Classified

Day Two

Morning

The next day came and before school had begun, I was sitting in the playground waiting for the bell. Most of the kids were milling around, but I was sat still on a wall to a flower bed. Across the front playground, I could see Sam and Chris, also sat down, but on a bench.
A bench. Nobody sat on benches. There were plenty dotted around school, but we’d always find walls, grass, windowsills and victims to sit on. A pre-decided place of sitting was just too easy for us. I kicked my heels against the wall, waiting for Brian and Louis to arrive.
The aliens continued sitting on the bench, much to my chagrin.
As I glared at them, firing laser beams of hate from my eyes, Louis arrived. I saw him coming down the school drive way, his bag weighing him down. He struggled onto the playground, spotted me and sat down on the wall next to me, dropping his bag.
He breathed heavily. I raised my eyebrows at the bag.
“What’s in the bag?”
“School equipment,” he said evasively.
“You’ve gotta get lunchtime detention,” I said.
“I know,” he said coolly.
“By lunchtime.”
He turned and looked at me. I shrugged and turned away. We sat in silence for a while.
“Got your reading book?” asked Louis.
“Oh arse, no, I forgot all about it. What lesson is it?”
“First.”
I bit my thumb.
“I thought you’d forget,” he continued, “so I bought you this.”
He handed me a small book.
I took it off him and smiled. “Thanks, man.”
I turned the plain blue, cloth covered book over in my hand. Seeing no sign of a title, I turned it to read the spine.
It was an atlas.
“Louis,” I said, “this is not a reading book.”
He sighed.
“Yeah, I didn’t really think you’d forget, but you can make it look like you’re reading something at least.”
“As long as she doesn’t see the spine,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Or the pages inside.”
He nodded.
“Or ask me to read anything.”
He was quiet.
“Or—”
“Alright! If you don’t want it I’ll—”
“No no, it’s better than nothing.”
We were quiet once more, both of us casually watching the aliens across the playground. They were sat on the bench, not talking, or moving, or doing the kind of things kids do. Like picking their nose. Or hitting each other. Or spreading jam in each others faces.
Brian passed the school gates and began walking up the drive way, greeting the homeless person who was currently occupying himself stealing the caretakers fence.
The hobo told him firmly to bugger off, and Brian had every intention of doing so. He walked down the drive, across the playground and towards us.
“Hello, Brian,” I said.
“Hey,” said Louis.
“Hello!” said Brian.
I cast a wary eye over the boy, who was rolling on his heels and watching the birds in the tree behind us. Morning people are always happy.
“Have you got your reading book?” I asked him glumly.
He quickly knelt down and delved into his bag, producing a large, yellow book, which he thrust in my face.
I leant back to focus. It was an atlas.
“Yep!”
I turned the book I was holding to show Brian.
“Wow, you have an atlas too! They’re really good!”
Before I could muster the will to speak, he began flicking excitedly through his atlas.
“Canada,” he said, “is the second largest country in the world.”
He snapped the atlas shut and looked at me, beaming.
“Isn’t that amazing! You can even find out where Canada is!”
I was too drowsy to speak, so I just rubbed the mark on my forehead from yesterday and let him flick through the atlas again. He thoughtfully pouted, turning a page over slowly, then turning it back. He looked up and around, then pointed behind me.
I turned.
“That way!” he said.
I turned back, slowly.
“That is quite impressive,” said Louis, “he knows where north is without any sort of guide. It’s kind of an instinct people have.”
I was beginning to be impressed.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah,” said Louis, getting into the swing of things, “it’s very rare to have the instinct. You probably need to be bitten by a radioactive spider.”
“Radioactive?”
“They listen to the BBC a lot.”
I whistled appreciatively.
“That is pretty impressive.”
I looked up at Brian, who’s eyes were shining with delight. He’d always liked the radio.
The school bell rang, indicating the teachers had to stop smoking. The ringing startled the homeless person stealing the fence, who fell over backwards, snapping off a length of wood as he did so. He got to his feet and ran off cackling, raising the length of wood over his head as he did so.
After a few moments, I decided to get up and go into the hall.


Every morning, the head teacher would stand in front of us and preach morals such as "being kind" and "not being dirty".
The aliens were, of course, the first to sit down. I milled around, waiting for more of my class to sit before I took a seat on the floor.
“Good morning, everyone!” said the head teacher.
“Goormmnn mornnnmmnnmm,” we replied. School children are loath to pronounce more syllables than they have to when confronted with the morning, especially when they fail to see how good it is.
