Chapter 2: Chapter 2: The Nightmare Begins

Central Valley High School. 

Santa Barbara. California. 

There was nothing special about this high school. In a city of over 90,000 people, there were at least a dozen high schools similar to Central Valley. It wasn’t notable for sending many of its students to the Ivy League, nor was it known for excelling in academic competitions. The school, like its students and the city it was in, was ordinary.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with being ordinary. There couldn’t be anything exceptional without the ordinary. Sometimes, it was a bliss to be ordinary. 

But today, Central Valley High School was about to gain quite the fame, or rather the infamy, for one of the worst reasons possible. 

As the school bell rang, the students quickly cleared the hallway and found their ways into their classrooms. Teachers started teaching, and the students started procrastinating. Everything happening in the school was no different to any of the previous school days. It was just another boring, normal day. 

That was, until the nightmare began. 

In one of the classrooms, a rope suddenly appeared out of thin air in front of one of the many students in the room. One second, the student’s desk was empty. The next moment, an old, worn-out looking rope was laying on the table. It was tied into a slip noose. 

The student immediately noticed the noose. Was it there before? It definitely wasn’t, so who decided to put a noose on his desk? Was it some sort of sick prank? A more rule-abiding student might take the prank in silence so they wouldn’t disrupt the class, but this particular student didn't care about rules or order. 

“Hey, which clown put this here…” 

Before he could finish his sentence, the noose, without being touched by anyone, darted toward him like a lion pouncing on a gazelle. His words died in his throat as the rope wrapped itself around his neck before yanking him upward. The rope wasn’t connected to anything. It was just floating in the air…easily bearing the full weight of its burden and hanging the young man alive. 

As he struggled and everyone else in the room, student and teacher alike, snapped to him in utter shock and horror, the young man still couldn’t wrap his mind around what the hell was happening to him. He tried to pull on the rope and free it from the invisible hand that was holding the noose up, but he couldn’t. The rope didn't even budge. As if all the hints already given weren’t enough, this made a painful fact clear to the young man. 

This rope wasn’t normal. It wasn’t…natural. 

Unfortunately for the young man, he would never get the opportunity to find out anymore about the rope or where it came from. 

Within seconds, he was dead.

The deaths happened so quickly that only after he stopped struggling did the others in the room realize what they just bore witness to. Somehow, one of their classmates was hang alive right before their eyes. A few girls, and two boys, screamed. The students who were sitting close to the hanged boy stumbled out of their seats and tried to back away as far as possible while suppressing the urge to vomit. 

A few quick-thinking students looked up at the noose that just showed up out of nowhere and killed one of their classmates, only to realize in disbelief that the noose wasn’t attached to anything. The other end of the rope was just floating in the air in a way that defied physics and logic. 

As the initial shock died down, some of the students tried to look away from the body and call the police. Unfortunately for everyone in the room, they would never have the opportunity to do so, and their classmate’s death was just the beginning. 

If someone familiar with the noose and its horrible properties was here, then the first thing they would do upon the initial kill was to divert their eyes and look at anywhere but the body hanging on the noose. The second thing they would do was warn everyone else to do the same. Yet the noose just got here, and no one, not even the professions in the field, knew what it was capable of. The sudden and abrupt death of the first student was enough to catch the eyes of everyone in the room. 

Every single one. 

And that was all it took. 

A strange, supernatural influence washed over everyone who saw the body on the noose. Everyone, student and teacher alike, stood up. Their actions were slow and mechanical. Dozens of nooses similar to the original one fell down from the ceiling, with one noose beside each person. Without a moment of pause, everyone in the room put their necks into the noose. Their gazes were blank as they sealed their own fate. 

The nooses tightened and pulled up, and soon, following a wave of sickening sound of necks snapping, the classroom was silent once again. 

This time, there was no one left to scream. 

All but one of the nooses were still floating in the air, suspending the bodies in midair even after they were long dead. The original noose, the one that claimed the first kill and unleashed this carnage, started moving with the first corpse still attached to it. There was no real destination the noose was trying to get to. Instead, the noose simply headed for a random direction. 

The door was unlocked and open, but instead the noose decided to smash the body against one of the walls. 

Thump. 

Thump.

Thump!

Under the influence of the noose, the body hit the wall hard. Usually, hitting concrete with flesh and bone would end poorly for the latter, but the body was no normal flesh and bone. Not anymore. Within a few seconds, the concrete wall had broken down into pieces while the body was still unscathered. 

