Have you ever been in school during a snowstorm and felt trapped, I have. It’s not a good feeling is it; everything seems dark and macabre. It feels as if there is only you and the empty echoing halls shouting back the nervous clunks of your footsteps. Now imagine that snowstorm is the biggest one in New England history and you’re stuck in a Saturday detention.

By most unfortunate luck I was stuck in that horror movie cliché you just imagined. Just add four of my friends and a seriously ticked off teacher. You see we messed with his car, Eve, Alyssa, Jim, Tori, and I. We should never have touched his car that was the breaking point for him.

Mr. Kresge was our English teacher, he owned a beautiful silver Mustang. It was his pride and joy, like a child to him, more loved then his own children. We had messed with him all semester, just drove him nuts for fun. It was senior prank week; and he was our target, his car the victim of choice. We didn’t realize that all year he had been holding in his feelings toward us. If there’s one thing I have learned from this whole ordeal is that; teachers, like postmen, have a strong buildup of homicidal tendencies. Also, next time I have the urge to torment a teacher ill stop and think about the consequences.

We all skipped fifth period on that faithful day, to steal his car. I drove it to an old abandoned parking lot while the others followed in Jim’s car. At the parking lot Tori did her damage first; spray painting the windows black. Eve, Alyssa, and Jim put a huge red bow on the roof. I went last painting a huge green peace sign on the hood. Jim was to drive it back carefully because we didn’t want to do any damage we would have to pay for. Yet allowing Jim to drive was asinine on our parts, he’s a speed demon.

When we finally got back to school the car was a wreck.

Jim had taken out at least two mailboxes and a bike on the way back to the school. He parked it back into Mr. Kresges spot while we climbed into his car and waited for Kresge to come out. For some insane reason I can only blame on immaturity we all thought it was hysterical especially when Mr. Kresge came out and stood mortified by his car.

Mr. Kresge walked a complete circle around his car not saying a word, not even breathing. Tori had her hand over Jim’s mouth to keep him from laughing but he drooled on her hand making her let go and hit him. His laughter, high and shrill, caused all onlookers tolaugh. We were all laughing when Mr. Kresge walked over to Jims car, to us he said,

‘Did you do this?” He didn’t yell or scream, he said it with no emotion at all. It was all in his eyes, they were watering, and he had the look of a hound dog. Droopy watery eyes that held all emotion, but behind them there was a flicker of anger that seemed unable to get past the tears. When the tick started in his left eye the laughter stopped, gradually.

Obviously we all ended up in the principals’ office, who lectured us on the audacity of our generation. Mr. Kresge just stood looking out the window until she suggested pressing charges.

“Wait,” he said,” how about Saturday detention?”

“That’s an excellent idea!” she chirped brainlessly back.

Saturday morning at ten o’clock we reported to our detention with Mr. Kresge. We all showed up which was surprising because Jim barely showed up for class, let alone detention. Kresge didn’t say anything to us at first; he led us to an empty classroom. He perched on the edge of the teachers’ desk in front of the room and watched us take our seats. To me he looked like a gargoyle or a hawk waiting patiently to dive among the grass at the slightest sign of movement. I whispered this to Alyssa who was sitting next to me; she just shook her head with a smile.

“So Kresge, what’s new?” asked Jim with a smirk. Kresges eye began to twitch again and I wondered if it was only I that noticed these things.

“Why my car Jim, why my Mustang, what did she ever do to you?”

“It was a beautiful car, but you could get it fixed. It’s no big deal.” Tori cut in.

“Do you kids have a problem with me? What is it? Is it because I am short?” he asked beginning to get a bit hysterical.

“Mr., I am shorter than you and so is Eve,” piped Alyssa trying to calm him down.

“Ok, sorry Alyssa and Eve, Jim do you have a problem with me because I am short?”

“Heck no, I love that movie Wizard of Oz.”

His eye twitching more violently with the onslaught of Jim’s giddy laughter, Mr. Kresge nodded and left the room. Silence settled upon us after the clock ticked past twenty minutes. Looking up I noticed the window was white, as in cotton ball white. That’s exactly what it looked like; the window was stuffed with cotton balls. Then I came to my senses and saw that it was a swirling, sparkling whiteness. The snow had started to come down heavy and thick making the sky dark and the day dreary. Walking over to the window I leaned against the windowsill.

