So, nerds, geeks, preppies, jocks, goths, and assorted non-conformist losers, stoners. What did I miss? I’m sure I’m showing my age with that one. Are those even the major cliques anymore?
Well, anyway, was that fun? 5MinuteFiction, I mean, not high school. As usual, a crop of amazing entries as thick as the pimples on a nerd’s face.
Jeff had a heck of a time picking only five finalists, but he gave it the old college high school try and gave us these that rose to the top of the class:
Ain’t they great? Go give them a read and then vote in the poll at the bottom. Send all your friends too, and anyone you want to scare, cause, no surprise, our horror writing judge picked some scary stuff. đ
Poll’s open until 9:00 Eastern, when I’ll announce the winner. So be here then!
It was so strange to see the high school empty and dark. There was a certain creepy vibe that seemed to float around the place like a fog. Even my sneaker covered feet made a hollow sound as I moved down the hallway. Just yesterday the place was filled with chatty, happy and energetic students. Now it was a crime scene, and it changed the building so drastically.
I needed to find the gym, which was easier than I thought. It was easy to get lost in places like this, but I could hear voices, hushed and frantic. They lead me right to the place. I paused in the doorway though, because I could smell blood. It made my nose twitch, and I felt a pulling in my brain. Grasping the doorframe to steady myself, I cleared my mind and took one step into the gym.
It came all at once, in a giant force of rage and fear. I could see the large man, holding what I think was a tire iron. I watched him raise it, bringing it down onto someoneâs body, onto someoneâs head. I could see the man clearly, I was watching his rage filled face, getting splattered with blood as he brought the tire iron down again and again. It only took one step to see this, and I wanted to run from the building. Instead I fell to my knees, and left my breakfast all over the floor. It had been a long time since a vision had made me throw up.
High school. Like a bad dream repeating itself. This time she was running. She knew she had to stop him before it was too late. This was the third time Sarah Hentice had been in the same hallway, on the same morning, at the same time. All in one day! Today. The first time of course, she had no clue what was happening, or that is to say, what was going to happen. The second time, it was all a daze.
Sarah had closed her locker, having retrieve her chemistry text book. She really wasnât looking forward to chemistry. Pop quiz every day followed by a boring lecture. She knew she could get interested in the subject but not with such a boring teacher. She had walked, almost shuffled, down the hallway along with a couple hundred other kids, just doing the drill. Once the bell had rung and everyone was seated, Mr. Smith had taken the roll.
Thatâs when it happened.
That creepy new kid had then stood up, ran towards the teacherâs desk shouting all the while. Sarah still couldnât make out what he was saying, even now, having been through it twice already. And then heâd raised his hand and, BANG. Blood spurted back onto the black board behind Mr. Smithâs head. The class erupting in chaos as screams immediately filled the air. And the creepy kid turned, looked straight at Sarah, and raised his hand.
That was all she could remember. From the first time. The second time, even though she knew what was going to happen, she couldnât get her mind around that fact that it actually was happening. Not just some kind of nightmare or flashback. That second time, as the creepy kid raised his hand and she made eye contact with him, she knew. She knew it was real, she knew she was here AGAIN, and she knew he knew. She could tell by the way he kind of did a crazy smile grin and started saying something. Something she still couldnât make out.
This time it would be different. Sarah slammed her locker door shut and immediately started down the hallway. Running. Running for all she was worth. This time it would be different.
She came in with a BANG as the door swung back against the blackboard. We all knew better than to let that door go when coming in, but she was new. Her first class here and yet she didnât look apologetic at all for having interrupted Mrs. Harrisonâs lecture on swamp moss.
Entering the room, she surveyed the rest of us as if we were her subjects. She paraded through the room like a queen and gracefully sat herself down in the empty desk next to mine. With a flip of her dark hair, she announced: âIâm Beatrice.â
The rest of us were stunned. We were used to school princesses here â in Southern California I think we got more than our fair share, but she was nothing like them. Her clothes were actually sloppy â grayish-brown menâs corduroys cinched up around her waste with a rope and a ragged Hard Rock T-shirt hanging off one shoulder.
I couldnât help staring at her and had the sense that the rest of the class was doing the same. Mrs. Harrison, after what seemed like hours, finally asked, âDo you belong here? I mean, are you a new student?â
Beatrice just looked at her. Then she slowly turned her face toward me, a face that looked remarkably familiar â like the one I saw in my mirror every morning. She gave me a slow wink and then said, âJust visiting. What do you know about the multiverse?â
Jenny hated high school when she was a teenager. She hated it even more now, running through the halls in the dark of night. What the hell had happened? The reunion was going fine when all of a sudden people were screaming and running in every direction. Jenny had stayed put until she looked to the middle of the emptying gymnasium and saw⌠It was horrible.
A mass of gooey flesh, once a person, was growing fast into a blob of blood red organs. Tentacles started growing out of it, flying at others who hadnât made it out yet and grabbing them. It pulled them in, making its mass grow bigger.
Jenny had barely made it out of the gym before slamming a tentacle in the door. The lights flickered and went out around her and she came to a dead stop in the darkness.
Silence surrounded her and she couldnât see a hand in front of her. She pulled her cell out of her pocket and unlocked the keys. A small blue light came to life from the phone and she held it in front of her as she continued walking down the hallway.
Without knowing how, she was on the floor. Her cheek hurt where she hit the hard linoleum and her phone had clattered down the hall out of her reach. As she tried standing up to get her phone, she felt the tentacle that had grabbed her pull her back.
She screamed louder than she had thought possible, hurting her throat and her ears. She was being dragged backward faster and faster. She tried grabbing on to anything, ripping her nails off in the process, and still never finding purchase.
The last thing she saw was the lines on the floor of the basket ball court as she was ingested.
He hated this town. It wasnât his home town. He grew up a few miles away, this was merely where he had gone to high school. High school, what a terrible memory that created. He rarely ever came to town. He was happy he didnât have to drive through to visit his folks. Today was different though. He was visiting his parents and happened to look at the local weekly newspaper.
Glena and Brenda Hillcrest are happy to announce the marriage of their daughter:
Laura Gene Hillcrest
to
Jason Alex Kline
His heart stopped.
âWhatâs wrong sweetheart?â His mother asked clearly seeing his ashen face.
âDid you see this?â He asked.
âOh yeah, wasnât that the girl you had a crush on in High School?â She asked innocently, not knowing that the crush had never gone away. He still lay awake a night imagining her, she was still the vision that he saw in his dreams.
âYeah.â Was all he said. She didnât recognize the other name, Jason, he was a bastard. If there was one person in the world that he hated, and still hated it was him. He visited him in his dreams too, in those dreams the only happy endings were Jasonâs head lolling off to the side as he sliced through his neck, or fragments of skull and blood bursting from the side of Jasonâs head as he shot him at close range. No ending could make up for years of ripped clothing, swirlies, wedgies, snake-bites and general humiliation.
He saw Jason in the picture, leering at him, as if to say, I really gotcha now.
For the first time in many years, he snuck out of his bedroom window, 32 years old and sneaking out like he was sixteen. He had the newspaper in his hand, he knew what he had to do.
The fireball of gasoline had exploded as the fiery newspaper lit the homemade bomb, now the school that he had so dispised was beggining to glow orange. Every window a flicker. This time, he won.
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