This Sorrowful Life

Chapter 3 - Where we stand

Sometimes in the darkest moments, there is an opening to light. Happiness and love dwells in those who accept it, but blinding yourself in the hatred of this world disables your ability to accept such emotion. I myself was a victim; I always hated this world ever since I was a child. Every insult, tease or bother from people around me fueled the fire inside that wanted to see the world burn. The specific events that created a fire in the first place are details that I would rather leave locked inside my memories, but I was forced to eliminate the emotions I once had. My life changed for the good while I matured, but the people around me helped to find that emotion I once lost. They created that light inside my dear soul, which eventually leads to happiness, or at least something similar to that. My thoughts may be a bit dramatic, but without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

Willing to survive, I crouched down next to the classroom door and look over through the very long, but dark hallway to my right.  Near the center of the hallway, next to the library, laid stairs leading up to the third floor. Close to the end of it stood the exit, where about two corpses devoured some unknown body, but it was too far to see any details.

“Shit”, I thought to myself. “The only option is going up to the third floor, and then to the second building”, I whispered. Tanisha gasped timidly, “But you don’t know if it’s worse over there”. I analyzed quickly, but ended up rejecting Tanisha’s words. “Everyone would go down to the first floors, I’m sure that it will be empty”, I said. Tanisha trembled, but nodded agreeing, while Arej was too nervous to even discuss the situation. “Are we going to take our bags?” Tanisha asked. “Forget about that, it will just slow us down, now get ready” I said. The tension builds up, my hand shook, my breath got heavy, but I was sure of my actions. I gulped dramatically and gave the signal to run with great confidence.

My heart pumped, beating my chest down. The adrenaline kicked in as I gave each step. I could clearly hear Tanisha’s and Arej’s loud breathing with the addition of low whimpers just behind me. This particular floor was completely covered in walls on every angle, while the other two had full vision towards the school grounds to the left. This disabled the possibility of looking exactly the status of the school and the city.

Sweat began to fall through my forehead, my legs had that burning sensation, but it wasn’t enough to pull me down. As we reach the stairs, Tanisha catches her breath dramatically, while pointing at the monsters eating away the body in the floor. “Oh God, that is Mr. Rodriguez, the school’s director”. I could see the terror in Tanisha’s eyes, but their reflection made my heart skip a beat. The corpses heard Tanisha’s breath catch and begun moving quickly over to us. Aware of this, I screamed, panicked. “RUN!!”

I begin running through those steps eager to get to the top. The moans and groans from the dead made Tanisha cry desperately, slightly fogging her glasses, and Arej to gabble in patters. As we got through half of the stairs, I could hear uproar on the third floor, it was faint, but something was up there. I turn to look at the girls, but clearly they were having trouble running up the stair in the school jumper. As I reached the third floor, I turned once again and realized that I had gone ahead. Arej gabbled, “John… Hep usth”. Having to risk my life was something to think about twice, but the dead was catching up to them and I had to fight. I ran down a couple of stairs as Tanisha and Arej ran past me and into the third floor, breathing out heavily with great desperation.

Time slowed down as those blood drooling freaks rampaged up each step, just about to reach me. Their smell burned my nostrils; the enclosed walls of these stairs seemed darker than usual. Those ‘things’ had trouble climbing them, but their fast agility complimented that default. As time picked up its pace, about to devour into the flesh of my leg, I held my place strong and stomped one of them in the face, the details of its face breaking into pieces printed in my mind, even its nose fell apart, making blood to continue the stain cycle in my yellow polo.