“Looks like a really bad storm.” said Alyssa watching the snow and me.

Jim, moving quickly, got up and looked through the small window in the door. Seeing nothing he opened it and went into the hall. The others turned to look at me. Feeling myself the appointed leader I walked out after him.

“Dude, what are you doing?”

“I am bored and hungry, let’s find the lunchroom.”

“What about Mr. Kresge?” asked Eve sounding nervous.

The others had followed me out the door and were looking around anxiously.

“His cars gone, I think he left.” I told them.

“It was gone when you looked out the window?”

“Yeah, I could still see our cars but his was gone.”

“Whooooo!!!!!” screamed Jim running down the hall.

“What are you doing, shut up!” screeched Eve.

“We got this whole place to ourselves; I am going to have some fun.” Jim yelled back as he turned the corner going towards the stairway.

Turning to smile at the others I took off down the hall after him, the others in my wake. We caught up to him on the ground floor in front of the lunchroom he had stopped to catch his breath. The hall was dark; none of the lights were on in the building, except for our classroom. Tori turned to one of the many circuit boxes that lined the hallways. Jim grabbed her hand before she could turn the lights on.

“Don’t its more fun this way.”

Meanwhile I had been trying to open the lunchroom doors, coming to the conclusion that they were locked. At the top of the door was a window, the kind that lean down when you push on them. I jumped up to try and get my fingers on the edge. I couldn’t reach. Before I could ask for a boost, Jim grabbed my legs and shoved me upward and through the window. I tumbled completely through and hit the floor on the other side, the floor is concrete. Thankfully I have an older brother which means I am used to being dropped onto my head. Dazed, I stood up and wobbled towards the door to let the others in.

The doors to the kitchens were unlocked allowing us to scavenge freely along with other creatures that roamed our school.

“Eeek! A rat, a rat!” screamed Eve jumping onto a table.

“Hey, calm down he’s doing the same thing your doing. Everyone has to eat.” I told her pushing the rat out of her line of vision with my foot.

The moment of excitement past we proceeded to eat.

“Guys look I found ice cream!” shouted Jim gleefully.

“I would check the date on that, they haven’t served ice cream since my grandma went to school here.” warned Tori.

From outside the kitchens I heard the sound of the lunchroom doors sliding shut with a hiss. Hopping down from the table I was sitting on I started to walk towards the door. Before I could get there Mr. Kresge slid into view out from the darkness like an alley cat in the night.

“Hey Kresge you hungry too!” yelled Tori from across the room. From the corner of my eye I saw something brown and red fly past me. It was a sloppy Joe; Tori had thrown it at Mr. Kresge. A sports master in our school her aim was dead on. The sloppy Joe hit him square in the face. It dripped down his face landing with a sickening plop on his shoes. She was laughing hysterically, they all were. I was watching Kresge, his eye was twitching grotesquely, and he was hiding something behind his back. I don’t know what it was, something that kept catching the light and blinding me with its gleam, a gleam that a sharp metal object sometimes has.

He wiped the sauce from his face, grinning widely, he noticed me trying to see what he was holding and he winked at me. Or at least he tried; it only made his face form a type of wince because of the constant twitching of his eye. He stalked towards Tori who had not realized the mortal danger she was in.

They all stopped laughing now; I assume they could see what was in his hand as I now could. It was the axe, the axe from the emergency firebox. Every school has one, I guess they never imagined a teacher would snap and use it to massacre the students. He had snapped we all understood this now and the ones who didn’t yet would when he swung the axe over his head bringing it down upon Tori’s head. It was a clean cut, straight through her body; at first you couldn’t see it. I don’t believe she felt it herself but then a sort of gurgling came from the back of her throat and her eyes looked from us to Mr. Kresge. Alyssa’s hand grabbed mine a second later when Tori’s body split into two pieces and slid onto the floor in a pool of blood and steaming human entrails.

I tried to run but Alyssa had a death grip on my arm and she wasn’t moving.

“Come on you idiots, stop staring and run!”