“I know you’re all very eager to do your work, but sometimes a sharp pencil isn’t always best,” he began.
The pencil assembly. This usually followed a particularly brutal stabbing in one of the older classes. Probably a walk-by. In the most extreme cases, children were mugged.
A vicious poke in the arm by a honed HB, followed by a swift pilfer of the finest of erasers.
Usually the florescent kind.
“A blunt pencil can be especially useful for shading and it makes writing a lot easier.”
Easy writing was no substitute for a good defence against a walk-by robbery. The teachers were out of touch.
“And it saves precious hand-energy which can be used for other things!”
At the back of the hall, the older kids sniggered. I didn’t get it. They always laughed at things I didn’t understand. I was always anxious that one day I would grow up to be like them, laughing at things not meant to be laughed at.
The head teacher eventually finished the assembly with a prayer to the Lord. The congregated children all managed to finish the prayer without actually forming any recognised English syllables, stood and shuffled off to their classrooms to be registered.


I took my seat in the classroom and carefully placed my atlas on the table. I sighed.
“Somalia!” came a voice behind me.
I jumped and span around. Brian was stood there, reading the atlas to me.
“Somalia is shaped like a number seven!”
“Brian,” I said.
“Amazing, I know. Hey you have an atlas too, I bet yours is full of amazing things like that.”
“Brian.”
“Everyone sit down.”
Brian walked away before I could really talk to him, muttering something about Cambodia.
There was a huge crashing sound across the classroom and everyone looked at Louis, who has just dropped his bag on the table. Whatever he had in there, it was very heavy. When the attention began to subside, he smiled faintly and sat down. This was kind of exciting.
What was he up to?
Mrs Benson took the register, to ensure she had something to write down incorrectly and complain about at the parents evening.
“Okay, everyone get your reading books out and begin reading in silence. I will see you all individually.”
I sighed and opened the atlas, glancing around at Louis. He stood slowly and opened the straps on his bag. With a flourish, he tipped the bag onto the table and out fell his reading book, clattering loudly in the now silenced room.
Huge metal clasps held it shut and lined the hinges. People craned to see. It was huge, thousands of pages thick and very dusty. The binding was a dull red and on the spine I read..
“.. Necronomicon.”
My jaw hung loose. I wasn’t very good at multiplication, but I knew the Book Of The Dead when I saw it. He carefully sat down, unclasped the hinges and gingerly opened the enormous tome. I shrank into my seat a little, imagining I heard the screams of a billion souls, bound to the will of whatever necromancy sealed them.
I shivered.
The teacher hadn’t noticed, and was proceeding to talk to the first child on her list about their book, why they chose it, what it was about and how they were enjoying it so far. None of this was written down, she just wanted to know if they were lying about reading.
I was staring at Louis, as some other kids covertly were, over the top of my book. He was calmly turning pages and scanning quickly, like he was looking for something.
Was this his plan for detention or was he just bonkers?
The answer, it seemed, was both. After a short spell of turning pages, he seemed to find the one he wanted. Quickly looking at what the teacher was up to before turning back to the book, he read the entire page completely, then produced something from his pocket.
Pretty much the entire class took a deep breath and craned their necks to see. The only people who didn’t was the table the teacher was currently sat at. In the presence of authority, you got on the business of reading, or at least thinking up a plausible web of lies to convince the teacher you had been reading.
Even Brian put down his atlas to watch.
Louis, calmly, coolly and of more importance, quietly moved the Necronomicon to the side and began drawing on the table.
I was amazed. Only Louis could formulate such a devious and sublime plan.
Achieving lunchtime detention by performing a summoning rite of the dead on the table. All that was just a cover, though. The core of the plan involved writing on the table, a felony too large to punished with a mere scolding. The necromancy was just an excuse to perform the dark deed.
From what I could see, he had drawn a circle on the table in red chalk. Inside the circle was a six pointed star, with one of the points mutating into a large ‘J’ shape, which bent into the circle.
Louis kept consulting the Necronomicon to ensure his magic circle was correct, occasionally stopping, licking his finger and erasing part of the circle before redrawing it.
Smiles were beginning to spread across peoples faces, and a quiet whispering began to emerge as Louis continued his work.
I rested my head on the palm of my hand, grinning. This was genius at work.
He quickly finished his circle, doing a final check by consulting the book of the dead, and then he quietly slid back his chair and stood.
The entire class fell quiet, the steady whisper a deafening memory.
The sudden silence roused Mrs Benson’s suspicions. She looked around and saw Louis standing.
“Louis! Sit down!”
