(hey there Gurochan ._.;;
long time reader, first time writer. I've never done this before. I'm a little nervous. In the words of Max Bialystock: "heeeeeeellllp me."
I'm open to suggestions. This is going to start out all right, and get swiftly worse for Rebeka as I continue writing. Trust me.
So, one quick disclaimer: Firepoint is a fictitious place, as is the Bishop University discussed herein. Any semblances to real universities/towns/people, in any way, shape or form, is purely coincidental.)

It was tradition- it had been so for years. The end of the year at Bishop University, in Firepoint, was a time of great joy for most of the students- and after all, why shouldn't it be?
Four students of each graduating class were nominated, and of these, the election would be held. For all of November, the halls of the so-designated building were plastered with posters for the grand day. The first snows of the year almost inevitably came around that time, and the celebratory ceremony- held outside- usually had the gorgeous sparkle of the early-morning frost. The student and faculty bodies of Bishop looked forward, with great anticipation, to that day- with only one or two exceptions.
This year, the first two nominated were very popular, as usual. Kirsten Smith and Luther Czerwinski had friends in high places. though the two weren't quite close themselves, both were friends to one and all. The next was Winston Violet, mostly due to his devoted and very emphatic little circle of friends. None of these really came as a surprise to anyone, and each seemed (on the face of things) to be quite excited about it all.
Predictably enough, though, the fourth candidate was chosen for quite a different reason:
Unlike popular Kirsten and Luther, or dynamic Winston, Rebeka Samson had been chosen for the sole reason that she was horribly, terribly, and quite helplessly unpopular.
She had come in mid-semester. She had no chance. She was desperately awkward in social situations, and most people only spent time with her out of pity. That would have been all right, but the problem with that was that she wasn't ugly.
She desperately clung to fashion trends. She dyed her hair brown from her natural red, and walked submissively along the sides of the hallway, stepping aside for anyone and everyone. She was pretty, and that almost made it worse.
Rebeka was horrified when she heard the results of the nomination.

"You can't let this happen to me!"
She had weaseled, somehow, an appointment with the assistant to dean. She was nearly on all fours on top of the man's desk, appealing to any ounce of humanity, her voice cracking with grief.
"It's just an election, Rebeka."
He didn't understand! He didn't understand at all! This was madness, she thought, her lungs aching with the effort it took to hold back tears- well, that and the paperweight digging into her diaphragm.
"I'll lose," she breathed.
Somewhat desperately, she tried to catch his attention on her low-cut shirt. Amazingly enough, she failed and he looked at her in a bemused, but slightly concerned manner, as if one of her eyes was slowly going through the spectrum of visible light.
"Don't resign yourself just yet. You might win."
"I'll lose." She reiterated.
"College is a place of new frontiers," He argued.
"Don't think I don't know what this is about!" Rebeka barked. She backed off the paperweight, and inadvertently caught his attention with her breasts. Offended, she pulled up her shirt and shot him a look. Somehow, the irony of it didn't strike her.
"You hate me," She spat, grabbing her jacket from the chair in front of his desk. "You all hate me."
She whirled, and haltingly tried to storm out of the office in a huff. She waited for him to stop her, or allege that he didn't hate her. He didn't, and continued staring at her.
She stopped halfway out the door, looked back over her shoulder, and stared at him, bloodshot green eyes failing at a foreboding blaze.
"You'd be fine if I died, wouldn't you?"
He gave her another bemused look, and again, said nothing, refusing to encourage her tirade.
"I hope you die." Rebeka screamed back at his unspoken agreement, and slammed the door behind her.

Days slipped by.

