(EDITED 14/09/22)
I awoke the next morning, dressed in a pink sweater and some grey trousers.
Whilst walking down the stairs, I could hear muffled voices coming from the television, along with my mom pouring herself some Gin. "Police say the victim, 15-year-old Libby Douglas had quarrelled earlier with her boyfriend Tod Gates."
I neared the kitchen, the voices became clearer, "Gates is now the subject of a citywide manhunt. The murder weapon, a straight razor or similar sharp object, has not yet-"
I blinked as the television turned off, shaking my head and walking towards the door when my mother's voice rang out. "Where do you think you're going?"
I turned around to face her, my backpack in my hand. "School."
"Honey, you were tossing and turning all night last night. You have no business going to school today." She placed a hand on my shoulder.
"I've gotta go to school mother, otherwise I'll sit up there and go crazy."
She gave me a look, "Did you sleep?" before brushing my hair out of my face.
"I'll sleep in study hall. I'd rather...keep busy y'know?" I pressed, bringing a cup of coffee to my lips.
She carefully took the cup away from my mouth, "Right home after?"
"Right home after." I replied.
"Okay." She sighed.
I gave my mom a kiss on the cheek. "See you."
"See you" she replied as I made my way to the door.
______
I walked alone down a sidewalk, edged with thick flowering Oleander. I cocked my head, puzzled, as if sensing something. I looked across the street.
On the other side of the street a man stood in dark clothes, reading a newspaper, but he was really watching me. I shrugged and continued on, then stopping and looking back again. The man had gone.
In the next moment, a bloodied hand jumped out from the opposite direction, hand clamped over my mouth, dragging me into the bushes.
I struggled, twisting against the powerful assailant. Turning my head, I noticed Tod, bare-foot, dressed only in jeans and a leather jacket, still caked with dark blood. The rest of his skin was as pale as a ghost's.
"I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm not gonna hurt you."
He released me warily. I made no move to run or scream, even though several students passed on the nearby sidewalk. I could tell it reassured Tod just a little.
"They're gonna kill me for sure."
"Nobody's gonna kill you."
We sat there studying each other until he broke eye contact by looking away.
"Did you do it?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I never touched her."
"You were screaming like crazy." I replied, saying this without accusation and with just cool observation.
He clenched his jaw, "There was somebody else there."
"The door was locked from your side."
His muscular body tensed, "Don't look at me like I'm some fucking fruitcake or something. I'm warning you."
"Just move away from her, son."
The boy jerked around. I looked up and noticed my father easing out of the bushes.
"Real easy, like your ass depended on it."
Tod suddenly then dived out of the bushes and ran like hell.
"Hold it!" My dad snapped his revolver to fire -- but instinctively I jumped in front of him.
"No!"
He jerked his gun into the air, "Jesus Christ!" before plunging past me.
Tod raced like a frightened animal across the lawns -- but was soon cut off by two Police cars who closed him in from another angle.
"Hold it!" An Officer shouted. He immediately threw his arms up in surrender as the cops exited their vehicles with guns.
"Watch it. Hold them."
"All right. I'm cool, I'm cool." Tod then had his hands pinned behind his back by one of the Officers.
"Okay. I got him."
"On the ground now! Come on, Get down." He obeyed and followed their order.
"Lieutenant look at this. A switchblade." One of the Officers said as my dad ran up to them.
I didn't do it! I didn't kill her, Nicold!" At the sounds of Tod's voice, I take myself out of the bushes.
"Daddy?" I shouted. He turned around.
"You used me." I say, nearly on the verge of tears.
Exasperated he argues back. "What the hell were you doing going to school today for anyway?"
I spin angrily and walk away.
"Nicole!"
But I just kept going.
"Nicole! Nicole!"
"Come on, let go of my arm." I heard Tod yell.
______
"What is seen is not always what is real. According to Shakespeare, there was something operating in nature, perhaps in human itself, that was rotten. A canker, as he put it. Now, of course Hamlet's response to this, and to his mother's lies, was to continually probe and dig."
I was sitting in class, quite tired but still listening. The teacher came up behind me and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder before carrying on with the lesson. "Just like the gravediggers, always trying to get beneath the surface. The same is true in a different way in Julius Caesar. Jon, go ahead please."
She nods to Surfer who's been waiting uncomfortably in front of the class. He squints at his book and begins the recitation.
