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The School
Inspired by The Dent Schoolhouse
I walked into the school. The hallways and rooms looked decayed, and I felt an eerie sensation that something wasn’t right.
The air tasted like blood and wet chalk. Overhead, the lights flickered. I saw a classroom and stepped inside, spotting a little girl standing with her back turned to me. When she turned, her expression was pure fear. In the blink of an eye, the room shifted to a deep red, and the desks glowed white. A sudden tremor knocked me backward against a wall where a door used to be.
When I looked back up, the girl was filled with fierce anger. She began to grow, her face reshaping into a man's as her clothes transformed.
"You're late for class," he growled.
I scrambled up and ran as a new opening appeared behind me, leading straight into a gym. A group of cheerleaders stood waiting with unsettling smiles on their faces. Suddenly, the room shifted into a PTA carnival, and the girls twisted into clowns.
Spotting a door marked Basement, I bolted for it, tripping and tumbling down a flight of stairs. I looked up to see children floating in midair while a school librarian watched me. She walked toward me, her form morphing rapidly—from a librarian to a principal, to a student, to a massive school rat, and finally into a little girl wearing a doll mask.
Ignoring the pain in my injured leg, I forced myself up to search for an escape.
The entire room plunged into pitch black, revealing hundreds of people trapped and merged into the walls. At the far back, a door creaked open. A thin figure emerged with a limp to the faint sound of children crying. The tools clanking in his belt grew deafeningly loud. He was balding with a full gray beard, blackest-of-black eyes, and wore overalls over a flannel shirt. A name tag on his chest read Janitor.
He drew a heavy wrench from his belt. Everything went black.
...I woke up, head resting on my desk, having fallen asleep in class.