Mornin'

    After a long week of being in detention, Hero falls onto his bed emotionless. Every part of his being torn to shreds. Behind his ocean colored eyes, you can see that there is no hope for what is ahead.

    A prerecorded message chimed in over the bedroom’s alarm system; “You have one message.”

    The voice that came over jolted Hero up in a panic for who could be listening. “You know you are a jerk,” a sniffle could be heard in between words, “I go all the way to do this for you, and you didn’t read the letter I slipped into your pocket.” He looks over to the school’s jacket and sees a letter poking out the left pocket. As he sees it, he frantically runs over to the letter, falling into the floor and sliding some before he quickly rips it open to read whats inside. “Never ever, look at me again, JERK.” the message ends with a beep.

    The intercom speaks again and says, “Do you want to save the message or delete it?” Hero after frantically reading the message collectively says, “Block the number,” then rips up the letter and throws it away. As the paper in the can fades away, Hero gets up and goes back to bed to drift off.

    His arms and legs get heavy as he lays there and stairs into the void that is the back of his head.

    He wakes up in the middle of the classroom with nobody around but… Jack sits in front of him sitting backwards in his chair. He is saying something unimportant or rather uninteresting with a smile to Hero. He says his words with such a passion, but it falls onto the ears of nobody. He looks as if he is the happiest of his life, no worry about what Hero thinks of him, just happy to have him to tell to.

    As his rambling begins to end, Hero gets up and grabs his bag, then walks out the door. The halls were empty as if they were robbed of the personality they hold. The fluorescent bulbs look so bored and uninteresting that they'd rather be somewhere else. Jack follows suit and hugs hero from behind and kisses his cheek. He says in a soft whisper, “If I could, Id save every moment with you as a thousand little photos Id save them forever.”

    Early morning, Hero rises with a cold sweat. Early in the morning, so early, the sun doesn’t greet him as he puts on his clothes that he doesn’t remember taking off. “Ugh, this sucks so bad...” He says while putting on the clothes and looking into the mirror to tight up his hair and uniform.

    “Mythose academy… They should change it to-” He hears a few bangs on the door that makes him jump. He looks to the door in wonder of who could be on the other side. Sluggishly, he frumped his shoulders forward, and opened the door to see Jade dressed up in a ridicules winter outfit.

    “Brother, have you been sleeping in there all summer and fall? You look terrible and you still wearing spring’s rags.”

    “No,” Hero stops for a moment then looks at Jade in the eyes, “This is just what detention does to you…”

    “No way you have been in there for that long, your hair is so long and flowing.”

    “It feels like it though.” Hero walks past Jade to look outside, and is shocked to see there is snow on the ground. “There’s no way that’s real…” He pressed against the glass looking outside to see the entire landscape that changed. Stepping back, he sees his reflection in the glass, his hair goes down to his shoulders and looks unkempt like an ape.

    “How long has it been since I came here?”

    “What do you mean man?”

    “When did I first start attending here?”

    “How should I know?”

    Hero turns back to look at the mirror and see the reflection of them both in it. Both look visibly older; one a ghost and the oth-

    “Come on brother, I got some extra clothes in my room.”

    Jade walks into his room and Hero follows. Walking in there, it has the smell of oils, a boombox, and a humidifier. Besides these few aspects, it is almost identical to Hero’s. Jade was searching through the wardrobe, before finding another coat for hero to wear. “Here you go brother.” Jade says while handing Hero the Jacket and snow pants that dawn the Mythose academy emblem.

    Hero takes it and says, “Thanks…” before leaving the room. “Hay,” Jade calls out while throwing a girly hairbrush with a hair tie around hit. “Fix yourself up brother, no man or lady would want you looking like that.” Hero turns around and heads to the bathroom.

    Entering the bathroom, Hero throws all of the clothes down onto the counter sink. He gets a good look at himself in the mirror, the window outside wasn’t playing tricks on him, he looks like an ape that escaped confinement.

