|Type| Horror Short Story
|Origin| This was a monthly writing challenge for the Midnight Faith, a horror writer Discord community I’m part of.
|Prompt| After School
|Words| 5,071
[Featured image by David Werbrouck on Unsplash.com]
What keeps you up at night? For me, it’s reliving social embarrassments, all the slip-ups and ridiculous things that my memory fills my idle mind with. My whirlwind brain only slows when I’m trying to fall asleep. Otherwise, I keep it packed with escapist fantasies from America’s greatest role-playing game tee-em.
The other night my mind forced me to remember the Jessica’s Hair Incident from when I was thirteen. I made some thoughtless comment that I don’t even remember anymore about Jessica, a black girl I was friends with. One of our friends misheard and told her about it. At lunchtime, Jessica approached me with a couple other girls and asked, “Did you say my hair looks like worms?” She seemed confused more than angry.
I could have cleared things up right then, but some spirit of deviousness seized me and I ran to the playground instead. It was like a really dumb game of hide and seek where I kept jogging partway ahead on the trail, and Jessica and her friends eventually caught up, talking about something else entirely, and paused to glare at me. Then I ran off again to avoid the confrontation, cringing inside each time the pattern repeated. I was even cringier than a ploy from a bad sitcom.
Lunch ended and I knew if I let things go, she’d never stop thinking badly of me. I finally approached Jessica and apologized. I told her the inane thing I’d said instead of “Jessica’s hair looks like worms,” and that I thought her corkscrew hairstyle was actually cool.
You think about these things until you’re exhausted enough to fall asleep. But why do our brains do this? Is it self-induced humility? Or just self-indulgent torture, a penance we can never pay back, but still feel we owe? Either way, maybe it came back to me because I’d been wondering how I got so passive. Maybe it’s dumb to become quieter to avoid misunderstandings, but the less you talk, the less people can hold against you. Right?
I managed being a blank-faced NPC in other people’s lives for years until I got caught up in someone else’s inertia. Catherine was possessed of confidence that seemed boundless and sourceless. She could have fit with the preppy kids even if she didn’t quite resemble them, since she had their means and style. Instead, they teased her for not straightening her wild puffy hair, and she told them off every chance she got. I envied her.
Then Val entered her orbit. Unlike me, Val transformed from a demure short blonde uncomfortable with the body that had matured before she was ready into a maelstrom of personality. They were united with laughter that could break down the tender peace of a classroom, or glares that withered the most aggressive griefers.
I wanted to grow into myself under the tutelage of their charisma like Val had done. Instead, I only shrank as we got closer. They taught me what colors best suited me and how to find good cheap make-up, but I’d rather have died than shown them the ‘5th edition Dungeons and Dragons Handbook’ in my bag. My nerd-dom was not in their wheelhouse, not to mention my delusion. How could someone so dull and meek make enough friends to play a game, let alone host it as dungeon master?
I imagined them discovering it.
“What’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide? Are you into BDSM, Claire?”
“There’s no way she’s that kinky!”
The titters follow me as I crawl into a locker to die of embarrassment. It is not a portal to a different fantastical world like I’d hoped; it’s just a sharpie-stained coffin.
Then the day of my grand mistake came. The art class had recently done caricatures of teachers and classmates that got hung in the hallway outside the art room. They were supposed to be light-hearted and funny, but someone drew Catherine, who wasn’t even in the class. She didn’t give consent to be drawn, and the way she was pictured as a fat dumpling of a girl at the bottom of the page with a huge triangular tree of hair filling the rest of it was anything but cute. To make matters worse, other students covered it with horrible slurs and the teacher took it down before the end of the day.
People like me don’t get into trouble. We make A’s and keep our noses in books. But in Math class, Oliver bragged about doing the drawing in front of me, since I’m just an NPC. I did what a friend ought to do, and I told Catherine.
“Are you sure we won’t get caught? Isn’t there a night guard?” I whispered, shrinking against the wall.
“Come on,” Catherine said, ignoring me. She opened the handicapped stall we were all hiding in and went out.
