Dead End Corridor

Three kids. One empty school. One dare.

They all entered together, beneath the grinning teeth of a dinosaur-like bulldozer. The demolition men would be back in tomorrow, on Monday morning, to collapse what was left. Only the central main corridor, the spine of the building, remained.

The boys loitering at the entrance didn’t go this school, because it was a senior school, before the council tore it down. They were barely in juniors. From where they stood, they could see right up into the corridor. It seemed to go on for a mile. This was the only way in. Every door along every side was locked, and every window to every room boarded up.

At first they chucked stones in, seeing who could throw the furthest. Then they slowly crept in and leaned their weight against the first classroom door. It creaked and groaned, but didn’t budge.

Zack, the tallest, stood a clear head over Greg and Daz. He regularly insisted they do silly things, like fling banana skins at moving cars and swap classmates’ packed lunch boxes. Because he was a year older, and because he knew boys a year older than him, Greg and Daz usually did whatever he said. Zack had what must be the best bedroom going, too, and invited them both over at least twice a week, and sometimes every single week night. He had internet, videos, books, toys, posters, and even a Superman bedspread.

Zack suggested Greg and Daz race to the very end of the corridor and back. There was light at the bottom, which made it look like they could get out, but they couldn’t; it was just a gaping hole in the ceiling from above. If not for holes in the ceiling, it would have been dark.

“No way,” Greg declared, and no amount of X-Box or Harry Potter would convince him otherwise. Daz felt the same way. There was something about the place that smelled dangerous.

Zack huffed and puffed because he was accustomed to getting his own way, but Greg soon flipped the tables by daring that he run up there, all by himself. “You can race the clock,” Greg put to him, taking off his Casio watch. “I’ll time you.”

“You have 60 seconds to get there and back!” Daz chipped in. Daz sometimes felt like the tag-a-long and thought he had to prove himself to Zack, so it was nice to be able to order him to do something for a change.

Zack looked surprised at first but then he lifted his Nike Air Max and tapped the soles. “No, 60 seconds to get there and 60 seconds to get back.”

“Okay!” Daz said.

“You have 120 seconds then.” Greg pushed his ‘start timer’ button and shouted, “Go!”

Zack sped off up the tunnel. It was more like a tunnel than a corridor. His mates laughed and giggled. They had got one over on Zack. He shrank into the converging lines of the walls, but always remained in plain view. It was a bright day, but not sunny, with church bells ringing in the distance. Early. Peaceful. But quiet. Eerily quiet. Too quiet...

It was just after Zack had passed the halfway point on his way there when a big dark shadow detached itself from a door and took one large step out into the middle of the corridor. It looked like a huge man dressed in black. The man simply stared at Greg and Daz as Zack run on towards the end, where he would be trapped.

Greg and Daz recoiled in fear. Daz tripped over backwards. Greg dropped his stopwatch. They saw Zack reach the end, tap his Nikes again, then head back towards them. When he saw the big man in black, he stopped dead and paused like a rabbit in headlights, frozen stiff. It wasn’t until the man slowly turned around and started walking towards Zack that he started to panic, darting left and right, checking the locked classroom doors for an escape.

They heard him shouting and screaming and crying, but didn’t hang about to see what happened next. Instead, they ran as one, as fast as they could, back to their homes, to tell their mums and dads.

© A.Michael
Blob of Glob

07.30am Fri 19 Nov 2010
(start to fin in 60 min)
Uploaded via mobile web

This is toned down normal version. The 15-rated one involves The man picking up Zack and pinning him against the wall, before doing some bad stuff one need not go into, because nobody (and I repeat nobody) likes children being harmed. Not in stories, not in movies, not anywhere. Kingsley Annaneu (see previous post) has written a story about a child lost in the woods who gets eaten by cannibals. He can't even get it published online anywhere..