Author's Notes: Inspired by Rockfan05's "School Shooting At PS18". The concept interested me, but it needed a different character and approach for me to play with it. Hope it gives you chills.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hey Arnold! or any Nickolodean associated cartoons.

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Echoes. It all would echo, just like my footsteps do, overpowering everyone's voices except the ones in my head. They talk constantly, talking to me, arguing with each other, sometimes screaming. It gets tiring and I'd love some days just to shut them up.

When I walk through those heavy doors, I feel eyes. Squishy, staring eyes that locked onto me and became weights like prisoners wear around their ankles. Sneers and remarks about me that jabbed into my sides, as though I were upon the crucifix of Christ and they were Romans, stabbing me in the sides. I look down at my hands and imagine blood pouring from them, all over my desk, down my arms and on the floor. They'd scream too. Pretty screams if I was the next Jesus. And they'd kill me just the same. All petty pathetic sinful humans....

"Curly? Curly?"

A voice!

Curly looked around and found the voice had come from Mr. Simmons, smooth and gentle.

"Curly, do you know the answer?"

"Elimination!" He replied boldly, as the class erupted in laughter. Mr. Simmons gave him a small confused smile.

"No, that's not the answer to the math formula. But good try though."

"What a freakshow!" Helga laughed loudly a few desks behind him.

"He's even stupider than I am." Stinky's voice rang from beside him.

"Stupid, stupid!" The boisterous laugh of Harold rang through the classroom.

It continued for more than a minute until Mr. Simmons calmed the class and the lesson continued. But the insults were being stored in Curly's mind.

Stupid...Stupid...who's stupid? They are stupid. They ask me for the answer to this plague of walking abusive meat bags and I give it to them and they laugh and mock me? Who's the stupid one?

The teasing didn't stop as Curly walked from the lunch line and felt his foot make contact with a 6th's grader's. The small boy was launched forward and into his tray of spagetti, covering him in the mess of it. Once again, he heard an uproar of laughs from all around him, a few shocked gasps as well. He began licking the spagetti sauce from his skin and eating it from his hair, sitting in the middle of the cafeteria. This brought on a bigger laugh and students crowding around him.

"What were you, raised by wolves, ya little snot?"

"What a loser. Hahahaha!"

"Go back to the crazy house, you freak."

They encircled him to a point where he felt suffocated and let out a primal hiss, slipping through legs and running off on all fours out of the cafeteria, the laughter trailing behind him.

"Are you an animal?"

"No."

"Then get up and stop being one."

"But aren't humans simply animals with more advanced brains?"

I stand as my mind gets into another argument, but it's being eaten. I lose the voices as the laughing gets louder and louder. It's coming in waves, darker, deeper...I turn around and it's got me...

Arnold left the cafeteria after Curly and found him nearly, curled around himself behind a trashcan, gasping for air and trembling. His tender heart ached for the boy, even if he was erratic sometimes. Reaching out a hand, he placed it on the sauce-soaked back of his shirt. Curly brought in a deep gasp of air and looked up at him. His eyes weren't laughing like the others. They looked sad. He stood, head down.

"I'm sorry everyone's so mean. Are you okay?" Arnold said to him.

He stood still for a moment, then reached out and cupped Arnold's cheeks, whose eyes went wide. He kissed him softly and said to him, "You are the only forgiven one." With that, he walked off, leaving Arnold, stunned, confused and slightly disgusted.

You are forgiven. But none else shall be...