Trigger Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Suicide and Disturbing Imagery
Kayla chased Armin through the backstreets of the campus, as night gradually fell around them. In her right hand, she held the knife used to kill Mina Carolina, flipped open and ready to be used for the slaughter once more.
Although Kayla had no recollection of how she had suddenly gained the knife, nor how she had started chasing Armin, who had bolted from the shadows of one of the buildings as she had been out looking for him, Kayla was determined to finish it once and for all.
"This is the end, you damned faggot!" she screamed, huffing and puffing as she chased Armin to the alleyway between two of the oldest brick buildings on the campus.
Armin was now trapped against the dead end in the alleyway, and when he looked at her, Kayla sneered with satisfaction at the overwhelming fear in his blue eyes. The moment had come for her to finally prove to her mother, Zach and everybody else that she was not to be taken lightly.
Just as she was about to charge forward and stab him to death, a violent thunderclap resounded overhead, and Kayla looked up at the sky in alarm as white lightning danced across the clouds. The arc lightning spun and flashed over and over again for several seconds, before Kayla looked back at the dead end where Armin was.
She froze in horror when she saw the cruel smile on his face, exposing the rows of razor-sharp, carnivorous teeth that Shane had seen that awful night. Kayla shuddered violently as Armin suddenly faded away into thin air, leaving her alone and petrified with confusion.
"What the hell?" she thought as she backed out of the alleyway. "Was that really Armin that I chased here?!"
Her terrified thoughts were interrupted by the pitter-patter of rain falling over her. Kayla turned and began to walk briskly away from the old end of the campus, desperate to get back to the shelter of Sansburg Hall.
As she walked, unnerved at the rapid change of events, thunder continued to boom all around her as lightning danced across the dark sky, the clouds shifting in color from dark grey to a sickening green that looked like the color of poison.
Kayla increased her pace, desperate to escape the ominous storm, which looked like it could shift at any moment into something severe, even a tornado. She breathed heavily as she walked, and felt a shiver go down her spine when she heard footsteps rapidly coming her way.
When she turned around, unable to see anything in the darkness that had fallen over the entire campus, Kayla could only hear ragged breathing and what sounded like sobbing coming from the person stumbling towards her. The lightning flashed violently once more, and Kayla stopped in her tracks when she finally recognized who was walking towards her.
Nac Tias, the first of her victims in their high school, was walking haphazardly towards her, sobbing maniacally and carrying a knife of his own, clutched in a spasmodic hand. Kayla shuddered and squeezed her pocketknife for reassurance, alarmed at the appearance of the dead boy.
"Why are you here?" she screamed at Nac, who only continued to sob as he came closer to her.
In response, when he was less than a foot away from her, Nac suddenly seized his knife and violently slashed open his wrist, releasing a horrid spray of blood that splattered over Kayla's hands, which she had instinctively put out before her in a defensive reflex.
Kayla shrieked in terror as Nac collapsed to the ground, writhing in agony and weeping loudly for several painfully long seconds, before finally ceasing movement.
"This…this is how the faggot killed himself!" Kayla remembered, frozen as still as a statue as she looked down at Nac's corpse. "He slit his wrist in his house one night! And only a few days after that-"
Sure enough, coming up behind her was Mylius Zeramuski, sobbing as well and carrying a pistol in his hands. Kayla gawked at him, Nac's blood still spattered over her hands, as he lifted the gun to his mouth and suddenly whirled around.
"No!" Kayla shrieked as Mylius pulled the trigger, his own blood spilling over her hands and the surrounding area as he collapsed, lifeless to the ground.
"This freak killed himself with a gun after his precious boy-toy Nac offed himself! What the fuck is going on?! Why are they here, and why are they reenacting their deaths?!"
There was only one other person left, the third and most infamous of Kayla's victims, and Kayla shuddered as she heard her approaching.
When she turned to her right, she beheld Mina Carolina, looking terrified out of her wits, approaching her slowly. Kayla could only watch as Mina suddenly started to scream.
