The shrill sound of the break bell jolted me rudely from my sleep. The bright sunlight from outside immediately burned into my eyes, which I quickly covered with my left hand. With my other hand, I rubbed my eyes, yawned once hard, and stood up. Again, I had fallen asleep during class. But I was also consistently tired because I didn’t get to sleep at night.My mother and father would get drunk at night and then their fights would start, sometimes keeping me up all night. Not to mention the psychological strain. But I can’t blame them for the fact that I just sit around at school and do nothing but rest my head on the table.
Just as I was on my way out, Mrs. Gallagher, my teacher stopped me:”Hey Brandon, you fell asleep in class again. This can’t go on like this. I’m going to have to contact your parents and we need to find the reason why you are perpetually tired. Are you aware that you are already a topic in the teachers’ lounge and everyone is wondering why you sleep in every class? I know you’re having a hard time focusing on the school material, but your grades are continually getting worse and if it continues you’re have to repeat the class.”“Yeah whatever, can I go now?” I asked her annoyed.She sighed once and nodded.
Annoyed, I left the classroom. I had already lost a few minutes of my break due to Mrs. Gallagher, which only made me more irritated. Once outside, I stretched hard. A few students ran past me, some giggling as they saw me trudging down the hallway, overtired and with disheveled hair.I was the outsider of the school. Even the Weirdos were able to make friends at least among themselves. But I was so different from the others that I wasn’t even able to do that. Maybe I felt too sorry for myself and radiated that too much. Maybe it was my basically scruffy appearance. I don’t know, but I also didn’t care because I don’t crave human company and being alone has become normal for me. Anything else would be alienating and that would just make me feel more uncomfortable.
On my way to the locker, I noticed three teachers looking at me and muttering something. Yes, I was not spared even the teachers’ taunts. But that’s also the great thing about it, I don’t give a shit. When I arrived at the locker to change my textbooks for the next lesson the janitor came up to me.
“Hey Brandon…” I noticed he was trying to get my attention.”WHAT?”, I asked annoyed.”I heard you fell asleep again. You should get your circulation going. I’ll tell you what helps” he explained, suddenly holding out a glass of water.I raised an eyebrow.”A glass of water?” I asked skeptically.”Yes. You’ll be surprised how your circulation gets going again. You’re drinking way too little, so come on! Down it!” he urged me with a grin.”If I drink that shit will you leave me alone?” i asked.”Whatever you want” he assured.I sighed and decided to finish the glass all at once. But when I was done, I only noticed the disgusting taste that was spreading in my mouth. Not wanting to have him around any longer, I didn’t let on and asked the janitor to leave, which he did.
And then the break was already over. I trudged into the classroom and, as usual, took my place in the farthest corner. As soon as I got there, I slumped down in the chair. The students gradually gathered and when the math teacher entered the room everyone became quiet. I noticed that I was just getting more and more exhausted and when the teacher started talking, I had a hard time understanding even a word he was saying.Before I blacked out, my last look was to my teacher, who was looking at me with a serious expression.When I woke up, my head was still rested in my seat. I still felt weak and I had severe headaches and aching limbs.
Slowly, I rose and looked around. I was still in my classroom, but it was dark. The light of the moon shone through the window and gleamed on the smoothly polished tiles of the school desks. All was quiet. My school things were gone. I looked for them under my desk and tried to feel for them. To no avail. My cell phone and wallet, too. Everything was gone. Only I was there. The chairs were up.I was still trying to understand what was going on. My eyes were slowly getting used to the darkness and I could see the clock on the wall. It was 2:45 in the middle of the night. I got up and looked out the window, but I couldn’t see much.
I wondered what had happened and why no one had woken me up. Slowly and quietly, I crept to the door of the classroom and peered out into the hallway. It was all dark and quiet until I saw a light burning at the end of the left corridor. Slowly, I opened the door and peeked around the corner. I watched the room where the light was burning for a few seconds before I left the classroom completely.My heart was beating faster. Seeing the school at night made me extremely uncomfortable. It was Kenopsia all over again. I don’t know exactly why I was so cautious and decided to be quiet, but I had a very queasy gut feeling, as if something bad could happen at any moment.
