Judgment Day

She drifted on the ebb and flow of sweet morning sleep, dreaming of hot summer beaches with bright blue skies. The covers purred against her like big fuzzy cats and her pillow felt as soft as a cloud.

The hideous screech of the alarm clock shattered her world to pieces. She blinked sleepily and groaned as a bright ray of sunshine stabbed her right in the eye. She was about to slap the snooze button when it hit her…sunshine?!

The clock said 10:23. Blood red digital letters bled out from a background of deepest black, dark as the devil’s heart.

“I’m so late!” she screamed, the blood in her veins curdling, her hair turning stark white. Rushing around the room, she threw all her books but one in her backpack, and then fell down the stairs and out the door.

The one book still left in her hand was titled “Advanced Statistics.” As she ran down the sidewalk, she turned to page 47 and began to do the review exercises.

“Oh no oh no oh no oh no,” she chanted as she did a running jump over a rotting corpse in her way. “I can’t fail this test! They’ll kick me out of school!” She passed through a grove of dead trees, the branches clutching at her with wraithlike, emaciated fingers.

“Get out of my way!” she shouted at a queerly dressed stranger who was wobbling down the sidewalk. He growled at her, the dirty ragged strips of his mask coming loose and showing leathery black skin and one bloodshot eyeball. But she ignored him, having eyes only for the correlation coefficient in problem 12 b.

Suddenly, her foot caught on a stray jack-o-lantern and she lurched forward, her calculator falling on the ground. “Oh great, just what I needed,” she moaned, getting down to retrieve it. At that moment, there was a great ‘whoooosh’ of air above her head as the sword of a headless horseman missed her by mere inches. Overjoyed that her calculator was okay, she stood up and kept running. The sound of hoof beats faded away.

Finally, gasping for breath, she ran into her statistics classroom and plopped down in her seat. Around her, glassy-eyed students were staring, motionless, towards the front of the room. A large chunk Pete Toomey’s hair had fallen off his head and lay on the desk. All the skin had peeled off of Jen Parkinson’s left arm. Mallory Jung was drooling.

The teacher was passing out a thick sheaf of test papers. His hand slapped one down in front of her, leaving a little piece of brittle nail behind with it.

“Braaaaiiinsss,” he told her, solemnly, and then caught himself.

“I mean, good luck.”