He did not sit down; instead he raised his arms to the horizontal and, staring down at the magic circle, began to hum.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” he hummed.
With startling coincidence, the rest of the class began humming too.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” I said.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” Brian said.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” said Craig.
The teacher rose to her feet.
“Be quiet! Louis! What are you doing?!”
Without waiting for an answer, she stormed across the classroom towards Brian.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
“What on earth are you” she saw the table, “what devilry is this?!”
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
She looked at Louis, who was transfixed with the circle and took a worried step back.
Mrs Benson was a very experienced teacher. She’d dealt with all kinds of children, from the civil disobedience children to the armed uprising. The abusive swearer to the pathetic weeper.
She’d never seen a nine year old summon the dead before.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” said the entire class.
The teacher looked around wildly at the chanting children, before spinning back to face Louis, whom she recognised as the catalyst of the phenomenon.
The leader of the cult.
She did not dare to touch the magic circle, being a devout Christian. Her faith was so strong, her belief in God so great that the arrangement of dust on a table moved her to tears.
Feebly, she tried to force Louis to lower his arms, but he was strong and Mrs Benson was rapidly growing weaker.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
She staggered back a few steps, her eyes glistening with tears. Taking a step or two more back, she edged towards the door, before turning and bolting.
She ripped open the door, stepped over the threshold and looked back at her demonic class.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
For effect, Louis was raising his arms higher, increasing the volume and lowering the pitch of his chant.
The teacher fled.
“Okay guys, keep it quiet, everyone get reading,” said Louis, quickly sitting down.
I raised my eyebrows as he sank into his seat and couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The class quickly joined in.
“That was awesome!”
“They’re gonna crucify you, just like Jesus when he was humming!”
“Do it again!”
Louis, swelling with inner pride stood up and turned to address the class.
“Please, please, you gotta keep it down. Someone will be back soon and we have to be innocent!”
The class simmered down to a gentle murmur, and they generally prepared themselves to hide behind books when the head teacher, exorcist or SWAT team arrived.
Then it hit me, right between lungs. The aliens. I’d forgotten about them.
My eyes shot to the place they usually sat at. They weren’t there. No wonder I’d forgotten.
Heart beating, I kept looking around the room, hoping to catch Brian’s eye while I was at it. I couldn’t see them anywhere in the classroom. Idly, my eyes trailed over their usual seats again.
There they were. I recoiled in horror and hid my gasp of surprise behind the atlas. Brazil took the full force of my expletive reaction.
This was too weird. I hoped they could not time travel or turn invisible. My task to defeat them would be a lot more difficult if this were the case.
Now I’d overcome my initial shock, I took care to examine them from afar. They were sat how I’d expect them to be sat, straight backs, heads bowed, reading their books.
Model students, apart from the whole disappearing and reappearing thing. After I’d watched them for a while, I began looking elsewhere, namely out of the classroom door window to see if anyone was coming.
As I turned my head to see out of the window, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was the aliens. I quickly looked back, and their heads were once more bowed into their books.
Looking away again, I’m sure I saw their heads move. Casually I looked back, and they were once more reading.
This began to really spook me out, so it was fortunate that the head teacher suddenly burst through the door, brandishing a hefty crucifix.
“Down, foul demons!” he exclaimed.
Every single person in the classroom, including the aliens, looked up from their books at him. A tidal wave of silence washed across the classroom, and Mrs Benson peeked out from behind the head teacher, who was currently looking rather embarrassed.
“Um,” he said, lowering his crucifix.
Mrs Benson leapt back in horror.
“What?! What did you just say?!”
“I said um! UM!”
“Oh my god!” she cried, raising her hands to her head.
“No! It’s not like that!” said the head, waving his hands hurriedly, “The class have stopped, I don’t see anything unusual.”
Mrs Benson gingerly stepped up to the door again and, with her class all staring impassively at her, she conceded that yes, the unusual events had indeed stopped. She stepped back outside the classroom and whispered something to the head teacher none of us could hear.
The door swung back open and they strode, now confident, bold and strong. They beat a hasty path to Louis who was sat calmly flicking through the Necronomicon.
“John!” bellowed the head teacher.
“Louis,” whispered Mrs Benson.
“What is the meaning of this?” he continued bellowing, pointing at the magic chalk circle on the desk and still gripping his crucifix.
“It’s a circle for summoning the spirits of the dead,” Louis said quietly.
The head teacher drew himself up to his full height, taking a huge breath and putting his hands firmly on his hips.
“This is a crime against God! Using heathen religions to—”
Louis looked up. “Actually you can’t shout at me for that, the country enforces religious freedom.”
