BRRIIIIINNNG!

BBRRRIIIIIIINNNNNGG!!

I groaned in my half sleepy state.

I squeezed my eyelids tighter and buried my head deeper into my arms, trying to force myself back to sleep.

I don’t know what's going on with the instructors today, but I’m not one to waste this chance of catching up with my sleep.

We gamers are nocturnal, y’know.

Today, for some reason or other, 3 of 4 of my lecturers have called in sick or are absent due to other less suspicious reason. I have Core Math at somewhere around 12 o’clock but I’m not too worried as it’s currently somewhere around 8.

I’d be happy except for the fact that the staff has a sick idea of ringing the bell every fucking 0.5 hour.

Tugging on the tip of my hoodie to block off as much light as possible, I tried to smuggle myself back into Dreamland.

And I’m happy to say I was successful.

TAP TAP TAP*

Huh? Wha…? Who’s tapping my head?

I lifted my head to see which goddamned bloke woke me up.

Before my desk stood what happened to be a dark-skinned girl and was currently getting all of the sun’s rays on her face. In other words, it was as if she was standing in a weird form of spotlight. Whether she strategically placed herself there or it was a total coincidence, I’ll never know. But I did know one thing-

For a split second, she looked otherworldly.

No, I don’t mean that as in beauty or any of that horsecrap illusions. I mean that for a split second she didn't feel right.

I shrugged the feeling off and stretched in a rather luxurious manner. “What can I do for you, Asha?” I asked as I started to pop my fingers one by one. I was feeling a bit irked at myself for getting all alert at her. I mean, she’s just a girl.

“Aevan,” she said. “You’re being extra emo today.” she claimed.

Let me correct myself, she’s an odd girl.

I never understood why some people would go out of their ways to call me emo. Or cool for that matter. One might think that these are compliments, but I’m not that shallow.

And, for that matter, one can’t simply accept compliments or whatever it is. You don’t know me, you don’t know what I’m doing. You have no inkling of my thoughts, and neither would you have understood if you did.

So how in the world’s wisdom do you conclude that I’m cool or emo?

I shook my head with an exasperated and a bit frustrated smile.

Usually, I’d deal with such bullshit with a ‘Suurrrre’, ‘Riiiight’ or ‘Uh-huh. Anything else?’. But currently, I’m feeling fresh and rejuvenated. So I decided to humor her.

“And what makes you think that?” I asked with an amused smile.

And my smile faltered.

Come to think of it, the Math Lecturer should have been here before I got the chance to ask anything. But he’s not here. Maybe he’s late. So everything’s fine.

No, something’s definitely wrong. I must be missing something. Or else this intense feeling of Déjà vu is entirely misplaced.

I looked at the first sign of my discomfort.

She looked back innocently. “You have a big knot on your brows. Everything alright Aevan?”

“I dunno, Asha. You tell me.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help.” She offered.

It was totally like her to want to help. A goody-two shoes through and through. Also, her mom was a counsellor, which explained a lot.

And yet for some reason her offer sounds like a challenge. As if I’ve wounded her pride.

So bizarre. All the more reason to be on guard.

I looked around the class, only to find it empty. All of their stuffs were here, but they themselves aren’t. Why?

“They’re out playing volleyball.” Asha supplied, as if reading my mind.

“Right.” I replied. Instead of calming me, it put me even more on alert. I don’t know why, but I feel adamant that this wasn’t supposed to happen. That I should have found them chattering in their seats. And that our instructor would have arrived by now and started teaching the lesson. More importantly--

“So why aren’t you playing?” I asked in a casual way. Up until now I’ve never seen her not around her friends.

“Well,” she said and walked up to the desk next to me and sat on it. “I’ve been wanting to get to know you better.”

This isn’t right. Why is she sitting so close to me? Where is she getting the nerve to invade my personal space?

I moved back with my chair. Or at least I tried to. I tried once more. Nada.

Either I’m not eating and working out as much as I should or the chair’s nailed to the floor.

I thought of a different approach.

“You know,” I began, “I would be very not pissed off if you keep the proper distance and respect it.” and maintained eye contact with her.

You see, there’s another thing she did other than invade my personal space. By just sitting above my field of vision or in a way I’d have to look up to face her, she tried to lay her dominance on the table.

This subtlety made me reconsider my view of her. That maybe she wasn’t the goody-two shoes she let everyone think she is. This maybe the real Asha.

(Or it maybe something worse) my mind supplied to me.

Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe it was really there, but I saw her eyes narrow ever so slightly before edging away. After half a second of butt dragging episode she shattered my new found triumph.

“Is this far enough?” she asked casually, but couldn’t keep the amusement out of her voice, as if she was watching a helpless mouse.

As if I was the helpless mouse.

“Now you may cut the crap and get to the point.”

And finally a frown grew on her face. I smiled in return. 2 can play this game.

“I want to know how you dodged it.” She said.