Oh, what Rebeka Samson wouldn't have given to be given a frightened berth in the hallway, or at least, to be ignored. Instead, today, as she stared in helpless sorrow up at the glossy 8-by-ten photograph of Winston's bright smile and the lovely bold Times New Roman caption imploring the students:
"Don't Vote for Winston Violet."
Don't vote for Winston Violet.
Never had such a cruel joke, she thought, been played on her. Winston would win. She knew it, even if he didn't. He had a wonderfully dorky charm about him. He even had a gap in his front teeth, because his parents were poor and he wanted to go to college instead of having braces. His sense of humor almost always involved a minority at the short end of the stick. It was sickening what a perfect candidate he was for failure.
Self-pityingly, she tried to shield herself in the fake fur collar of her jacket from her new Friends.
Oh, her Friends- this was different than just being 'friends.' Her few, old friends would have left her alone to wallow in her own sorrow like she wanted. Her Friends were numerous, and never left her alone. They had been trotting everywhere after her since they heard she was on the candidate list, and she found herself assailed at all hours by smiling faces and bright words of encouragement.
"Buck up, Rebeka!" An adorable, freckled freshman smiled at her. "You're going to lose!"
"I don't want to lose," she moaned, despite the fact that she had only half-heard the girl (being too involved in deep, tragic thoughts of her own.)
Her Friends laughed, slapped her on the back, and steered her away from Winston's poster past more of Winston's posters, and into the circular main room of the Electorate Hall, where all the posters and advertising had to be done.

It was there that her little crowd ran right into Kirsten.
Kirsten, Rebeka noted with envy, was almost alone. Only one or two of her Photography Club friends were huddled with her, one at either shoulder. Kirsten, Rebeca noted secondly, was in tears. Rebeka's Friends all froze at once, and moved, like a school of fish surrounding food, to half-encircle her.
"Kirsten, Kirsten," The vocal redhead purred.
"Shut up, you dumb bitch," Kirsten snarled at her, looking up from her place on the bench.
"What's the matter, Kirsten? We're not voting for you," She said.
"Shut up, she said! You guys know she wanted to win."
A shocked silence settled over the crowd.

Ah, an explanation was in order. Nobody but the staff really wanted anyone to win the election. After all, the winner was the one with the most votes. The one with the most votes, then, lost. In the end it was the loser that really won. It was all very confusing to say the least, but so far as Rebeka could tell, getting the most votes meant something bad was happening. The downside to this was that, depending on who you were talking to- student or teacher- winning and losing could have two very different connotations.

Kirsten ignored her friend as her eyes caught Rebeka. She stood up.
"This is all your fault," She snapped, pointing at her. Rebeka flinched a little.
"You're ruining this election! I was going to be miserable about it! I was going to win. It was going to go down in history, the only at Bishop ever to win on purpose. And you're ruining it, because you don't want it even more than I do."

Rebeka was utterly baffled, and said what was possibly the worst thing to say under the circumstances:
"I don't want to win or lose. You can do whatever you want. I don't even know what this is about."
Every word of it was the truth. Rebeka just wanted to be left out of the matter.

And so it was that Kirsten lunged up from her place at the bench, and made a valiant attempt to stab Rebeka in the face with what looked like a keychain.

It was really more than just an attempt. In fact, in missing her face, Kirsten's metal cross keychain (about five inches long, with four of bottom spire) stabbed neatly into Rebeka's right eye.
On impact, her face tilted back, and instead of screaming Rebeka found herself just a little bit shocked.
It honestly hurt more as she hit the ground, cracking her skull neatly on the white marble with a very tearful and emotionally hurt Kirsten sitting astride her torso, twisting the cross in her eye like a corkscrew in a wine cork.
It took Rebeka a moment to realize that her perspective was suddenly quite flawed, and as she did, she screamed. Her Friends and Kirsten's friends circled around them, looking very excited about the whole thing- at least, the half of them that Rebeka could see.
Her ears rang. Wrapping her hands around Kirsten's arm, she tried shoving her away. Kirsten bore down harder, the two arms of the metal cross biting into her skin, making the bone of her eye socket feel like it was splintering. Kirsten was quite a bit stronger and bigger than Rebeka was- she wasn't the skinny little thing Rebeka had spent years starving herself to be, and it took all of her adrenaline-fueled strength to escape from her grasp.
Frenzied, Rebeka tried to dash away, only to be caught and held by her Friends.
"Don't go, Rebeka!"
"Rebeka, come on!"
"Play fair!"

