I think the van break-in with their arrest on Jan 30th was the initial turning point that helped solidify the half jokes and kicked-around shared fantasies into something more serious and concrete. The shock and humiliation of being caught and arrested by cops would’ve made them join in solidarity over their stewing anger regarding the entire system and it’s authority dictating their lives. Once processed into the Diversion Program, they had to buckle down for the entire year completing various reform classes and working community service on weekends and such. They were held responsible and accountable to complete various steps in the ‘systems process’, and to jump through the various hoops that authority doled out to them. They could not miss appointments nor be late. They had to be accountable for good grades in school and to show that their work was adequate enough. At the same time, they had to fall in line with the school ‘system’ too. So, they were under The System’s thumb all the way around from every angle (And this never bodes very well for Indigo Children having to follow all the rules. 😉 ) They knew they had to just lay low, ‘be good’ (or at least look like it) and hope for an early release. I’m sure from about March ‘98 until when school got out in May for summer break, they must’ve been really annoyed and exhausted with the program and fitting it in between school and work. Now it was summer time, their supposed free time, and they were still stuck in the program capitulating to authority. Though, the fact that they were no longer taking up half their schedule with school, meant they had more idle free time on their hands to collaborate, flesh things out and seriously plot. So, I think the summer of ‘98 is when they really began to jump in and initiate the entire thing in concrete detail. In the Basement Tapes filmed in March, Dylan mentions they’d been planning it for ‘8 months’ and Eric said ‘at least.’

I think when they got back to the library the last time, they walked in, maybe paused briefly at the security scanners near the entrance doors and quickly assessed that everyone had left. At this point, the fascination was no longer about their kills scattered about the library. The thrill had evaporated and they were in a disillusioned funk over the overall failure of NBK.   So, no, I don’t think they  walked around in the library gloating or even just to linger and survey the damage.  They were sick of it and the walls were closing in. The thought of getting caught and arrested would be a fate worse than death.  The attention was now on the presence of the cops and the sense of being surrounded. The library exit door leading out to where the south-west entrance is located was now propped open from the students that had fled form the library and emergency vehicles were milling about just outside. Cops were there too – some keeping an eye on that door. This caught the boys’ notice as they walked further on towards the front of the library. I seem to recall from the 11K that it was eerie because one of the boys (from the description it sounded like Dylan) was seen visibly standing off in the distance from that door looking back at the cops just outside. The Lost Boy looking rather like a ghost in the smokey haze of the library staring outside the open doorway. They were face-to-face for moments and I believe some fire was exchanged in a cursory way by the boys at the cops.  Since nothing else had gone as planned, the only focus at this point had become about ‘killing cops’ so they progressed to the noises outside the main windows to get a good view of all the attention they had literally surrounded by cars, cops, swat, media, helicopters. The two exchanged fire with the vulnerable cops and ambulances on the ground trying to shuttle wounded into safety with cops simultaneously firing back up at them.  The concerted battle was the boys’ last ‘hurrah’ – their vendetta against “the authority” which also served the purpose of attempting to attain their planned death wish: to be killed by cops. At some point in the brief showdown, they must have realized it was futile. They were rapidly running out of ammo and realized that even the fantasy they’d envisioned with someone else taking their lives was not to be in the cards. At this point, the two turned from the window and had begun to quickly survey a decent enough spot within their sights for them to end their lives. They were now weary, disillusioned and desperate to take care of the problem. The back corner of the library would do.   

There wasn’t time to think; simply do what needed to be done. They strode over to their designated graveyard with resigned purpose. The only way to do this properly and without hesitation was to do it as quick as possible. Seems Eric would have been single minded in purpose, like a soldier, all business-like. Dylan would’ve been considering how he wanted to go and which personal affects he would remove off of himself. While Dylan was doing all of this, Eric was busying himself, already getting down into position and adjusting Arlene. Any exchange of words would have been hasty and not overly considered. Too much delay and hesitation would make things more difficult. The deed needed to be done, the sooner the better, especially for Eric who likely had a haunted look on his face because he quickly had to come to terms with suicide by his own hand in addition to the failure of NBK.. By contrast,  Dylan would’ve been quietly methodical, calm if not lethargic in movement. He had waited for this moment for a long time and he was mindful having fantasy-rehearsed his death several different ways before. Dylan prepared for his suicide in an almost ritual-like way by removing certain items and putting them into a small pile by himself. Somewhere in there, Dylan decided to light a Molotov which only partially exploded on the table nearby.  Yet, another failure.. Eric looked up at Dylan and the exchange might have been a nod of:  “Nice knowing you man, see you on the flip side.” And just as Dylan looked away for a split second to remove something, he would’ve been stunned by how abruptly his friend had managed to have done it, pulled the trigger: the deafening sound of the shotgun, the splattering of Eric’s brains hitting the ceiling and the blood projectiling everywhere, including on his own clothes and arm. Just in that split second, he had experienced Eric’s death peripherally while in the midst of shedding his belongings. He may have thought Eric could have waited for them to go out together, instead that was not to be the reality just as none of it had gone the way they thought it would that day.  Dylan was then literally all alone and just the thought of that in and of itself was more than enough motivation to shakily position his TEC a hair’s breath from his skull and blow himself away from his miserable existence as well. I would imagine that he’d have closed his eyes and took one last tremulous breathe while holding the vision of the Halcyons within his mind’s eye, where freedom and bliss awaited him.“ I didn’t like life too much & I know I’ll be happier wherever the fuck I go. So I’m gone. …”

