The cigarette smoke chokes me, but I don’t let myself cough, instead I keep it inside. Everything in my wants me to let it out, expel it like some kind of poison that disagrees with my organs. Still, I keep it inside.
It’s my first cigarette ever, in a classroom far away from the populated part of the School. I won’t let myself look like a wimp, not in front of her. I couldn’t give two shits about the popular kids standing with us in the room. I’ve never felt the need to care about them. However when I heard the girl of my dreams was going with them, I just had to be there.
That’s pretty much how I found myself here, no one goes here anymore. Not after that kid died. Honestly it was kind of sad. Some poor little girl gets lost and ventures a neglected and dangerous part of School on her first day, has a large table fall on her and heavily injures her. Than slowly loses her life as she bleeds out.
You’d expect there to be an outcry of some sort, yet the School pushes the blame onto the parents and bashes them. The local paper paper joins in and before you know it, the whole town is bullying this family about not teaching there child proper safety rules.
A seven year old girl was supposed to be taught proper safety rules, it sounds as ridiculous as it actually was.
What do we get from all this, we get lectures on how “we” as students should keep the younger students safe. We get ghost stories that quickly spread across the school about the young girl and how you can still hear her cries.
We get a special assembly today, on the one year anniversary of her death. An assembly where we have a moment of silence for her but don’t worry guys, refreshments are provided. It seems like everyone around are insensitive bastards.
I pause my thoughts to find Alyssa looking at me, I take another deep pull of the cigarette I’m holding. I take it better this time, I still feel the need to cough, but not as intense as before. Is this what romance is worth, because as my brain gets cloudy and I drown in the nicotine, it seems worth it.
Than the cries start.
I almost didn’t hear it at first, it was soft, but definitely audible. I turn around and there’s nothing, we all start looking around us. Have we been caught.
None of our teacher would make that soft of a noise if they caught us. It must be a small animal. Than it dawns at us all at once and a nervous chuckle takes over the room. It can’t be the stories of the dead girl, it just can’t. It’s probably just someone playing a prank on us. Still the whole group slowly but sure creeps towards the door, no one admitting that their scared, but everyone ready to run at the same time.
I take another pull of the cigarette and than hear another cry. It’s time for us to go. However a thud behind us makes us turn around and than a slam behind us makes us turn around again. Something distracted us, something in the dark of the room. Just long enough for us to turn away from the door, long enough for it to slam shut.
We’re trapped now.
Everyone’s scrambling, trying to open it, the cool kids arw still nervously chuckling, thinking it must be the wind. However the wind can’t close a door hard enough for it to feel like it been welded to the door frame. We can’t get out and the room is getting clearer now.
You see, the thing about light at and dark is that you can see in either one, the other just has to be absent. As the door blocks out the light from outside, the room inside becomes clearer. That dark corner is now taking shape.
A desk is there, a large heavy one and underneath it is a small figure, it looks like a doll but it’s faintly moving. It has to be a child.
I’m not an idiot, not by any means, I’m a skeptic definitely, but not an idiot. I’m seeing a ghost, live out its last moments, a child live out her last moments.
The cigarette is on the floor now, and so am I. We’ve all fallen to the floor unable to move, I look around me and it seems like we’ve been pinned by an invisible force. It sounds ridiculous but it makes sense, a force more powerful than our meek bodies. She’s not just living her last moments, we are living her last moments.
I feel like I’m about to die, I’m not ready for this, I’m too young. I just want to go home to my family. I just want to go back to class, I was so excited to see my friends today and be around people who I care about. All things that she must have thought about, all things I’m thinking about now.
I turn my head and she’s in the corner sobbing, a child with nowhere to go and no one too help her. Yet she keeps asking for help. I can’t die here, I hope she gets help, I hope I get help. Than altogether I realize she never got help and maybe I never would.
We’re all going to die here and I’m terrified of the thought, but I’m not the one I should be afraid for. My life, as scared as I am, doesn’t matter. I should be helping the one that looks at me and sees me as someone older. Someone who could have helped her.
So I turn to her and look into the eyes of the dying child and speak to her.
“it’s going to be okay”
I say to her, it’s all I can say with the weight on my chest. It’s all I need to say. She stops her sobbing and looks at me. Almost as if she trusts me. I wish I can help her but I can’t. The weight is now off my chest.
Everyone one of us Is able to get up, everyone of us is able to leave and so is she. She dissapears. I hope that is knows that wherever she’s going, it’s going to be okay.
Outside the school emergency services are waiting, apparently the same thing happened to every single person in the school. They didn’t see a ghost but they did feel pinned down.
Authorities are blaming it on a gas leak from years of neglect by the people in charge. When I hear that I start to chuckle, I wonder who their going to pin the blame on this time.