"Let me go," Rebeka screamed, both trying to cover her eye and worm through the crowd. Behind her, she heard Kristen crying.
"Fuck you! Let me go!" She howled more desperately, thrashing. She felt horribly dizzy. Was she bleeding? She thought she was bleeding. (In fact, she was pretty much covered in blood.) She continued screaming profanity in a horribly unfashionable, disheveled way. Her face hurt like hell. She vaguely became aware that she was falling from her Friends' collective shoving back toward Kirsten.
No longer able to compensate, Rebeka fell to the floor, shoes squeaking in protest as she tried to scuttle backwards, her whole body weak and now feeling as if it was going to explode in a hail of red confetti and agony.
Staring fearfully up at Rebeka in pale-faced, tremendous horror, she could only mouth more pleas.
Kirsten was crying again, holding her bloodied keychain in one hand and covering her face with the other. Her friends seemed to be consoling her.
"Why don't you just- just- just try to win, like everybody else?" She screamed at a bewildered Rebeka, and proceeded to whip about on-heel, and storm away.

( Feedback get? I know it's shitting confusing right now. It's my first attempt. Anyone have any suggestions as to where I could take this? )

( Well, I hate to leave a task unfinished. I'll just keep going until someone sees fit to help me out. )

The hospital at Firepoint was one of the best. It was well-renowned, never abused a soul, and Rebeka hated every inch of it for the time that she was there.
Although for most of the time she had been doped within an inch of unconsciousness, Rebeka liked to pretend she had suffered horribly there while making every effort possible to delay her recovery.
Her new world seemed curiously flat- the most she could get out of anyone was that the extensive trauma she had endured had, well, fucked her up. She complained extensively about her school, and in response she was greeted with laughter and sympathetic stories because, it seemed, everyone in Firepoint had attended Bishop University. The reasoning of it escaped her.

The week prior to her release, she requested a transfer, and was denied. The denial came through in a cold e-mail addressed from the Dean:
"Miss Samson,
I cannot approve your request at this time. As you know it's simply the wrong season for it- after all, you're a candidate for the Class Election! I'm sure when all is said and done you'll be-"
and in a rage, she stopped reading. She felt more and more panicked as the inexpiable flow of time seemed to steer her straight back to Bishop. It had become her own personal, inevitable Hell, and the horrible inhibition she had felt at exploring further just what "winning" her Class Election meant began to melt away.

Sitting in bed one afternoon, she questioned a sweet male orderly whose name she had deemed to pointless to remember about it.
"You went to Bishop, didn't you?" She asked him, almost aggressively, as he changed the bandaging on her face. Her stitched-shut eyelid was slightly infected, due entirely to her incessant poking at it in the hopes that it would delay her return. Perhaps she would even miss the Election.
"Of course I did. Best years of my life," he smiled- or he seemed like he was smiling. She couldn't really see.
"You remember the class election."
"Of course I do! My sister ran. I voted for her."
He still sounded casual, happy. It made Rebeka sick.
"Does she work here?" She asked, trying to keep her disdain from her voice. To her surprise, he laughed.
"Who, Tasha? Work here? No, silly, she won! Of course she doesn't work here! She had better things in store for her."
"Why not?" She jumped in. She slapped his hands away as quickly as she could, tilting her face to get a better look at him. "Why doesn't she? Where does she work? What happened when she won?"

But his laughter drowned her out, and he whisked away as quickly as he had come, and the following day she was brought straight back to Bishop University.

As she was wheel-chaired back into her dormitory building, she caught a glimpse of Winston Violet- it was almost impossible not to notice him- laughing (at her, although she didn't know this) himself into a conniption at a table in the center courtyard, which the cubical building was built around.
She frowned at him and tried to look menacing- and noticed a gash in his face, arcing almost gracefully from his left temple downward over his cheekbone. Its length was meshed with clumsy stitches, like tiny black ants marching into his unkempt black hair.
She hated him instantly, and resolved herself to tell him so.