"No, no, please!" the lesbian girl shrieked as without warning, cut wounds and bruises began to appear on her body, blood dripping everywhere.
Kayla tried to back away from her, and in response, Mina started to almost run forward as the multitude of wounds increased. More and more knife marks appeared all over her body, and Kayla shuddered when she remembered that the knife in her hand was responsible.
Overhead, the sickly green color of the stormy sky rapidly twisted into a rusty scarlet as the lightning increased in intensity, and Mina bolted forward towards Kayla. Kayla panicked, and knew that she was seeing for the first time just how her boyfriend had murdered the dyke.
Suddenly, Mina paused, and the fear seemed to disappear from her entirely. Kayla watched in confusion as the girl paused close to her, and put out her right hand in a stop signal, telling somebody unseen to not approach her.
And then, Mina's neck was sliced open, a crimson stream of blood erupting violently and splattering Kayla's hands further as the lesbian girl collapsed to the ground unmoving.
Kayla screamed and screamed in horror as she looked down at her hands, the blood of three people soaking them. She looked up to the sky and shouted a manic plea.
"God, please help me!"
Without any warning, the dark woman appeared before her, snarling and emitting an aura of vengeance. Kayla couldn't move, her fear paralyzing her as the frightening woman screamed at her.
"YOUR BLOOD-SOAKED FAITH CREATES NOTHING BUT DEATH!"
The woman beckoned around her to the three corpses dotting the area, their blood continuing to seep out of their wounds.
Kayla shuddered as the woman approached her, her voice lowering to a sinister whisper.
"Behold the fruits of your hatred, vermin, and know the price of your sin!"'
With that, the dark woman disappeared, leaving Kayla alone with the corpses of her victims as the sky raged all around her. Kayla sobbed harshly as she took in their lifeless faces.
She made herself walk away towards Sansburg Hall, but froze when she heard low growling behind her. Kayla looked over her shoulder, and gawked in horror at what she saw.
The three corpses slowly rose from the ground, almost like puppets reassembled by their master, twitching violently and snarling as they began to transform.
One by one, Nac, Mylius and Mina's skin turned hideously scarlet and scaly, their mouths opened impossibly wide as their teeth lengthened into viciously sharp fangs, and violent screams of fury ripped out from each of them.
Kayla screamed and ran as fast as she could towards Sansburg Hall, with the three corpse demons in hot pursuit. Sansburg Hall loomed up in the distance, looking obsidian black in the midst of the blood-colored stormy sky.
When she arrived at the front entrance, Kayla threw open the doors and bolted up to the elevator, pounding on the call button frantically as she heard the shrieks of her pursuers coming closer. It took a moment for the elevator to lower to the ground floor, opening hesitantly and allowing Kayla inside.
She ran in, and slammed the key marked "4", making the doors close, and Kayla felt the elevator lurch into life, initiating a painfully slow climb upwards.
"What's happening?!" she thought, sweating profusely as she waited to be delivered to her floor. "They all look like bloodthirsty demons!"
As the elevator approached the 4th floor of Sansburg Hall, Kayla gagged as an overwhelming stench of burning blood filled her lungs. The metal doors emitted a high-pitched shrieking noise as they opened, and Kayla was allowed to see what had befallen her floor.
A horrific, churning miasma of blood and fire had spread across the floors and walls of the 4th floor, consuming everything in sight and leaving nothing untouched. It looked like her floor had transformed into Hell itself.
Kayla gagged and ran as fast as she could down the hall towards her room, the intense heat choking her. The miasma pulsed around her rapidly, and seemed to be responding to her presence by converging on her spot, surrounding her and threatening to burn her alive.
She did her best to evade the sentient, gory mass and bolted towards her room, which Kayla could see was just down the hall, silently beckoning to her. As the miasma swirled around her, she ran past Armin's door, and couldn't help but pause when she heard the voices behind it.
