Prologue

I’m your average, stereotypical quiet kid that sat in the back of the class. The getup is quite simple: a black hoodie, a white t-shirt, and khaki shorts that are familiar with every student in the school. Nobody paid attention to me. Even if somebody wanted to talk with me, what is there to bring up with a shady-looking character – what type of guns are you into? Of course, there are a whole species of quiet kids scattered throughout the school. In some of the worst hallways were most of the school’s gang’s hung out, there have been a number of infamous quiet kids who have caused at least some trouble around those parts. Class 116 located right next to the library. Class 155, across from the computer room (it’s literally right in front of the double doors that lead inside) And class 224, known for its claustrophobic hallways - it isn’t hard to miss. All those spaces are breeding grounds for trouble and usually because some of the worst people who have rumors lingering over their heads attend those classes. Josh Wilmington is a well-known kid who comes from class 116. People described him as one of those background characters that you’d see in the hunger games - that one scene where everyone circle-jerked around the main character “whoyoucallher”. He almost never talked or acted out against anyone. He got into a fight with another student after they had yanked on the strings of Josh’s jacket. He took offense to that and socked him in the jaw. Many accounts say that Josh continued to pursue the string-puller after he was helpless on the ground and just beat the absolute shit out of him. Josh didn’t even get suspended. Josh returned the next day as if nothing had happened. Most of the students flocked to him and offered him to see a counselor or offer him their own personal therapy. Some people even suggested he’d see a real therapist. To me, it’s not fair to Josh because it wasn’t any of their business. It can be weird how people get concerned for someone after some major event; it’s not like he was the one socking himself in the face. Then Gabriel Gonzales from Class 155 - a walking pity of a man. People gossip that he constantly stares at his desk for the entire period, and if there was a fire, he’d walk while still staring at the ground. He’s not the autistic type: he’s actually really smart despite his absentmindedness. His papers show nothing but high grades. You’d know he was actually smart because he’d purposefully miss the most obvious questions in order to get a 90 on each assignment. For all I know, he has some special instinct that gives him a 90 every time! In one incident, he went from 0 to 90 real fast. He shanked a football player inside of the locker rooms and, supposedly, took advantage of the chaos inside to make his escape, and just like Josh, he was cut clean for any punishment. Nobody even talked about the fact that he stabbed someone. In both of these cases, it seems like the students just forget about the quiet kids, almost like how a flash of lightning appears for just a millisecond, and then fades away. Same with the memory of what these kids did. However, not all memories (of any bad events) disappear or fade away for that fact. Mello Morell, class 224. Mello is a whole case study on its own because she has actually made people disappear. Unlike the last two incidents, the names of Mello’s victims never come back to school. They’re just gone. Now a lot of students doubt her criminal record because how can a stunning blonde woman do such terrible things? She has everything going for her; she’s big in all the right places! The first rumor starts off like this. Mello apparently stabbed a pencil so far inside some kid’s nasal cavities that she pierced through his brain. Chaos roared through the classroom and the students were let out early for supposed “trauma". Though this report came entirely from the creative writing classroom, which just so happens to be the class Mello’s homeroom is at – class 254. It’s very unlikely that this ever occurred. But just recently another incident happened separate from this rumor just two months apart. It all happened during the school dance (is that even believable?). A lot of people were heating it up in the gym, touching skin and slow dancing to hit songs like I want to rock and roll all night. Maybe if they played Sex on fire by Kings of Leon , the mood would’ve been just right (or a bit too extreme). The witnesses name was Hallie. Halie was heading towards the pool because she forgot her swimsuit (I’m pretty sure she was meeting someone for “the good suck” as Hallie had lent her suit off to Victoria the same day: Jade told me). She started up the stairs and for the main doors to the pool on the 3rd floor, until she came across an unfamiliar student coming out from the double doors. This person towered over Hallie and made her way down. As soon as they crossed paths, Hallie glanced into the persons eyes. The women was described as looking disconnected, like how one’s eyes would spaz during the first few seconds of waking up from a coma. She also gave off a depressed grin the whole way down. The women softly stepped down the stairs and didn’t even look at Hallie once nor recognize she was even there. Seeing this women walk by, then