Late

• Emily Haywood, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2019

Quickly making my way up the stairs, I wince as the solid concrete structure echoes my footsteps towards my prison for the next hour. My hands shake as my book slips from my grip, causing papers to explode around the stairway. I drop my equipment as my arms wildly grab for the paper. Freezing on the spot, I look towards the heels clicking on numbing, grey concrete. Shivers race up my spine as my eyes meet her eyes. I’m trapped in her effluvial eyes.
“And why, are you in the stairway during these hours?” she questions, her voice deliberate and calculating.
“I-I,” I stutter before the thing that haunts your nightmares.
She raises a pencil-thin eyebrow and grabs my ear, digging her talons in. She drags me towards her den and propels me to the floor of the stale room.
The cold floor bites my skin and the decayed air stifles my senses. Claw marks riddle the furniture, tipped to create a barricade. A barricade to stop the thing that lives in the next room. The whiteboard is tipped to the side and a mahogany substance splattered across the walls, ceiling, ground and furniture. Curtains are ripped from the windows and grime thwarts the path of light to the room. The clock’s pulsing ricochets throughout the lair. Glass covers the ground, cutting into my shoes and scraping together as I trek to the corner. Sliding to my knees I hold back tears, my stiff, prickly uniform, identifying me as a prisoner here.
She isn’t the one that horrifies me. She's just the feeder. The keeper of the demon that the institution houses. I bring my knees to my chest as a long, pitched creak engulfs the silence.
Clank.
Clank.
Clank.
My stomach writhes and twists within me. My eyes slowly look to the black abyss. A gnarring sound slithers into my ear, causing shivers and goosebumps to ripple over my body.
A horrible writhing mass of nightmares. She is a daydream compared to this creature, demon.
A scream is ripped from my throat as it approaches. At that moment, I realise where I am.
I’m in detention.