The boys' toilets contained sights that would shock the hardiest of girls. Even Gunhilda felt her soul tarnish when she discovered a crude attempt to etch a glory-hole between the urinal dividers. Countless males over the years had scrawled graffiti all over the walls for the purpose of calling each other gay.

Gunhilda shrugged. “If they're all deader than dead, maybe it will be easier to get them back than if they were regularly dead. I'm bored of talking Philosophy. Hurry up and save them.”

“I think I slept through the 'saving students from metaphysical threats' class on my PGCE,” said Morris. “But, okay. Let's explore the mirrors methodically--starting with Violet. She was the first one to get in there, so maybe she knows something we don't.”

The girls' toilets contained sights that would shock the hardiest of boys. Morris was not a hard man. He just about melted when he caught sight of the sanitary sludge smeared over the walls. Countless females over the years had scrawled graffiti all over the doors for the purpose of bullying each other to suicide. Morris pinched his nose, clambered up over the sink, and passed through the mirror opposite Violet’s cubicle. The smell was no better on the other side--the room was identical apart from the graffiti being the wrong way round. Gunhilda vaulted through with a running jump, hiking her legs up as she cleared the counter.

“Toilets are empty,” said Gunhilda, kicking open each cubicle methodically. “No corpses here.”

“Pens are dropping,” said Morris, as he let one splash into a puddle of indeterminate liquid. “And my watch is ticking.”

“Well?”

“I mean it's a mirror world, use your imagination a little bit. Wherever we've ended up, the laws of cause and effect are working as intended.”

“Can we leave? Is Tolliver in the boys'?”

Morris slid through the doorframe to avoid touching any more grime, and reached the corridor. Gunhilda charged through the door like a barricade, flattening it. They opened the door to the boys' and were greeted with a perfectly white void on the other side. It was both so bright that it made Morris squint and so dark that it made his pupils enlarge.

“No girls allowed?” ventured Morris.

“Why do you feel the need to crack such poor attempts at humour?” asked Gunhilda. “May I ask what you think that adds to anything?”

Morris ignored her and tried a door to a nearby English classroom. It opened just fine, and appeared to be a perfectly quintessential classroom, but the Maths one next door opened up into the same white void. Ditto for the science lab at the end of the corridor. There was nobody else around--no students, no teachers, not even a helicopter parent.

“Why do some doors work while others--” began Gunhilda.

“I'm thinking!” said Morris. He sat in the middle of the corridor and pressed his fingertips to his temple in order to emphasise just how important it was that she shut the hell up. Sapphire had walked into a situation and immediately solved it, and he wasn't going to be shown up by her today. After a minute, he reckoned he had it.

“Do you know what classes Violet takes?” he asked.

Gunhilda scoffed, then turned her back to Morris so that he couldn't see she was looking it up on her phone. “Philosophy, English, and Computing.”

“Have you heard about a theory called Idealism?” he asked.

Gunhilda scoffed, quickly looking it up, but there wasn't any internet. She doubled down and said, “What kind of stupid idiot do you take me for?”

“Right.” He stood up. “Then you know what we need to do next.”

“Absolutely.” She pressed her hands together, and the clap echoed throughout the empty hallways. “Lead the way, Morris.”

She followed him, leering at all of the white voided rooms they were passing. They went down flights of stairs, and she tried to hide her gobsmacked surprise when she looked out of the window. Instead of the usual view of the town outside the college, only a few select roads were visible, snaking their way through the whiteness to a distant house. It was like looking at a video game that hadn't properly loaded all of its assets.

“Going back to your classroom, eh, Morris?” she said. “Good plan, that's what I was thinking as well.”

“Don't patronise me,” said Morris as they turned the last corner. “Well, look who's here!”

Mr. Dense was still there, spinning in place, his wardrobe heavily malfunctioning, but the rest of the class was empty. Upon seeing them, his face lit up like a child witnessing the homecoming of an absentee father.

“Ghosts and ghoulies,” cried the Physics teacher. “I didn't think you were going to come and save me! It's been awful lonely, you know.”

“Sorry, we haven't quite figured it out yet,” said Morris. “Hang in there.”

“Stop it, Morris,” said Gunhilda, striking a power pose to intimidate her subordinate. “Mr. Dense, why are you saying you’re lonely after all of one minute in an empty classroom?”

“Why wouldn't I say that?” said Mr. Dense. “You all disappeared after I threw the hammer.”

“Nonsense.” Gunhilda slammed her fist on the table, setting a long chain of cause and effect in motion that led to a glue stick being catapulted off a ruler and shattering a window.

“Yes, sense!”

“That's not Mr. Dense you're talking to,” said Morris.

“Yes, it is. I'm Mr. A. Dense.”

“He definitely appears to have the proportions of Mr. Dense,” said Gunhilda. “Nobody else quite embodies the word 'rotund'.”

Morris shook his head. “Dense, last year's Christmas do. You went through a whole bottle of Vodka. You got in trouble for singing a song about a particular teacher. What did you sing, and who was the teacher?”

Mr. Dense blushed. “I was blackout drunk, how am I supposed to know?”

“Convenient. Alright, here's an easier one for you. What was the hypothesis to your PhD?”

He wriggled around, flustered. “That one's easy! It's... uh... it's too complicated to explain to the likes of you.”

“You explained it well enough when I interviewed you,” said Gunhilda. “You also had to write a statement for HR about your actions that one hallowed soiree.”

“So?” said Mr. Dense. “I just--I don't quite remember it right now!”

“What’s your first name?” asked Morris.

“No way in hell am I telling you that!”

“Why don't you know?” said Gunhilda. “What's going on?”