The head teacher widened his eyes to new, extreme proportions. Capillaries were bursting in his eyes and on his nose. As a previously Catholic priest, he was having a hard time resisting the urge to club the pagan to death with his crucifix. After a few seething moments, he subsided.
He devoted his furious hatred to finding some punishment. The book was allowed, as was the summoning.
“Writing on the table is forbidden. You will spend your lunch break cleaning this table.”
Louis blinked, emotionless.
“AND ALL TABLES!”
The class gasped.
Louis, playing the part, looked down sadly. When you showed remorse at being punished, teachers stopped punishing you. That was figured out pretty early on.
The head teacher grunted with satisfaction and turned to leave.
“Mrs Benson, I will leave the rest to you.”
She shrank a little and leant against the wall.
“Oh, do you think I could please borrow your.. your crucifix?”
“Nonsense!”
“I think it would..”
“Ha ha! Nonsense. Good day, Mrs Benson.”
With that, he strode out of the classroom. As he left I noticed his knuckles were white around the cross he held.
Mrs Benson whimpered slightly as the holy relic left the room.
“L.. Louis.. go sit on the far table,” she said meekly, pointing to the table reserved for the naughty children and the smelly ones. The distinction between them escaped me.
“Everyone else,” she stammered, “just continue reading quietly.”
She slowly walked over to her desk and sat down heavily. Her haunted eyes scanned the classroom, then she quietly began fiddling with things at her desk.
I leaned back carefully to see what she was up to.
She was making a crucifix out of paperclips.

The lesson began to draw to a close. We were running the final stretch, all eyes in the room watching the heating timer.
It was school policy not to have large visible clocks in the classroom. This was to discourage clock watching, an activity that would reduce the children's enthusiasm and will to work, as well as completely destroy the last 5 minutes off a lesson.
Our classroom was home to heating timer, a small device above the sink area which ticked the time, with hours marked off with red and blue counters to indicate when heating started and finished.
The small clock had no visible markings from where we sat, but we soon learned to read the time without them. In this aspect, our education was remarkably effective.
Everyone had their books raised to their faces, heads bowed slightly, all eyes on the clock. The hands were barely visible, but we all saw them.
Occasionally, someone would remember that we had to turn the page to provide a realistic book reading impression. The sound of this resulted in everyone else remembering and turning their pages.
So, for the final five minutes, every 30 seconds was the sound of a page quietly turning, followed by a second delay, followed by twenty seven other pages turning at exactly the same time.
Time ticked on and, with a large sigh of relief from the class and teacher, the bell sounded to indicate break.
I ran out of the classroom, elbowing a girl in the face to secure my position as one of the first out the door. I stretched my legs and scratched my backside in an appropriately boyish manner, waiting for Brian to get out. I would have waited for Louis, but he would now have an entire fan club devoted to his new-found necromantic self.
The girl I elbowed in the face stepped outside, bleeding slightly, clutching her nose. I noticed she was also crying, so I began to turn away.
Then I noticed she was clenching her free hand into a tight fist, so I began to run away. I dived into a bush and checked for incoming hostiles. She hadn’t seen me. I relaxed, suspended upside down in a mass of branches.
Through the leaves I saw a small crowd of people make for a bench and I presumed Louis resided in the epicentre, quietly and calmly lapping up the attention like a solar panel reservedly soaks up sun.
Peering this way and that, I eventually spotted the midriff of Brian.
He had the unique ability to make almost anything look untidy. His shirt was tucked in, but unevenly. His belt was buckled too loosely, his fly on half zipped. It was very unnerving for the teachers. While he couldn’t exactly be punished, they couldn’t let it go. This resulted in very awkward situations with teachers confronting him, yet finding nothing to actually shout at him about.
Brian handled his super power with surprising ease, never getting tired of nervous teachers wavering in front of him, unsure of what to do.
I fell out of the bush, picked a twig from my ear and ran over to Brian. What I hadn’t seen from the bush was the atlas he was still reading.
“Oh, hey Matt,” he said, looking up from his atlas as I stood up.
“Hello, Brian.”
“Hey, did you know that the..” he looked hard at his atlas, “.. that the Vatican City State is the smallest independent state in the world?!”
I sighed, pulling a leaf out of my ear.
“Isn’t that amazing?!”
I looked at him, his eyes sparkling with wonder.
“Yes Brian,” I said, “that really is amazing.”
He rolled on his heels and continued reading.
“But what does it mean?” I asked.
“No idea!”
The break time rolled on and, as Brian was informing me about the incredible growth of South Korea’s economy despite the global conditions, I decided we should speak to Louis.