And this feeling became more and more intense the closer I got to the room.I couldn’t hear more than my own footsteps. When I arrived at the room, I looked at the label: “Teachers’ Lounge.” I peeked around the corner into the room hoping to see any teacher who could possibly tell me what was going on. But the room was empty. I looked around the room a bit and called for a teacher, but there was no answer. The room contained a large table with several chairs, the principal’s desk, and numerous cabinets full of books. In addition, there was a coffee machine and a small kitchen, if you can call it that.
On the table in the middle of the room was a whole stack of papers. But one in particular stood out. It was a missing person’s report. Of me. It described exactly what I looked like, and next to it was an older photo of me. I couldn’t even remember when it was taken. I was wondering what was going on when I heard voices in the hallway from outside the room. Cautiously, I peered outside.Two cones of light could be seen coming from the other corridor, approaching the classroom where I woke up. The voices also became clearer now.
Two figures were now coming from the blind spot.”Here he is in here! I positioned him in his seat!” whispered the one female-sounding voice that seemed quite familiar.”Why didn’t you just leave him in the hiding spot?” replied a deep male voice.”Because if he wakes up in the classroom, we can make it look like a misunderstanding. You know, like he just fell asleep and we missed him. So we can’t be accused of kidnapping him. We’re lucky the cops didn’t find them!” the voice replied.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see exactly who the figures were because the light from the teacher’s room didn’t reach the classroom door and the two figures weren’t shining their flashlights at each other. But it was clear to me that they had no good intentions towards me. Had they kidnapped me?”WHERE IS HE?!” thundered the male voice.”NO IDEA!” the female voice screeched back. And now I could better place the voices. The female voice was Mrs. Gallagher my classroom teacher.
The two figures came out of the classroom again.”We need to find him now! Search the teachers’ lounge. It is obvious that he has sought out a lighted room.” the male voice replied.Mrs. Gallagher nodded and came right up to me. I slipped back into the teachers’ lounge and hid under the principal’s desk. As she entered the room she looked around. I could see her stressed face through a small borehole. She was visibly overwhelmed and was skimming the room rather than searching it more intensely, which was convenient for me.I was at a point where I realized I couldn’t trust anyone in this building and would have to find a way out of here on my own.But it was almost as if she had heard my thoughts.
“Brandon, if you are here, I advise you to come out. Any escape is futile! We’ve sealed off the entire building. If you do what we want, nothing will happen to you!” she shouted loudly into the room. Obviously, she had already discarded her plan with the “misunderstanding”. Keeping up this facade would have been impossible anyway.I didn’t react and just held my breath. The fear I felt dwarfed anything I had previously experienced with my parents. I was aware that I could easily overpower her since she was a slight and not exactly tall person, but I also knew that the guy was still around and she would surely start screaming or something to get his attention.
And if I could fight with a big man as a teenager. You can guess the result, so I stayed in my hiding place until she left the room. I waited for some time until I heard no more footsteps and then slowly left my hiding place. I was shaking with fear and breathing heavily.Carefully I went to the door of the room she had closed behind her, opened it a crack and peered out. The corridor was pitch black and there was no sign of a flashlight. The first thing I did was carefully leave the room and close the door again behind me. I crept back into the classroom and tried to open a window there, but they were also firmly bolted and could not be opened.
At that moment, I felt a sharp pain. First on my arms, then on my neck, and then on the rest of my body. I held my arm under the moonlight and realized that s my arm was carved. I also felt over the rest of my body. It was carved everywhere and I didn’t understand how I hadn’t noticed it before. I tried to ignore the pain. I knew I wasn’t going to die from this, so I had to get to safety before I treated my injuries.But what had happened here? Had I really been kidnapped? And how could no one notice. In my own school? I knew that if she was telling the truth, then I would not be able to leave the school through the normal exits or through the windows.
