"C'mon! Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"Left hook! The left!"

"Aim low!"

A bunch of teenagers were crowded around a small group of kids in the hallway of West Valley High School. David Kepler was shoving through the crowd, trying to get a view of what was going down. Once he finally was able to break the circle of kids and see inside his suspicions were confirmed. The boy with the buzz cut hairstyle, who was engaged in a fight with two older, tougher-looking guys, probably seniors, was David's best friend, Jack Reilly.

And, needless to say, he was getting his ass handed to him.

"Alright, now are you gonna apologize?" mocked one of the larger guys, grabbing Jack's shirt and pinning him against a locker. Jack's face was bruised and a thin line of blood was trickling from his nose.

"Oh, just go f-" Jack muttered, prompting the large guy to interrupt him with a swift punch across the face.

"The hell'd you say?" exclaimed the senior. "Sure didn't sound like an apology!"

"You're quite the perceptive guy," Jack replied mockingly. Angrily, the senior pulled back his fist to strike again, but was interrupted. David had run into the fray and tackled the assaulter before he had the chance. He managed to take him by surprise and knock him over, but this only lasted a moment. The senior was pissed and so was his friend. At this point, it was impossible to keep track of anything. Fists were flying. Jack, David, and the two seniors were going at each like there was no tomorrow. This lasted at least a minute before either somebody decided it was a good idea to get someone or the principal just happened upon the scene. Either way, Mr. Deputy, the principal of the school, was on the boys, pulling them apart.

"What the hell is going on here?" yelled Mr. Deputy. "Little! Pool! I don't know about whatever juvenile correctional facility you were last kicked out of, but we don't tolerate violence in these halls. Get your asses down to the office and I'll see you there to talk about your suspension after I'm done with these two."

Pool and Little, the two seniors, looked like they wanted to pop the guy right there as they walked away, giving Jack and David some really nasty looks as well.

"Now, you've never had any sort of behavioral problems in the past," pointed out Mr. Deputy. "But I am shocked that you would take part in something like this. I'll let the two of you off easy with a detention, but you're lucky that I don't suspend you. If I ever catch you fighting in this school again, you can be sure that I will. Now, both of you go to the Nurse's office, you look like you just got hit by a truck."

With that final note, the principal gave the two boys detention slips and passes to the Nurse and walked off, yelling to the crowd of students, "And all of you, get to class!"

"Damn it," Jack muttered. "Ken's gonna kill me." Ken was Jack's older brother. Jack's parents had been killed in a car crash about a year ago and Ken was the legal guardian of Jack and his sister.

"Yeah, my parents aren't gonna be thrilled either," David added, reaching up and pushing his long hair out of his eyes.

"Why did you jump in there like that?" Jack inquired.

"Well, I don't know, I guess that's just what friends do," he replied. "Plus you were getting your ass handed to you and I wanted to save you the embarrassment," He joked. "Why were those guys attacking you anyway?"

"Well," Jack muttered. "I sort of … hit them first."

"What did they say?"

"They were making fun of Jamie," he replied. David didn't press the issue. He knew how defensive of his younger sister Jack was.

He sometimes wondered what would happen if he had to go through everything that Jack had been forced to deal with over the past year with his parents dying and having to help take care of his sister. He knew that if he ever had to then Jack would be there for him just like he had been, but he couldn't imagine how hard it would be to deal with losing somebody close to him like that.

For David, calling his parents to tell them he got a detention for getting in a fight was not exactly the highlight of his day. And detention wasn't exactly much better. A wave of relief washed over David as the clock hit five-thirty and the teacher told them all to get their stuff and go.

"My God, that was boring," Jack told his friend as they left. "I definitely don't want to have to do that again."

"Yeah, let's just go home already."

"Actually, go on ahead without me, I've got to take a leak," Jack told his friend.

"No, it's cool. I'll wait." David leaned against the wall as his friend ran into the restroom.

David waited for some minutes before he started to hear sounds coming from the bathroom. Yelling mostly, as well as the repeated flushing of a toilet, accompanied by some wild laughter. It sounded like somebody was getting a swirly in there.

David felt bad and wanted to help, but also felt that it was a bad time to be picking fights, considering what the principal had said earlier that afternoon. He looked outside and saw that the sun had dipped partly below the horizon, casting the sky in a red-orange light.

Suddenly, his heart jumped as he heard a horrible noise. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! He froze in place. Moments later, a young boy he recognized ran out of the bathroom. His matted black hair was soaking wet and he looked ready to go to hysterics. He was a freshman that David had seen before named Joe Lincoln. He got picked on a lot. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he had been on the receiving end of the swirly David had heard in the bathroom.

He didn't even seem to notice David as he took off down the hall. Blood stained his clothes and in his hand was a nine millimeter hand gun. David was frozen in disbelief before his brain suddenly kicked into action.

"Oh God!" David screamed, bolting into the bathroom. He saw a horrible scene before him. There were six people lying on the floor, pooling blood beneath them. Four of them were unfamiliar to him. They each looked older than him, juniors or seniors. The fifth was recognizable. A senior named Harrison. The school delinquent, supposedly spent a year in juvenile hall and had been kicked out of at least three other schools. He was lying cold on the ground, a bullet hole in his forehead, cigarette still lit in his mouth.

The sixth made David want to be sick. He dropped to the ground, whimpering, "Oh, dear god, no!" On the ground was his best friend, Jack Reilly, cold and lifeless.

