Evanescent

1

I was sitting on a battered cushion Harini left me before assuring me her return. I snuggled up with Maya and Kahlo, crouched on the ground sitting on a dusty rug. She was off to check for more students stuck in the rooms. Sipping water from a paper cup, I took the time to compose a believable and more comprehensible picture of the rapidly evolving situation.

I waited for the last drop at the bottom of the cup to slide onto my tongue, then held it with both my hands, applying enough pressure to make the soft, pale paper cup more cuboidal than frustum-y. Mentally marking floors on the cup, my mind started to flood with the bizarre episodes that came with no subtitles.

Okay, the draft synopsis is... me and a bunch of people I know, from school and some alumni, ensnared in a ginormous maze which was filled with traps and... Beings of some sort. They weren't monsters, but I don't know if they were human either. Ah, I suppose we should consider them monsters for now. We didn't get to see them, but we knew where they stood, most of the time it would seem. Whoever was jinxed enough to have the light (or darkness?) of these beings shone in their eyes, just disappeared. I assure you though, they don't die, but for some reason they reappear in the hall with weights made from some weird golden-y metal tied to their leg.

The room was one I had never seen in this building. Was I on the fourth floor? It seemed like it, I'd know otherwise. Back in school, we were never allowed to go beyond the third floor, and we never asked why. We all just assumed that's because it's the terrace, it would be unsafe for children. You know, how children are, adventurous little -
CLANG
"What was that?"
A whisper left my lips.
Everything created the impression of abrupt stillness. My mouth went dry. I tried to calm my breathing to make as little sound and movement. There was nothing unsettling in sight. Then again, there wasn't much that I could see. I let my eyes scan the room's cobwebbed purplish white walls again. There were some withered softboards stacked in the left corner, above which hung a fancy painting of the founder of our school. The first branch of this school used to be in the suburbs, unlike this one, standing tall in its current metropolitan locus. I followed the string of paintings that were hung side by side with about a gap of a feet between them. The next one was the inaugural ceremony of our current school. Oh, it was a photograph, my bad. Classic ceremony, with garlands and the lamp lit by the founder and hey, our director! He's quite old, isn't he. The paintings slash photographs that followed were of various events related to the school. Milestones that were achieved. Odd that they have never let us see these, they're moments of glory and sweetness which I've felt our school dismissed pretty quick. But I suppose it always wasn't this way.

Never knew they'd celebrate it this way. 

CLANG

What is this noise?

It is so fucking irritating. Who dare disrupt my tranquil minute with that kind of a vexatious shrillness which only the lord knows what hellish thingamajig is capable of producing?

What the devil was that sentence? I didn't find that noise so irritating. And god damn how did I remember a word like thingamajig? Apparently clanging noises unlocks a higher level of English lingo. I felt a pair of eyes my way, Kahlo's eyes. His eyes were glisetning, in a weird way. I felt all my attention slip into them. His soft brown eyes. I leaned forward to have a better look.

And all it took was a blink.

All it took was a blink for my attention to shift.

And I saw them.
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• • •

I hope you liked this one!
Who did our protagonist encounter? All in good time.

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