“What the hell happen here?” I ceased my pace when I reached their sides. 

“I don’t know. Something ain’t right.” Elena was the first to respond. Fear and worry filtered her voice in a way that influenced me to be too.

“Schools don’t usually randomly close during weekdays, right?” Jaime asked. 

“Where’re all the teachers and staffs?”

“The diligent students, who’re not us, decided to call them, but maybe they’re currently in an isolated abyss or somethin’.”

The school’s pretentious building stood wide and majestic in front of us like a cathedral. Its huge main doors displayed the creepy architecture of the building, but didn’t chill us as we learned there for almost two years.

Suddenly, the doors swung open, revealing the mainstream hallway of a colonial building filled with lockers and decorated with strange reliefs. I expected anything but reliefs when I first stepped my feet to there.

The students entered the still gloomy school with weird expressions, chatting to their peers about the awkwardness of the situation and the stinky smell generated from somewhere. About two hundred and fifty students from grade ten to twelve strolled inside, which some few more were already returning home after witnessing the school’s doors’ closed. 

BANG

The main doors bunged up altogether again. Almost every female student screamed in horror after the loud bang the doors resulted. Some of the boys shouted everywhere that it wasn’t funny and they should end whatever it was.

“Maybe we’re in one of those reality shows. You know, those indie budgeted crappy shows ‘bout scaring off confused people. Hope we got paid after this.”

Elena’s statement wasn’t completely ridiculous. I myself thought that it was either a high class prank, or a reality show messing around with students. It all ended when the first genuine scream broke off from the back of the crowds. I saw it with my own glaring eyes. A boy from tenth grade flew upward towards the ceiling with extreme speed and panic. He was upside down, and a rope seemed to strangle his legs and pulled his poor, little body up there.

He dangled upside down twenty-five meters above us, screaming and panting. The rope cut through his skin quite deeply, but it let him go and making us all witnessing horror itself. He foundered in the air, falling straight for the gasping students that either tried to catch him or to get away from him. 

Before he could touch down and stains the floor with blood, a noiseless shadow whipped in the air and caught his body mid-air. It wasn’t really catching, but consuming him in a matter of seconds. Dark red liquid rained down to us, and dozens pieces of flesh and bones came tumbling toward us, instantly turning the school into a death zone.

We all frantically ran toward the doors and blasted it with fists that came from the people who wanted to be alive. The metal doors didn’t even budge when dozens of students tried to dodge it with all their might.

I watched as those dozens of kids, some of them I personally knew, strung back when these hundreds of gigantic needles stroke their bodies. Deaths came to them in a split second, and the rest of us either cried in horror, fled somewhere to avoid the madness tragedy, or passed out. 

“Where are we going?” Elena asked me half tearing when I pulled them hands with my full strength toward the cafeteria. Cries and screams hauled off from the west wing when we arrived. We cornered ourselves in the room, hands together in each other with genuine, strong grips.

“What in the actual hell is happening? Tell me this isn’t a dream, because I won’t sleep alone ever again if this is a dream,” Jaime prattled. “Tell me this is a dream.”

“This is no dream, Jaime, let’s be realistic here.”

“Well certainly, our school becoming a slaughter arena isn’t very realistic, no?”

Our concentrations broke when Franklin, the annoying, danced inside the cafeteria with yanking pain from his voice. Thousands of eight-legged arachnids swarmed on his body, making his scream sounded like pathetic mumblings. His body fell and thousands more of those small creatures charged toward us from the main hall.

“I’ll be damned.”

“Goddamn run!” I shouted literally to their ears and launched off from the current area. Those spider-like creatures looked real and fantastical all at once, but we still ran for our lives.

We passed hallways after hallways, seeing more and more dead friends there. The adrenaline couldn’t be much higher. Those horror flicks didn’t prepare me for deadly situation like this.

“Through here!” I dodged one of the classrooms’ doors and bulked inside with my buds. We crashed the door closed so those stinky creatures couldn’t get through. I locked the door and grasped the desks to block it.

We all tumbled down after the door was properly barricaded. We breathed heavily and our adrenaline couldn’t be higher.

“That was the nearest death situation I have ever experienced,” Jaime said.

“Are you alright?” I asked Elena who apparently cried besides me. She was the toughest woman I had ever met, but even the toughest person would never be brave against those kinds of situations. 

“Ar… are… are we go… are we gonna die?” Her mouth murmured with saliva and sweat. Her eyes were red like blood, and her skin was pale like a zombie. 

“We’re not gonna die, okay? I promise you.” I hugged her tightly to my arms which later Jaime joined. “I promise you, we’ll be out of here before you even know it.”

Before she even knew it, the door flung open, resulting the destruction of the desks that blocked the room’s entrance. Elena’s pupils went wide again. We backed of slow by slow from the creature that faced us; a faceless, gigantic, black dog with furs those of shadows. Our butts moved rapidly when it closed in to us, and I tried to find something on the ground that I could use.

I clenched when my hand reached it. The fangs of the monster in front of me showed us no mercy. 

It shot us with a loud roar that activated my reflexes. I swung the wooden crossbar to the fantastical creature right toward its head. Black liquid burst out from the skull when it flew across the classroom and crashed painfully on the metal desks.

“Run!” I snatched their arms again and ran for god knows how many times.

“What the hell was that creature? Some sort of Godzilla type shit? Maybe even a demogorgon from Stranger Things, or that Maze Runner shit?”

“Shut up!” Elena and I shouted. 

“Where are we going?”

“To the gym, Elena. There are huge windows for us to escape and probably some baseball bats we could use to knock ‘em off.”

The situation got tenser and tenser when another one of that dog rerouted toward us and blistered with inconsiderable speed. We ran off literally powered by our fears, and it barked harshly to us. 

We turned to another hallway and I swirled back and faced the dog before I slammed a storage door to its face. The dog hit the metal door, bumping it with its unusual speed that printed the face on the door. I ran toward the others as they watched me with impressed looks, but flavored with fears. 

We reached the gymnasium after yet bumping into one more demon dog and a gigantic rat. I seized a wooden bat before tossing Jaime another one of those. We shattered the antique window and cleaned it from sharp remains of the glasses. We helped the young lady got out first, guided her to get out cleanly, and she finally stepped outside harmlessly. Her feet touched the grass, and then it was my turn, but I stopped before plucking my head outward. 

A black beetle with the size of an eagle snatched Elena’s body weightlessly to the air. Her instant physical body flew upside without us even noticing.

“Elena! No!” I screamed until my voice wore off, but dozens of those demon dogs roared at us. We were cornered, but we clenched our bats with desperation and anger. The first dog jumped straight for my head, but I banged it to the floor.

About twenty of those creatures jumped for us, and before they reached us, we saw death grasping its hands to our souls. Our pupils widened.

—

The credits rolled by our eyes, revealing the director’s name, then the writer’s, then the producers’. Our names appeared at the cast section, showing mine first; Damian Moldova

“That was the best cliffhanger I have ever acted on,” I said to Leon, the guy who played Jaime. He made a horrendous smile to me, but it was filled with satisfaction and pride.

Before the red ‘N’ logo appeared, the screen displayed ‘Stay tune for the next adventure of “The Horror School”!’

~~~THE END~~~