“Don’t forget the bag,” Val said. She blinked at me, baby blues that were too innocent-looking for the creature who had so eagerly agreed to this. She said, as if she was talking to a scared child, “There’s just one guard at night. We can dodge him, easy.”
I frowned and slung the shoulder bag around me. The cans inside knocked and sloshed together. But I followed, trying to keep the noise down.
“Which locker is Oliver’s?” Val asked.
Catherine peeked around the Z-shaped fold that separated the hallway from the girl’s bathroom and then motioned us forward, the party’s rogue lookout. She narrowed her eyes and answered. “Third floor, number 1332.”
“We go in and out quick, like you said, right?” I asked. “But why’d you get so much spray paint?”
“Oliver considers himself an artist, right?” Catherine smirked. “I need to show him up with something spectacular.”
Val chuckled. “I even made stencils.”
“You’re both nuts,” I hissed, but they were eager to be gone.
We argued about the route once we reached the elevator.
“The guard’ll notice the numbers moving,” Val said. “That’s a dead giveaway that someone’s in it.”
“Yeah, but if we meet him on the stairs, we don’t have anywhere to go,” Catherine countered.
“You’re right,” I said. “Elevator’s faster and it’s only three floors.” Calling the elevator might be a barbarian’s approach, like bashing right through the front gate of a fortress, but voices echoing up a stairwell wouldn’t be much stealthier.
We got in and Val pressed the button for floor three. The doors slid shut and the metal box began to climb.
Maybe it was the moment of tension, or that I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, or fumes from an open spray can, or—something else—but it suddenly felt like we’d hurtled weightlessly into space. My stomach floated and my vision blanked for a moment. An eerie cold filled the elevator, making my skin prickle under my clothing, which suddenly felt as present and abrasive as sandpaper.
“Oh God!” I yelled, and even though time hadn’t seemed to move, the others were grabbing my hands. Then, things were normal again. I looked at them, caught a single glimpse of their terrified expressions, and then the elevator light went out. Our breaths were loud, claustrophobic in the small space. We’ve entered Allagadda, I thought.
“Did the elevator get stuck?” Val whispered.
Catherine recovered first and went to the door. She started digging at the seam in the door and asked, not turning around, “Did anybody see what floor it got to?”
We answered, “No.”
Something tapped to the floor by her feet. “Damn it, I just twisted off a nail,” Catherine griped.“I need something else to pry these open.”
I handed her a spray can. “Try using the base of it.”
We managed to crack it open by pressing with two cans from opposing sides. Val wedged her hands in and held one side until we all could pull on it. When the door opened, we wished it hadn’t.
There was a ‘3’ painted on the wall made of the same white brick as most of the school hallways. Familiar white and black vinyl tiles stretched down the floor ahead of us. But we didn’t recognize the gloomy air that seemed alive, or the pulsing lights that swam within it. Stars caught in gelatin, or larvae in the congealed surface of a lake.
“We can’t do this,” I urged. “Something’s wrong.” We’d plane shifted. It couldn’t be real. Could we even breathe if we went on?
Catherine swept a hand at the box we were trapped in. “You’re welcome to stay here, but there’s no help coming unless that one guard shows up.”
None of us moved. “I’m getting tired,” Val said, hands trembling against the door.
Catherine shrugged off her fear first. We were caught between floors, so she hopped up and dragged herself to the lip of the third floor. Then she braced the door with one hand and held the other out to Val.
“I got it,” I said, and used my body to keep the door open. I refused to look down the dark shaft below the third floor. Val was short, so I offered her my thigh to boost off of.
As I followed her up, taking Catherine’s hand, I was ashamed. I should be living for this moment, fantasy inexplicably meshing with reality. We didn’t know for sure that something was wrong with floor three, but it felt like anything real or unreal could come out of that gloom. I should’ve been more at home in the unknown than them; I’d been preparing for it all my life, escaping reality for the uncertainty of adventure. But I hid behind Catherine, glad she was the first walking into the massy twilight.