    Starting out his makeover, he wets the brush and starts straightening it out. Brush by brush, the fluffiness of it appears to disappear. Wetting it more, He begins to straighten it out enough to put into a ponytail. After doing his hair, he puts on the pants and jacket that Jade gave him and then takes his leave.

    Jade begins to walk to class, and Hero catches him while he passes by then follows beside him.

    “Its freezing in here.”

    “Hahaha, brother you must be waisted.”

    “Right”

    They reach the classroom and sit next to each other. Nobody is around but themselves, until students begin to slowly fill into the rooms and sit in their seats. There are no recognizable faces in the room besides Hero and Jade. The teacher walks in just as bundled up, he gets his notes out and begins teaching.

    A while later, the expression on everyone’s faces is one of boredom. The well attentive of the students pretend to be listening, but they are even more bored because all it is to them is a form of review of the text book.

    After the class, everyone packed up their stuff and exited the room. Lost in the chaos of the class changing rush, Jade and Hero got separated with hero being the last one to exit the room. When hero does, the door shuts behind him and everyone disappears.

    Where Hero found himself wasn’t Mythose academy, but a hallway of an apartment. Out on the balcony, Jack siting on the patio. He holds a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He stands up and looks into Hero’s eyes. His eyes were different from how he usually looks. He opens the sliding glass door and walks in.

    “I’m too scared to do it.”

    “Do what exactly?”

    Jack takes a puff of his cigarette and looks to the balcony “Nothing,” he calmly pronounces before walking out of the apartment. Hero walks out to the balcony and sees the empty bottle of rum. He grabs it and throws it off and into the streets below.

    Before he realizes it, he is bumped into from behind and was back at the doorway. Jack rush pasts him and says “sorry,” before rushing off. The halls quiet down as everyone goes to their next class. He follows Jack to see where he was going. When they both reached the entrance, there was an angry lady standing out besides the door.

    “Today Jack, you will be sitting at the front of the class next to Nathan. And you, Hero- will be sitting in your usual spot.” She collects herself and turns around to inter the class as the bell went off. They sat down in a daze, with burning incense, decreasing the oxygen in the air. She shuts the door and begins to walk around and start teaching about nothing of importance. Her words have an emphasis on the names and places of what she is describing, but none of it is as entertaining as hearing her voice crack and squall like a trapped bird.

    After an hour and half of the old crow running around the room. The entire class runs out of the room like a murder being spooked by an acorn. Everyone is rushing towards and trying to be the first ones to get in line for lunch. Everybody, besides one, Hero is bolting it to administrations. He slams his entire body weight into the door, opening it wide.

    He scrambles in the secretary's desk and finds a spare name tag, and takes it. After the noise outside settles down, He gets up and goes for the front doors again. He runs towards them, and uses the keycard to unlock them. But someone starts hacking up behind him.

    “We all tried it before my friend, I don’t recommend it.”

    Hero ignored him and went out anyway. He ran out and slipped and fell into the snow. Turning over, he could see the guy from weeks ago looking out from the doorway. He closes the door and walks away from the window.

    Now alone, and outside. There were no alarms going off, until they start blaring sirens inside of the building. That was the wake up call for Hero to start running. He followed the path to the school from the main road and started running parallel to it. Eventually, He found himself onto the main road, and starts running down it.

    After a while of running, he slows down and takes a breather and looks around and sees if anyone was behind him. There was nothing, not even a bird in the sky looking down upon him. But something was off, the road leading to the academy, instead of being behind Hero, it was in front of him. He didn’t know what to make of this, so he begins to run even more until he realizes what was going on, then stopped dead in his tracks.

    Hero looks down, and sees his tracks that he made just before. There was no way forward down that road, but an infinite straight loop upon the same repeating path. He decides to stop following the road and run into the forest across from the school. He runs into the forest and comes upon a fence. Deciding to not climb it, he follows it and it loops back into the entrance into Mythose Academy.

 Tired, hungry, and worn out, Hero begins to feel light headed and passes out once again.