Clockwork

Chapter 2

She hadn't slept all night.

Come 7AM, Leah was weary and could hardly move. Still, she kicked herself to get up. Lazily, she limped to the washroom, got ready, and proceeded downstairs. Mom was in the kitchen, eggs and sausage for breakfast. "Good morning..." Leah yawned. She looked around. "Jessica... where?" she wondered.

Noticing the confusion on her face, Alice said, "Jessica's staying home for a couple of days. We want to make sure she's in tip-top shape before she returns to school!"

"Whatever..." Leah garbled down her food, wrote a good-morning message for Jessica-

"Hurry up, Leah, you're going to be late for school!"

That she was.

"Solve for the log of 6, assuming you're using the base 10." said Mrs. Burton, the math teacher everyone was afraid of.

Leah hesitantly pushed forward the door. "S-sorry, I'm late, Mrs. Burton." She slowly walked towards her desk and pulled her chair, laying her things down.

"You better be, you interrupted my lesson! Have you no shame? Get your books out, go!" shouted Mrs. Burton.

Leah pulled out her math notebook and started scribbling down the assigned questions, solving the most recently given. Well, we're using Briggsian logarithms, so this should be pretty easy... and done! She raised her hand, but Mrs. Burton shot her a darting look, and she weakly lowered her hand.

"Caleb, yes, you. What did you get?" Mrs. Burton coldly demanded. Although, joy was plainly obvious in her voice, that she was able to reject Leah so easily.

"Quite easy, Mrs. Burton! The answer is so obvious: 0.778. I could do it in my sleep." beamed Caleb proudly.

Mrs. Burton rolled her eyes. She'd had enough of Caleb being an overachiever, someone she could never put down. Annoyed, she mumbled, "Yes, Caleb..."

The bell sound as Mrs. Burton finished her sentence. Kids grabbed their backpacks and ran for their door. Fortunately, for her at least, Mrs. Burton marched to the door, blocking the exit. As lunch started, the kids glared at the other students running through the hallways.

"You have a lot of homework, today, kids." Mrs. Burton exclaimed proudly. the entire class groaned quite audibly after hearing the news. "You have chapters 4A to 4C for homework today, and tomorrow I'm doing a homework check. This counts for quite a bit of your grade, despite it only being homework." The students whined back, but gave up. The teacher moved over with the door open, and the crowd rushed through the gateway to freedom.

Caleb was at the back of the line, he was chatting with Mrs. Burton about the next chapters. "So, if we're doing natural logarithms next class, and we've already done exponential functions, does that mean we're doing logarithmic functions next week? When's the te-"

"Caleb, let's go!" Leah interrupted.

Caleb glanced at Leah, clearly upset. He twirled backed to Mrs. Burton and said bye.

Leah started walking, Caleb caught up. "What was that?! I was trying to have a civil discussion with our hardest teacher and you walk in and destroy everything!"

Leah looked him up and down. "Now is not the time for your nonsense. Come over here." Leah dragged him into a corner where there were very few people. "Last night, Jessica went berserk. I went to her operating room, and there was a dead nurse inside..." 

Caleb looked at Leah in disbelief, "Wrong." he said, absurdly.

Leah knew Caleb was the argumentative type, so she didn't bother. Instead, she took him to her locker, and said, "We're going to the hospital. Get ready." 

Caleb did as told and drove the two to the hospital.

When the two arrived, Leah hurriedly took the two to the room. "Darn, I forgot we cleaned it, there probably won't be anything in the room." she said, as her volume got continuously lower. Caleb had opened the door, and one the floor was a wondrous sight; another dead nurse. Not on fault of Jessica though. How could it be? She's at home, thought Leah to herself. Why are they only targeting doctors? I really do not understand this one bit, she mouthed.

Caleb shrieked, "Leah?! How are you so calm?!" Looking over at Leah, he saw an expressionless face, one of someone who was once innocent.

"It's like whatever." Leah approached the mutilated nurse. She looked around the room. Everything was similar to yesterday; a messy murder, yet any sign of actual practice was basically invisible. All the tools were all laid out nicely where they would otherwise belong. The bed tucked in the corner, the only thing that was messy was the bloody body, now forming a small pool of blood around her.

The blood was touching their feet now, the scent jabbing their nose relentlessly. Caleb took one step back and the door slammed. The blood recoiled, going back to surround the nurse, eventually coming to rise into the air. The word "LEAVE" formed in capital letters manifested, midair. The letters curled into a ball of blood and spun, exploding in all directions, leaving blood splattered across the once mostly white walls. Blood also flew over Caleb and Leah, Caleb ranting about how his cashmere sweater was ruined because Leah killed someone, meanwhile Leah stood their, indifferent to the events passing before her eyes.

Ironically, the door locked behind the two, and they were left to investigate the room. Caleb yanked out his phone to take pictures of what was going on, but his phone exploded before he could actually do anything. "M-my phone! What?! How- why?!" Caleb cried out.

"Honestly, Caleb, you're such a child. Get over it. Just buy a new- AH!" Leah said as she cut her finger on a piece of glass. "Damn, that hurts!"

Mockingly, Caleb laughed, "Get over it!"

"Haha, very funny." Leah rolled her eyes.

Blood started dripping from Leah's finger. "Dude, that really stings!" She watched the blood fall, paralysed, unsure what to do.

Caleb punched on the back and she snapped back to reality. She ran across the room, and leaped over the mangled nurse. A drop of blood fell across the corpse's face. It erupt into ash as Leah crossed. After her landing, the left leg of her navy blue jeans had been burnt, leaving it an off charcoal colour. Leah yelled, "W-what?!" Smoke rose from the burnt corpse and flew up into the air. A small storm formed and a green shadow descended from the smoke. It rushed around the room, knocking everything over. "Leave." is what it spelled. All the broken glass, fallen tools, all amount to the word, "Leave."

"We... should maybe go?..." Caleb quietly said.

"Yes, yes, that would make sense. Let's leave!" Leah said cheerfully.

The two, completely scarred from what they had just seen, scurried out of the hospital room quickly, praying whatever they saw in was their imagination.