looking at the doors after, Halie’s perception of these seemingly normal doors became warped. They now looked like the gates of hell. It’s as if opening these doors would release everyone’s nightmares and the most direst demons swelled up inside. It just looked like the handle could shoot out, and the worst inside would just burst. Starting her hand towards the handle, she trembled, and ran away from there as fast as she could before malevolent fingers could pull her in. There’s no other feeling like it: traumatizing to say the least. The school laid dormant for the rest of the night, some students even decided to continue the dance under the privacy of their own homes (I don’t know that for sure, but there’s a lot of seniors that blushed about what they did that day). It was a Thursday, and the hall was lively as normal. An ambulance approached the hospital from the outside. The people inside stepped out of the vehicle and started their way into the school, rolling in a stretcher and a pitch-black canvas bag of about 6 feet. They entered the building, and everyone went silent. It was as if they just watched a person getting robbed in broad daylight, looking at each other: their expression read - are you even seeing this? The staff disappeared behind the double doors; minutes flew by in silence. Then a big discovery was made. The doors that lead from the hallways connected with the library gently swung open and the medical team passed through. They passed through with the stretcher, and a stuffed body bag. The body was on display for everyone to see, like a stolen case of stuffed jewels just casually making its way across the hall. The medical team turned right for the exit; they all looked as though this had happened plenty of times. But it was our first time. The hallway became a game of “who’s missing?”, everyone taking glances and mentally checking off any familiar faces. There was also the possibility that that person may not have been missed at all. For all we know, he could’ve been the tape-over-the-mouth quiet kid we all didn’t pay attention to or talk to. This would’ve been a sad motivation – some quiet kid who didn’t talk much offing himself in the worst place possible because he didn’t have any shitty friends to make him more depressed. Does it even sound poetic to kill yourself in a school? But then there’s the stairway incident, and the whole demon-door conspiracy. It’s probably more likely this kids’ death was connected with Mello than it was suicide. We don’t even know the culprit, so we should just blame the hot blonde girl. We can’t even ask Mello ourselves without fearing for our lives, so (unfortunately) Halie is our first and only source of information on this matter. I happened to have her for first period, she sits right to the far right of the first row of desks - first chair. Her body pressed into the desk much more than her straight-as-a-rose posture she usually preferred. Maybe she was depressed? After all, the smile that once harbored her face was completely erased, and an unfamiliar frown crossed her mouth. She did little hiccups from time-to-time, which I can assume to be bits of laughter. But did she laugh out of pain, or confusion? She did have a great deal of pressure from the upcoming swim championships, but a mere encounter on the stairs seems like too much to pull her into the abyss. It’s as if the face was another being from Halie’s body, thinking on its own without any regard for what was happening around. She was disconnected. I stood up from my seat and started towards Halie. She glanced at me, then looked back down. I thrusted my crotch to the side – God knows why I did that, I thought she was taking measurements. I bent down on my knees. “You good?”, I said. The way I said this to her kind of reminded me of the song Mr. Brightside, the one lyric when Brandon says, “Just the price I pay”, except if he was using his “inside voice”. Halie looked at me, reached over on her side (still looking like an unplugged tv) and grabbed a sheet of notebook paper. She started to write in maniac. I read the words upside-down as I followed her hand flow across the page. What she wrote didn’t make any sense. Until she flipped it over. After which, she put her head down to hide the parade of emotions that would happen in the darkness of her arms. Paired with the white coat, it’s almost as if she was trying to hide herself. I took the piece of notebook paper. A tinge of madness crept through my neck as I read through the insanity in the harsh markings of her words. My brain was branded. I kept that piece of notebook paper and carry it with me almost everywhere I go. In fact, I’ve seen it so many times that I developed a mental image in my head. I can accurately describe each sensation. The rough texture of the paper, the sharp corners of each letter on the page and the blots of ink on the letter’s “m” and “r”. I even recall how she acted when writing that word. She started at the “m”, her hand jittered, she let out a hiccup, but she continued to write. The “o” into the “s” flowed nicely into each other, but she paused at the “t”, let out another ungracious hiccup, and started writing again. She finished her “r” in a hurry and laid down the pen.Monster.That was all Halie said that day.