The Gradebook

Chapter 11: Lights, Camera, Action

CHAPTER 11: LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

A dim shadow lulled under my eyelids, and when I peeled them open, it was just as dark outside. My hands drifted over my bed, searching for soft fabric...

And finding none. Instead, when I brought my hands up to look at them, despite it being pitch-black, a mucky mud clung onto my palms. After I propped myself onto my elbows, I briskly lifted up my head. I felt it hit a slack, but well-defined jaw as I tried to haul myself up.

“Eooooww... What in the?” A voice lazily said, somewhere from my left. Obviously, without thinking, my head spun towards the noise, and a dull pounding erupted into a headache. I clutched my head with a hand, groaning as thoughts swam in my head and I fell backwards with a loud thump on the ground, except for my hand, which seemed to waft in sticky water.

My eyes widened and I slowly surveyed my surroundings. “What is this...? Oh my god, where am... What the heck am I doing here?!”

By now, my voice rose up to an alarmed whisper, and I heard something stir beside me; I hesitantly felt around, and tightly grabbed onto the first thing I touched. I screamed as I scampered backwards, down a slope of who knows what, but not before flinging what I’d been holding towards me.

I definitely wasn’t expecting a (presumably) large body mass to hurtle down the slope with me. My hand dug into whatever soft thing I was holding and swung it around with me.

The second my flesh touched something cool and murky, I screamed. It seemed to slither down my shirt, which I awkwardly felt around for to no avail, instead finding a woolly cardigan, and then down the brilliantly chosen thin layer of fabric called leggings. Soon enough, I was buried mid-waist in a liquid mud.

I frantically swerved my head around, looking everywhere to what I was so tightly holding on to; the object that seemed to be groaning wasn’t visible through the dark patches of plum-coloured sky.

I lowered my head down to my cold numb fingers and breathed out a little. “W-what are you? Tell me straight up or I-I’ll...” I looked around myself and a brilliant idea came to my mind. “I’ll choke you in the middle of wherever-we-are with a woolly cardigan.”

“Well, not to spoil your fun, but besides my death, wouldn’t you be freezing in practically nothing?” a warm air fanned around my face as words trickled out of someone’s mouth.

“Ah!” I screamed, falling backwards, smartly still managing to drag the frightening source of the whispers with me. I felt a dull slosh of mud as my face suddenly got not only splashed with it, but smashed with a hand that must have left a gorgeous red mark. A substitute for synthetic blush.

I slowly lifted my head up from the pool of mud that I was buried under, and, with dirty, sticky fingers swiped mud off my eyelids and mouth. Fortunately, I managed to get even more mud inside my mouth and stinging my eyes.

I let go of my vicelike grip on the poor victim and looked at it.