It was the first day back from Christmas Break, and everyone was talking about the new student. "Good afternoon class and welcome back. I would like y'all to meet our new student, Ryan." Mrs. Lilley said, motioning to the boy standing next to her. He had brown hair that went past his ears and unreadable brown eyes. In a disgusted manner, he crossed his arms and stalked to the back to the classroom where he sat down. Mrs. Lilley was about to say something when the lights abruptly turned off. Students screamed in a panic. "Be quiet! It's just a power outage." Mrs. Lilley said, flipping the light switch up and down. The lights flickered before coming on.

"Oh my gosh! Blane!" Cody yelled. Everyone looked to the very middle of the classroom where a dead and bloody Blane who was slumped over. There was a slit running across his throat. A shocked silence overwhelmed the students. Mrs. Lilley fell to the ground, having fainted from the sight of blood. Cody grabbed the room's phone and dialed 911 but there was no dial tone.
"Someone go to the office and get Mr Byrd!" Ben ran out of the classroom and shortly returned with the principal and the resource officer. "Everyone out of the room!" Mr. Byrd yelled to the students. The students were all sent home to 'process what happened'. Mr. Byrd managed to return Mrs. Lilley back to consciousness. She screamed when she saw the red blood that was staining the white floor.

"Mary, I want you to calm down. The police are here and they want to ask you some questions about what happened. Let's get you out of this room, let's go to the teacher's lounge; okay?" She walked out of the murder scene and into the lounge.
"Now what exactly happened?" the officer questioned her.
"Well, I had just introduced our new student Ryan. I was about to start my lesson for today, then the lights abruptly cut off. I went to the lightswitch but I couldn't get it to work. So I told everyone to sit down and stay calm.Then the lights flickered and cut back on. That's when Cody screamed and I saw the blood..."
"What did you do next" He inquired.

"I don't exactly know, you see, I fainted when I saw the blood."
The officer was confused about what happened. There were so many unexplained occurrences; the only explanation is that strange boy, Ryan. He decided to ask Ryan about what happened when he came back to school the next day.

The Next Day

The officer was sat at the desk beside Ryan. The class slowly filled in and many cast glances towards the officer. Ryan walked into the room just as the tardy bell rang and sat in his chair, ignoring the man next to him.

"Hello Ryan." The man said, trying to start a conversation with the boy but failing miserably. Ryan just stared off into space while looking anywhere but towards the officer. "Ryan, look at me. I need to talk to you about yesterday."

"What do you want to know about yesterday? I didn't do anything. I wasn't even near that dude." Ryan snapped.

"Woah there son, I never accused you of anything...." The man was cut off

"Why else would you want to talk to me? The sensible thing would be to ask Cody! He saw the dead guy first!" He yelled "You want to know what I know? I know that the lights died and then when they came back on, the dude was dead! I know that the teacher screamed like a baby then fainted! I also know that there is some dumb officer in here asking me stupid questions while he could be actually doing something productive! Also, why would I want to kill him? Yesterday was my first day here and I didn't even know his name!" Ryan stormed out of the classroom, leaving everyone in shock at his outburst.

"Well erm...everyone get back to work." Mrs. Lilley said, trying to get the class to do their work. She walked to the back of the classroom to the officer. "I'm so sorry about him. His file said that he has anger issues but I didn't know that it was this bad."
"It's okay ma'am. I've had worse said to me before." The officer said with a slight chuckle. "Well there's nothing much else that I can do right now. I best be off. I'll contact you if there is any development in the case." With that, he walked out of the door and passed by Ryan who was sitting down in the hallway.
Ryan eventually returned to the room and the rest of the day dragged on uneventfully. School was let out and all the students left the room, leaving Mrs. Lilley sitting at her desk. 'How could something this awful happen to one of my students, to me? How is his parents dealing with this?' She thought to herself 'I should call them and give them my condolences.' She looked to her phone, ready to make the call when she saw the time.
"Five o'clock! How can it be this late? I was supposed to be home an hour ago! Where did the time go?" She exclaimed while running around her room, gathering all of her belongings. She got to her car and and sped home, hoping that she wouldn't get pulled over and given a ticket.

