Sacrificing Sanity

"No! No! You can't be serious I'm not being sacrificed again!" I screamed, my body trying to fight against the restraints. The others stared blankly at me, the unsettling sense that their humanity had vanished creeping into my stomach. "But but you don't understand! It doesn't work! Claira you know that remember what happened last year? They all died!" I argued, the horridness of the past seeming to unravel before us.

"I don't understand..... What happened last year?" One of the other sacrifices asked looking back from Claira to myself. All eyes turned towards her as a darkened shadow seemed to cover her eyes. Yet, there was nothing but this unsettling hollowness that lied within her. "Two years ago" I began "Claira and the rest of them had started sacrificing people. But not just anyone, people in this town, starting with everyone at school. They had believed that some of them would come back, and that the fire wouldn't actually harm them. For years it had appeared to work, until one year the group that had to be sacrificed had her sister in it.

Fear building up inside me and my voice quickened, words stumbling upon each other as the terror split my words in two "before we have had casualties.... but, it usually occurred that at least one of the sacrifices would survive. But, last year Claira's sister and her group had argued that all of this was wrong, that they knew something wasn't right about all of this that-". I stopped panic eating away at my lungs as my ability to breathe seemed to vanish.

Forcing myself to continue, the words escaping my mouth only coming out as a meager wheeze. "Nothing else was discovered on what they actually meant but their arguing and their screams were all but unsettling to everyone. A-after the smoke had cleared.... Th-they they w-were a-all....-" "DEAD!"shrieked Claira her eyes appeared to widen in a most sickening and unnatural way. "Well not actually dead" she laughed, "in fact all of them are still alive... Just, well not living" her wretched giggles bouncing off the outside walls of the school.

"But, t-the tombs-" I gulped looking over to Claira dreadfully "oh the tombs are empty" she stated a deviously cheerful note in her voice "in fact something quite strange has happened in the tombs" her voice lowering eerily as a screech erupted from the crowd. A sea of undead sacrifices scoured the audience while Claira burst in laughter once more. "God help us all" I whispered, struggling against my confines as the deceased sacrifices came closer to the alter.