“This sucks.”
I looked over at the other classmate who was sitting a desk away from me, they were in the same boat as I was, in detention. My classmate was the prissy Sabrina, blond hair, blue eyes and fake nails that look almost illegal to have. The look of contempt on the girl’s face made me wonder why she was in detention with the rest of slackers. She held the detention slip in her hand.
I ignored Sabrina trying to get someone’s attention, the teacher who was over seeing the detention room wasn’t even here yet. I turned to look at her.
“Are you sure you belong here?” I asked in annoyance as I watched her snap her head in my direction and she frowned at my words. It was true Sabrina was queen bee she thought everyone had to bow down to her because her father donated a lot of money to our high school, most of those who weren’t her clones or fans only club, but the rest of us knew she didn’t have much power then being a spoiled brat. “You know you break a rule you get sent here; you know that right?”
Christian in the corner who wore a hood like an emo, snickered at my comment, he wore a black hoodie with some figure I couldn’t identify it had a creepy smile on it. under his eyes were lined with black eyeliner as he flicked his blue eyes to Sabrina.
Sabrina just pursed her lips at me. “I mean that’s the definition of detention unless you like coming here to visit us riff raffs.” I used my best don’t-give-a-shit tone and pointed at the door. “Or can you not read the sign?”
Sabrina’s frown turned into a grimace. “I can read! I am in the right place!”
“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest you couldn’t read. No need to yell, I’m not that far away from you.” I heard Christian snickering again.
The door opened to a few more students with Mr. Gilmore right behind them, the literature teacher, tall, thin, and a sour attitude to everyone. He walked around the room to us six kids gathering up the detention slips, he went to Sabrina first and got hers out of her fake acrylic fingernails. Mr. Gilmore was just here to baby sit, we all knew he didn’t like being bullied into this, but no other teacher likes watching us for two hours in detention. I didn’t blame him.
Mr. Gilmore’s job was to watch us, making sure we are staying in the library for detention for two hours, and assuring the principal we did stay and do extra homework or sit here quietly stare at the ceiling or walls doing nothing. Mr. Gilmore made his round to all of us and went to the front of the area and set the pink slips on the table he was going to be sitting at.
“Welcome to detention you degenerates, I see familiar faces and a few new ones. Here are my rules, do not talk during the detention, no you may not use the bathroom, I don’t care what you do as long as your quiet, read, do homework, stare at the wall, and most importantly do not disturb me while I’m reading unless you want to come back tomorrow. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded their heads. Everyone opened their backpack’s and pulled out homework, Christian pulled out his lighter. Cass the computer lab nerd pulled out a thick book on algebra, Ryan pulled out his Gameboy and turned off the volume. Trevor the soccer star laid his head down. And I turned back to my own thing, I pulled out a sketch pad, so I could get my homework done in art class.
I know Mr. Gilmore’s job wasn’t a hard one in terms of skill level. He didn’t have to give a shit, very little communication with us, he had to be polite since the school is under scrutiny after one of the female students claimed a teacher touched them inappropriate. But most of the times, easy or hard, teachers didn’t have to with skill in dealing with us.
The door opened with a creak, and we all turned around to see a security guard standing in the doorway, the security guard was staring at all of us in shock. As if he wasn’t expecting detention on a Wednesday late afternoon after school got out, the school was empty besides us, I noticed Mr. Gilmore prepare himself for the hassle. “Can I help you?”
The security guard had an expression of slack-jawed determination. “Yeah, uh, you’re having detention tonight?”
Obviously, Mr. Gilmore disliked this question, even I could see the reason, first being that the principal didn’t inform the on-duty security officer that there was detention going on, which meant the security officer has to keep a better eye on us and make sure we leave the premises immediately after detention which all the responsibility falls on Mr. Gilmore if we do anything to fuck that up. Second neither of them gets paid enough to watch us after school hours.
Mr. Gilmore said politely, “yes, you should have received the notice before two when the detention slips were handed out. its on our school email accounts.” To be clear, all the teachers/staffing of the school including the security guards have school email accounts for such cases, so someone isn’t being spammed with personal email. How do I know? my mom works here. the security guard left with his cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.
