Written for 1_million_words community LJ
Word of the Day - Tenebrous
(dark; gloomy; obscure.)
He wandered down the deserted corridors of the school. Where once had been a hub of activity, a thoroughfare of fellow students too'ing and fro'ing to different classes, silence and abandonment reigned. Other gangs, 'Tribes' as they called themselves now, had already been through the school, causing chaos and destruction in their paths. A physical representation of what had wiped out the adult population.
School had once been a safe haven for him. He'd belonged, had a role, a place, even if it was being the geek, the nerd, four eyes,a dork. It would have been demeaning if he hadn't been a vital part of the student hierarchy, nobody hacked into the school computers as fast as him, left no footprint and was able to distribute the cheat papers without raising any suspicions from the faculty.
Jack leaned on the door post of his old English classroom. His favourite teacher, Mr Patterson, had taken the class for years. Mr Patterson had been one of the first of the teachers to get sick, one of the first to die. A subsitute had taken the classes for a short time, but more and more people contracted the virus and eventually all the schools had been shut down. This was the first time Jack had been back to school since everyone had died.
Different words were written on the whiteboard and Jack read over them, sounding them out in his head. All unusual words, not used these days, but they were familiar. He remembered how Mr Patterson had ben passionate about words and their meanings. His eyes drifted to the last word on the board.
Tenebrous.
Jack mulled on the word, it was apt for the future he was now a part of. Chaos, desolation, the unknown all lay before him in a dark gloom. He'd seen how kids lived now, with no lawmakers or rules to tell them what to do, everyone lived their own way now.
Jack had planned on staying at the school, perhaps create himself a safe haven, but it was lonelier than he thought it would have been. Too full of memories of friends who'd changed, now feral and dangerous most of them. The death of the adults had driven some of them mad. He shouldered his rucksack, having raided the computer room for some bits and pieces he thought would come in useful one day. He waited until early evening to make a move, it wasn't safe to walk out in the open during the day. He still stuck to the shadows and it would be slow going, but he'd head into the city, see if he could find somewhere safe there to stay for a time.
As he walked, he said the words on the blackboard over and over again like a mantra, trying to think of a word that meant the opposite of 'tenebrous' and if his future would ever be less obscure than it currently was.