"I WANT HER DEAD!" she heard a woman shriek from behind the door, along with a chorus of weeping, disembodied voices clamoring to be heard.
Despite her aching desire to flee, Kayla was frozen to the spot in fright as she heard the deathly choir combine into one low, chilling voice.
"Kaylaaaaaaa..."
The blackened door suddenly began to slowly swing inward, giving her a glimpse of what must've been the core of the miasma, a nexus of scarlet fire mixed in with seething blood, and within, a crippled figure sneering at her with razor-sharp teeth.
After making herself snap out of her fearful paralysis, Kayla ran to her door, shoved the key in the lock and pushed it open, running inside and slamming the door shut behind her.
It was pitch-black inside her room, but Kayla refused to turn on the light, wanting to allow herself a moment to breathe. She clutched at her sides, heaving and shaking as she tried to calm down and think of an escape plan as the thunder continued to boom right outside her window, the hellish sky lit up over and over again by the arcing lightning.
A low, cold laugh suddenly resounded just behind her, and Kayla whirled around to behold Armin sneering at her, showing once more his mouth filled with demonically sharp teeth that glistened in the outside flashes of lightning.
Kayla didn't even have a chance to scream as Armin's form rotted away before her. His skin molted away into the same hideous, scaly-scarlet hue of the corpses demons, his hands twisting into violent claws tipped with curved black talons, and his lips peeling away so that his horrific grin was widened even further. His blonde hair was now mottled into a greasy black, slickened and slimy.
When she tried to back away, the three other demons suddenly emerged from the shadows of her room, shrieking in maniacal fury as they clutched her arms, holding her in place as Armin approached her, a sadistic gleam flashing in his blue eyes, the only original part of him that remained untainted by his transformation.
Just before he stabbed her with his talons, Armin roared in her face "You will BURN!"
With that, all four of the nightmarish creatures pierced Kayla with their talons, and at once, it felt as if her blood itself had turned into fire within her. A pain worse than anything she had ever felt coursed through her body as all she could do was scream in agony.
Violent images of her victims cowering and weeping flashed through her mind's eye, along with the messages she had exchanged with Zach plotting the murders of Mina and Armin. Kayla could only watch the images flash before her as her extreme pain went on and on.
The door to her bedroom was slammed aside by a security officer clutching a master key in his hand. Kayla was in her bed, shaking uncontrollably as her screaming slowly subsided.
She fell off it, landing with a thud, and the guard rushed to her and lifted her back up, as Kayla noticed the rest of the 4th floor peering into her room, gawking at her like she was an exotic zoo animal.
"D-don't look at me!" she silently pleaded, noticing that Hannah was looking at her with an expression of realization.
"No, no, don't tell me that she suddenly knows what I did!"
In his own dream, blissfully unaware of the horrors that Kayla was suffering elsewhere, Armin found himself in what looked like a changing room, with a large mirror covered by a dark blue cloth standing before him. To his left, the woman who had rescued him in the farmer's market long ago stood by him, looking grief-stricken.
"Child, please cease your hatred!" the woman pleaded, and Armin looked at her in utter confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"Your hatred! It's marring your own soul at this point!"
Armin said to her "But…they deserve to suffer for what they did to me! All of them! Why wouldn't I be justified in hating them?"
At that, the woman bit her lip in regret, and slowly yanked the cover off of the mirror, enabling Armin to finally see his reflection.
He screamed in fright at his demonic doppelganger, horrified to see the mottled, twisted figure looking at him.
"Armin, wake up!" he heard Jean yell as he woke up screaming in alarm.
He was back in room 327 of Wickson Hall, with Jean shaking him desperately. When his roommate saw that he was awake, Jean breathed a huge sigh of relief, and sat on Armin's bed, looking worried.
"J-Jean?" Armin shakily asked him. "What…"
"You suddenly started screaming in your sleep. I woke up to see you thrashing about madly, and I did what I could to wake you up. Armin, what the fuck did you see?"
Armin shuddered, and told him "I saw myself."