And, well, that’s approximately how I envision it?  The moment they are back up in the library that last time would’ve been a very haunting, disillusioning, hardcore-gritty experience for them. It was Them versus The World which was closing in on them like a vice. Think Star Wars trash compactor.  No time to look around to admire their (rather meager) destructive handiwork they were responsible for and no time to say thoughtful “hey bro, you were the best man. I love you, dude” sentiments. Just them stuck in the library looking back at NBK as the biggest flop of their lives only to further define them as losers. Even the very last molotov that Dylan threw on the table seemed to say “nope, you two are made of fail.”   You would’ve thought Dylan might’ve wanted to pull the trigger first since he was eager for death or that Eric and Dylan would’ve waited for one another to be ready, to do it idealistically together as Bros in Arms – but instead, the colossal failure of NBK was enough to make a suddenly extremely self-loathing Eric want to blow his brains first and asap, leaving Dylan to go it alone.  The enormous sense of aloneness in that moment for Dylan would’ve topped all others in his life. 

This was much more long-winded than I intended.  Hope it helped satisfy your question and then some! And thank you so much for the kind words. 🙂  

Lisa Kreutz’ (page 62 of the 11k) account: The boys entered the library and started yelling then and one said something about blowing up the library. She heard an explosion inside the library then and she heard one of the gunmen say that they hated the school and that the school had messed them up. Then the shooting began inside the library, setting the fire alarm off. The girls pulled the chairs in closer to the table to hide behind but that didn’t stop the bullets when [Dylan Klebold] began to shoot under their table. Lisa’s right wrist was grazed by a stray bullet. She heard the “Do you believe in God?” exchange between Valeen Schnurr, which occurred about the same time that [Dylan] fired again under the table where Lisa was still hiding. She was hit several times, sustaining multiple gunshot wounds to shoulder, hand and both arms. She lay bleeding in the library for 2 1/2 hours, unable to move due to the severity of her injuries, before she was rescued by officials on scene. She was the last survivor to be pulled from the library.

When the shooters entered the library she heard one say: “Are you still with me? We’re still gonna do this, right?” 

Which time the shooters entered the library- that is, when her mind recalls she heard this –  is key.  

Which boy said this really is hinged on when Lisa Kreutz actually heard the alleged question and whether her recall of precisely when she heard this is correct.  If Lisa had heard one of them say this at the start of the library massacre, while the boys were first approaching the library doors, then I believe that Eric was asking Dylan for reassurance that he was still on board with the ‘make it up as we go along Plan B’ – to continue on with their KMFDM agenda to shoot, kill, maim classmates trapped in the library. This would’ve been before Eric had broke his nose and so he would’ve still been very enthusiastic and pumped up, thirsty for kills and revenge, in addition to the mere taste of it they got outside with some potshots at students on the school grounds.   Upon entering the school, they’d stalled and dicked around in the hallway by shooting and throwing pipe bombs at lockers and walls and randomly shooting at fleeing students in an ineffective free-for-all manner. The two even separated a good bit of time. Dylan killed no one in the hall, Eric killed Dave Sanders.  So, Eric was ready to head into that library and take revenge up close and in a personal way.  Was Dylan ready for this?  Eric had to be sure he was ready for the next level of destruction that was left up to them to accomplish since the bombs hadn’t yet gone off, and might never.

Since, Lisa was heavily wounded and remained in the library somewhere near  an unconscious Patrick Ireland the entire time after all the other students fled, her recall may have been hazy as to when exactly this alleged question was posed. It’s quite possible that it occurred when the boys returned for the very last time to the library.  By then, their mindset had become more distracted and aimless after failing to make the bombs go off in the Commons.  The blood lust against classmates had fizzled and committing suicide was rapidly becoming forefront in their minds since the cops were now closing in.  If the alleged discussion had occurred the second time, the last time, they ventured to the library, I believe Dylan would have asked Eric for reassurance that he too was committed to the act of suicide because this is what Dylan wanted most of all out of that entire day.  Oh sure, the rest was the ‘have fun!’ journey but the end was his destination he so longed for.  