When she got home, she found a dark empty house. "What the heck?" She asked herself, censoring her dirty mouth in case her daughter was near the door. She walked in and flipped the switch, expecting the lights to turn on. "Why isn't the power working?" She shrugged it off, thinking that ice must have frozen on some power lines, causing them to snap. "I guess I need to call the electric company." She walked into her kitchen, and grabbed a flashlight. She shined it towards the counter, then towards to fridge, looking for a note explaining where her husband and child were. There was no note to be seen. She cursed softly and started to freak out. Where could her family be? She decided to call her husband on her cell phone, but when she dialed his number there was no signal.

She started to walk upstairs, just in case they were deciding to play a prank on her. When she got upstairs, she walked into her bedroom and saw nothing too out of the ordinary. Just the random mess that was left by herself and her husband. Then, she spotted something that was a little bit different. Her closet door had some of her daughter's navy blue skirt sticking out from under it. She walked to the door and pulled it open. The corpse of her little girl fell out at her feet, her husband was sat in the back corner. Both were covered in slashes and blood that was starting to congeal, the heaviest around their necks. She let out a strangled scream and surprisingly didn't faint while she fell to her knees with tears already streaming down her face. She cradled her daughter's head into her lap and rubbed her hair gently. She laid her down and then moved to her husband. She wrapped her long arms around him and put her head beside his, ignoring all of the blood that was getting on her. She decided that she needed to call the police and get somebody out there to get an investigation started. She was about to get up when she noticed something written in dried blood on the wall.

"You're going to get what you deserve." She read under her breath. Just as she was about to stand up, she felt a rag cover her mouth and nose. See tried to scream out but the cloth was shoved farther into her mouth. She smelled a strange chemical, then blacked out.

She awoke in a dark, unfamiliar room. A single floodlight was focused on her that was so bright she had to close her eyes. She heard footsteps and tried to get up only to find herself handcuffed, gagged, and tied down to a metal chair. She tried to scream but it was so quiet that she could barely hear herself.
"Well, hello Mary. I'm so happy that you could stop by. Are you comfortable? Good, I'm so glad to hear so." An unknown voice said. She knew that she had heard it somewhere before, but she couldn't' place where. She squinted her eyes and attempted to see her captor. "Ohh, do you want me to show myself to you? I'm not sure if you would want that..."

She saw a figure step in front of the floodlight and she screamed as loud as she did when she saw her dead family. Stood in front of her was a clown. Not your everyday funny clown, oh no. This clown had hair that would put Chuckie to shame. His teeth were sharper than a piranha's and lips were as red as his blood red nose and overdrawn. His eyes were darkened to the color of dark red wine, giving a drastic contrast to his unnaturally white face. His clothes, once a bright orange and purple flannel suit was so torn, tattered, and grimy that the it all looked slightly brown.He somehow walked around her in his huge, scuffed orange shoes.
He raised his unnaturally drawn eyebrows at her scream. "Do you really not like how I look so much that you would try to scream. I'm flattered." He walked behind her line of sight and whispered in her ear, "Maybe you'll be more fun to kill than your daughter. She died so quickly that there was barely screaming at all. And your husband, my. He was a bit of fun, hearing his yells. I think he screamed louder when I killed her more than when he was slit open."

He walked back in front of her line of sight and slowly pulled a knife with a black hilt out from behind him. "What a shame, it looks like your family made the blade dull. How rude of them. Oh well, I guess it will just make it worse for you. At least you know that it was less painful for them. I wonder how many times I'll have to drag the blade over your skin before it shreds open."
She looked at him with a mix of hatred and terror burning in her eyes. Her makeup was already streaked and smeared from her tears, making her look slightly like a zombie. He just laughed at her look and said "Oh, Mary darling, you think that it will matter to me like you want to kill me? Only one person here is going to die today and it isn't going to be me. Now, let's do something about that gag. It can't be comfortable and I want to hear you scream in pain." With that, the clown stepped behind her and unbuckled the gag and slowly pulled it away from her.

"HELP ME PLEASE! SOMEBODY! ANYBODY, PLEASE HELP ME!" She screamed loudly.

"Mary, please don't waste your voice just yet. Besides, nobody can hear you." With that he put the blade on her right inner arm and dragged down from her elbow to her palm slowly, only applying enough pressure to rip a few layers of skin away. He repeated his actions on her left inner arm but bared down a little bit more so that her there was a little tear in her arm. "Screaming already? This is only just the beginning."

He scoffed and stabbed down on her right arm, puncturing the skin. He dragged the knife downwards so there was a small canyon in her arm. "I don't want this to end to quickly for you so I'll use a sharper knife." He pulled out a small dagger that had a dark red-stained blade. He traced the flat edge along her face lightly as her breath hitched. He turned it so that the sharp blade was on her skin when he traced her forehead."W-why are you doing this? Who are you?" She inquired.

