Sword of Flames [Book I] - {#Wattys2017}

Chapter 4 - The Last Straw

Chapter 4 - The Last Straw

"What in the world?" she shrieked, jumping out of her chair into the walkway between the desks. Mr. Martinez turned around in a start and lowered his reading glasses to look at the startled girl.

"Levana, what is wrong?" The whole class stared at her in distress. She glanced at the desk again, which was still empty, and looked back at her frustrated teacher.

"Mr. Martinez, Keavy is gone. I was just getting her a pencil sharpener and... did she go to the bathroom? No she didn't; she would have asked." By the end, she was mostly talking to herself instead of the teacher.

Mr. Martinez stared at her with a blank face. "Who's Keavy?"

Levana was taken aback. She glanced around at the other blank faces in the classroom and a few were chuckling at her confusion. "But she..." she pointed at the seat and then at the perimeter of the room, as if pinpointing specific people with her finger. "She couldn't be part of my illusion! I'm not that crazy, am I?" she mouthed to herself.

She turned to her left. "But Patrick?" She asked a boy with bushy brown hair with a concerned countenance. "She's been your girlfriend for two years." He stared at her as if she was mad and shook his head.

"I have never heard of a Keavy in my life."

"What?" she stuttered, backing up to the wall behind her. Mr. Martinez pointed to the door.

"Ms. Ganim, please sit down or I'm going to have to escort you to guidance-"

"Are you people crazy? She's been in this class since September!" Levana interrupted, searching the room with a frantic look in her eyes. "We sang 'Happy Birthday' to her as a class just two weeks ago. What do you mean you don't know who she is?"

Lunatic, crazy, mental. These words popped up into her head once again. Were they actually true? The girl began to feel dizzy and held onto one of the empty seats. She gazed over at Keavy's desk.

Without notice, a terrible chill swept over her.

"Oh Levana Ganim," a calm voice slurred. Her eyes bulged out of her sockets and her hands started to shake as the recognizable voice entered her ear like cold air. "My darling, Levana Ganim...."

Her head jolted back in Mr. Martinez's direction. There he stood ten feet closer from where he was standing before, his arms at his sides staring at her with no emotion but a crazed smile. His eyes were the murky orange color she feared for those long days. It was as if the beast watching her.

"Get away! Get away!" she repeated, shouting so loud that her throat began to hurt. Her body dragged itself down to the floor and wept. "Leave me alone!"

"My Levana..." her teacher continued, his low voice drowned out by the teenager's shrieks of terror. She looked up and met the gaze of a student watching her, their pupils gone and staring at her with white eyes. She could no longer emit noise from her throat, reminding her of the terror she felt in her dream but intensified.

All of the students stared at her with the same eyes, destroying every fiber of her sanity she had left. Their tongues stuck out at the same time as they hissed "Levana" in unison.

Every person in the room then flopped to the ground, laying there without motion. Levana stood up and stared at the fallen people with a blank mind. When she took her first step to leave the room, each body began trembling without control. Their arms and legs joined together in a twisted fashion. Their heads sunk into their necks and their skin became silver and paled. Disturbed, Levana let out dry sobs as she watched her classmates and teacher turn into snakes the height of their human forms.