I do believe that Eric may have been hesitant to commit suicide at some point or another, since he was seen to be remorseful on the Basement tape videos made two and a half weeks before the incident, and in their final testament video, Eric was seen to be saying how much he would miss his boss, Bob, at Blackjack, how he would miss some special people, how he wished he could go back to Michigan and see some old friends first, and how he knew his parents would be so hurtful, and his statement of “to everyone I love, I’m sorry about all this” or something to that similar affect. Dylan, on the other hand, was on a suicide mission from the very beginning, and made his suicide a key point in NBK, more than a year prior to the incident. Eric had also wrote that he and Dylan could escape after the incident, and destroy as much as possible, move to Mexico or an island where Americans couldn’t find them, or hijack and crash a plane into New York City afterwards. His alternative exits may have been wildly far fetched fantasy but it equates to a certain amount of disbelief and hesitation that NBK was a revenge mission which could only end unequivocally in suicide – either romantically by cop as he envisioned – or by their own hand.  At the point they made their way back up to the library, Eric would have had to rapidly come to the terms that he would have to do the job for himself in their failed mission.  Even though Eric knew that he wouldn’t live after the incident, and that he eventually would go ahead and commit suicide, he didn’t make his own suicide a key part of the event, something that was absolutely necessary, while Dylan did.  It’s not likely that Dylan would have been the one to have ideas of backing out since it was his utmost goal to complete NBK for the reward of freedom that awaited him.

Anyway, that’s my take! Glad you enjoy E-C. 🙂 

So, you mean to say that you’re upset that memorials/crosses for Dylan and Eric have never been a consideration over the past sixteen years? I think after the wooden crosses were erected right after Columbine happened, it was a very unusual occurence in this country to have the crosses of the perpetrators side-by-side with their own victims. It was almost like an experiment to see how people would react and it was definitely an extreme controversial mix of reactions. The thing about Dylan and Eric is that while the minority of us that know this case well can honor, respect and morn the fact that they were mistreated and this whole horrible thing began with these two being bullied and ostracized, it also ended with Dylan and Eric becoming the very thing they disliked about Columbine. The two morphed into bullies and more importantly, not only bullied and mocked back, they murderered kids. They arbitratrially ended the lives of classmates they didn’t even know and had no personal vendetta against. We also should’nt forget the enormity of their insidious plans since they initially hoped to kill 250-500 students at their school with bombs, some of which would’ve been their own friends. So, while they were initially started out as victims they ended up turning into bullying perpetrators. The Littleton public, America and by extenision the world, only remembers the last insidious course of action these two boys took. In a way, it is an act of internal terrorism of sorts – their rebellion against the school and organized society. Revenge and retailation against students in return for the bullying they received is never going to be seen as something noble or worthy of sympathy. So, realistically, given that, I don’t really expect any tax payer dollars will ever be spent to erect memories for the boys in the future. And I don’t really see this happening for any school shooters or mass murderers no matter how much bullying they may have initially endured.

Don’t get me wrong, on a personal level I understand your frustrations, and I can understand and appreciate what you’re saying. You can relate to their initial suffering so you feel/believe they are worthy of being remembered for the damaged people they became. It would be nice if the world could open its’ eyes and get the bigger picture: that Columbine was/is about all fifteen victims and the circle of/vicious cycle of suffering they shared in. Perhaps it’s a matter of it being up to us, the Columbiners, to be the ones to take the action in putting a memorial in place for the boys, instead of waiting for those that don’t have the enlightenment nor wisdom to do it for us? We would have to be the future to set the example and make a change in consciousness. Can you imagine Columbiners taking a collection to have a memorial constructed for the two in a special location of our choice? 🙂 But the problem is, I think that their memorial would likely be vandalized and destroyed no matter if we – or the public – had one erected. Dylan and Eric sought to leave this place infamously and internal infamy is exactly what they’ve received. In this society that we presently live in, it is very difficult to get people to understand that Dylan and Eric made waves to get the world’s attention for a reason. Instead, school shootings continue with regularity and the blame on Dylan and Eric is compounded. I don’t think the world is ‘there’ yet with understanding their own “monsters” which they’ve had a hand in creating let alone erecting memorials in their memory. It is what it is..for now, anyway. Columbiners have to be the ones to pave the way for the future they hope to see. 🙂