It was fall in our rural town, and as the sun sets down earlier, outside gets a bit chillier, so most of us wore sweaters or jackets half the time, including the teachers, I wore boots since it’s been raining as of lately since Halloween passed. I turned to stare out the windows that overlooked the courtyard and in the far-off corner was the green house. there was a breeze that was causing the almost leafless branches to sway in the direction of the wind. I noticed someone left their brown lunch bag on the grass and it was being pushed gently across the grass. The entire room was filled with silence as Mr. Gilmore sat behind one of the tables reading, and everyone else doing something to keep themselves entertained for the next two hours. In a month they’ll have their winter break around Christmas time, and I had plans and hoped I wouldn’t find myself back here during that time.
As my mind really started to wander, the sound of squeaking behind me got repetitive, I glanced over my shoulder to see Cass was wiggling her legs and I knew that concentrated expression on her face and I seized my opportunity to get out of here for a while. “Mr. Gilmore? Cass has to go to the bathroom.”
“Raven,” Mr. Gilmore said without looking up from his book, “you know the rules, no bathroom breaks.”
“Well, Cass is my friend, and I know she won’t say anything. But,” I lowered my voice and whispered loudly. “She has IBS and she’s had it for a long time, are you really going to let her soil herself and sit it in it for two hours?”
He looked up and glanced between Cass and I, the deep in thought look on his face and then he sighed in defeat. “Okay, Raven, go ahead, you can go with her. but as soon as she is done, both of you back here.”
“Sounds good.”
I got up and Cass got up too and the thankful look on her face said it all, I hurried us out of the library and the moment the door closed behind us, and we headed to the bathroom Cass turned to me.
“I don’t have IBS; I don’t even know what that is. but I really do have to pee.” She smiled ecstatically at me.
“Irritable Bowel Syndrome, my grandma has it, it means you have uncontrollable poop, either its diarrhea or hard poop, and you can’t hold it in.” I explained.
She giggled, “I can see why you’re in detention.” She pushed inside the girl’s bathroom, and she hurried to an open stall, and I leaned against the counter. “So why did you get detention, I got mine because I was playing a videogame during computer class.”
I smiled, she’s such a nerd. “I put mentos in a soda bottle and gave it to one of my least favorite teachers and when they opened it, them and their entire desk got soaked. Worth the detention.” I know childish but I couldn’t help myself, my biology teacher is an asshole.
After she was done, she opened the stall and walked over to one of the sinks to wash her hands, “that’s rotten of you. I heard you on your way getting kicked out of school.”
“They won’t, my mom works here, and I know as soon as I get home, I’m going to get an earful and if she could, my mom would spank me.” I wiggled my eyebrows.
She laughed. As we left the bathroom, I turned the opposite direction from the library and Cass frowned at me. “shouldn’t we head back?”
“Nah, I’m going to the vending machine in the cafeteria, I’m starving and besides, Mr. Gilmore doesn’t give a shit if we’re gone the entire time, he’d have no choice to tell the principal you had IBS and that’s an uncomfortable subject for adults.” I shrugged.
“Okay, really quick we’ll go get something, but we shouldn’t miss the entire time of our detention, after all it seems randomly weird if we’re gone too long. And now Sabrina is going to tell everyone I have IBS.” Cass said who sounded a bit worried. “I like this guy in my math class and I don’t want him to not think that bad about me, I want to ask him the winter ball.”
The winter ball was the yearly winter dance their school has to celebrate Christmas and the other holidays that religions celebrate but mostly Christmas. I shrugged, I know Sabrina had a mouth, but I wasn’t sure if she’d spread something like that around, besides, Sabrina isn’t innocent in health conditions either, and she’s keeping one from all her peers, but I know what it is.
“you’ll be fine.” I said as we walked down the steps towards the cafeteria, slowly as we approached the vending machine that illumined a partial of the hall outside of the cafeteria, but the entire cafeteria was completely dark. I really didn’t like going into the cafeteria alone, especially since its kind of creepy by itself anyway, hearing the hum of the machines, and the shadows that cast along the walls from the windows.
