Wren

Pulling the flashlight out of my back pocket, I clicked it on and kept its small beam aimed at the floor. Solar powered, and a gift from Randy soon after we’d met, the flashlight had managed to survive with me. I dreaded the day when I clicked the switch on and no beam greeted me.

At the top of the stairs, I stared at the closed classroom doors interspersed with the rusting lockers that lined the hall between them. We’d shut every classroom door after checking them for anything hiding within. They all remained closed now. Most of the locks on the lockers were broken, probably by someone searching for supplies.

Stopping before one of the lockers, I lifted the metal handle and peered into the empty locker. I’d never made it to high school and never had a locker. My elementary school did have cubbies for us to store our things in, or at least I think that’s what we’d called them. My memories of the small space with my name in pink lettering over it were fuzzy, but I knew I’d placed my lunch box in something every day to keep it safe.

I’d taken such joy in my metal lunchbox with the Care Bears, or was it Transformers, on it? Maybe I’d had both. Back then, getting a new lunchbox every year had been very important to me. Now, I’d toss that box aside for one bite of the cupcakes or sweet treat my mom always stashed inside. Like my dad, my sweet tooth had been insatiable, and no lunch or dinner was complete without dessert.

The batter for those oatmeal cookies was the last sweet treat I could remember eating. I was certain I’d stumbled across some candy bars or something over the years, but I didn’t recall what they’d tasted like. However, I could still taste that batter on my tongue as clearly as the jerky I swallowed.

Now the only treat I had was a six-four demon with an attitude and the ability to make a woman scream in ecstasy.

My pulse quickened at the memory of Corson’s body moving over mine. I closed the door on the locker as if that could shut out the way Corson had felt inside me. I gritted my teeth against the memory as I strolled onto the next locker.

Opening the locker, my breath caught when I saw the textbooks stashed within. Chemistry, Calculus, and Sociology were written onto the spines facing me. I ran my finger over the brown Chemistry binding. When the cover broke apart, I realized the book had been bound in paper.

Dust drifted up from the bottom of the locker when I pulled the book out and flipped it open. The scent of mildewing paper wafted up to me. My nose twitched, and I couldn’t suppress a sneeze. With watery eyes, I brought the strange equations on the page into focus. In another life, I would have learned what the things in this book meant. Would I have liked chemistry?

I’d enjoyed the science Randy taught me, hadn’t been the biggest fan of history, but math was fun. I probably would have enjoyed chemistry. Maybe, I would have been a doctor or a scientist or someone who wore a white lab coat. No one wore white anymore, it drew too much attention, but maybe the Wren in that nonexistent other life would have liked wearing it.

No, I wouldn’t have been Wren in that life. I would have been an entirely different woman with a whole different name. Maybe, I would have had a husband and home by now, perhaps a child or two. I could almost see that home, almost hear the love I was certain would have filled it. My parents would have come over to laugh as they watched their grandchildren toddling around.

Now the water in my eyes had nothing to do with dust.

Slamming the book closed, I shoved it into the locker and closed the door on that imaginary life. This was why Wilders stashed away personal items in homes before they established them as safe houses. No one wanted to think about the could have beens of their lives and the losses they’d endured.

Resolving not to look into any more lockers, I stalked down the hallway. My eyes roamed over the small glass windows in every classroom door. The footprints of those who had searched this hall earlier were the only things disturbing the dust coating the floor. The spiders had made this high school their home for fourteen years, and they were not thrilled with my interruption. Their eyes followed me as they watched me from the thick webs they’d woven across the ceiling and in the corners of the doorways.

Without the lockers to distract me, my mind wandered to what I’d seen by the closed gateway. The horsemen, all eleven of them.

I shuddered at the reminder of what was out there, seeking to destroy us all, just as we sought to destroy them. I recalled Lust’s power creeping over me, and icy fingers swept down my spine.

Brushing aside some cobwebs, I found myself inexplicably drawn toward another locker. Why are you torturing yourself?

I had no answer for that as I pulled up the handle and the door swung open. This locker was full of decorations and stickers so faded I could barely make out what they said. Beads, necklaces, and other things now dulled by age hung from the hook on the inside of the door.

I wiped away the dust coating one of the necklaces to reveal the shiny blue and green beads beneath. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, and I almost pulled the necklace free to slip it on. Instead, I let it go and turned my attention to the rest of the locker’s contents.

A small box sat within. When I flipped it open, I found more jewelry stashed inside. I didn’t know what compelled me, but I closed the lid and slipped the box into my pocket. Carrying around things I had zero use for was a fool’s game, yet I found I liked the weight of the box.

Only one book was in the locker, and when I wiped away the dust on it, I discovered it was a magazine instead of a book. Closing the door, I moved on to the next locker and then the next. I felt consumed by this compulsion to see into the lives of the teenagers who had once roamed these halls.

Their lives would have been so simple, so easy that I imagined they had laughed every day. The ghostly echoes of their laughter floated around me. However, the more I searched, the less I believed laughter had filled these halls.

Some of the lockers lacked anything personal within, and only books marked the person who once made this tiny space their own. Others had angry words scrawled inside like, I hate it here. I hate my life. Fuck this place. Fuck the world. Mrs. Dooble is a BITCH!!!!

Well, Mrs. Dooble is probably dead, so there is that, I thought as I closed the locker on the hatred within. I felt inexplicably sad for the teens who had roamed these halls. I stopped envisioning happy, laughing people, and started seeing ones who slunk miserably through these colorless corridors.

What had high school been like for them? How many had survived the opening of the gateway?

They were questions I’d never have answers for. I could ask some of the older Wilders what they’d experienced in high school, but I knew I wouldn’t. The past was rarely, if ever, discussed. Some wounds never healed, and tearing them open again to satisfy my curiosity was unfair and cruel.

Sparkles and unicorns decorated the next locker. Inside were smiley face stickers with cute sayings like, Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

What does that even mean? The owner of this locker hadn’t survived the first day of Hell being open, I decided before moving on. I was opening the door of the next locker when I became acutely aware of non-spider eyes following me.

The uptick of my pulse and the tingles racing over my flesh alerted me to who it was before I spotted Corson leaning against the doorframe at the end of the hall. My mouth went dry, and I opened the next locker to distract myself from his presence.

“Spying on me?” I inquired as I carefully closed the empty locker.

“Making sure you’re safe.”

“I’m perfectly capable of keeping myself safe. I’ve made it this far after all.”

“You don’t have to do that alone anymore,” he replied.

I didn’t respond as I opened the next locker. I said I was fine with being alone, but had I subconsciously left the gym because I’d hoped he would come after me?

Was it really subconscious? That annoying little inner voice prodded.