“He’s famous now, y’know, he needs some real friends.”
Brian looked at my oddly.
“People that aren’t friends with him because he’s famous.”
“People actually do that?” asked Brian.
“Oh yeah, I saw it in a movie once.”
With that decided, we walked towards the large crowd of people surrounding a particularly prime spot of wall, perfect for sitting. A few metres away was an empty bench.
I walked over and, standing at the edge of the crowd, listened. People were talking about a variety of things, from zombies to gorillas to mobile artillery to balloons. Louis had to be inside.
Brian ambled up beside me as I observed the task before me. The idle chattering of many people created a large background noise which, to the casual observer, sounded like this.

“Mrnnrnerhmerurnymurnymurny.”
“Hanoharhanmournournamenyo.”
“WellIwonwhenodogtimurnaflidomunryopolart hywhum.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to visit Benin.”
I craned my neck and stood on my toes in a vain effort to see if I could see Louis. The fact extending ones neck and standing on ones toes had never aided in the spotting of someone in a crowd since the beginning of time was not something to put me off.
“According to this, the entire country is ice cream cone shaped!”
“Sounds delicious,” I said distractedly, looking for Louis. I decided to embark on a much more radical plan.
“Louis!” I shouted.
“What?” he replied from behind me.
I turned and found Louis standing there.
“Apparently the country is very poor though,” continued Brian.
“Why aren’t you in there?” I said, jerking my thumb to the crowd.
“Oh, I got bored. They’re a self sustaining crowd, anyway. Get them talking about disgusting things you've seen down toilets and they’ll survive for hours, even without the person they’re crowding around.”
I nodded sagely, knowing only too well how long kids could talk about toilets. The school bell rang, indicating the start of the next lesson. I imagine, in the classroom, Mrs Benson was currently getting off her knees and finishing her prayer.
Me, Louis and Brian started to walk back towards the classroom when I saw the girl I’d elbowed earlier. She was still looking pretty angry, so I hid behind Brian as we walked to the classroom. I bent over, clutching the waistline of his trousers and crabbed my way around him, putting his body in the way of her line of sight. Doing this, we made our way towards the classroom, Brian reading his atlas, Louis trying to look like he didn’t know us.

In the cloakroom, people were gathering. I ignored the wrath of the girl and wondered what was going on.
The cloakroom was a place of great fear. The walls were lined with black prongs, initially designed to hang coats on, but recently adapted by the school to impale. The smaller kids would be hung on them by larger kids or, more often than not, several smaller kids. Occasionally, coats were hung on them, but people tried not to bring coats any more. Any reason to stay in the Room of Spiked Walls was soon omitted from the daily schedule.
“What’s going on?” I asked one of my class.
“I DON’T KNOW,” bellowed Jack. He was a large kid, not fat. Nobody was brave enough to call him fat. He was simple minded, stubbornly determined and easily manipulated. He also shouted all the time.
I took a step back, even in the now cramped cloakroom. Not far away, I heard someone scream as they were viciously attacked by one of the coat pegs.
I turned to someone else.
“What’s going on? Why are we all stuck in here?”
“I’m not sure, but I do know that Pakistan lies just north of the Tropic of Cancer and—”
“Never mind, Brian.”
I turned to one of the girls.
“What’s going on?”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
“I wasn’t asking you!”
“I think the door is locked,” said the girl, who I vaguely remembered as Joanne.
“Locked? It’s never locked..”
“I WILL TRY,” said Jack. He squared his already rather square jaw and set off through the crowd towards the door. There was more screaming as coat pegs struck deep into the backs of children, mixed with the disturbing grunting noise Jack usually made when he walked. I kept back, but followed him.
Jack reached the door and dumbly stared at it. He grasped the handle with what appeared to be a gargantuan intellectual effort and pushed the handle down, while pulling back on the door. It didn’t budge.
Nothing.
It must be locked.
With a grunt and an increasing furrowed brow, Jack pulled on the handle. The top of the door cleared the door frame. Slowly and dramatically, the door fell out of its frame and towards Jack. All the kids, myself included, got out of the way, resulting in more screams from coat peg impaled classmates.
Jack stood still, watching the door fall on him in slow motion with a slack jaw and a puzzled expression. The door picked up speed and landed on him, smashing the glass over his head. The door fell to the floor, with Jack standing where the window had smashed over his head.
He shook a little, and a few crumbs of safety glass fell off his body. Jack grunted once more and took a few steps into the classroom before falling over and lying still on the ground.