My panic stricken scream woke them up and they started to run, I in the lead. Kresge was still standing over Tori’s body, now he was laughing maniacally watching us run from one we had tormented for too long and now we were getting our just deserts. I like to think of it as Karma when I look back on it, at the time I was wondering what we had done to deserve this.

I was still wondering when I turned towards the front door hoping my car wasn’t snowed in. The grin of hope still plastered on my face when I hit the front doors head on, and bounced off landing on the floor. This time I was more then dazed I was out cold. I was shaken awake a few minutes later by Alyssa.She and Jim had dragged me up the stairs; we were now on the second floor.

Warmth slid down my forehead reaching up I felt a cut about as long as a dollar bill oozing forth the warm solution of my blood and sweat. Hoping I didn’t have brain damage I tried to put the three purple Alyssa’s in front of me into focus.

“Guess the door was locked, huh?” I slurred.

“Yeah, we thought you were a goner for sure. We were going to leave you there until we saw your hand twitch.”

“Well don’t I feel loved.”

“Hey we dragged you up here didn’t we?”

“All right, thanks for saving my life guys, but you could have said something before I hit the doors.”

I started to walk up and down near the wall to get the jelly feeling out of my legs. John heard the elevator before the rest of us, but Eve was right near it when he came out. He was smiling again the twitching of his eye now hypnotically rapid. The axe glinted at his side. We were far down the hall but Eve was a slower runner and he got to her first. She was paralyzed with fear, crying silently she waited for him to come giving up all hope.

He sidled up next to her and patted her on the head. Her crying paused maybe she saw a slight ray of hope. Until he clasped his cold hands of death around her neck picking her up off her feet making them dangle over the floor. With surprising strength he slammed her into the circuit box mounted onto the wall behind her. Her back went through the thin plastic plating that covered the wires and she screamed out when the first of the shocks went through her small body. Then she let out one constant, streaming, blood-curdling scream as the three thousand volts of hot electric fire surged into her veins. The skin on her neck boiled and gray matter was leaking from her ears before the screaming stopped. The lights had come on when she hit the box but now the bulbs burst showering down glass and sparks.

Picking up Alyssa, Jim and I ran towards the other elevator at the end of the hall. Hoping to god it would open before Mr. Kresge got to us I leaned on the button. He was running full out down the hall waving the axe at us. The doors opened letting us rush in breathlessly pushing all the buttons just to get the door to close. He got to the doors before they closed, the axe swung down missing Jims face by inches. When he tried to pull the axe out he cut me across my right calf. It was a good slice deep enough to soak my pant leg in the time it took the elevator to go up to the next floor.

The third floor hall way was deathly silent when the elevator doors opened, thinking we had a few minutes I dropped to floor unable to support my own weight on my injured leg.

“There’s no time to take a break.” Jim whispered the panicked fluttering of his heart raising his voice an octave. He pulled me to my feet, using him as a crutch I leaned out into the hall to see if Kresge was coming.

“What do we do now?”

Trying to think of how to get out of this I leaned my head back looking at the ceiling. By this time I knew we were being punished for the torment we had put Mr. Kresge through. This meant no one was coming to save us and we were all going to hell where Eve and Tori were holding seats for us in the line to eternal damnation. A humming sound brought me back from my morbid thoughts.

“Stop humming you guys.’

“I am not humming this is not the occasion to hum.”

“Then what’s….”

I began but stopped realizing what the noise was. Jim had realized also and was reaching into his pocket to pull out his cell phone when Kresge came charging up the stairs in front of us.

Completely losing his mind and destroying another means of escape Jim threw the cell phone hitting Kresge in the shoulder.

Kresge charged like a QB at the super bowl sending me sprawling onto the floor taking Alyssa down with me. He jumped on Jim shoving the blade of the axe threw Jims rib cage. Alyssa grabbed my hands trying to pull me to my feet but I couldn’t get any grip on the floor streaked with my blood. Finally I managed to get some kind of traction, limping as fast as I could I held tight to her hand following her down the hall.