Just like that, the noose, still carrying the body, made its way into the open hallway. 

And soon, it was gone. 

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The noose itself was certainly a horrifying abomination to encounter. It could hang almost anyone alive with its first hit, and once that happened, it could invade the minds of everyone who saw the body of its previous victim. Anyone who as much as glanced at the floating corpse would be influenced by a supernatural power into willingly joining the corpse. 

So what could make things worse?

Well, for one thing, the noose wasn’t alone, and if there was one thing more terrifying than one abomination, it would be multiple abominations. 

---

At the same time as the noose purged an entire classroom of lives, in a different classroom on a different floor, a young woman who was just paying attention to her English teacher suddenly felt her hand brush against something wooden. Something unfamiliar. She frowned and looked down and found herself staring at one of those masks actors wear in Greek drama shows. This mask seemed to be a comedy mask, with the lips curled up into a smile. Its blank eyes stared at her. 

The young woman had no love for the theater, and she had no idea where the mask came from. In most cases, she would throw the mask away or simply ignore it, but not this time. This time, she felt inclined to…put the mask on.

She didn't question it. She didn't doubt it. She just wanted to put the mask on, and that was exactly what she did. 

It was only when the mask touched her face did she realize what happened, and when she did, she felt embarrassed. She reached to the mask and tried to remove it, only to realize she couldn’t. Even as she pulled against the mask with all her might, she couldn’t take it off her face. Looking for a way around this, she subconsciously tried to reach for the strap before suddenly freezing. A wave of chilling fear washed over her mind. 

There were no straps on the mask. There was nothing on the mask to attach it to the actor’s face. So…how was it on her in the first place?

“What are you doing, Jaime?” The English teacher, who had been trying her best to ignore whatever it was the girl had been doing because she was one of her favorite students, could no longer let it go as the girl grew louder and louder. “Take the mask off. We are not in theaters!”

“I…I can’t!” The girl cried out, almost sobbing. What was going on here? 

“What do you mean you can’t?” The teacher almost couldn’t believe her own ears. Did the girl think she was an idiot?

“I just can’t! I can’t take it off! It’s fused to my face or something!”

“Give me a break, Jaime! This is not funny!”

The English teacher raised her voice in frustration, and when Jaime continued sobbing, the teacher frowned and walked to the young woman. She paused for a moment before reaching for the mask and trying to pull it off herself, but as soon as she touched Jaime’s skin, she suddenly froze in her tracks. 

The next moment, the English teacher started laughing. 

“Hahahahahahahaha!” The middle-aged woman laughed, a sound that terrified both Jaime and the other students in the classroom. A few students raised their voices and asked the teacher if she was alright, but the teacher didn't respond. She couldn’t respond. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. All she could do was laugh and laugh and laugh.

When the laughter ended, so did her life.  

Soon, as her teacher collapsed and died, Jaime started screaming. 

---

In another classroom on the same floor, two boys were chatting to each other as their teacher was going through attendance. As the teacher finished going through the attendance sheet and started talking about mathematical formulas, one of the boys turned to the front of the classroom and tried to pay attention. 

His grades weren’t the best in this class. Unless he wanted his parents to be very disappointed when the grades came out, he had to get his act together.  

That was when he heard a loud thud. As if something just fell on the ground. More importantly, it was coming from the direction of his friend. 

Confused, the boy turned around. What he saw made his eyes widen, his heart sink, and his stomach turn. 

His friend was still sitting in his seat. There was just one problem. He no longer had his head. That particular body part of his was resting on the table in front of him. It took the boy way too long to realize what the loud thud was. It was the sound of his friend’s head falling off his neck and hitting the desk. 

There was a moment of silence as the boy stared at his friend’s body. He didn't scream. He didn't cry. He just sat there, paralyzed by shock of the impossible, illogical thing he just witnessed. What even happened? Heads don’t just randomly fall off of their necks, right? Right? Was this some sort of sick joke? Maybe he really lived in the Matrix and there was a glitch in the code? 

After a few seconds, he finally got his senses back, and when he did, he screamed. 

Like a terrified child, the young man screamed and screamed. When the headless body of his friend suddenly stood up from his seat, the boy was still screaming. The only difference was this time, he was also running. He was quickly joined by everyone else in the classroom. 

They did not get far, and when the screaming stopped, the only figure that left the classroom was the headless corpse. 

 

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