By this point, the teacher had heard and was walking over. She saw Jack’s incapacitated form and began screaming, before running off. I took a step forward and leaned through the door frame, catching the end of her screaming as she fled. Calmly, I walked into the classroom properly and took my seat.
There was a slight gasp of horror as someone once more fell the victim of a coat peg, which caused the rest of the class to step over the large, still form of Jack and sit down.
A moment’s silence was held, remembrance of dead door we so often had used.
Then we began arsing around.

“Louis!”
I leapt out of my seat and made for his table. He was sat staring at his desk.
“Louis, what..” I trailed off.
The magic circle was still on the table.
Louis turned in his seat and looked up at me.
“Weird, huh?” said Louis.
“Why do you think she left it? If it bothered her that much, why didn’t she get rid of it?” I said.
I looked quietly down at the crude chalk circle, with intersecting lines and drastic, demonic curves.
“Well,” he said, “from the look of fear in her eyes, and the way she reacted I’d have to say that..”
“Yeah?”
“That it cannot be destroyed!”
I gasped.
“It’s the only answer!”
“I agree!”
A few of the other kids in the table began to back away.
“Wh-what’s going to happen if we just leave it?” said one of them, a fair haired boy with a nervous smile who always pisses his pants.
I pointed my finger at him.
“Don’t piss your pants, soldier,” I commanded.
“Yes sir.”
I pointed at the other person on the table, a short, fat black girl called Jessica.
She batted my hand away.
“It’s rude to point.”
“Anyway, we have to worry about this magic circle.”
Louis looked at it.
“Why? It’s not doing anything.”
“Perhaps it needs the magic words,” I said.
“What are they? I just made them up before!”
“So we don’t know what the words are?”
Brian sidled up beside me.
“If you don’t know what the words are, even the most common of words could cause something horrible to happen!” he said brightly. I slowly turned my head, emitting pure dread from my eyes. He smiled brightly back at me.
More people were coming to the table now I had stood and pointed at the black girl, and they getting larger in numbers.
“Everyone!” I shouted, “away from the table! We don’t know what the words are!”
“So?”
“So we don’t know what they aren’t,” I declared, “they could be anything.”
With that clarification on the true dangers of the magic circle drawn from the Necronomicon, Louis, Alex and  stood and moved away from the table. I took a few steps back, as did Brian.
Looking around, it seemed the entire classroom, minus Jack who was face down on the floor, covered in glass, had surrounded the magic circle. We ourselves formed a circle around the circle and, at this unfortunate moment, the head teacher burst into the room, wielding a crucifix offensively.
He glared at us with incredible fury when Mrs Benson bumped into the back of him, pushing some kind of trolley. I heard the gentle wash of water as she stopped.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“It’s worse than you said.”
I quickly sat down at the closest seat possible, which triggered a cascade of people bolting for seats in the vague hope we wouldn’t be noticed.
The head teacher began stalking through the classroom, snaking between the bright red chairs and lightweight tables, Mrs Benson slithering meekly behind. Wherever he looked, the head teacher pointed his crucifix.
“What’s going on?” he snapped, prodding one of the children with his crucifix.
She yelped, although I couldn’t see who she was.
“Didn’t like that, eh?” he leered, “Don’t like the touch of Jesus, eh?”
“Er.”
“Nobody asked you to speak!” he roared. He certainly enjoyed being angry, which was a bit of a contradiction.
I turned away and clenched, to begin radiating inconspicuousness.
After expelling some justice down upon the girl, he quickly rose from stalking stance and proceeded towards Jack, who was now stirring slightly.
He leant down and slowly laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder as he groaned.
“Jack? Jack are you alright?”
“URGHHHHHHHHH.”
Mrs Benson screamed.
“He’s been possessed!”
“Be quiet, Mrs Benson.”
“But!”
“He’s fine.”
The head teacher stood and faced the rest of the class. Jack was staggering to his feet behind him, glass dropping out of his hair.
The head stared at us for a while, every kid in the room casually avoiding his piercing eyesight.
After a short while he realised, much like the author did at this very point in the narrative, that were was no really suitable way to proceed. His eyes swept the classroom one last time, then he turned to the door frame, taking a step towards it and desperately looking for something to look at. He placed his hand on his chin and examined the woodwork.
Mrs Benson was bending down to attend to Jack.
“Oh my dear, are you alright?” she said kindly.
“URGHHHHHH BRAIN!” Jack replied loudly. The teacher recoiled in horror, desperately fearing the child as he reacted similar to one being possessed by a devil. She took a few more steps back.