He tried to shake his friend, but it was to no avail. "Wake up, damn it!" His eyes filled with tears and his voice was cracking.

It had been Lincoln who did this. Everybody always talked about how he was gonna snap one day. There were rumors that he was living in foster care because his mother was murdered by his father, now in prison, when he was younger. That he was really messed up in the head and had to go to therapy for it. This was definitely not helped by the fact that he got a lot of crap from kids at school every day. But David had thought it was just talk. School kids spreading rumors and making jokes.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! The sound of gunshots rang through the hallway followed by shrill screams and more gunshots.

"Oh no," David muttered. He ran outside, leaving the scene in the bathroom. People were running and Lincoln was firing off shots at everyone around him.

Jesus Christ! David thought before quickly and instinctively running the opposite way. He bolted around the corner and kept on running. There was an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. His closest friend was dead and his life was in danger. This was horrible.

WHAM! He turned a corner and ran straight into somebody, sending them both to the ground. He looked up, hoping to god it wasn't Lincoln.

It wasn't. It definitely wasn't. It was a girl. She looked fifteen or sixteen, about David's age, and had long brown hair and green eyes. She looked as terrified as David. It was strange, but David had never seen her around before. She must have been in a different class than his or a different grade.

"What is going on here?" she asked, voice trembling. "Who's that crazy kid going around shooting people?"

"No time, we've got to get out of here!" David grabbed the girl's wrist and started to round the corner. Time seemed to slow to a stop as he beheld the horrifying site before them.

Lincoln was standing right at the other end of the hall, looking straight at them. He lifted the handgun up to the two. David stood, terrified, everything seeming to move in slow motion, as the bullets flew through the air, piercing his chest. He fell, hitting the ground with a thud.

He looked over at the girl beside him. She, too, was covered with bullet holes and pooling blood beneath her. They clutched each other's hands tightly, desperately grasping for some kind of human contact to hold onto as they went.

Damn it, David thought. This is how it ends? This is all so … pointless. What have I done with my life up to now? Is it really over already? Damn.

He felt the world fade to darkness. He knew it was his time and surrendered, letting death take him.

"Hey, someone else came!"

"Oh, there are two this time."

"Is anyone else going to show up? This is getting weird."

David could hear voices all around him. He could distinctly remember dying. Was he in heaven? Or was he in hell? He could feel solid ground beneath him and he was breathing air and everything. He couldn't be dead.

David opened his eyes and bolted upright. He was definitely not dead. He was in a room. He looked next to him and the girl who had died beside him was there, still holding his hand. She, too, quickly came to her senses. They hastily let go of each other's hands and stood up, embarrassed.

David examined the room. The floors were carpeted and the walls were painted white. In the center of the room was a large black sphere. Gathered around it were three people aside from David and the girl standing beside him. One was another girl, dressed in a cheerleader outfit. The boy standing next to her was a redhead, kind of tall, dressed in leather. They both looked about David's age, give or take a year. When David's eyes fell on the third fellow occupant of the room, his heart leapt with joy.

"Jack!" he screamed, running to meet his friend. Jack Reilly was indeed across the room from him, alive and well.

"David? What the hell are you doing here?" his friend inquired.

"I don't know. I could ask you the same thing," David replied. "I thought you were dead."

"Well, that makes two of us," Jack explained. "Did you … die, too?"

"Yeah," David muttered in response.

"It seems like everybody here was shot at our school like us," Jack continued explaining. "And then somehow ended up in this place."

"Kitchen's empty. All of the appliances work but there's no food or anything," said a voice from the other room. He came into the main room with the rest of them. It was Harrison, the kid David had seen with a bullet in his head. He was alright too, just like the rest of them.

"Front and back doors are locked," said a voice belonging to another boy who then entered the room as well from a different direction. This boy looked like a stereotypical Goth. His nails, clothes, and hair were all black. His hair was stuck up in short spikes.

"So, what, we're trapped?" the cheerleader asked. "Did you try picking the lock?"

"Pick it? I can't even touch the damn thing!" he exclaimed.

"Bull!" the cheerleader called out, walking into the other room, a foyer area, where the front door was. However, to her dismay, the spike-haired Goth was right. Some invisible force kept her from even laying a finger on the doorknob or the lock.

"Hey, look!" the red-haired guy pointed out. "One more's coming through."

Suddenly, David noticed a rainbow-colored beam of light shooting forth from the giant black ball in the center of the room.

What the hell? he thought in disbelief as the beam started to form a person. He could see inside of the half-formed person's body and all of their organs. It was absolutely sickening. Is this how we all appeared?

Then, once the person had completely appeared and the rainbow light vanished, a fire ignited in David as he recognized the boy who had just appeared.

Lincoln.

How did he die? He was the one doing the shooting.

"Hey!" Harrison screamed. "That's the son of a bitch who shot us!" He, the redhead boy, and the Gothic kid all converged around Lincoln.

Naturally, the young boy was terrified. He came to the immediate conclusion that he had been sent to Hell and was now being haunted by the people he'd killed. He had started to pee his pants out of sheer terror from seeing the faces of his victims and immediately curled up in a fetal position whimpering. Before the three boys could give him the biggest ass-whooping of his life, though, they were interrupted by something rather unexpected.

The great big mysterious black ball sitting in the middle of the room began to sing.