Posted by Handprints just as the room the kids started in began to appear. Some were much smaller matching who knows how young, others seemed to be as big as an adult’s hand. The lights covering each corner turned more sloppy, leaving some areas dark. Finally, however, the floors seemed as if it was never touched, as if the floor was a haven and everything else was hell. The surroundings of the floor were getting engulfed by murders, and corrupt, limitless odor taking every known space the hall gave. While the kids were the final turning point of the floor, corrupting the spotless reflecting white that it managed to save.
……..
Who knows how long the little kids walked, but as they got further away from their door, the uglier the scenery became. Only Sho was showing a little emotion in his eyes walking past these halls, but nowhere near enough to be noticed.
After a while, the field trip finally saw something besides what could be considered normal. A figure in the distance appeared. Not noticeable to see who it could be but was outlined enough to notice it was a person.
“Click…Click…Click”
The grandma’s footsteps echoed throughout the limitless hall, and the sound was lonely without company. The previews echo-like taps related to a war trumpet the kids produced went away. The children were still behind the grandma; however, the steps turned silent when the body came in view as the eye of a hurricane. The kids’ only trace left was the glowing red in the tainted hallway.
Taking around two minutes to match the old woman’s pace, the group came close enough to see a boy. He looks to be around the same age as the rest of the group. He was on the floor, not moving, unlike the other kids. He had the same attire; however, the color was a hit of yellow showing a glimpse of the previous shade it once held with three strips tingled around.
The old grandma’s face quickly turned into absolute disgust. It covered her wrinkly face, walking up to the spotted kid’s body. Getting a closer look, a pool of blood surrounded him, with his hand located on his stomach.
She walked up to the lifeless body at the same pace she was walking at earlier. This time, the only difference was that her previous smile turned into disgust and anger.
She stopped next to the body. She would stand on the statue figure if she were to take another step.
“Pow, Pow, Pow.”
She raises her foot and starts kicking the kid’s body with all the energy she could possibly afford. Every time her foot made contact with the lifeless body, it would move an inch or two. Kicking the boy’s body echoed aloud in the hallway. It was like someone playing the drums, which resonates in an empty theater.
Sho looks at the lifeless body that’s getting bombarded with the grandma’s brittle leg. ‘That’s Kaoru Takahiro from class 33. Maybe when he was going through the previous treatment, he decided to escape instead. However, he couldn’t escape the box that we call fate.’ The look in Sho’s eyes held no sympathy. Instead, there was nothing! It was like he was staring into the air. But at least he took the time to remember the kid’s name laying on the ground; perhaps that was his only way to still feel like a human.
“Uhhhh…Uhhhh” After a while, the old woman stopped, as she was breathing in all the air that her lungs would allow her. Physically she could not keep up with such forceful moments, or she would still be kicking the kid.
“Oh, my! Sorry kids, I just got a little caught up. Come, let’s hurry, we’re going to be late. I would not want your big day to be delayed.” Her heavy breathing showed, with her much slower pace. Passing the kid, no one even gave a glance at the corpse that was on the ground. However, the original echo-like war trumpets the children’s feet produced were pronouncing themselves to the endless hallway once more.
“Up ahead is a room that you all need to go in. Just go straight.” Finally, they reached their destination, another metal door that matched all the others; however, the only difference is that it was at the end of the hallway. The grandma walked to the side of the metal door and pressed a couple of buttons to open it.
“SCREECCHHH.”
As if the metal door was screaming, leaving marks behind the spotless floor showing its overwhelming weight. No one went in until the door fully open all the way. Hiroto led the line first, while the older woman smiled once again, walking away.
Walking into the large room, the kids quickly saw that it was split into four sections. Breaking the sections was a dirt path in the shape of a plus sign, with enough room for six kids to stand shoulder to shoulder, meeting each end of the horizontal ends.
Meeting the door on the right side was a plentiful number of trees clumped together, with bright green grass an inch tall covering each corner, with no leaves or branches, on the ground. On the left side of the door was the exact opposite. Sand covers each corner of this square outbox as if they grabbed a piece of the desert.
Back left corner of the door was a swamp, covering the rims of the dirt path with muddy dark green grass going tall enough for adults to hide standing up within, then going to the center of the swamp was brown water with long grass blades to cover. Finally, the back right corner was covered with grass and spaced out large rocks enough to hide behind six or fix children easily.
Looking up, an oversized single black glass circled the square room with four speakers above the glass in each corner. The remaining walls were the matching color of the hallway. The brimming light didn’t skip a beat covering each corner, trying to take away any existing shadow. The smell was of fresh paint, and the wildlife of the tress mixed.
Sho looked back to see that the grandma had already left, like dropping the kids off at daycare.
….
“Today is the day!” One man holds a cup of wine in the air. His hand touching only gold entrapping the liquid. He’s lumbering against the window with a look of amusement.
