Chapter 21

“Devil dogs have a strong sense of smell. However, their visual acuity is below average. I personally have two ways of tackling them. The first is traveling downwind from them, so that they can’t smell us. But, unfortunately–” He held his hand out the window and let a small scrap of paper fly down as the group watched. The paper floated lackadaisically, taking its time to meander down to the ground. “–there is no wind here.”

“So what’s the second way?” Scotty asked like an eager student. “By the way, mister, you’re a Zero-fan as well right? This all sounds like something that he would say on the forums. Like, just use your brain, idiot.”

Do I actually sound like that? Zack resisted the urge to say anything, although he decided that his online presence probably needed a bit of a makeover. “Yeah, you can say that I am. Anyway, listen up. The second tactic is to overwhelm their sense of smell, with a stronger odor. Because of how sensitive their noses are, this throws them off significantly. The problem is figuring out what exactly we can use as bait. I mean, we could haul a dead body out the window, but I’d rather not both out of respect for the dead and because their scent might get onto our bodies if we’re not careful.”

A bit of discussion began around the group, as they tried to think of a solution to this particular problem. It was clear that what Zack said was true– in the worst case scenario, using the corpses of the dead was a viable plan. But nobody wanted to resort to that unless it was absolutely necessary.

Alicia lifted her hand for attention. “I think I know what we can use.” Undoing her lunchbox, she took out the plastic wrapped hotdog that came along with it. “If my chihuahuas are an indication of anything, it’s that dogs love meat. This’ll do the trick.”

Patricia interjected. “Are you sure they can even smell that?”

“Not when it’s like this, but there’s a microwave back in the kitchen in the cafeteria. If we stick it in there for a few minutes, the hotdog will burst, and it’ll still be in wrapping so the smell won’t come out all that much until we need it,” Alicia replied.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Nicolas grinned. “But the problem is, how many hotdogs do we have? I already ate mine.”

Sofia Alley looked a bit guilty as well. “Me too… I was hungry, alright?”

“How about the bronze marks?”

“We only got water bottles and bread,” an older man said.

Thank god I wasn’t hungry enough. “So that leaves us with two hotdogs,” Zack concluded. “We’ll be able to work with that.”

——

The woman who had left with two others had made her way to the first floor already with her small group of three total. She was an office worker, so survival situations like this one were not exactly natural to her.

“Where’s the monster?” she whispered tersely to her companion, a janitor roughly in his fifties with a bad back.

“I haven’t seen it in a while,” the janitor replied. “It’ll be best if we stay inside for a while. That young man said that it doesn’t like water, right? So we should hide in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, let’s do that. The gymnasium is just a sprint away,” the other companion said, a younger male in his late teens.

The three of them entered into the women’s bathroom on the first floor, just a stone’s throw away from a shattered window leading towards the outer courtyard, which would bring them on the path towards the gymnasium. They just barely managed to get into the women’s bathroom safely when the last person in, the younger male, caught a glimpse of one of the hounds.

“Shit, shit shit!” he said in a panic, quickly closing and locking the door. “One of those dogs is out there.”

“Did it see you?” the woman questioned, irritated by the boy’s carelessness.

“No, I don’t think so. It had its back turned to me.”

The woman exhaled, taking in the situation. “Well, we’re trapped here for now. Let’s move when we hear screams, since that will be the best time to take advantage of the situation.” A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, staining into her white blazer. Thoughts of laundry intruded into her mind. It was steamy in the room, and it reminded her of ironing her laundry.

Since when was the bathroom so humid? Another bead of sweat formed on her temple, and then another. She glanced over and noticed that her companions were heaving, having difficulty with the humid air. The bathroom was beginning to feel like a sauna, stiflingly hot and wet.

“What’s going on?”

The janitor made a tsk sound and walked over to a large cylindrical pipe, the kind used for ventilation. “Pipe’s leaking or jammed,” he said. “I’ve had this happen a few times in the building I work in. Let me see if I can fix it.” He examined the aluminum piping, tapping it a little. “If it doesn’t get better, we’ll have to leave.” With a hand, he wiped off a palmful of sweat from his face.

“I’ll leave it to you then,” the woman replied, her face visibly disturbed by the heat that seemed to be increasing by the minute. The temperature was so unbearable now that she was beginning to feel light headed.

“Whatever, I’m getting out of here,” the teenager said, heading to the door.

Right at that moment, the sound of a hound’s footsteps could be heard from outside, and its ragged breath.

“Never mind,” the teenager mouthed, backing away slowly from the exit.

“I might be able to fix this, if I can just…” the janitor whispered with determination, both hands around the cylindrical tubing. He tapped both sides lightly, then began to move it ever so slightly.

The cylindrical tubing bulged. Except, it was not possible for it to bulge from the inside out, unless the pressure within was becoming too intense, or if there was something inside–

“There, almost done–” the janitor said, just as a straight seam burst open from the cylindrical tubing, and a grotesque appendage extended itself outwards.

It was an arm, but instead of a hand and fingers like what one might expect from an arm, protruding from the stump of the wrist, sewn on like a frankensteinian monster, was something that could only be described as a grotesque pair of scissor-hands.

The two ten-inch long, sharp daggers positioned themselves at the janitor’s jugular, the poor man’s eyes bulging with horror at the creature that was crawling within the cylindrical tubing, now staring directly into his soul.

Without warning, the blades snipped closed, cutting directly through the flesh of the janitor’s neck with a horrendous squelch, blood pouring out of his neck and pooling onto the floor as the janitor fell to the floor, lifeless.

The woman screamed, and the teenager cursed, unlocking the bathroom door and bolting outside. But less than a few yards away was the hound, who immediately turned its face towards him and snarled.

In the bathroom, steam poured out of the severed ventilation tube unstymied, as a long humanoid creature dropped out of it, like a disgusting canned chicken falling out of its casing. It was male, with a head that was far too long for its own good, and a gait that appeared to waver from left to right, stumbling as if it could not balance itself well due to its abnormal length.

[Edward Scissorhands has appeared on campus.]

[Solve the mystery of Edward Scissorhands to receive a special reward at the end of the examination.]

A notification appeared before the woman, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment. Her terrified eyes and trembling lips were fixated on the horror in front of her, her legs paralyzed with weakness. The way that it approached her was hypnotic, the way that it swayed like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, coming ever closer with its claw-like scissor-hand snapping open and close.

It opened its mouth.

“Are you my mother?” the creature asked, drawing nearer. Blood dripped down from its right stump.

The woman could not muster up her voice. She wanted to say something–anything–, but her vocal cords could only produce a nonsensical mumble. “I-I-aah…”

“Ohhhhhh…” the creature moaned, placing the blades of its hands around the sweet neck of the lady.

Snip.

——

Zack stared at the notification that just appeared before him, the same one that everyone else got as well. Like clockwork, his phone vibrated.

[Chronicles of Gakuen High has been updated.]

He had a bad feeling about this.

——

Author’s note: I was not consciously aware of the existence of a 90’s movie called edward scissorhands with Johnny Depp until I googled it just now, trying to find the scissor woman from world of horror. I’ve never watched this movie. Maybe I heard of the name sometime in my life, a very long time ago. It’s strange how these things just stay lurking in the subconscious.