Life, Death, and Chaos

Part II

Bzzzzz! Bzzzzz!

Death Mourning popped her eyes open to a bright, sun-infested room and sat up far too quickly. She waited for her head to adjust before grabbing her sparkly purple glasses and slipping them over her nose. Then she immediately took them off and wiped them on her not-so-clean pajama pants. When she slipped them on again, Death still couldn't believe her eyes.

The clock read seven fifty in the morning.

There was no way she'd gotten up that late.

And yet, when she checked her phone, the time matched the one on the wall.

How had she slept through all seven of her alarms–plus her roommate Alyssa's? Death knew she was a sound sleeper, but some of those alarms were insanely loud. (Too loud, according to Alyssa).

Death sighed, climbed out of her bed, and glanced up. The bunk above her was empty, indicating that Alyssa was already awake.

The nice thing to do would have been to wake Death. But you could count on Alyssa to do anything other than the nice thing.

Death pulled on some clothes and grabbed a granola bar for breakfast. She dashed out of the room, locking it behind her, and raced down the stairs of her dorm.

Death lived at Chaos Academy, a prep school in New York City. The Academy's grounds were rather large, with five buildings, two outdoor gardens, and multiple parking lots. When passing outside its large iron gates, most pedestrians eyed Chaos with jealousy–on Manhattan, space was severely limited, so a boarding school with more square feet than it deserved wasn't exactly looked upon nicely.

And yet, Chaos Academy was still the most prestigious school in the area. It catered to millionaires and other wealthy citizens who wanted their children to get a good education, but who also wanted them out of the way.

Death was not the child of a millionaire. In fact, she was an orphan.

So why did she go to a school for wealthy people, you might be wondering?

That was a long story. The short version was that Death had been "adopted" by Chaos Mayhem, the nonbinary principal of Chaos Academy. She'd then been left alone, expected to act normal, as if her life were the same as all her classmates.

As if she weren't different.

The other students in Death's class eventually got used to her, but that didn't mean they wanted to be friends. They merely stopped sending her weird looks whenever she passed.

Now, ten years later, Death hadn't left Chaos Academy since she'd arrived. She had gone on field trips, of course, but those just earned her more weird looks and confused stares.

So what if her name was Death? So what if she could be a little intimidating when people got in her way? So what if she'd nearly killed two people–and no one knew that besides her and the two people she'd nearly killed, so that didn't really count!

She was still a person.

A perfectly normal person, aside from the fact that she could shapeshift on occasion.

Death climbed the steps of building H, one of the two class buildings. The five buildings at Chaos Academy were labeled C, H, A, O, and S. Building C was used for administration and teacher housing, H and A were classrooms, and O and S were student dorms. Which was kind of weird, but the principal was more than a little strange themself. Anyways, Death was used to it.