Turning back to witness the carnage at a safe distance we saw Kresge on his knees next to Jim hacking away at his body. Blood sprayed all over him and the walls, it reminded me of the pig blood scene from Carrie. Kresge was screaming about his Mustang, drooling madly, his eye twitching. Next to me Alyssa was emptying her stomach of the delicious cafeteria food we had eaten earlier. I turned sliding my foot in a trail of my own blood trying to find an unlocked classroom. The blood I had lost from the cut on my head and now the blood I was losing from the chunk taken out of my leg was taking its toll on my body. The colors were swirling in front of my eyes again; the urge to vomit was incredibly strong. My brother once told me that this is kind of what it felt like when you were tripping on acid.

“I will never do drugs.” I said not realizing I was no longer saying these things in my head.

“What are you talking about?” Alyssa asked following me to the different doors.

I didn’t answer her. A door was open down the hall on our right, at the end. I spotted it at the same time I saw Kresge sprinting towards us from the corner of my eye. We were near the door when he screamed at us.

“Run, run, run as fast as you can, Ill catch you, I am the gingerbread man!!”

Nervous laughter fought its way up through my mouth bursting forth so suddenly I scared Alyssa and myself. Dashing inside the room I slammed the door dragging a teacher’s desk across it. This was a storage room filled with desks and file cabinets.

“Get some desks, put them on top hurry! Help me lift this file cabinet!”

We got the door barricaded before he could get to it, he must have hit it head on because the barricade shook for a movement.

“Damn it! Ill be back for you!”

That’s when Alyssa started to cry and I slid onto the floor my vision blurring from the blood loss. If we didn’t get out of here soon I was going to die from massive blood loss. So far I knew I needed a transfusion at least, I wouldn’t be conscious for much longer. Once I realized that the sense of perseverance every red blooded, meat eating American has pulsed through my veins taking the place of my blood. Limping towards the window I grabbed Alyssa’s attention pulling her away from the door and her crying. Looking outside was like looking out on an alien world of white. The snow had covered everything though I could still make out the gas station across the road from the school. With the wind blowing sideways a snowdrift had been made against the side of the school all the way up to the second floor window right below ours. Alyssa looked up at the clock on the wall sniffling.

“Its three thirty.’ she whispered.

Time flies when you’re watching your friends get massacred.

I heard Kresge outside the door again; he was dragging something heavy by the sound of it. He was humming sweetly yet tunelessly. This only caused Astrid to bury her face in her hands leaning onto the windowsill. He was pouring something in the hallway; I could hear a sloshing sound like water. Once when I first got my car I was filling it with gas and dropped the nozzle spilling gas all over the place. The smell was really strong, something you could never forget. That’s what I smelt then coming from the hallway. He was going to burn the place down. Not wanting to send her into complete hysterics I didn’t tell her.

“To bad we can’t go out the window.” she said looking down at the snow pile below.

That’s when it hit me, right then I could have kissed the little midget.

“Alyssa, you’re a genius!”

“What, why?”

“The third floor windows don’t have bars on them, we can get out!”

I started to pry the window up, straining to lift the heavy window. She realized what I was doing and started to help me. We got it open in a few seconds that felt like eternity. She boosted me up then I pulled her up after me. Swinging our legs over the edge I grabbed her hand. She looked at me with huge scared eyes.

“Its just snow.” I said.

Then we jumped dropping down into the freezing cold powdery snow. Sliding down to the bottom of the drift I looked up at the gray sky feeling the biting cold on my wounds and welcomed every inch of frostbite I was sure to get.

But it wasn’t over yet; above us the windows burst into flames shooting out over our heads, glass raining down. We ran through the snow, I far behind Astrid who was almost completely buried in the mountains of snow. Crawling out of a snow mound we got across the road to the gas station and told the clerk to call 911.

My body giving out I plopped onto the cold linoleum floor. Alyssa sat next to me leaning her head on my shoulder. We watched the school burn, rapidly clogging the sky with smoke.

“We were just having fun. It was just a joke, it was all in good fun,” she sobbed showing tears for our lost friends.

“It was fun; it was a roller coaster ride.”

The school burned steadily over the next two days. Thanks to the storm the fire department couldn’t get to it in time. It was just a burned out shell by the time the snow put the fire out. A body was found in our sixth period classroom with the axe and our friend’s dead bodies in their assigned seats. Astrid was sent to a mental institution, I visit her a lot but she just keeps repeating the same things, nonsense really.