“Okay,” I replied. “Dodge what?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know, when I sliced at you?” she said as if I was supposed to know what she sliced at me.

In fact, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Nor do I have any memory of getting into any fights with her. We were classmates. Nothing more or less.

She looked at my bewildered face and sighed. She jumped off the desk and walked back to where she was standing.

And her precise return unnerved me more than anything.

“I guess I have no other way than refreshing your memories.” she whispered.

And that was fine.

What wasn’t fine was the air that whispered along with her.

And trust me, when the air itself starts speaking, doesn’t matter if it's unreal or surreal, shit’s about to get real!

At first nothing happened. She just stood there, staring at me. I was starting to feel uncomfortable, till I noticed a peculiarity in the air. It was starting to get dry. So dry that I felt my lips crack. It was as if the very air was getting its moisture sucked. Not only that, but the air also felt dead in a way, in an inexpressible way. The air also was shivering or… or trembling. There was no breeze or gusts of wind to back my experiences, but I did feel it.

I was so absorbed in the air’s spectacle that I almost didn’t notice a kind of musty smell filling the whole class. I looked at Asha to see how she was faring in all this to see, to my surprise, that her skin had turned green. Not the sort of green you would get by feeling sick, but the sort you would find when something is decaying.

Yes, Asha, my classmate, was decaying right before my eyes.

It was probably the most bizarre thing to see. The sight of a classmate decaying in an alarming rate as she stood before you wouldn’t only cause you revulsion and disgust, but also a great deal of fascination and wonder. Your brain would be too busy trying to sort this ‘out of the blue’ cocktail of polar emotions to decide if you should look away and end the confinement of your previous meal. Or, to be simple, your brain would be too shocked to look away.

Much like mine.

There was just a barely noticeable texture of green on her skin. But only initially. As seconds ticked by, the green spread all across her body. And the musty smell turned into eye-watering stench. Her orifices started to bleed pus and trailed down her eyes, nose, mouth, ear, you name it. Then they started to cake her clothes --A full-sleeved shirt and a blue skirt, if you’re curious--as she started to bloat. Soon, even her skin started to liquify, and the stench… the stench… oh god, it alone was keeping me quaking in my chair. And yet I was unable to look away, unable to leave, too absorbed in this… this madness before me.

It wasn’t long till her hair began to fall off. She kept her hair braided, so the whole hair-mass dangled on one side after enough hair got uprooted on one side. Like trees that fell during long rainy days due to the decreased integrity of the soil. Not long after, it dropped on the accumulated decomposed flesh with a wet noise. And her clothes had crusted, cracked and dissolved; especially around her stomach and her skirt, and now were nothing but pitiful rags.

Next, her muscles started to fall off her skeletal structure in big chunks, making wet noises every time they hit the black pus of dissolved flesh and internal organs at her feet. Eventually, she could no longer stand, and fell on all fours. Not just that, her body kept twitching as if the pain was finally getting to her. She twitched and bucked, her peeling fingers scratched and dug in through the black goo of biomass and in through the tiles. Her knees scraped the tiles too. It was a very unladylike position, and I chuckled despite the horror before me.

And then, it ripped out of her like a butterfly ripping out of its pupa, except in a very savage and shit-brix-in-pants way. It came out like an otherworldly arthropoda, stretching and growing till it towered over me. Till it looked down at me with its hollow eyes, giving away nothing but the abyss in its eye socket. A bleach white structure standing like a monolith.

A skeleton.

It wasn’t just a skeleton. No, I felt it in my bones, ironically, that it was a lot, lot more than a mere skeleton. The fact that not a single err…”muck” was on its bones, considering where it came from, was the first giveaway.

Only now did it start to reveal what it truly is or, for all I cared about, what was really going on.

As soon as the last remains of my ex-classmate dissolved into the puddle of black goo, the skeleton raised its hand, causing me to flinch. The black goo at its feet flinched too; it gathered properly under its feet as if the skeleton was standing on a black disc. And the disk began to whisper. There wasn’t just one whisper; thousands and thousands of voices overlapping each other. Some expressing pain, some regret, some bewilderment and others a whole lot which were a lot to concentrate on.

The black goo started to quiver and tendrils started to wrap itself around the skeleton. It wrapped and weaved and coiled as it climbed to the skull. It covered the whole skeleton like a skin-tight holosuite until it started sagging. The sags on the legs joined together and a cowl opened up at the head, revealing nothing but the same abyss I witnessed in the skeleton’s eye sockets.

It reached its bony digits out of its large sleeves and held out, and the mass of braided hair that was lying on the floor which I was too stunned by the fluid-to-cloth-venom-symbiote scene to notice flew up to its hand. Then it started to grow till it transformed into a scythe.

Now do you remember me?

I don’t know what happened then, but, to my great annoyance, the room spun madly, and I was kidnapped to Dreamland.