The air was cold. Not like the cold spikes of winter that sting your nose and dry your skin. Instead, it sunk damply into our bones and deadened our senses, making us feel half alive. My bladder felt too full and I regretted not using the bathroom before we’d left our hiding place. I told myself it was just fear.
We walked past the stairwell and I stopped to look down it. “Uh, we’re leaving, right?”
Catherine swiveled dramatically to look at me. “Uh, no. We’re close to his locker now. Let’s finish up and leave by the stairs after.”
“You can if you want,” I said. “I didn’t sign up for—“
I heard something. It started low, like a sleepy cow, but rose into a wail like a viking’s war horn. A silhouette appeared, gliding up the stairwell. Perhaps it was just a shadow of the being, or the being itself, but I couldn’t tell. No name came to mind for this tall thin thing, but one large glowing orifice opened in what I assumed was its head. Multiple pupils slid around in the eye gel, it emanated another call, and I bolted, knowing that it was looking at me.
I heard Val and Catherine run after me but didn’t look back.
The third floor hallway had never been this long. It seemed endless. I got winded but didn’t dare stop. I flashed by the longest row of windows that had ever been made and saw a plump puffball-haired girl and a small blonde racing after me, and a tall, thin, shadowy entity with spirals of smoke trailing from it, the glowing orifice bulging toward us from its front.
My panicked mind scrambled for the stats of the Beholder while I ran and cried. This was reality, not pen and paper. We needed to hide. I shoved away the mental regurgitation and grasped at other fleeting thoughts. Weapon. None. I couldn’t expect that thing to obey physical laws, anyway. The bag of spray cans banged against my back, reminding me I had them. I tore one out and dropped it, hoping it would roll and trip the thing. A test to see if it was substantial.
“Incoming!” I yelled, and heard Val shriek, hop over the can, and land.
“Fuck, Claire!” But she was still running and panting behind me.
The creature didn’t so much as glance away from its targets, the rolled can proving no deterrent.
I didn’t have strength in my legs to keep this up. It would catch us. I promised myself. It will catch us. So, what’s the point in it catching all of us? I pulled out another can. I could drop it to the right and trip Val, or drop it to the left to trip Catherine. Val the flake or Catherine who made me jealous? The supportive one who teased me or the confident one who couldn’t help overshadowing others? I couldn’t choose. We’d all die if I didn’t, but I loved them. They annoyed me and made me feel insignificant, but I regretted missing the chance to ever be real with them. It was on me if I couldn’t measure up, not them. I wasn’t hero enough to sacrifice myself.
Stop.
I’d prove I was worth a shit, even if just to myself. I pulled out a spray can and chose.
Skidded to a stop and nearly fell over. Turned to face the beast as my shocked friends whizzed past me. I pressed the plunger and ejected a plume of what turned out to be violet into the thing’s blazing many-pupiled orifice. The shadows engulfed me and I saw black.
I heard Val and Catherine crying. Then I realized I could feel their hands holding mine, even though I was half numb and still dazed. Val wiped my face and her fingers came away smudged with violet.
“I-it took off for now,” Val jittered.
Catherine’s hand squeezed mine harder. “Get up, even if you can’t. We need to leave.”
I climbed to my feet but my whole body shook. My lungs were burning. I must’ve only been out for seconds. Still hadn’t caught my breath.
Catherine took a second and looked at me intently. For once, without a trace of condescension, she said, “That was brave.”
The acknowledgment was more than I could bear and I started sobbing. Val led me while I was blinded by emotion. Her hand was very warm.
We took refuge in yet another bathroom. Never expected the tables to turn totally away from reality. We each took one of the remaining spray cans and I realized just how lucky I’d been. The violet can was the only one that had been used. All the others had their safety tabs still on. We prepared the others, and I stared at my can of green apple, imagining what could’ve happened if I’d pressed the plunger in front of the beast and no spray came out.
My life sucked out through my face, body left a withering husk. Maybe I foresaw my death in its eye and was simply obliterated where I stood. Or it embraced me, drawing my screaming soul into the void to join all the others—
I was jostled out of the visions of my death and I whipped my head around. Val was gripping my shoulder and looking at me, brimming with tears. Worried for all of us, I guessed.