Jack groaned quietly, and began rubbing his head. From where I was sat, I could just glimpse the look on his face.
It was a delicate mixture of anger and confusion, with a heavy dollop of pain and a slight sprinkling of torture. He expressed this by screwing up his face.
Mrs Benson was overcome with grief, bending over to help the poor boy.
“Oh, you poor boy,” she said, bending over.
She placed a hand on his shoulder and began brushing more glass from his hair.
“URGHHHHHHHHHH BRAIN!” he shouted again.
Mrs Benson recoiled once more, her gentle nature tricked by the cunning devils in possession of Jack.
“My brain hurts,” said Jack, who, after slowly coming to terms with the situation, began to cry.
Seeing Jack, the behemoth, cry was unsettling. He was the kind of kid who would not only steal your lunch money, but proceed to quickly rob your parents too. He was generally too slow to be a bully, though, much to everyone’s relief.

Before I turned away from Jack’s emotional outburst, I saw the head teacher walking through the door frame. I wondered what he was looking for, what the aliens would get up to at lunch break, whether the aliens were involved with the door, what time it was and what socks was I wearing.
My brain began to hurt, so instead of seeking the answers, I wrote a rude word on a piece of paper and slid it across the table to the nice Catholic girl who was always polite and sweet and who everyone hated.
She screamed when she saw what I had written, causing Mrs Benson to leap back from Jack and, when she realised where the scream had come from, she leapt away from the entire class in general.
While Jack staggered around, clutching his head, Mrs Benson fumbled for her crucifix and, when she wouldn’t find it on her desk, she started screaming too.
The head teacher stormed back into the classroom at the sound, although I couldn’t see him, my back was turned.
“Silence!” he bellowed, and Mrs Benson was silent. The sweet Catholic girl took a few more seconds to be silent. The head stared at the girl and, realising it was a fellow Christian, became concerned something demonic had occurred.
“What? What is it?” he said, softening in his tone.
The girl repeated the rude word I had written and a wave of silence drifted across the classroom. People stopped breathing. I would wager that my heart stopped.
“Lunchtime detention,” the head said quietly, his tone more of disappointment than fury. The entire classroom took a deep breath.
As I reoxygenated my body, I heard the head teachers voice cry out. I turned to look, and his head was leaning close to the door frame.
“What appears to have happened,” he said, turning to Mrs Benson, “is that the hinges have been removed!”
Mrs Benson stared back blankly.
“Uh,” said the head, pointing at the door lying in the coat peg impaling room, “the hinges aren’t on the door either. They’re gone.”
Mrs Benson gasped. The head teacher looked thoroughly puzzled as the true situation dawned on him.
“But, they were there this morning, right?” he said.
“Yes, some children came in that way..” said Mrs Benson.
“So, they were taken while everyone was there..”
“Why would someone steal the hinges off a door?”
The head began to look very worried.
“I’m.. I don’t know..”
Seeing the head teacher so worried concerned Mrs Benson even more. Jack fell over again, abandoning his tough man image and deciding to go to hospital.
“I’ll go call an ambulance,” said the head teacher.
“Don’t leave me!” cried Mrs Benson.
He ignored her and strode out of the classroom, skirting around many of the outlying desks to avoid going near the magic circle.
The classroom sat for a while in an awkward silence. I personally began chewing idly on the ink cartridge of a fountain pen, treading the fine line between happy chewing and an unhappy ink explosion. As I slowly bit into the soft plastic with my teeth, I began to wonder why the class was so quiet and why Mrs Benson was also so quiet.
She usually pounced on the opportunity of a quiet classroom to shove some useless facts down our throats. I looked around in my seat, trying to look inconspicuous with an ink cartridge dangling from my lips. Suddenly, the true extent of what had happened occurred to me.
Someone removing the hinges in the middle of the school day without apparently being seen was, I thought, kind of amazing. Something only possible by Spiderman or..

“..aliens!”
“Do you really think so?”
“I think Kuwait has a rising shrimp industry!”
“Definitely,” I said.
We were sat in the playground, having been ordered outside by the head teacher, so we didn’t embarrass the entire school in front of the paramedics. They were currently attending to Jack in the classroom, from what I could see.
The classroom window was in demand, not often did one get to see some real life paramedics who’d probably touched at least fifty dead people before they’d arrived. After a brief glimpse, I discussed more high brow matters.
“Let’s face it, Spiderman is in America, it could be aliens,” I said.
Louis nodded, pushing his lips into the kind of pout which could only mean he was thinking of something nobody else in the entire world had ever thought of before.
“Hmm,” he said. I looked at him.
“What?”
