Once the man was looking around the principal’s office, or at least that’s what he assumed it to be, which he had visited many times before. He gazed across the bookshelf in the back of the room, behind the large wooden desk. The man never got bored at re-reading the names on the spines on the books, especially when he could swear that he had never seen the names of some of these books on the shelf before. Still, the man does not question the strange nature of the place.

After scanning the bookshelf, the man turned to the drawers on the wooden desk and sat down on the squeaky office chair in preparation of his upcoming search. He opened the drawers methodically, carefully analyzing the contents in each of the drawers.

Many of the drawers were filled with old paperwork, detention slips, and some sort of files about the previous students. The man would also read through these files when he was in this office but could never remember the names of the students that were written in the papers, no matter how hard he tried to engrave the words in his mind. Every time he would set the files back in their appropriate drawers, the names were erased from his memory, along with any information he had newly obtained. It was frustrating, but again, he did not inquire too much about this phenomenon.

As the man continued on his path of searching through the drawers, he found something he vividly remembered not being there before. The drawer he had just opened seems to be a collection of all the items that were confiscated from the students. Inside the drawer were items such as a deck of cards, a dead MP3 player, packs of chewing gum, candy bars, and bras stuffed under all the other garbage.

There was one item in the drawer that caught the man’s attention, it was a plain, cheap butane lighter that seemed to stick out amongst the confiscated items. When the man picked up the lighter, he did so with unexpected struggle, since the lighter apparently weighed a pound or two by the man’s estimation. When he clicked the flint wheel and button together, he stared at the small flame it produced.

While impossible for such a small lighter, it produced an incredibly potent orange flame glowing with a purple tint. If a normal lighter could create a simple, dull yellow flame, this flame seemed much fuller and more powerful.

As the man continued to stare into the flame, he noticed small orange glowing orbs detach from their parent flame and float to his head. At first, there were only a few appearing at a time and would orbit his head. Quickly, however, hundreds of these orbs filled the room and skittered around the air as if they were excited. The glowing orbs around the man’s head were whispering to him tales. They were tales of the students.

The man saw young, teenage students running around the tree in the middle of the building, laughing with smiles pasted on their faces. He heard all of the gossip flying around the crowds, what the teachers did in their lives, the newest relationships, newest scandals, and rumors about the principal. The man could see couples kissing in the hallways, students passing notes to each other in class or whispering answers, and a few fights in the bathrooms. While it was not perfect, the man felt the youthful spirit of school as told by these glowing orbs.

Suddenly, the orbs around the man burst into flames, and he swore he could hear screams. One by one, more orbs began to combust. The room turned from a mystical purple dotted with the orange glowing orbs, to those orbs igniting the air and overpowering the purple tint. Then, the burning orbs died off, and so did the flame of the lighter.

The man tried several times to re-ignite the lighter but would not listen to his commands. Successfully confused, the man returned the lighter to the drawer and left the principal’s office.