And worse, the light motions activation. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that they took a second longer then most motion activated lights. So, you were standing in the darkness until the lights registered you were there, this made me uncomfortable, hence why I had Cass with me. and in the far back where the kitchen was even direr the kitchen lights flickered, like a low budget slasher film. And I always found myself imagining when the lights come on, seeing someone waiting, perfectly still and watching me from afar.
Today, I had Cass with me, but as we got a few snacks that dropped down after we chose what we wanted, I reached down to grab my bag of chips and I heard it. the sound of clatter coming from the kitchen in the cafeteria. Both Cass and I looked at each other, and slowly I stood back up and handed Cass her chips. The clattering got louder almost causing us both to jump.
Slowly I moved towards the cafeteria and that’s when I saw it. a silhouette of tentacles swinging around and out of the serving window, the suction cups on the tentacles attached to the wall with a loud slurping sound. But when I accidently walked over the threshold of the cafeteria of all times in the world, the light flickered on. the color of the tentacles was booger-green, as it pulled itself toward the serving window it had one large yellow eye, like a cat’s eye, or a snake eye, it was a thin slit of a pupil that stared directly at us, it was like an octopus but with one huge eye watching us.
“Um, hello,” I said even though I felt stupid, and I was scared of this creature. It was either talk to it or let the panic overtake me, so I continued even though Cass held onto my arm and her entire body shaking into mine. “Nice meeting you, um, we gotta bounce. . .”
It threw its head back and it shrieked, fang-filled mouth had emerged from the slimy thing like an angry starfish, the teen of the creature was circular motion going up-or-down into its body. Before it finished shrilling, I grabbed Cass’s arm and force her to run away. we ran away as fast as we could, but the shrill seemed to echo down the hallways.
The shrill stopped and the sound of suctions cups slamming on walls and floors echoed behind us as if it was following us, we could hear the sickening sound of the suction cups being ripped off hard surface every few seconds as it got closer and closer to us. we turned a corner and kept running. As we ran down the hall I nearly stopped when I saw through one of the classroom’s outside was no longer clear but the school was now covered in a thick cloudy misty fog.
Cass tugged on me, urge me to keep running and we did, we ended up throwing open the library door and slammed the door as loud as we could. Cass and I pushed several desks against the door and Mr. Gilmore shot up out of his seat frowning at us.
“You won’t believe what we just saw!” I said as my hand was shaking. “We need to barricade the door quickly!”
“What is going on?” demanded Mr. Gilmore who didn’t like the idea of them barricading the door, trapping them inside. The fog in the courtyard had been covered in a thick blanket of fog as well, I couldn’t see if anything was out there.
I almost screamed with frustration. “We were chased.” I said, managing to keep my voice calm.
“What do you mean you were chased?” his tone was both calm and infuriatingly patronizing.
“Well, technically it was some sort of animal that chased us, and it looked as if it was going to hurt us.” Cass tried to explain.
Before Mr. Gilmore could reply, the sound of suction cups ripping and sucking on the hard floor and walls was closer, we could feel the vibrations of the creature. Mr. Gilmore and everyone else ran to the door and there was a window we can peer out in the hallway. We all witnessed the creature chasing a security guard, not the one from earlier, this one was different. He screamed as he tried to get his radio out. but just as he was about to call for help, the creature used its tentacles and gripped on the lockers and pulled its body back as if was using its body as a sling and flung its body and slammed right on top of the guy and blood splatter across the lockers as the creatures’ sharp teeth bit down on half of his body.
We all gasped.
I looked up at Mr. Gilmore whose blood drained from his face, shock and fear mixed all in one. “Mr. Gilmore, what are we going to do?”
He shook his head and took a few unsteady steps away from the window, “I don’t know,” he whispered. “But first let’s barricade the door and we’ll have to come up with a plan.”
“we’re fucked.” Christian said snapping his zippo lighter closed.