The Phantom School

Have I started hallucinating already? Or... could it be real?

"Handle yourself, you are better than this." I told myself. I slowly turned back around and peeked into the room. The man was still there. I was not mistaken. He was alive; he stopped looking around and turned his head down. He was a slightly fat adult, probably in his thirties. His clothes were ripped and dirty. Upon further inspection, I"ve noticed that he was tied to the chair by his arms, his neck and his legs. While I was watching him from distance, he started crying, silently.

"Why?" he said to himself. "What did I do wrong?"

He was sobbing and oca.s.sionally coughing.

"Why do I have to suffer?" he continued crying. Seeing his condition, I felt a strange pity I"ve never felt before in my life. He seemed to be in so much pain, both physically and mentally. It wasn"t hard to emphatize since I had similar times recently. I had no idea how he ended up there, but I had to help him. Apart from relieving my conscience, I could gather some useful information from him.

I"ve entered the room again, slowly. This time, even though he noticed me entering the room, he didn"t even bother looking at me.

"Please, just get this over with!" he said, softly.

"Stay still." I told him, and approached the chair. He was tied tightly to the chair by ropes. I grabbed the rope and tried to untie the knots. Just then, he slowly turned his head and looked at me.

"Huh? Oh... You are not one of them, are you?" he said to me.

"Who are "them"?" I asked in return.

"How did you escape?" he asked me, instead of answering my question.

"How did I escape what?" I asked this time.

Just before he could begin talking again, we heard one of the doors closing in the distance.

"Hurry, they are coming back!" he said in panic.

"Who are they!?" I asked again in frusturation. It was too hard to properly communicate with him.

I was unsuccessful; I couldn"t set him free of the ropes. But I had another thing to worry about: some people were coming this way. I started hearing indistinct chatter and footsteps from the hallway. I had to hide somewhere.

"Please don"t leave me here!" the man cried as I ran out of the room. Even though I was feeling bad for him, my own survival had the higher priority. I started looking for a place to hide.

There were some unexplored rooms in the hallway ahead, but since I didn"t know what lied beyond this point, I simply ran into the large, dark surgery room I explored previously.

As the people approached, their chatter became cleaner. I crawled near the dead body in the corner of the surgery room in an attempt to blend in to the environment. Although trembling, I sat near the wall as still as possible and tried to control my breathing. As the group approached, I tried to listen to their conversations.

Person 1: "...said that we will need replenishments soon."

Person 2: "How much do we have left?"

Person 3: "We"ve got about four or five doses left on the shelf."

Person 2: "So what are we going to do about that man? He is not an easy one, he might cause a lot of trouble. It"s not enough to keep him under control."

Person 1: "Just get rid of him already."

Person 2: "Hey, we can"t just waste so many subjects away like that."

I was having a hard time with controlling my heavy breathing. The adrenaline rushing through my body wasn"t helping at all. As they got closer, I started sweating. They finally got through the last door in the hallway, which was just outside the room I was in. They were now in the middle of the surgery room and the electric chair room. They stopped there and kept chatting for a while.

Person 1: "We don"t have enough goo to waste on him."

Person 2: "This is why we don"t ever get more funding, you know... Because we inconsiderately waste everything we have in our hands."

Person 3: "This is also why the hauler divison hates you so much."

Person 1: "I will start hating you if you don"t shut up."

Person 3: "Fine, fine... You do the killing, I will bring you some goo and come back."

They stopped chatting and started to walk again. Just then, somebody entered the surgery room and turned the lights on. I immediately held my breath, but I didn"t close my eyes. Instead, I kept them fixed on a point on the opposite wall.

The person that entered the room was wearing a clean, white lab coat. He was probably in his late twenties. His face had the most neutral, emotionless look I"ve ever seen.

He walked inside, looked around. If he noticed me, it could be my end. He kept standing in front of the door and looking around for a long time like he was searching for something.

Eventually he looked towards my direction and noticed me, and immediately, his eyes were fixed on me. I tried so hard to keep my breath and hold still. I could not understand his intentions about me.

I thought that he was about to do unpleasant things to me, but instead, he calmly looked away after a while.

"At least you can tell me before you throw your stuff in here." he murmured and sighed. I was not sure if he was talking about me or something else in the room.

He walked up to a table and grabbed a few half-filled beakers. He turned around and turned the lights off as he walked out of the room. After he left, I relieved the stress on my body and started breathing again. It was a close call.

"I have to escape." I thought. I walked to the door and peeked into the hallway. I saw three men in white lab coats standing in front of the electric chair room. They got in one by one and closed the door behind themselves. So, they were the people that the man tied to the electric chair was talking about...

I looked both ways into the hallway, and when I made sure that there was no one else, I slowly stepped into the hallway. I was trying to avoid making noise.

Just when I was walking past the electric chair room; I heard a loud yet short "pop" sound inside.