Rebeka made better progress coming down from her apartment than she had going up. She was no longer worried about persuading the hospital to let her stay, and so she bounded down the flights of stairs back to the lobby, and its central courtyard, like a man possessed, hell-bent on telling Winston (and his sick sense of humor) off.
She slammed the doors open, and marched up to him, her face turning red as he began to laugh again at her, erasing all doubt in her mind.
"What are you think you're laughing at, you ass?" Rebeka demanded, glaring at him. He took one look at her and half-tried to contain his laughter.
"Let's be smart, here," He asked her, hopping off the table he was sitting on. "What do you think I'm laughing at?"
"I think- I know- you're laughing at me. I want to know why."
He looked down at her disdainfully for a moment, then grinned again.
"All right, I'll throw you a bone. You're irrepressibly stupid. Look at yourself. Look at your face," he sneered, and prodded her bandaged eye (or lack thereof.)
Rebeka turned bright pink, slapped his hand away and backed up. "Don't touch me! Who do you think you are? You don't even know me," She spat.
"Sure I do! We're running in the same election, aren't we?"
He advanced towards her. "Everybody knows everybody. We're losing together, you know," He smiled charmingly, to which Rebeka frowned. She felt nervous. He seemed a little crazy- then again, they all seemed a little crazy. She felt like the only sane person left. Self-pityingly and mentally, she bemoaned her fate.
"Last time I checked, someone thought I was going to win." She snapped at him, and shuffled backwards a little more. The doors, now about twenty feet away, seemed much further.
"You're talking about Kirsten, right? Don't worry about her, she's loony as a cuckoo."
The bird joke made her cringe and feel ashamed to have even detected it. He smiled even wider at that, a flicker of pain in his china blue eyes as his stitches stretched upward. She could almost hear them stretching, and a chill ran down her spine. She shuffled around a nearby table, positioning it between her and Winston. He paused at that, leaning forward over the table.
"She's talking about Winning-Winning. I'm talking about /really/ winning. Losing-Winning."
"That doesn't make any sense," She objected. "Just leave me alone, okay? I don't want any trouble. I don't want to get stabbed again."
She eyed his face, wondered what had happened. Had Kirsten gotten at him too?
"It makes sense. Trust me. Look, you have two options with four names- you can Win-Win, which is the same as Lose-Winning. If you Win-Win, then you lose, really. Kirsten wants to Lose-Win. Or Win-win. Same thing. When teachers are talking about Win-winning, they think it's actually winning, but you and I don't. Right?"
Befuddled, she stood across from him. She was going to bolt for the door, but this confused her too much. He seemed to take her silence as consent.
"If you don't, and you lose, then you Lose-Lose, which is the same as Win-Losing. So win-losing and lose-winning are your only options, unless you die in the preliminaries."

"Die in the preliminaries?" She echoed, breathlessly. Her eyes went wide. "You're kidding, right? That's metaphorical?"
He started laughing again. He cracked up, falling facefirst against the table, going through all the theatrics. She staggered backward. She had enough of his craziness. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him off anymore.
He looked up suddenly, with an expression that was horribly serious.
"See, that's what I mean when I say you're stupid. Of course people die."
He crawled up onto the table, slid across it, and walked briskly towards her. She felt jumpy, but stood her ground, bracing herself. She wasn't going to puss out and run from him- after all, hadn't Kirsten gotten at him, too?
"People die every year," He smiled brightly, with a startlingly familiar cheery helplessness that made her skin crawl. "That's what makes the Election worthwhile."
His hands came forward suddenly, grabbing her shoulders with a strength she hadn't expected from such a geeky-looking kid. She twisted in his grasp, fear spiking suddenly.
"Get off me!" She screamed at him, and fought him off. She wasn't going to submit herself to any more insanity today. She wouldn't have it. She whirled and ran, her flat shoes crunching on the white gravel as she hurtled toward the door.
"Hey, don't go! Come on, I just want to get to know you!" He called. She heard him running behind her, and felt hunted.
"Fuck off!" She screamed after her, and grabbed the door.
As she fought to open it, he lunged at her like a lion on a gazelle, slamming her into the thick glass and dragging her to the ground. She clung to the door's handle as long as she could, but her trembling fingers weren't up for the task. She fell to the ground with a thump, his arms encircling her midsection.

going good so far...although I have a feeling the winner get's executed I hope the unwilling one wins as unwilling executions are more fun to read about

MOAR!! Yeah!

i sure hope rebeka gets to live...and grow up to be a demolitions industry worker to take revenge on that school

i see what your doing there