The Demon
The sun was lost afar in the chaos of the clouds. It was only 3 pm. It’s way too early in the noon to be this dark outside, thought Nora to herself as she looked outside the window from her classroom, unaware of whatever gibberish the teacher was teaching. It was gibberish at least to her since it was physics class which she hated. The teacher hated her too so the situation of hatred was mutual. Her head was feeling like a barrel over her shoulders by the 5th and final class of the day. Perhaps a slash of water could help to shrink the barrel to a fish bowl if not to its original state, she thought.
The 8-grade class was held on the third floor of the school building and Nora’s classroom was the last to the left of the main corridor. She went to the washroom followed by the echo of her footsteps in the empty corridor. The building was mostly empty as the junior sections were all gone and transferred to the new building. The school was intaking a large number of new students to the senior section as per the rumor. Nora wanted to walk around a little longer which will save her from the torture in the name of education in the classroom. From a young age, she was never afraid of darkness or an empty place. She always liked to wander around which works like a bliss of peace to her soul.
She took the corner stairs which was always the least used by the students or any staffs of the school. Knowing that it will be quite and the washroom on the 5th floor is always cleaner as they were less used, she started climbing the stairs. The corridor on the 5th floor as empty, as she expected. She found that the washroom was locked. With a little effort, she twisted the knob and pushed the giant wooden door. There were always little chirping noises from there as a sparrow family lived under the window shade. But on that gloomy day, ever the birds were not in their usual mood.
She gave a hard twist to the tap of the sink which was locked tightly enough that it made her palm red from the twisting. Too much work for a little splash she thought, judging all the efforts she made to get there. As she was splashed her face a few times with the cold water, the barrel on her shoulders started to feel like a part of her body again. She started humming and walking out of the door she noticed there was some unusual footstep on the group, as if a cow walked by after stepping on a muddy field. She gazed at the gloomy sky for a while. After a moment of spacing out, she heard a few steps coming from the very end of the corridor. It might be one of the generators but as she turned around, it was nowhere near what she was expecting to see.
There was a creature, three legged. Thick black hair covered its whole body which made it hard to see its eyes or even to judge whether it’s a sheep or goat. It had two curled horns on each side of its head which could possibly make it a ram. But it had a way bigger head to be any of those, almost the size of a horse head. She could not believe what she was seeing at first, so she tries to narrow her eyes and take a good look at the creature. It was three legged. But it was unusual on top of unusual! If it was four legged and lost another leg, the legs would have been on either side of its body but it’s one leg was rooted from its chest.
She felt her legs going numb. She wanted to walk away but she couldn’t. As she managed to move her leg with a lot of effort, the creature that was standing looking down the stairs now turned its head right at her. She wanted to scream but no sound could escape her mouth from the terror she was in. She saw this thing before. But she could not remember where or how. Even if she did, how come was an animal roaming freely in the 5th floor of a school. A loud thunder took her soul out, making her jump and break her from the terror as if it was an attempt of the sky to make her body unfreeze. As the thunder lighten up the dark corridor for a brief moment, Nora noticed it had Sabre tooth. Cold sweat covers her body.
With sudden terrific thuds, the creature starts walking at her and Nora turns around to run for the back stairs. Now she could hear the gallops of the creature running behind her as she ran screaming and crying in terror. She jumped 5 stairs at a time until she saw lights of the 3rd floor in the dark enclosed staircase. She did not stop running until she reached her classroom only to find the classroom empty with all the bags gone except hers. She didn’t hear it coming down the stairs so she stopped to catch her breath. Her heart was throbbing like never before. She grabbed the books from her table in a snatch and put it in her back to run for the downstairs as fast as she could.
It was past 4 and home time. The school was empty except a few students who were from the soccer team. She took a breath of relief at the sight of human. She looked back at the 5th floor corridor as she walked in the middle of the field and threw a spit on the ground as if cursing that creature for terrorizing her.
It was him, she remembered. It was one of the mystical creatures that came alive from one of the many dreams that she had, she recalled, thinking it had enough guts to show up for real after she had already killed it with her magic spell when it appeared in her dreams.
Before it died, it said "I'll rebirth in your world."
