Her Name Was Sheila

His name was Milton. That’s what eventually did him in. Milton McCrawler. As if that last name wasn’t enough his mother, for some reason he never fully grasped, named him Milton.

Now if this was 1955, it probably wouldn’t have bother him as much. He probably wouldn’t have been pushed around so much in school, probably wouldn’t be looked down on even as an adult. We’ll never know. Well, there is one thing we do know. If it had been 1955, Milton wouldn’t have had the idea to go to the store, buy the weapons so eagerly provided to him and proceed to gun down his office. Every last one of them.

Except Sheila. Sweet Sheila. Sheila never made fun of his name. She even defended him once. Milton remembered it fondly. It was near the coffee machine, at 12:34pm, on the 5th of June, 2011. He also remembered thinking it was fate that it was near that same coffee machine he found her hiding. He didn’t blame her for hiding, even as she cried harder as he approached her. He knew he had to look a mess, covered in the blood of the people who made him so miserable for three years, four hours and thirty-five minutes. It was her fear, in fact, that made him realize his next step. See, Milton has planned this day for a while; three years, three hours and thirty-five minutes to be exact. Sheila was the one anomaly. He had never planned for there to be survivors. Well, a survivor.

As Sheila cowered in front of him, biting one of her beautiful lips to keep from screaming, Milton decided. And then he turned around, walked to the elevator, pressed the button for the ground floor and smiled.

But this story isn’t about Milton or his lifelong struggles revolving around his name. This story is about Sheila and what happened to her after the police shot down Milton McCrawler on the ground floor in the building of her very first job.

This is a story of after.