sounded more like she was talking about the weather than about shooting, and potentially killing me. I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not, if she was making a point to seem normal, like this was something she did every day.

Maybe it was. Maybe she was used to it. That thought somehow made me feel both better and worse but it also made me feel more determined. I was going first too and I was very aware of that. The way I reacted was important, it would set the expectation for how bad it was. If I reacted badly, if I got hurt, the others would be more scared.

There was a small protective part of myself that wanted to protect them, even though we’d only just met and I had no real reason to feel that way. I wanted to stop them from being scared.

“Okay, we’ll need to go into the other room for this part. Shall we?” Hannah asked me.

“Sure,” I made myself say.

“Great! Follow me!”

She strode towards the door and, after a slight pause, I followed. There was a flurry of movement as the rest of the class stood and began racing after us. I could feel their eyes on me, feel the curiosity and fear, but I forced myself not to look at anyone. If I saw their fear, it would crack the fragile shield I had constructed that kept me strong.

I followed Hannah along the corridor into the next room and looked around in shock. I recognised the room. Katie, Abbie and I had found it when we’d been exploring before. It was the shooting range.

It looked ever so slightly different now. The paper targets were gone but that was the only change. It concerned me though. Did that mean that someone here had been using the range? Was it Seth?

“Okay, form a semi-circle, everyone!” Hannah ordered and the class hurried to do so.

I stood awkwardly to one side. No one seemed to want to stand too close to me. It was like they were worried about me being contagious. Like, if they did stand next to me, they’d be chosen to be shot too. I understood the fear, I’d probably be doing the same thing as them if I were in their position but, for now, I forced myself to ignore them and watch Hannah as she approached one of the lockers.

Her body blocked the keypad as she entered the code before pulling the door open. She rooted around for a moment before glancing back at me. Her eyes narrowed as they slowly scrutinised my body, making me feel self-conscious. She looked away again before long, pulling out a black padded long-sleeved shirt and some bulky trousers.

“There you go,” she told me as she passed me the surprisingly heavy clothes. “They should fit over your school uniform. Do you want to put them on now whilst I explain what they are and what the plan is?”

“Umm… sure,” I said, aware that I had no other options.

I mean, I could have said no but there was no point in that. It wouldn’t help me at all. I liked that she gave me a choice though. It made things feel more… like I was actually part of it, like I could chose what I wanted to do. I hadn’t volunteered but it made me feel more like I had. Like it was under my control.

It felt nothing like my normal school, I realised as I started to struggle into the strangely stiff clothes. I’d put the top part on first and I quickly realised that was a mistake. My arms barely bent, it was a struggle to step into the trousers and pull them up. I almost fell but Seth appeared from nowhere, quickly catching my arm and holding me steady.

I sent him an embarrassed but grateful smile as Hannah continued speaking.

“So, the outfit that Grace is climbing into right now is made of a state of the art Kevlar hybrid. It’s capable of stopping real bullets so a rubber bullet will be nothing more than a punch to the stomach,” she said with a smile that made it sound like a punch to the stomach was nothing to be wary of. “Now, when you’re ready, Grace, if you want to just go into the first aisle there and walk along to the end.”

I froze, almost finished pulling the trousers all the way up and glanced at the aisle she’d gestured to. For some reason, that scared me. I wasn’t sure why but it made me more scared. I think it was because the aisles were used for real guns and, even though she’d said that she wouldn’t be using a real bullet, I doubted her.

But I couldn’t run away, just because I was scared. It took a minute for me to be able to move again but I forced myself to finish pulling the trousers on and looked back at Hannah before taking a deep breath.

My feet felt heavy as I crossed the room and began walking down the aisle. I didn’t want to do it. My body screamed at me to stop moving, to turn and run or flee the fantasy but I focused on placing one foot in front of the other. Hannah was still talking somewhere behind me but I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear anything other than my shaking breaths.

Finally, I reached the end and looked down at the bullet-littered ground before turning slowly. I wasn’t sure how far away I was but it felt far.

“Are you ready?” Hannah shouted down to me.

“Yes,” I called back but my voice was too shaky, too timid.

She didn’t respond so I lifted a hand, giving her a thumbs up.

What was I doing? It was so stupid, so dangerous. I didn’t have to be doing it, I didn’t need to stay there. It wasn’t cowardly to run, it was safe.

“Okay, I’m going to do a countdown,” Hannah called, lifting something in her hands and pointing it at me.

I couldn’t see what it was from the distance, it was just a black shape, but I knew that it was a gun. She was pointing a gun at me. I should run.

I wanted to stay but I wanted to run more.

“Try not to flinch or move and keep your arms out of the way as much as possible,” she told me. “Three, two—”

There was a deafening popping noise before she reached one but I barely heard it. Pain exploded in my stomach, my visions turned white and I opened my eyes in reality.

I was going to be sick.