School Of The Dead

It was my first day at the new school. We moved from across the country to a small town called West Vile County State. A mouth full if you ask me. But that isn't all. Everyone that lives here is creepy. They look drugged, sleepy and their zest for life is missing.
Anyways, the day started of horrible. The sky was grey, rain poured out the sky and I missed all my friends. The yellow school busses’ colours were faded to almost white. The school building was built in old Victorian style, the white building reminding me of an asylum or something. No one greeted me, no one looked at me, no one noticed the ‘new kid’. That was funny, because in my previous school the older kids always picked on the new kids. I looked a girl in the eyes, she was really pretty – long blond hair, small body and blue eyes as clear as water – but the moment our eyes met, she jerked her head away and walked away as quick as she could. The rain still poured down on us, the umbrellas helping little. My black hair was soaked by the time I entered the building; covering my left eye. My clothes were drenched.
The first thing, other than no bullies, that I noticed that was different were the quiet halls. Not a word was said, only footsteps; countless shuffles of thousands of feet. My own feet made loud squeaky noises. Every step I took felt like if thousands of little eyes looked at me, but when I tried to make contact, no one looked at me.
It felt like I was never going to get my class room. The rooms are numbered with unusual marks, something in the line of scratching a bird made. An angry bird.
“Are you Pete?” the voice was cold, without emotion, dead.
“Yes, I’m Pete,” I said trying to bring a smile across my and to hide the scared expression. He looked at me for at least two minutes, but it felt longer. He had black pupils; it looked black from where I stood. Without emotion, without love, without hate. Again dead. His stare made me shiver for a moment, but I diverted my look from him across the passage. Three other kids ran across the wet floor and disappeared around the corner.
“Come with me.”
I followed him down the hall, over the cold-quite floor. The wooden door made hollow noises in the school building when he struck it with his knuckles. The door opened really slowly. A white hand, covered with blue veins, exited the class room, greeting the strange man. It was really quick and he left.
“You must be Pete! Welcome,” her voice was cold as well, but with a touch of kindness to it. She tried to smile and managed a small petite one, but I swear I could see ash falling from the wrinkles and cracks on her upper lip. I shook my head and sat in the middle of the room. I sat in the chair; it was too small like in my previous school. I decided to keep quiet. I felt all the children looking at me, not with eagerness or anticipation, but with deep sorrow. I tried to ignore their stares but couldn’t take it. I looked down on the table, to avoid them. I was filled with shock, fear and disturbance.
“GET OUT”, “HELP”, “day 33”, “YOU’LL NOT SURVIVE”, “YOU’LL BECOME LIKE THEM”.
My face turned white when I saw the scratch-marks on the table. I didn’t care if they looked at me anymore, I couldn’t look at the table anymore. My insides, my stomach, everything turned around. I felt the urge to vomit, but kept it inside. My hands trembled, my face felt warm, but also cold. My whole body became so sensitive that when the girl behind me put her hand on my shoulder I jumped out of my chair. The chair fell over and made a loud racket. The teacher turned around and looked me straight into my eyes. She had the same dark coloured eyes.
“Everything all right?”
Her cold voice hit my ears, and it was the breaking point. I ran toward the door but didn’t make it. In a rainbow-form, I brought up my breakfast. Green vomit hit the white walls. I fell to the floor, out of energy and quivering with fear. The teacher walked towards me. She bent over, looking at me; making strange noises with her mouth. On her face was a satisfied smile. I managed to stood up again and opened the door. Feeling the strange sensation of something running down my face, I turned to the nearest bathroom. The image of myself shocked me, making me buckle under my weight. Blood ran down my eyes, like tears, out of my nose ran two streams and out of my ears dripped the red drops onto my shoulder.
The passage felt long, really long; but I managed to get out. Thunder filled the air and pouring rain came down onto me. Streams of red blood flowed on the road when I looked down. I ran towards our house. I have never run so fast. My legs ached when I stood in front of the door. The bell echoed through the huge house, but my mother came quickly. Shock filled her eyes when she saw me in the door, almost gasping for air.
“It’s school! What are you making here,” the shock turned to rage. Her face reddened up.
“Help me, help me,” was all that I could manage to say out of breath.
“What has gotten into you?” the rage left her and shock came back. My face was white in the mirror I passed, no blood.
“I am bleeding, help me, mom,” I said in a soft whisper. My lips barely moved, the sound just loud enough to be heard.
“What are you talking about, Pete? There’s no blood! What happened at school?”
“Their faces, so cold. I don’t want to go… back,” I looked past my mom, looking at through the window. I saw an elder walking down the road, in the rain. She saw me and gave the same smile the teacher had. I stood up from the couch and ran upstairs; ignoring my mother’s screams. The door made a loud bang. I covered myself with my duvet; sheltering away from everything.
“Pete, get out of that room now! Open the door now!” she hit the door while the shouts filled the house. I didn’t open the door, I didn’t move.
She left the door and was gone after ten minutes, I thought.

