Nausea overwhelms you.

  You can’t think - just stare at the grisly scene in front of you until it too begins to feel blurry. You feel hands on your shoulder, but you’re sinking to the ground and it all feels so distant …

  You wake up with a gasp, heart thudding with anticipation. You’re … back in your room. Some birds tweet quietly from outside your window and light shines in bright rippling patches through the curtains that cover it. What time is it?

  Your mom is in the kitchen on the phone by the time you make your way slowly downstairs. Her eyes are red, but they widen in surprise before she murmurs something into the phone and drops it on the counter. She runs to you, folding you in her arms and exclaiming gratefully.

  As the two of you talk, she gradually lays out the series of events that occurred after you passed out. She doesn’t want to give you some of the more sickening details, but your curiosity eventually overwhelms her and she relents. Apparently, Mr. Euss had hid a criminal past while applying to be a teacher at your high school. The police arrived before he could make his escape, and the resulting investigations linked him to the headline killer of a decade or so ago. He must have relapsed, slaughtering two students with notoriously inattentive parents for unknown reasons and filing false absence reports for almost a week. He likely would have escaped if the school nurse hadn’t been shocked out of her stupor by the fainting of a student and prompted to call 911 in her office as quickly as she did. The school was rethinking their ban on cell phone possession on campus due to the incident, and classes … well, they’d be canceled for a while.

• The End •