“Indeed, today is the day we have all been waiting for.” A man whose belly stretches out said with a black bread that ran down his chest—also leaning against the widow breathing heavily as if he’s ready for animals to fight each other.
“Finally, after years of all this, we finally get to see our fruit grow.” The younger slender woman said, whose excitement was apparent, almost jumping in place ready for the horror movie.
“Hush, it’s about to start.” An older man sat away from the widows but was instead sitting down, with his golden cup of wine, almost as if he was not part of this group.
With a room filled with many men and women dining and talking. All dressed in fancy tuxedos and dresses, each with different expressions, prominent. The surrounding walls are blue, with the only window to stare down at the children as if you were looking down within a zoo on all corners.
Besides, that were paintings, flowers, ribbons, balloons, and so on. There are seats and tables spread apart with a huge stadium. TVs on all corners so if you were on the opposite side of the glass and you didn’t feel like looking down, instead you could watch the TVs.
“Whoosh” The lights cut out from the room, making it briefly dark.
Spotlights blaring at the crowd working their way up into the stadium, reaching to the middle of the stage as the floor cuts out a circle with a man coming out from the ground.
“Hello people my name is doctor Shiro Ishii, and I was the man in charge of this project. Today shall be the last day to this project as we get to see the end product of what are fruits bare.” The man speaking was the sweet grandpa from earlier, but he didn’t hold the same air of wickedness or sweetness this time. As a professional business owner, proud of what was coming, everyone in the room got to see his creation.
A spontaneous reaction everyone in the room starts to clap their hands for Shiro Ishii.
He waved his hand and smile back to the crowd. “I would explain what the end product is but what’s better than seeing it yourself. Lamia if you would, could you bring the button?” Out of the side came the lovable grandma in a blue dress pushing a cart with a single box with a red bottom covering the top.
“Thank you.” The grandpa smiled at her as she walked off the stage. He then turned back to the crowd and began to talk again.
“Everyone watch! Go to the window, and watch the show. Don’t worry. They can’t see you all. For all, there is the black stainless window, and with that I welcome you to the Failing Star project.” The remaining people walk over to the window and look down on all the children standing in a line.
……..
“Congratulations, out of all the classes, yours was the last, the tearing, pain, murder, and change. You guys have gone through many treatments enough so that you could probably not even be considered human. Saying this, you are almost fully treated, almost done if you will. There is one thing left that you have to do! Look at the ground as the weapons come from the dirt path; you will see only melee weapons. Grab all you think you will need to go against your fellow classmates. Afterward, I will give you all 10 minutes to place yourselves somewhere within this room, maybe call it to hide in seek? Hahaha, either way, good luck!”
Sho looked in front of him with the floor caving on itself. The remaining part of the dirt path was gone, replaced with a wall stretched as far as the tallest kid, holding a series of weapons. Knifes, shields, swords, axes, spears, maces, clubs, throwing knives, even one wooden bow with a stack of 26 arrows surrounding it, and more.
As a royal command, the kids cleared out the racks with all the weapons. Sho got lucky grabbing the only wooden bow with a stack of 26 arrows around it, and after which he grabbed a combat knife putting it toward his right pocket. He looked over to his right to see what Hiroto was grabbing. Sho almost throw-up a mouthful of blood when looking at Hiroto. All he grabbed was a simple plain knife held in his right hand, only a little bigger than a pencil. His left hand held four puncture needles in each web of his figures with one more in his pocket.
“Hiroto, you have to be kidding! You can’t be serious; that’s the only weapon that you’ll be using is just a little knife and puncture needles.” Hiroto only shook his head yes to Sho’s question, still having the doll’s face impression. Sho’s mouth opened wide. He would probably break out in laughter if this was anyone else, but Sho only felt rage as if Hiroto was trying to kill himself!
‘Calm down, this is Hiroto we’re talking about, he must have a plan in mind there’s no way he would just throw his life away.’ Sho took a deep breath calming himself. Hiroto can only think logically currently he has no feelings. There’s no way he would choose a knife as his main weapon for no reason.
“Would you please at least grab one more knife perhaps a combat knife?” Like a command, Hiroto reached down and grabbed the closest combat knife. Taking his pencil knife tore a line of cloth out from his shirt creating a small loop putting the pencil knife in the middle completely hidden from plain view. Hiroto tied the remaining cloth around his waist creating a holder for his combat knife.
Sho looked around and saw that the other kids were dressing themselves in weapons. Others were grabbing a variety of weapons multiple spears, swords, shields, knives, and so on.
The people-watching down was all amazed, how could they not be? How heavy are some of these weapons, with ten-year kids holding them as if they are nothing? Both the grandma and grandpa were smiling watching their creations getting admired by the rest of the crowd, but this was all unknown to the kids.
Hiroto and Sho were the first ones to finish. Then slowly everyone lined back into the line waiting for the next instructions until everyone was done. The metal door that was behind the kids slowly started to close.
“SCREECCHHH.”
Before the metal door was screaming, but now was as if it was the beacon that everything was about to begin.