"Uh, in the most high and palmy state of Rome, a little ere the mightiest Julius fell. The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead-"
I start nodding off, barely able to keep my eyes open in the warm, close boredom of the classroom.
"Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood."
My head pitches forward; but I jerk it back up, barely awake.
"Disasters in the sun, and the moist star upon those who influence Neptune's empire stands."
My head had sunk again, eyelids drawn as if by a enormous weight. By the time my cheek hits my palm, Surfer's voice is echoed and distant.
But another voice, Libby's, is very near, very much present. A sad, thin plaint. "Nicole."
I open my eyes and lock them onto something. Out through the open doorway of the class-room into the hall, there, stood in a full-sized rubber body bag was Libby.
"O god! I could be bounded in a nutshell-"
I sit upright, wiping the sleep from my eyes, shaking my head like a punchy prozefighter. I look back out the door but the hallway is empty. Aside from a dark smear on its floor tiles.
I look nervously towards the rest of the class. No one else seemed to have noticed a thing outside the door. All are dumbly spellbound
by Surfer, who now recites like a deep-voiced robot, his face wreathed by white hair. "Were it not that I have bad dreams."
"Libby?" I call out.
I slip from my seat, eyes warily on the teacher and class. But no one turns as I disappear through the doorway. I turn and look both directions. No sign of anybody.
I race blindly down the corridor smashing straight into a body lunging at me from the opposite direction. We both go down.
A dazed freshman hallguard cranks herself up on one elbow. She wears a plastic plaque on her red and green sweater that reads 'Hall Guard'. Her nose bleeding from the impact.
"Where's your pass?"
I leap up. "Screw your pass."
I turn and see the body bag halfway down the hall. But just as I sees it, a voice calls out causing me to stop.
"Hey Nicole. No running in the hallway." The freshman pulls her hand up to her face revealing what looked like fingerknives, whilst bleeding from her eyes and ears.
I run for it again, edging my way down the stairs. "Libby?" I called out.
I come off the stairs into a dank boiler room. The smear trail is there, running behind a cracking, red-hot boiler the size of a diesel locomotive. Everything about the place feels dreadfully wrong.
"Libby?"
Slowly, terror moves onto my face. There's a low sinister giggle. All I can see is tangles of pipes, shadows, and the tainted fire of the huge boiler.
"Libby?"
Then from behind this, a deeply shadowed but still identifiable figure, steps out. The same filthy red and green sweater and slouch hat, the same melted face twisting into a smile, the same garbled laugh as he slides the long blades from beneath his shirt and fans them on the ends of his bony fingers.
"Who are you?" I called out, controlling my voice to make it seem as if I wasn't awfully terrified of this person.
"Gonna get you."
The leering man brought one of his bloodied scalpel-fingernails across his own chest, splitting a nipple. Yellow fluid pours out accompanied by maggots and worms.
I forget my question and jerk around and flee in blind panic into the first opening I see -- a dark pipe tunnel.
I flee deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of steaming, sizzling pipes, squeezing through smaller and smaller openings. The killer is just yards behind me and soon enough, I'm trapped.
I press my back to the wet bricks. "It's only a dream!" I yell.
"Come to Freddy." The man says, getting closer to me.
"Goddamn you!" I scream. I wheel around, shoving my arm against one of the scalding steam pipes. In the same split second I hear my flesh scald.
______
I lurch up screaming. "No! No!"
I throw myself around, finally thrashing up against the wall.
"Okay! Okay, okay! Evans!" I hear the teacher say, resting her hand on me.
"I'll call your mother."
I look around with panicked eyes, expecting to see the killer leap from any direction. But there's only the sea of staring eyes.
"Everything is all right now." The teacher assured, noticing what a sweaty state I was in.
She takes my arm carefully. "Come on. Sit down."
"No." I breathe out.
I began picking up my books methodically. "I'm okay. I'm fine." I say, practically on the verge of tears.
"You sure?" She asks. My peers' eyes still on me.
"Yeah. I'll go straight home." I say as I march for the door.
"You'll need a hall pass!"
But I was gone.
I walk out of the building, shaken. "God!"
I pause at the wall of the school out front. I start to shake, and next second I knew, I was sobbing like a broken-hearted, frightened child.
But I shook myself silent, wiping the tears away with a slash of my sleeve. I rubbed my arm absently, lost in thought, then reacting in surprise and pain. I lift up my arm and stare at the spot I had touched. There was a burn there; about the size and shape of a half-dollar.
I looked at it, utterly and chillingly confused.