We heard a deep sound that started low and climbed until it was a blaring horn. Catherine looked up from the sink, her face still dripping water, and gave our reflections a horrified stare. Val collapsed against my side, trembling, so I hugged her.
The cry came again, sounding closer. Catherine and I noticed ripples going through the mirror, echoing the rhythm of the cry. The mirror seemed to grow less solid. Catherine rubbed her face against her sleeve. Then she raised a hand and touched the mirror. Her palm vanished. She jerked back with a gasp.
“What did it feel like?” I asked.
“N-normal, I guess,” Catherine said.
Shapes appeared on the mirror, swirling clouds of color that adjusted and formed lines and curls until they became words. They looked like graffiti, mimicking what we might have sprayed on a certain locker, had the world not subverted our intentions.
Feed me your wish and you may leave—
“Wish?” Val murmured behind her hands. She shook her head violently against my shoulder. “I can’t take this! It’s too weird!”
Catherine took several deep breaths and stalked back and forth. She raked her hands into her hair and shook it, a gesture she did when she was psyching herself up to argue with someone. Or wanted to fight. “Let’s just try it. Alright? I-I’ll go first.”
“Cath, you don’t know—” Val whined.
Catherine grabbed us both in a hug suddenly. “We might end up somewhere else. But this is all wrong. All we can do is move forward, right? Otherwise, it’s back into the hallway with that thing, and I don’t personally feel brave enough to try to sneak around it. Do you?”
I’d been enough of a hero for one day, so I shook my head.
“I’ll be just on the other side, waiting for you…”
“I hope,” she didn’t say.
Catherine faced the mirror and levered her butt up onto the counter. She said, “I wish I could do whatever I wanted.”
The words on the mirror vanished, but there was no further response. The rising howl came from outside again, and this time, sounded near. I pictured the creature panting just outside the door.
Catherine didn’t need any further prompting. She twisted and put her feet through first, then with a shove, went the rest of the way, eyes squeezed shut.
Val cried as she climbed up on the counter, as afraid of what laid ahead as what followed us. “I wish my brother was still here.” She slid through awkwardly, giving little shrieks at every unexpected sensation. Then she was gone too.
The shadow started phasing through the door soundlessly. The glowing orb beheld me and it shrieked so loudly that I thought the reverberations would melt my brain. I told the mirror, “I wish everyone was the same,” and threw myself across the counter. A dark rope of shadow wrapped around my forearm and my knee banged into the faucet so hard I thought it would break. But I yanked my arm and rolled, and was free—
—I slammed against a floor, knocking the lights out of me for a second. Then I sat up and looked at Val and Catherine, who gaped down at me. We were in the third floor bathroom. We all moved instantly. Catherine pawed at the mirror and found it stable, an immovable physical object. Val flipped on the light switch. I fled to a stall and finally released the aching bladder that had threatened to embarrass me so many times that night. The gloom was gone, and so were the pulsing lights that had made the world feel like a hallucination. When I came out, we stood around in stunned quiet for a while, our questions so unanswerable that we couldn’t even form them.
Someone coughed in the hallway and we all screamed.
“I’m coming in,” a male voice said, uncertainly. The guard was in uniform, a black man with a bit of a belly, and he took in the state of us. “What in hell? You girls are here way after hours.”
“Practice ran late,” Catherine said immediately. “I’m about to call my folks for a ride.”
“You do that. You all don’t look well.” He scratched at his head. “I have to escort you off premises, alright? Let’s go to the parking lot together.” He looked at the violet spray paint that spattered my jeans and hoodie. “You girls have ID on you? I need your names and the names of your homeroom teachers.”
We didn’t care at that point. We were in trouble, sure. But it didn’t compare to being dead.
Catherine got out of the Uber in front of her house. Dad wouldn’t love that she’d used the family credit card on an expensive ride, but he should’ve picked up his damn phone when she’d called in that case. What good were rules if he didn’t follow them either? What good was the “Home by eight on school nights, or else” threat if he wasn’t awake enough to give her a ride later than that? It would be so much easier to live alone. Maybe she’d move out when she turned eighteen and graduated. Then she really could do whatever she wanted.
