The Joker | KTH

13: The Half Past

Third Person Perspective

2:00 a.m.

The man kept looking at the CCTV cameras. It was his night shift in the school... He had no other profession or way of making money, and so, he wanted to do his best to get a perfect paycheck by which he can fill his children's stomachs. 

Sipping his tea, he tried not to feel bored by the work.

He was looking at the cameras intensely, trying to keep a watch on every part of the school to ensure it was safe. He sighed with a satisfied smile when he noticed nothing wrong and was about to close his eyes for some time but before he could, he noticed a shadow in one of the cameras' view which statued him. 

The shadow was lurking through different doors and into different rooms... It wasn't stealing or doing anything, yet its presence made the watchman grow quite uneasy. He kept observing for some time and got a clue that the person was not a member of the school. It was dressed up differently and weirdly... He felt its existence was eerie and so, he decided to go on a walk in that particular part of the school. 

"Let's go." He spoke to himself before grasping the torch in his hands and switching it on.

What he didn't know was that by doing this, he was conducting a grave mistake that would cause him to play with his life but what could he even do? He was miserably poor and needed money for his family. And for that, he needed to work sincerely no matter what.

...

Walking into the bizarre hallway, he kept turning the flash of his light here and there, to spot something or someone. After almost 20 minutes, he gave up.
He was quite old and walking this much with fear had never been on his plate. 

"There's nothing..." He nodded, trying to assure himself even though he knew something was wrong... 

He was about to walk away but the moment he turned around, his grip on the flashlight loosened... His hands became numb and goosebumps rose all over his body. Heart started to vibrate at an abnormal pace, causing him to breathe heavily and whimper. 

He soon fell down to the ground and the torch from his hands fell down and broke too. Even when there wasn't light anymore, he could see it glowing... The dark mist seeping through his body, alighting the entire hallway but with a glow of darkness, not light...

A man whose face was painted with different colors...

He gulped and parted his mouth to shout but before he could, he felt his body floating mid-air... The next moment, he felt cold fingers tightening around his neck and choking him. He tried gasping again but all in vain.

In an instant, his body was thrown to the ground with a loud thud. The next thing he knew was feeling some kind of piercing sensation on his wrist but he could no more react because he was already too tired to react.

All he could do was chant about his kids in his mind.

My children... Oh, my little kids...

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First-Person Perspective

Scribbling over the graphite lead on the paper, I observed the way sharp and blunt lines were making their way onto the paper. The soft, blunt screeching sound erupting through the contact of paper and lead was calming... Do you know? Soft graphite from a pencil acts like an adhesive and that's why it sticks to paper, marking it? Yeah... Those were the only thoughts in my mind. Or maybe, I was too bored and tired to think of anything else...