Getting Schooled!  Choose Your Own Adventure in a haunted school
<--- Pg. 112:  Grab the cassette and flee the principal’s office.


You reach out and grab the cassette with the incriminating evidence from the desk and turn to flee the principal’s office.  There’s no way this old wolf could keep up with you, and once you break the news of where the missing children have gone you’re sure you’ll get a parade in your honor.


Your heart thumps, but it’s nothing like the pounding steps behind you.  Even in those ugly dress shoes of his, that old man moves fast.  Way too fast.  You’ve barely reached the door when he’s in front of you, a snarl of yellow teeth and breath like death itself.


In the sunset light of the ratty old office you can really see the glow in his eyes now as mouldering claws grab your shoulders. Digging through your shirt with casual ease as the Principal’s once smooth, calm voice is lost in a guttural growl, “Now now, no running in the halls, we’ll have to take you for your punishment.”


In one motion he casually tosses you over his shoulder.  Your hands beat and tear at his back.  Ripping at his hair, clumps falling out as the horrible stench grows.  Oh god!  He doesn’t even react as half his ear comes out in your hands.  What is this monster?


Your screams echo down the empty halls, everyone long gone.  The steady clap of footsteps ring out as he walks you at a terrible pace through the dimly lit main hall.  Rusted locks and doors half askew, as the school’s ugly nature grows more plain.  Has it always been falling apart so badly?


A door creaks open as you see the cheeky skeleton of the nurse’s office sitting in the desk by the door.  But now the uniform is bloody.  Bits of rotted flesh and a braces clad smile, far smaller than the cheap plastic and metal model that normally sat there.  The pink, white and blue bands on the braces suddenly strike a memory.  That freshman you helped who went missing when she found this strange computer cassette!


“Don’t worry, Juliette is being a model student now!  Nurse, we need to administer this student medicine, it seems they’ve been quite naughty.”  The sounds coming from the wolf rattle through rotting flesh and wheezing breaths.  Bits of bone can be seen through his fingers as they shove you roughly into a chair.


The nuse herself is a hideous amalgamation of scales and fur.  A long fang poking free and red eyes glaring, her once motherly appearance faded,  “Yes, of course, please prep the patient for me.”


A rough hewn belt is jerked over your chest as you squirm.  Nnng!  It’s pulled with so much force your breath escapes with a glitter of stars in your vision.  Your legs kick uselessly, the chair strapped down.  Your arms pinned to your side as every breath pains your lungs.  Gasping wheezes to just push your chest enough to get a breath.
A cold hand pushes your wrist over and pins it firmly.  You feel tendons creak and threaten to pop out as you squeal and yell hoarsely.  No longer able to even shout in the painful constriction as you watch a large needle be filled with a vial.  A prominent skull warning of dangers of the potentially deadly medicine.


A second hand from the principal pushes down at your elbow, locking the arm in place.  You stare in horror as the muscles quiver and tremble, worthless against he slimy cold embrace of death from whatever foul creature the principal is.  His glowing eyes like jack o’ lantern eyes, flickering with unnatural light behind them, lusting for something from you.  The cassette with all the evidence of missing children and faked accidents falls from fingers as they grow numb.


The nurse uses one hand to casually grasp your other arm, holding it to keep you from stopping her.  The syringe she has is ancient, like some old movie prop with the three metal loops.  THe rusty needle probably the least of your worries, as a clear liquid drips from the sharp tip. “Just relax dear, we’ll have you nice and comfy in no time...”


There’s a sharp prick as she pushes it in with casual ease.  The sharp sting burning as it slides effortlessly past fur, skin, and muscle into the vein.  That burning flows with an aching heat, and your arm immediately grows slack.


“There there, that’s a good boy, was that so hard?”  She says with false comfort as she holds your free hand in a painful crush.  The principal has let go of your other arm.  And as that burning ache crawls up your arm you feel that limb turn to numb, aching uselessness.  Tingling prickles as you watch horrified as it flops to your side, not responding to your desperate struggles to lift it once more.


That cold, boney hand grasps your chin and turns you to stare into those glowing orange eyes.  Flickering candle lights digging deep into you as that salty ache crawls up your shoulders.  “Now be a good boy, and just relax, it’ll all be over…  I’m sure we’ll all feel better after a good meal.”


Oh god, he’s drooling.  His tongue purple and livid and so long.  His eyes piercing into your gaze.  You can’t turn away as you feel your heart race.  And then the sharp heated ache digs in and you realize what’s to happen.  Your limp, numb arm soon to spread into your heart and then...


That glowing grows bigger and bigger as blackness encroaches.  Your heart BURNS!  Breaths racing shallower and shallower as you feel pin pricks and tingles in your chest.  That steady thump softer... softer...


A burning lick of fire and flames grows from those eyes, and you realize with your last thoughts just how he’s kept himself going for so long.  It’s not been a steady string of relatives as principal, just him, feeding and growing fat on such easy prey over the centuries.  Brought to him by unknowing parents.


How long will your soul burn to keep this festering monster alive, and feed the illusions of such a sweet and kind principal.  Another soul lost to a tragic accident, another point of data to be tracked for his coverups.


He’ll be sure to write your parents a heartfelt letter of the tragedy that befell you, but you shouldn’t have been trespassing after school and snooping around, it’s a shame the neighborhood is just so dangerous after dark.