Catherine punched in the code to unlock the front door. She expected the living room light to be on since she was home so late, and Dad or Mom awake on the sofa, watching TV and waiting up for her. But they weren’t. The house was dark. She turned on the lamps and looked out the front window. For a panicky moment she imagined she saw a tall shadow with a big glowing orb looking in, but there was nothing. Just the cars in the driveway, like she’d expected.
She went to her parents’ bedroom and knocked on the door. Then pushed it open.
“Just me. Hey, sorry I’m home so late. I didn’t expect to be.”
She stepped in and flipped on the light switch. The bed was empty and mussed.
“Mom? Dad?”
Catherine traced through the whole house. She rang their cell phone numbers and followed the ringing. She found their phones, but strangely, her number wasn’t attached to a contact name in either. She used to be “Dandelion” in her Dad’s phone and “Cat” in her Mom’s. When had that changed?
She checked the guest room, her room, and all the bathrooms. Then she went to the neighbors and asked them. After the second neighbor answered her, she started to shake. It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be.
Mrs. Winslow wasn’t as old as Mr. Perry on the other side. Catherine could count on her to remember. But the answer drove a spike of cold into her heart.
“I’m sorry, Catherine, I never met Doug and Matilda. You’ve always lived alone. I don’t know how you did it, you’re so young, but I always assumed you were a ward of the state, or had family look in on you sometimes. Oh, honey. Why are you crying?”
Catherine let the neighbor hold her for a minute, then said, “Mrs. Winslow, I think I need to call the cops. My parents are missing, and I…I think it might be my fault.”
She had no idea what she’d tell them.
Valentine’s mother proceeded her down the driveway from the Benz. She didn’t look back and didn’t say anything, so Valentine knew she was angry.
“I’m sorry,” Val tried again. “I didn’t mean to miss the bus. Catherine said she could get us home, but her dad wouldn’t pick up his phone.”
“You knew I had friends over tonight, Valentine. I just think it’s a bit selfish that you ruined my plans.”
Val watched as her mom sighed and stopped to wait for her. Then, Mom touched Val’s shoulder with a hand covered in tiny gold rings and a bracelet. Flashy and perfect. “I might seem harsh. But I came to get you, didn’t I? I might be annoyed but you know I’m always here for you.”
“I know, Mom.” Val gave her a wan smile. After everything else, coming home to accusations of selfishness felt unthreatening. The blanket of normalcy swept her up and grounded her in reality. It felt like home.
Something felt off from the moment they stepped through the front door, like something in the trash had gone bad. Val kicked her shoes off in the front hall and froze. Her brother’s old sneakers were there.
Her mom waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, those grimy things.”
Val gaped at her. Was Mom feeling sentimental, dragging his old belongings out?
Mom went on. “You’d think August would want something branded and new to fit in, but he sure clings to retro fashion, doesn’t he?”
Val shook her head. She couldn’t understand. Why was Mom using present tense?
“Valentine? Are you home?”
It was a young male voice from upstairs, a bit threadbare as if the caller was weary. But it sounded very much like her brother.
No way. That trip to hell couldn’t have been real. The wish couldn’t have been. But if it was—
Val took the carpeted stairs so fast she tripped and gave her shin a rug burn. The door to August’s old room was cracked open, light and the sound of video games leaking out. It was nostalgic enough to make her chest throb.
It’s not that they’d ever gotten along. It’s not like she’d missed him. Yet every time a school mate had talked about their brother or sister acting out or getting one over on them, she’d felt a sneaky kind of loss. Over time, she realized what it was: abandonment. The complete denial of potential. If he was really back, they might develop a more meaningful relationship.
She pushed the door open and was assaulted with a scent she hadn’t fully recognized until she arrived at the source. Rot.
Flies buzzed past and tickled her face with their wings. Maggots writhed on the carpet under the swivel chair, falling out of the pants cuffs above gristly blackened feet that tapped to the music blaring from the speakers. August toed his desk chair around. Val recognized his face despite the waxy bloat, but couldn’t have explained how he saw her out of those opaque sunken eyes, nor recognized her voice with the nubs of chewed cartilage that remained of his ears.
