Alone (Bluford High) (Watty Awards 2013)

Chapter 9

   Karen didn't like what she was seeing at all. It was as if all humanity lost its empathy and turned insane and chaotic. In the main lobby, there was a fire. Probably the largest she had ever seen. But that wasn't the worst part. There were several burned bodies, skin like charcoal, hanging on the ceiling with hairless groundhogs shoved into their mouths. Their ears (the bodies) were twisted in an unusual fashion and their jaws were also twisted. After seeing these bodies, Karen also noticed that the front doors and windows were barricaded. So, she asked herself, how would she get out? It seemed extremely difficult, but there had to be some way to get out of the building. When the fire blazed and romped towards her, she backed into the elevator immediately. The smoke was making her cough heavily. She pushed one of the buttons in the elevator and the doors closed shut. 

  

  As she rode her way back up, Karen wondered if her parents knew she was gone. They both would get up early in the morning for work, but couldn't they hear her screaming? Nonetheless, they had to know that she was missing. What about Elle or Dale? 
"Do they know?" she said to herself.

   She was still wearing her pajamas from the night before and had on slippers. But one thing that she kept on thinking of was if those people or whatever they were, were still up there waiting for her to come back up. Did they start the fire? If  they did, did they do it not only to destroy the building, but to make her notice it to force her to come back up? From the look of things, it seemed like there was no easy way of telling how many of them were there. In the apartment from which she escaped from, it looked like there were at least eight or ten of them. But who were they and what did they want? Whatever the reason, Karen knew she had to get herself out of there. But she knew that she would have to be clever and come up with a plan to be sneaky and fight her way out of this hellhole.

"OK, calm down," she said, hyperventilating,
"I have to get out, but the question is how? And I need some sort of weapon or something."

   The elevator came to a stop and when the doors opened, there was nobody there. She sighed of relief, but didn't get her hopes up. She stepped out of the elevator and looked behind her and in front of her. The hallway was silent and it just didn't feel right for her. She felt as though one of them was hiding and waiting for the right moment to come out and grab her.  But it wasn't the time to stand there and worry. Her only option was to be quiet and find a way to get out. She looked down the hallway and saw a blood-stained handgun lying on the carpet. However, she didn't go for it immediately because she could see that a door was open right in front of it. She also wondered if anybody in the apartments knew what was going on. Were they sleeping or did those people get them, she wondered. It was morning and alot of people were at work at this time. But that no need to worry about that now.


   In one flash, Karen speed-walked toward the gun, but was also careful enough to be quiet. She picked it up and examined it, while standing right next to the open door. She had never touched a gun in her life and never learned how to use one. She didn't know if it was fully loaded or empty, but she had to be careful not to pull the trigger just in case it was ready to fire. 
"OK, OK, OK, come on, Karen," she whispered.

  Instantly, she walked into the apartment. The first thing she saw was the living room, which was horribly ruined and trashed. The couch was flipped over with blood stains all over it. The pillows were ripped to shreds and cotton was scattered all over the floor. She saw holes in the walls as if somebody had punched it and chairs were tilted over. Karen saw a window that was broken and walked over towards it. To her dismay, she realized that the floor she was on was pretty high up and if she tried to escape from there, she would certainly die. 
"Damn it!!" she mouthed angrily.

  One strange thing that caught her attention was that despite the place being destroyed, the televison was still on, playing cartoons. Something wasn't right. The place was trashed and the TV was still on? It wasn't right at all. Before she could run out of there, the televison screen was suddenly dead with a gaping hole in it. Karen jumped and she saw some sparks fly into the air. A chair had been thrown at it as she could see it on the floor. She knew it was time to get out right that second! As she ran towards the doorway, a figure that looked like the ones that nearly attacked her came out of nowhere and screeched like an animal dying. She pointed the gun towards it, held it firmly and pulled the trigger. Immediately, she ran out of there. Simultaneously, one of the doors to the apartments busted down on her. She screamed for a second and got up from under it. Behind her was another figure with a skull mask. Only this time it had two pairs of scissors in his hands, which were rusty and bloodied. The thing pursued her as she ran from it.


   She pushed the button on the elevator rapidly as the thing got closer and closer. So, she fired the gun at it and the bullet hit it in the shoulder and at the same time, one of the scissors pierced into Karen's skin all the way.