• Zie had been walking back from school when she realized something of great and utter importance.

    She had forgotten her paper in the computer lab.

    The paper that was going to guarantee her stay until graduation. The paper that was going to save her from suspension. The paper that was going to redeem her from countless other drawbacks from cutting class and loitering in the grounds 'til late and using the school computers and countless other facilities for personal purposes...the paper that was salvation! After some time she realized that in the span of registering her shock, she could have been halfway back to the still open school.

    For Zie, thinking before acting was her best attribute, but it was also her worst. She spent too much time thinking. And most of the time it was pointless, borderless thinking.

    And again it proved detrimental to her cause. Once she had gotten to the school, it was already closed.
    "Crappo." Zie muttered, slinking off to the farthest edge of the brick hedge that surrounded the school. She could've been enrolled in a more lenient school, but nooo, her parents just had to put her name down for the most uptight school in the city and pay for the whole shebang, bless their souls, wherever they are.
    Zie climbed a tree that stood near the hedge and hoisted herself up and over. Bolting across the grounds, fancying herself as some ninja in stealth mode, she dived for the nearest hiding place. There was nobody in sight, but well, you never know who's watching.

    It took a few lockpicks to get to the computer room. There it was, sitting on a desktop like some glorious, majestic...thing, was her paper. Zie grabbed it, hugged it, kissed it a few times and cooed some words of comfort like it was a great, 35 page, paper baby.
    The great, 35 page paper baby was motionless.
    "Home we go." Zie declared, marching off into the deserted corridors. And on her way, she heard the janitor screaming frantically, "Who's there? Zie?!"
    The janitor (whom Zie constantly refers to as a humanoid hound of hell) usually worked overtime to sniff out and purge delinquents who tried taking over his territory: the school. He had assumed that since he cleans it, he theoretically owns it by divine right. And Zie was just another pest.
    A chase ensued, but Zie managed to pick open the old storage room door in the music hall. It was a particularly old hall, so it was a very old room. Diving into dark space between a group of mops and a large desk, she curled herself up into a ball and tried not to drown in the dust.
    The Janitor ran past and Zie made sure he was well past before crawling out. She shuddered and was suddenly enveloped in a large cloud of dust; when it cleared, she knocked over a couple of carton boxes, revealing a horrible stain on the ancient wallpaper.
    It was like somebody had thrown a water balloon and its contents went splat right on the spot, only the stain remained permanent. Zie moved closer and saw two or three dents in the wall, right in the middle of the splatter. It was deep; like a knife had dug into it, but no, Zie thought, running her fingers over the gaps. It was too wide to be a knife and two narrow to be something bigger. She stepped backward; the stain led to a thicker stain, like a dark watercolor painting of a road, down the wall and onto the floor. More stains, but not splatters anymore; more like something had been dragged over it. And the stains stopped right where Zie stood.
    And again, she stood in shock, thinking. She was thinking how the stains looked like blood, thinking that if it was blood, then someone was stabbed right through, bled on the wall, slid to the floor and crawled to the spot to where Zie was...and died.
    Zie groaned, superlatively freaked out and ran to the door, fumbling to get the lock open, and ran down the hall, trying her hardest not to scream.
    "C'mon, dorkus; why're you so afraid of a blood splatter?" she told herself, slowing down to a walk, warily glancing over her shoulder. If someone really had died in there...then it must had been a very long time ago.
    What if....what if it had been a student? What if it had been some poor, lost student who'd hidden there, found by the Janitor...and killed?
    "That psycho!" Zie hissed and she walked faster, "You're not killing me, no..."

    It was suddenly very cold. Not the cold like how it feels on a rainy day, or in a air-conditioned room. The cold was...eerie, the kind that's get you all chicken skinned and make your bladder suddenly contract and scream for release. That kind of cold.
    Zie walked faster, but it got colder. And she felt like something was behind her. In scary movies, watching someone onscreen getting followed by something relatively unknown to the character, but seen to the audience is as scary as a worm brandishing its non-existent fangs in the knowledge that it is a snake. But when you're in the character's shoes, it's seriously scary. And it was scary for Zie. She heard no footsteps, no breathing, no shrill whistle of a butcher's knife slicing through the air. Just that feeling that you know, and it's not just a feeling, you know someone's there.
    As she was about to turn a corner, she looked back.

    Looking down at her was a towering hulk of gray mass with hair and clothes. It was neither solid nor insubstantial; it was like shifting from solid to non-solid form; a constantly shifting paradigm form. Its eyes were bloodshot, bulging from their sockets, the mouth hanging open. It made a low, sucking, raspy sound, its skeletal hands reaching out...closer...
    Zie screamed and ran. She didn't care about the Janitor now...what the hell was that thing?
    She kept running and running away from the school. She didn't go home; living alone and sleeping alone in the dark at night after seeing something like that isn't something you actually do, especially if it follows you home. No...Zie ran to a 7-11.

    She stayed there the whole night.

    And after her nth sandwich, she came to a horrible realization:

    She had dropped her paper in the hall.