Phantasmagoria

    The door was locked, and this was strange.
    The door to room 201 was always open in the morning, inviting students in before the first bell rang. But not today. There were three of them, Dylan Wells, Jane Dolmeyer, and Bud Halport, all puzzling outside the door and trying to peer past the warped glass into the blackness behind it. Mrs. Hasson, their second grade teacher, was always early to school, and usually sat humming at her desk going over papers at least half an hour before class started. But not today.
    Today was strange.
    They all looked up and down the endless hallways, following the ancient tiles with their line of sight until they merged with brick walls and stone ceiling in a pinpoint of singularity. They were nervous. There were footfalls from down the hallway, and in accelerated gestures, a woman in a tight fitting no-nonsense dress and blazer clip clopped her heels toward the kids.
    They all automatically moved aside, looking up at her tall stature with fear and speculation. She analyzed them over her horn rimmed glasses, and the corner of her mouth twitched as she rammed a key into the door and opened it into the classroom.
    In moments, the lights were turned on, flickered and then settled, to cast sterile illumination over the three children, who were quickly joined by the rest of the class, shuffling in with unnatural speed. They had all taken their seats, hands carefully interlaced on the tops of their desks, and perfect blank faces aimed dead ahead.
    Dylan looked at Bud and Jane. Their expressions matched his: sheer terror. Something was very wrong here, they all knew it, but each felt paralyzed in their immaculate seating arrangements.
    “I am your substitute, children. And we’ll be doing something a little different today.” The woman said, standing as a menace in front of the class, and the three coherents shuddered in unison. She reached across the blackboard (which was as per usual, green) and fingered a large red button, attached to a steel rectangular plate. It was the kind of thing one sees in an old cartoon, but it was as big and real as life.
    She pressed it.
    The entire front wall of the classroom began to shake and whir, and with dust falling from the corners, the whole thing collapsed into the ground, revealing a giant array of mechanical dishevelment. This beast of a machine moved forward, into the classroom. The three grabbed their desks and showed white knuckles.
    The abomination began to unfold itself. A large steel box at the left end inflated, then became solid as a flat ramp speared out of it to make contact with the floor. A pleated chamber pushed out from the box, connecting to a giant chromed vat, with sinister pumps and dials manifesting on the outside. There were great hissing and groaning sounds filling the room as the thing became alive, and pops of steam and smoke that fired out from crannies between the pieces. There was a rubberized rolling track that jutted out of the far right end of it, giving the whole thing the look of some demented assembly line. It began to settle, its shape complete, and reduced its roars to a low, steady rumble.
    “We’ll begin with roll, and then…”
    The insidious teacher sneered,
    “Into the box.”
     The plastic faces of the other children were motionless, only Bud, Dylan and Jane looked around wantonly trying to find a solution, and wishing desperately for a deus ex machina.  
    “Bridget Anderson.” The teacher called, and a blonde girl with pigtails and a floral church dress replied to her, “Here!”.
    The teacher motioned her hand towards the entrance into the machine, and Bridget promptly walked over to it. She stepped up the ramp, ducked her head under the sharp metal lip of the box, and went inside. There was a slurping sound as she vanished within, and the machine vibrated and rocked from side to side.
    “Richie Cartwright.” The teacher read from her clipboard.
    “Here!” He beamed from the middle of the desks, almost skipping to get to the threshold of the insanity. Bridget hadn’t yet emerged from the opposite end when Richie jumped inside, but when Damien Castle next tucked his head of black hair into the machine, she finally appeared.
    She was barely recognizable, aside from the slimy remains of her pigtails. Her skin was a horrible putrid green, patchy with lesions and covered with mucky ooze. Her eyes had gone a murky yellow, and were dotted with large black pupils that darted around the room. She still wore her lacy church dress, but it was stained with the goop that poured out of her. The skin around her mouth had pulled back, and her teeth were rotting, corroded nubs.
    The invisible binding that had held Dylan, Bud, and Jane to their desks was instantly broken at the sight of Bridget’s fetid makeover, and simultaneously they bolted out of their desks and towards the door. Dylan led the way, as his desk was closest to the getaway, and made turning the door knob, pulling it open, and rushing through into one fluid motion. He skidded in the hall on his sneakers, and made a whip turn to make sure his cohorts were still in tow.     
    Bud was flashing, his whole body like an electric party light, with shades of blue, green, red, and yellow pulsing over him in a jellied halo. His body stuttered in mid stride, and he became a time lapse image, moving far too slow to reach the safety of the doorway. Jane was scurrying as fast as she could, her knobby knees planting her feet one in front of the other in rapid bursts of fear and adrenaline. She flew past Bud as he went from flickering cartoon to dead stop statue, but was intercepted by Bridget’s clawing outstretched hand just before she reached the doorway. Dylan screamed and ran down the hall, pumping his legs and slamming his feet against the floor, against reason, and against logic, until his lungs were filled with so much fire that he collapsed to the ground in a heap.
    As he rolled around on the ground, the tiles squished under his weight, and became a downy white, their textures changing from cool and hard to warm and enveloping, and he soon sunk into the womb forming around him. He could hear the distant clip clop of heels down the hallway growing louder as his head became heavier and his eyes fell shut. When he began to open them, he could still hear the sound, but it was more substantial, like a knock. He unlatched them, and watched his mother poke her head in through his bedroom door, smiling at him.
    “Time for school!”    

Reviews

[DavidRyanM]

Ha. Dig the end man. That was funny in a terribly morbid way. I have had nightmares like this about being at work and the feeling you get when you wake up and realize you have yet to go to work is terrifying. Dug it a lot. Would like to know, from the author himself, what was actually happening to these kids when they'd "step inside".