“He doesn't know, because you're not talking to Mr. Dense,” said Morris. “You're talking to the sum of Violet's perception of Mr. Dense, just as we are standing in Violet's perception of the world. Idealism, bitch! If you didn’t see it, it doesn’t exist!”

“Alright calm down, Morris. I understand. Everything the girl has seen exists here, and everything else is just void. But then if this is here world, she should be in it, right?”

“My question is why is Mr Dense here and nobody else? Violet could be here but why is it so empty?”

“Do you keep forgetting?” said Gunhilda. “I hired you to answer questions, not ask them. And we’re still in teaching hours I’ll have you know.”

“Thanks for the reminder. But we haven’t had a teacher training day in a while so don’t expect too much in terms of performance.”

“How unusual, you don’t often worry about that kind of performance, Morris.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t worry about that and get on with it.”

“But that’s harassment if I ever heard it!” whined Morris.

“If you’d like to keep your job, I suggest you get on with it, Morris. Besides, are you going to ask Mr Dense from the other side to defend you when we come back? I was just joking. I told you your humour didn’t cut it.”

“I don’t think that was very funny either,” growled Morris.

Gunhilda crossed her arms.

“Whatever,” said Morris before taking a seat in his reflected desk chair. Trying to forget the insult, he looked around the room for something that could help. There were textbooks which might have been helpful, but only about half of the ones he had in his real classroom were present. Stupid girl only read the ones that had something to do with his curriculum. And those books were all the wrong way round anyway.

An idea flashed through Morris’ mind.

“Gunhilda, where was Violet before she ended up in the ladies’?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. The corridor?”

“But we didn’t see anything there,” said Morris. “Where is she normally at this time of day?”

Gunhilda quickly checked her watch. Teaching time would have just ended. “I don’t know, maybe she nerds out in the computer rooms.”

“Let’s go and check it out then,” said Morris.

“You’re not going to say anything about overtime?”

“Forget about overtime, kids are deader than dead and the emergency people can’t even get in without more of them getting trapped in the toilets.”

They left Mr Dense to continue floating under the pretense that it would ‘all be alright soon’. The computer rooms were down in the half basement that was somehow built on purpose.

“Alright, which room is she in?” asked Morris.

“How should I know? This was just a guess,” said Gunhilda.

“It was rhetorical.”

“If you say so.”

“Let’s split up to go around and meet in the middle room,” suggested Morris.

“Fine, but if we find her?”

“Um, yell ‘she’s here!’ and wait for the other?”

“I suppose that will do. We should go fast. I have no desire to leave my students stewing in the lavatories very long.”

“Well, obviously.”

Morris watched Gunhilda gun it into the set of connecting rooms on his right. When she disappeared he tiptoed through into the rooms on the left. Even though Violet’s life was in trouble, he still didn’t really want to find her here. Especially not if she happened to be bawling. Yuck.

The first room was almost empty. Some of the computers had disappeared. No Violet. Morris snuck into the next room. There was almost nothing inside here. The girl probably never had a class here.

Next room. Morris was beginning to feel at ease. She wasn’t here. He noticed one of the computers in this room was flickering wildly and went to check it. Closer up, the flickers turned out to be pictures, changing like a slideshow. Morris’ face featured in every single one of them, photoshopped onto famous models. On the occasional flicker he saw himself pasted in bed next to Violet.

Morris fought the urge to throw up and headed to the aforementioned middle room before any more pictures could flicker into life.

“Morris,” boomed Gunhilda. “I didn’t see anything. Why are you green?”

“It’s nothing. I didn’t see anything either. Let’s look elsewhere.”

“Yes I didn’t think this would be the best place to look. Violet only really studies hard for your classes.”

“Only my classes?”

“That’s right.”

“Dear Nietzsche,” said Morris.

“By the way, there’s something I never told you about her,” Gunhilda tried to drop into the conversation nonchalantly.

“What’s that?”

“Well I’m only telling you now because it could help her but you’re better off forgetting what I said once this is over.”

“Just tell me,” said Morris.

Gunhilda looked him in both eyes. “She stalks you in her spare time.”

“She what?”

“Stalks you,” said Gunhilda. “Don’t worry, she only does it while she’s waiting for her train.”

“Don’t worry!” exploded Morris. “How do you know she doesn’t have my address and follows me home?”

“You have a good point. But I doubt she’d come back all that way just to watch you drive off. The girl does have a life.”

“Great. How do you know, anyway? And why haven’t you filed a report or something?”

“Well I didn’t think it was necessary as she wasn’t bothering you. And you probably wouldn’t have gained much out of it. You know how everyone else sees you and her.”

“Don’t put us in the same sentence!”

“Calm down, man. Anyway, I saw her spying on you in your office on evening and kept an eye on her for a while.”

“Holy fuck my office,” said Morris.

“Hey now didn’t I tell you-” began Gunhilda.

Morris ignored her and ran down the corridor to find his office.

“Wait for me, darn it, we don’t have a risk assessment on this for staff either!” shouted Gunhilda as she ran full pelt after him. Gunhilda managed to catch up just as they reached the glass door with Morris’ name tag stuck on with blu tack.

Morris had pushed at the door but had consequently frozen in the entryway. He looked like he’d seen his worst nightmare.

“Well, well,” said a voice. “You’ve found me darling.”

“No,” gasped Morris.

“Oh yes,” said the voice.

Gunhilda ducked her head over to get a better view of its owner.

“Hello there Gunhilda, nice to see you too,” it said.

Gunhilda covered her mouth with one hand.

Violet was sitting on Morris’ desk, wearing a deep purple latex corset and gloves. There was a matching whip in one of her hands.