However, I remembered seeing the sign of an emergency exit in the basement of the school once. I knew what I had to do. I had to get into the basement unnoticed. With shaky hands, I grabbed the door handle and crept through the school building as four lights came down the hallway this time. I hid in one of the lockers. The voices came louder and I heard Mrs. Gallagher again explaining the situation to the other people.As they passed the locker, I recognized who else was there through the iron grooves. My breath caught in my throat. I saw my biology teacher, my math teacher, Mrs. Gallagher, and my gym teacher. I couldn’t believe it. What had they done to me? What were they all doing at school at night? When they were gone, I opened the locker and tiptoed to the basement stairs. Fortunately for me, the door was unlocked. The basement compartment was the same size as the other floors. So it was not a small underground complex, but somewhat larger.
I had difficulty seeing and groped in the darkness for a light switch. There was a foul smell in the air. Fortunately, the light switch lit up in the darkness, so I found it relatively easily. When the light came on, I immediately looked around for the emergency exit door. Making my way through the basement, I approached the door labeled “Janitor’s Apartment.” The foul smell was coming from that room. I don’t know what drew me in, but I pushed open the ajar door and the stench became even more intense and disgusting to a point where I really thought I was going to throw up.My curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to know what the smell was all about. What I saw in the second room made my blood run cold.
The next room contained two mattresses. On the right mattress lay the body of a girl. I recognized her. She was one grade above me. Her eyes had been torn out, her head had been cut open, her underpants had been torn down, and her stomach had been slashed. Her body was missing any organs. This time I threw up and I instinctively threw up in a bucket that was next to a sink as I backed away in horror. In the bucket were her organs. I began to hyperventilate. My heart was racing extremely. The panic feeling was getting stronger and stronger and I had to gather all my strength not to lose my mind. My gaze wandered to the left mattress. Next to it was a lamp that was supposed to illuminate the room. Furthermore, my cell phone and my wallet were also lying there.
And then the memories came back. Although they were more fragments of memories. They had kept me in this room. Again and again individual memories came up of my teachers disfiguring my body while I kept waking up briefly but then also kept losing consciousness. I also remembered Mrs. Gallagher making out with a male teacher naked on my motionless body and forcing me to perform sexual acts. All these fragments that slowly came back.
Most of the time I was not conscious, thankfully. I would have been afraid of what else I would have seen. I left the room and saw that the janitor had left his universal key. I grabbed my cell phone, wallet and this key and just as I was about to leave the room I bumped into Mrs. Gallagher and we both fell to the floor. She started smiling morbidly when she saw me.”Ahh there you are!” she whispered in that obnoxious tone that immediately sent a shiver down my spine. Suddenly she started shrieking and several figures immediately came around the corner and ran towards me while she just stood there screaming.
I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as I could through the basement compartment. Their screams echoed through the corridors. It was very winding and I was afraid all the time that I might run into someone. Finally, I didn’t find an emergency exit, but the twists and turns made it possible for me to get past the teachers and back up the stairs before they managed to follow me. I locked the door behind me and ran with my last strength to the main entrance, which I opened with the universal key. Once outside, I ran a few more meters before collapsing, exhausted.With the last of my strength, I called the police and told them my location. I closed my eyes and lost consciousness again. When I woke up, I was in an ambulance. The paramedics noticed that I was waking up. My mother was sitting in the ambulance with me with tears in her eyes.I tried to say something, but couldn’t make a sound. At the hospital, I learned that the entire teaching staff of the school had been arrested and the school was temporarily closed. After a few days, during which I also did not see my father, at some point two policemen entered the room and took my mother away. She resisted and begged them to explain everything to her.
They explained to me that my parents were involved. My father confessed. They wanted to get rid of me. I also learned that I and the girl were not the only victims. Apparently, the parents of any missing person cases, were involved in the missing person cases of their children. It was like a perfidious game that the teachers were playing, making a business out of getting rid of the children who were nothing more than an accident to the parents and whom they never wanted.
The janitor confessed to be responsible for almost all the missing persons cases in our town and was sentenced to death a little later, while my parents and the rest of the teachers had to serve a life sentence. I am traumatized by this incident. I don’t even know how to continue my life normally. I think non-stop that I could have easily been in the girl’s place. According to the police, I was also the only one who survived.At the court hearing, I managed to briefly exchange a few words with Mrs. Gallagher. I wanted to know why. With a smile on her face, she said, “I told you I was going to call your parents.” before she was led away by two police officers.