"Mary honey, if I told you then I'd have to kill you, oh wait I'm going to do that anyway. I rather you get killed by your worst fear though." He sneered at her. She was about to say something but he interrupted her "I think you talk too much, I guess that I'll just have to fix that." He slashed along her cheeks and when she opened her mouth to scream, he stuck the dull knife between her teeth so that if she closed her mouth, she would jam the blade between her gums. He walked behind the light and returned with a pair of pliers. He grabbed her tongue and pulled it out of her mouth. He took his dagger and stabbed down on the middle of her tongue and twisted it until the blade was through the bottom of her tongue. He pulled the knife to the side until it was free and half of her tongue fell off. He went to work on the other half until it too, was dropped into her lap. He let go of the pliers but left the knife inside her mouth.

She screamed in pain and looked at him with eyes that were pleading for death. "I can see it in your eyes, you want want me to kill you now and put you out of your misery don't you?" She nodded as tears ran down her face and made a noise in the back of her throat. "Too bad, I'm not even done with the pliers yet." He took the pliers and grabbed at her front tooth and twisted. Her tooth rotated 180 degrees and she let out a cry of agony, her voice going with each scream. He then yanked downwards and pulled out her tooth. He did this again and again until she only had the teeth around the knife left.

She was getting weak from the loss of blood and was close to passing out from exhaustion. "You are close enough to death that I guess it wouldn't hurt me to tell you who I am." He reached behind him and pulled off a mask. She gasped when she saw the identity of her captor. Ryan tittered at her shocked and confused expression. "You don't recognize me do you? Maybe you remember my father?"

"George Ryan Ross II. Does that ring a bell?" A look of recognition crossed over her face. "So you do. I thought you would remember the name of the man you killed. You didn't think he had a son did you? Don't look at me like that. You know what I mean." He started pacing back and forth in front of the light. "Don't you remember the awkward boy in highschool that somehow had Danielle Kindem as a girlfriend? The boy that you called so many names that he broke down and cried himself to sleep every night. The boy who did absolutely nothing to you, but he wasn't 'normal' so 'the freak deserved it'. The boy who had a whole life ahead of him but he was only happy twice that my mother knows about. The night he found out about me, and the night he killed himself. Do you know what that feels like? Growing up knowing that your father was as happy, if not more, when he died then when he found out about his only child. Do you?" She shook her head no. "I thought so. Didn't you wonder why Danielle left school a few months after his death? She moved away from here and I can't blame her. Having classmates as sickening as you would drive anyone away. The only reason that I'm even here is because she died while giving birth to my little sister who also died. I don't have any other relatives besides my grandma on my dad's side so I was given the option of her or foster care. Not that she cares about me; she hates my mother and blames her for her son's death. She only agreed to take me in when she found out that the government would send her a check for 'taking care of me'. I heard that you were a teacher and I just hoped that I would get you as a teacher so I could get some revenge. Now I bet you're wondering how I knew where your house was. During Christmas break I followed you and your family so I could know you're routine. You really should have changed your routine, at least a little bit. I guess it's too late for you now. I guess I should put you out of your misery."

Mary was just about to finally die and as she was taking in her last painful breaths, he took the dull knife out of her mouth and used it to cut her carotid artery, killing her instantaneously. He looked at her corpse, precious blood still dripping from her many injuries, staining the concrete floor. He stuck his finger into the deep cut on her right arm and wrote I'm finished now across her upper shirt sleeve. He walked behind the spotlight and flipped on a lightswitch, light flooding the previously dark room in the basement of an abandoned house. He got some plastic wrap that was sitting under some boards from previous tenants of the building who were going to do some home improvement but never got around to it. He uncuffed her and cut the ropes that held her captive. After spreading the plastic down on a blood-free patch of floor, he picked her up and noticed that her body was a lot lighter without all of her blood. He flipped her over, moved her to the stairs, and dropped her. Ryan walked back to the table where the light was propped up on, grabbed a small gasoline tank, and poured it across the concrete. He then changed out of the clothes that he was wearing, threw those on the gasoline-soaked floor, and changed into the set that he had brought.
The smirking teen walked over to the body of his former teacher and dragged her to the bed of a waiting truck that he stole. He walked back to the house and poured some lighter fluid around the sagging porch. With an almost inhuman look, he struck a match and threw it to the old wood. He then went around to the side of the house where the outside entrance to the basement and threw another lit match down the stairs, grinning as the flames spread quickly, burning any evidence that there would be. He went back to the truck, knowing that it would only be so long before somebody saw the smoke and called the fire department. Even though it was 2 O'clock in the morning, he drove to Riverside Middle School and propped up the bag with her corpse in it to against the front door, feeling slightly sorry for the janitor who would discover the body. He didn't do anything to deserve that emotional trauma.

