𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐃 | 𝐬𝐤𝐳 & 𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐳

𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗨𝗘 !

He was running. It was all he had learned how to do. Behind him in the darkness, was the shell of his only constant. He, it, was tracking him. And there was only one way to survive. 'Don't fear the dark, don't fear the dark, don't fear the dark.' That mantra kept him alive. He took a right, down the stairs to the left, through one of the many doors, underneath a table. He heard the echoing footsteps, the cackling laughter.

He had to make it to the end, after all, it was the last day. The end of the week. Seven days of hurt as his friends disappeared. And worst of all, they didn't expect it, the face of their worst nightmare. It didn't start like this, it never did. Their rivalry was only friendly, right? Who would have expected it to go this far? No one.

But there were knives everywhere, blood splattered on the beautifully white walls. When the footsteps had passed, he ran. Only a few more minutes to go. The doors to the outside would unlock, he would be free. And they would never find out.

But they had to find out, the school needed to know what was going on inside. He slipped and fell, wincing, but trying not to make a sound. He had to leave a message of some sort. He had to let them all know who was behind the murders of the boys he had so grown to rely on.

What would happen if the school board didn't find out what happened. If the seniors inside just disappeared without a moment's notice? It would be covered up, wouldn't it? Of course, they would never let something like this tarnish their image. They'd be erased, as if they had never even existed, but they did exist, they were here, they had been alive just a few days ago.

He sprinted down another hallway, skidding into the library. 'What to leave behind, what to leave behind, how can I let them know?' He darted into the horror section, his legs heavy from running, lungs burning, hands covered in blood that wasn't his, yet his own was seeping out of a cut on his forehead.

He pulled books off of the shelf, letting them splat on the floor, trying to find one that would show his predicament. He heard footsteps, eyes landing on the door as it creaked open. He crouched down as the boy in a black hoodie entered the room. He hesitated, then walked in the other direction, leaving the door wide open.

The other boy waited, then ran. A notebook. That's what he needed. The English teachers always had extra. "You need to be able to write and memorize vocabulary on the fly." It was a good thing after all, no matter how much he hated it.

He burst through the door, pulling a notebook out of one of the many bins and snatching a pen off the teachers' desk. He flipped to a random page and scrawled in large letters: 'he killed us. My best friend killed us.'

He ripped the page out of the book and shoved it in his pocket, then turned and ran towards the entrance of the school. He had to keep running, to make it out the door, to tell the world. Only he couldn't. The familiar black hoodie was cast aside on the floor in front of the entrance. It was a gift, a birthday gift, a reminder of a promise to go to the same college. He stopped and picked it up. There wasn't any harm in it, was there?

A few minutes later, the doors unlocked and the crowd of students poured in, to find him hanging from the ceiling with a rope around his neck, dead. Unfortunate for him, but fortunate for the boy in the black hoodie, it allowed him to leave, pushing through the crowd as he looked down at the ripped, bloodstained page.

For a second, he felt a twinge of remorse, then he crushed it, and disappeared into the night.