August got up and walked toward her, stumbling on feet with uneven substance. His hoodie shifted, revealing the black bruise around his neck from when he’d hung himself last year.
“You missed dinner,” he said. His voice was a threadbare rasp from a tortured windpipe.
“Huh?” She couldn’t comprehend the words.
“Should be a plate in the fridge for you,” he said, melted expression unreadable. “Val, you look sick. Did something happen at school? If anybody hurt you after class, I’ll kick their ass. You know that.” He lurched at her, arms out.
Val took several steps back and banged into her mom.
“Valentine! Don’t treat him like he’s a ghost. He’s been so sweet to you lately.”
Trapped between them, Valentine could only weep helplessly as August hugged her, the damp of his flesh seeping through her shirt, parts of him wriggling.
Claire walked home. At so many points she’d failed to react the way she wished, and looking back made her cringe at her cowardice. She couldn’t believe she’d almost sacrificed one of her friends for a chance to get away from that monster. She reached home without thinking of any excuses. How could she explain an astral plane with a shadow monster that had chased her through an anti-climactic wish-granting mirror? The she saw Dad, all she could do was start sobbing.
He took her in a hug. Andrea, her step-mom, even patted her hair. They scolded her for being out late and said they’d demand an explanation tomorrow, but mostly seemed relieved she was safe.
Claire brushed her teeth listlessly in front of the mirror. She had to admit that they probably took pity on her because she looked like she’d been through what she had been through. She couldn’t tell them about it, so she didn’t, and both seemed concerned when she refused to speak over breakfast.
She got distracted at Catherine’s disappearance. Catherine simply never came back to school and wouldn’t answer her phone. Val looked like a skeleton and had started wearing perfume so strong that Claire could hardly stand to be near her. She wiped herself with disinfectant cloths and her skin got red and flaky. It hurt Claire to see her like that after just realizing what her friends meant to her.
The news started grabbing Claire’s attention. Rogue waves and typhoons occurred in Asia and one earthquake after another tore through California and the midwest. Tornadoes sprung up from nowhere out of season. Then stories of ghost and alien visitations increased enough that they showed up on regular news media. Dead pets came back home and attacked their owners. Then dead children and the elderly came back…
Zombie movies in real life? When the epidemic of the returning dead hit the USA, schools were closed and Claire couldn’t worry about Val or Catherine anymore. Recognition niggled in the back of her mind. The situation was familiar, associated with abhorrence. What was she not remembering?
The sunset was like a slimy bronze filter over the sky. Moved by some spirit of curiosity, Claire stood on the roof and looked out at the moon. Something almost as large but much darker hovered near it. Claire checked her phone for reports about the rogue celestial body and found a few articles, but hardly anyone was manning the news stations anymore. She went inside to get her binoculars since she didn’t have a telescope. The celestial body was big enough, close enough to see some details. Her mouth went dry when she realized what it was.
It was as round and big as the moon, but tonight, it was facing the northern United States. She knew it by the marks on its face that resembled a howling skull. It was a planet that presaged death, covered in slime and rot. The head of a god that had been born dead.
In ‘Dungeons & Dragons,’ Atropus the planet didn’t have stats. It was something even an army couldn’t fight. You could only fight its nearly impossible paragon to get it to leave, a CR 23 creature, a headless lawful evil gargantuan undead, and only if you made it through all the zombies and skeletons it had raised on your world and its own.
This was not a story. This was not a handbook. This was real life. Yet an undead primordial god hung in the sky, staring at them all, loathing their vitality. People were coming back to life at its beckoning to murder each other, creating more and more undead. Claire fell to her knees and hugged herself, shivering. Real people do not have statistics and class features, or rituals to resurrect each other with diamonds. There was no escape from this. They were a doomed planet. They would all be killed and then revived in undeath. They would…
They would all be the same. Had she wished for this?
Had the mirror?
AJ Reid 