Ryan drove to the soccer field and parked the truck in the middle of it. He got out, opened the gas tank up, and struck his final match and dropped it in there, then took off running. He ran until he got to the empty grass near the 7th grade hall. Entering the greenhouse, he heard the explosion of the truck and smirked. He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, wrote out his final thoughts, and left his phone open to a recording of the murder he just committed. He took out the small dagger for the last time and used it to slit his own throat.

Later That Day

"Okay students. I know that nobody wants to be here, but you need to be. I'm only going to say this once so if I hear anyone talking or I see anyone cutting up, then you will be sent home. I'm sure that you all have heard of the murder of Mr. Blane Reeves. It seems that the same person killed our beloved Mrs. Lilley." Mr Byrd said sadly, "We believe that these murders are related, but the killer's identity is not yet known. Also, it seems like there was a truck that was burned on our soccer field, not that it's very important right now. Right now, we need to focus on the departure of our friends. But, if I find out that anyone here knows anything about the deaths and you haven't reported them, the consequences will be sever. Okay you all are allowed to return to class." He said, motioning to the doors of the gym. Many students had tears running down their faces. Not even the teachers could hide their tears. Many people requested to go home. Before the bell even rang for everyone to be in class, over half of the students had left.

Mrs. Veverka's remaining few students returned to their classroom. "Okay class, I know that this is a very bad situation, but we need to go out to the greenhouse and water the cabbage plants that we are growing." All of her students stood in a single file line and walked towards the exit. She waited until the last student walk out and closed her door. "Go on out and to the greenhouse.I forgot the plant food so I'll be right back. Robert, when you get there only let five people including yourself in. You're the 4-H president, so take charge until I get there." She walked back to the room and went into the storage closet to get the fertilizer.

She had just picked it up when she heard very loud screams coming from a long distance away. 'Oh no, that's probably my students. I wonder if they stepped in a fire ant hill or found some ground bees or something like that. Probably knowing them.' She thought and hurried out of the classroom. When she got outside, she immediately say Robert was passed out on the ground and the other remaining students were avoiding the greenhouse like it was haunted. All except for one student who seemed to be sitting down on the floor inside the greenhouse. As she got closer, she saw a red substance staining the walls, floor, and clothes of the student. All at once, she realized the horrible truth. There was another death at Riverside Middle School.

"Somebody, go get a teacher or a janitor or somebody!" She yelled, feeling sick. A random student ran to the 6th grad hall, baniging on Mr. Reason's window to let her in down the hall. After about ten long, tense minutes, Mr. Byrd showed up along with Officer Sullivan. The officer walked into the greenhouse and looked at the phone and the note. He walked back out and showed it to Mr. Byrd who said "This is no matter to deal with in front of children, let's go to my office and then we can see what is exactly on this recording." They returned to the office after calling the police department.

"What exactly does this note say?" Mr. Byrd inquired?
They both looked at the writing on the note.

Dear whoever finds this note,
By the time that you find this, I will be dead and I assume that you have seen my body. I hope it hasn't been too long since I died or else the decaying flesh would smell repulsive. That's besides the point. I will give you an explanation of what isn't on the tape that is on my phone. First off, I would like you to know that I killed the red-head dude because he looked like an easy person to kill. Tell his family I said sorry. Ohh, and your janitor, Mr. Ray. I paid him $100 to kill the power for 5 minutes after the fourth period bell rang. As for Mrs. Lilley, listen to the tape and that should be explained. All except for how I got her from her house to the abandoned house (that is now burned down). I simply used chloroform. And dragged her out into a truck I stole from her neighbors. After I killed her, I burned the evidence and moved her body here to the school. I then dropped by the soccer field and burned the truck. I went to the greenhouse and killed myself just like she made him. She deserved to die, knowing what she did. I want whoever is reading this to know that bullying is bad and will get you killed. Keep that in mind.
Sincerely,
A former student
Ryan Ross