If there was something James detested more than going to school, it was going to school at night. It was like getting killed by the same stone twice: not only was he going to be missing precious time playing the hottest VR games out now, he was going to be hammered hours on end with his least favourite subjects.
Dom Adams Public High gave the sense of a labour camp more than a high-school. It drove its students to their breaking point—or maybe that was just James's biased opinion—owing to the fact that it was in a perpetual and increasingly ferocious competition with every other school in the state to churn out the maximum number of top rankers in the National Eligibility Exams conducted annually. Which meant, as a final year student at Dom Adams, James felt worked to his bones.
Intense education did not suit him; but he guessed that wasn't something either his parents or the school wanted to hear from him. He could try telling his parents, but he just couldn't spare the time needed to listen to their umpteenth sermon on how a little pain endured now could grant him lifelong happiness.
The school was worse. Dom Adams possessed a proud and single-minded mission of creating star pupils through what had been dubbed peevishly by the students as the iron trials: an endless chain of rigorous teachings, mock tests, revisions, remedials, counselling, and of course, night classes. The school was going to scald and burn them until they turned into sharp, polished blades.
One more month, James reminded himself, trying to rein in his mounting frustration. Just one more month and you'll be free of this school.
Outside the windows of the public bus, the familiar cityscape flitted past him in a slow blur, bright neon lights flickering the other passengers in and out of the growing darkness. He never quite liked travelling through the city at night. The city looked ghastly after sundown, like it no longer belonged to humans, but to ghouls and specters and wendigoes and every other creature of the dark. But it wasn't the darkness that unsettled him, it was the lights. The lights were in every wrong shades: eerie reds and poison greens and blues that felt like deadness. They always made him think miserable thoughts.
A middle-aged man lurched into him when the bus pulled to a halt, the heavy bags hanging off his back and shoulders knocking into James. James helped him steady himself and then stepped away, heading for the doorway while he adjusted the straps of his own bag upon his shoulders. The door folded open before him, and James stepped out into the chilly night.
The smell of grass hit him first, passive and refreshing, bringing a whiff of clarity to his senses and heightening his awareness of his surroundings. The bus had moved on, its taillights receding into the black distance, allowing the night to creep back around him like a thin shroud. There was less light here, and less vehicles passed this way. Towards the east he could barely make out the Simea Memorial shooting out of the city, a dark obelisk that bore the names of everyone who lost their lives in the freakish terrorist attack that happened over a year ago.
The cellphone he slipped out of his bag was a tad colder than the air pressing around him. James turned on the flashlight, noting how the battery was fourteen percent away from being dead. He directed the light towards a clump of trees to his left, searching for the spot where the woods parted for a curving mud path. It was ridiculous how obscure this path was—you wouldn't notice it unless you knew it was there. And Dom Adams just had to be in the middle of that forest, granted, the tree cover wasn't expansive enough to be called a forest. He supposed the school went a little too far in providing its students an environmentally healthy premise to study in.
Crickets screeched around him as he stepped onto the forest path cautiously, ducking underneath a spiderweb that glistened like silver in the moonlight that seeped in through the foliage. One of the insects hopped onto the crook of his elbow and James flicked it off into the nearest tree. He channelled his flashlight to the rich, dark brown earth beneath him. Who knew what creatures had turned this little pocket of greenery in the middle of the city into their haven—he wouldn't want to accidently step on a snake or a scorpion.
YOU ARE READING
Classroom X
Mystery / ThrillerONE OF US IS A SUPERKILLER The final year students of Dom Adams Public High has been called to school for a night class. They reach school to find armed soldiers in their classroom. Soon they learn that they are going to be put under a dangerous lo...