A strange tingle on my arm startled me awake. It was dark outside. The clock read 6:34. I slept for the whole afternoon. The tingle startled me again. I opened the duvet and stood up. The light shone bright, burning my eyes for a moment. After a while I got used to the light. I looked down on my arm to see what happened.
It was turning white, like the others…
***
The grey jersey just covered the white marks on my arm, only a bit came over my hand, but at least it's not that visible.
"Mom, please I don't want to go," I begged a last time before she went out the front door to her car. It was useless trying to convince her that all that happened to me was true. She would never believe it, not even her only son. Maybe I need to die first, then she can actually see something is wrong.
Cold milk stood on the kitchen table with some stale cornflakes from last week; I felt sick. While I threw the milk over the corn flakes, that don’t look like it, I swear I saw movement outside the window. I dropped the milk on the floor; the bottle broke spattering the whole floor with the white milk. "Shit!" I shout at myself, "It was nothing you asshole."
While I fetched the thing to clean up the milk, I heard the same noise and movement. I jerked my head to where I thought it was, there it sat, on the branch sticking out of the tree. On the edge sat a pitch black crow, his eyes were just two small beads looking straight into my eyes. My head started to spin, my eyes feel heavy and my limbs numb, I felt hypnotized from the bird's stare. I walked forward without noticing it, toward the bird sitting outside the window, inches from my face. It opened its beak, bellowed out a loud screech that hurt my ears; the faint whistling kept on playing in my head long after the actual sound. He blinked twice before he looked to the other side, to the left of the room. I felt something let go of me when he looked away, and when he flew away I felt a heavy burden leave my shoulders. Dust fell to the floor from where he flew away in slow-motion, the air bent by his wings flapping away.
The door flung open, hitting the wall with a hard thud. A shiver went down my spine and I suddenly became aware of the tingling in my arm again, or on my arm. It felt cold, like someone’s hand clenched tight around it. The icy sensation penetrated the skin and into the bone of my arm, and it spread a bit more than earlier. I moved the jersey’s sleeve up my arm to look at what was going on, but there was nothing; the skin only looked drier than before. I pulled the jersey back over my arm and started walking to the door. The appetite I had is lost now due to the freakish account with the bird I had; dumb bird!

The door stood wide open. I walked out, into the air that felt damp from the humidity. It must have been of the previous day’s rain. On the way to school, I walked through a couple of the water puddles next to the road. Small green weeds started to grow next to the tar roads, the first sign of life and colour I seen since we moved here.
Don’t stare at me like that! my mind cried out to some old lady with a baby in her arms staring at me like I was the weird one here. I guess I was the weird one here, for all the people here were dead. Her clothes hung loosely around her obese body, breasts hung on the ground, her hair – the little she had left - clenched to her face tightly. The skin had wrinkles on her wrinkles and the life was sucked out of her eyes. The baby looked like a doll rather than a real baby.
My footsteps became more hastily on the ground next to the road. I tightened my grip on the bag over my back and lowered my head; I starred at the ground moving quickly past me. The same uncomfortable feeling I had yesterday in the school building fell over me when I stood on the edge of Lain Street. The first corner of the school stuck out its head; my stomach made summersaults when I heard the same quiet. One leg in front of the other, first my left then my right.

“You’re late,” the facial expressions lacked on her face, the tone in her voice was monotonic. I could feel the cold stare she gave me, her eyes burning holes in the back of my head.
“I’m sorry, my mom left without me,” I tried to explain, but the glimpse I caught of her stare confirmed my assumption that she didn’t believe me.
“Sit,” her voice was colder than the previous statement. The bunk was cold; the wood made soft creaking noises as I sat down. All the eyes were on me when I made the only noise in the room; my cheeks turned red, but soon after disappeared again quickly. I think I had the only colour in the room, even if it was only the blushing. Scratching’s on the table hurt my hand as I swept it across, the same carvings than the previous day. I felt nauseas when I thought back. I just stared forward.

“I’m Jenna,” a hand with colour, actual skin colour, was stuck in front of me. I was dumbfounded for a moment, but took her hand at last. It was hot, filled with life unlike the rest of the whole town who had absolutely no life. My hand even felt cold against the lovely feeling of hers. I smiled, and she smiled back. “I guess you are new,” she said in a real tiny voice. “Something different to live in a city where everyone is kind of, dead,” a smile stretched over her face when she pulled a funny face. It was the first time in months that I saw a real smile, and heard a real laugh.
“What is this place,” I asked with a really monotonic tone like all the other talked. It almost scared me when I though again about the tingling.
“I don’t know, I just don’t let it fuck with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you let them in your mind, you will turn into one of them,” she jumped down the table where she sat and ran into one of the distant class rooms.