“The floor was wet, did you notice that?”
Brian looked up from his atlas.
“Yeah, I did,” he said, strangely subdued.
I panicked a little, as I had not noticed the floor being wet. I cleared my throat and said quickly, “Yeah I did too.”
“No you didn’t,” said Louis, “but the floor was wet, on the inside of the classroom, next to the door.”
I pressed on.
“So what does that mean? Aliens are pant wetters?”
Brian looked puzzled. “You mean I used to be an alien?”
“A common fallacy,” I replied, “an inductive argument.”
“No, this wasn’t.. that kind of wet, it was just clear. Just water,” said Louis.
“It could have been ectoplasm,” I suggested.
Both Brian and Louis turned on me and said, “That’s green, stupid.”
I looked down briefly. Of course.
“Besides, what would ghosts want with hinges?” said Brian, giving a half laugh.
“What would aliens want with them?” said Louis.
We fell silent, not because we understood the rhetoric, but because we were desperately racking our brains for the answer. The silence of our contemplation was broken when a girl tripped and landed in front of us, only to be leapt upon and kissed by a boy, who promptly ran away screaming.
The girl, still prone on the floor, burst into tears.
Brian buried his head back into his atlas and Louis looked across from the low wall we were sat on into the classroom. Feeling rather awkward having nothing to do, I decided to talk to the crying girl on the floor.
“Are you—”
“What the hell have you done!”
I looked up from the crying girl and into the fist of another girl. Leaning to the side, I noticed it was the girl I had elbowed previously. This was not my lucky day and I’m sure she felt the same.
“I haven’t done anything, it was—”
“You’re that boy!”
I raised my eyebrows. She was certainly well read on her anthropology.
“The boy who punched me earlier!”
“Ah, now, you see, it was actually an elbow and,” I stammered.
She pulled back her fist and swung at me, giving me plenty of time to roll backwards into the flower garden and take a few steps back. I had inadvertently crushed several flowers and the girl, having spent years watching television, felt she should act the part and lament the destruction of the playground flora.
I saw my chance as she bent over and ran away.
“These poor, poor flowers!” she wailed.
“It could be worse,” said Brian softly, “you could be reaching the end of your oil reserves, your main source of income, much like Peru.”

After several minutes of evasion on my behalf, it was eventually decided that something should be done with us, as a class in general. This decision was somewhat hastened to its conclusion by the fact several kids had uprooted a small tree and were hitting people with it.
We were ushered back into the classroom, through the cloakroom this time and not the long way round. The head teachers insistence that we go into the hall and to the playground through the fire doors was, I presumed, so he could examine the door closer. However now, we could go the normal way into the classroom. Louis led me through the door and, as we walked through, pointed to the ground.
“The water’s there,” he whispered.
I looked down, seeing what remained of the water. Obviously the broken glass had been cleaned up and so most of the water was also gone, but I could still see it glistening on the floor, by the door frame.
“AHA!”
Both Louis and I looked up. The head teacher was stood there, brandishing a crucifix in our faces. After a moment of sneering triumph, he quickly lowered the cross.
“So you were looking at the water on the ground, eh?!” he said, his tone questioning in nature but probingly malicious in intent.
I said nothing. To my unsurprise, Louis did the same.
“That’s pretty suspicious if you ask me! You boys know something about it, do you? I bet you do!”
I averted my eyes and said nothing. To my surprise, Louis said something.
“Actually, it’s a religious thing,” he said coolly.
The head teachers eyes boggled and he stormed off.
“Curse you!” he said.
After a brief moment of stomping, he turned back and said, “Not literally, of course. I’m not putting a curse on you or anything.” Then he resumed his stomping away. I blinked.
“Did that just happen?”
“Indeed it did!” said Louis, “I think we’ve just found out his weak spot!”
“He’s terrified of the fact you know about religious freedom?”
“Incredibly so, it seems. It also infuriates him no end.”
I stuck out my bottom lip in admiration. I wasn’t quite what Louis was talking about, nor was I quite sure what I was talking about, but it seemed we’d just scored a major victory.
“Trust me,” he said, “it’s a major victory.”
I trusted him.
“Hey guys!” said Brian, running up behind us into the classroom, “Voodooism is the official religion of Haiti!”
“Voodoo? You mean like in Scooby Doo? With all the zombies?”
“Yeah!”
“Thank god you told me, Brian,” I said, “I could have gone there thinking it was just an ordinary place!”
“I don’t think you have to worry,” Louis said, “you can easily run away from zombies.”
I nodded slowly. “Yes, good point. But still, you saved me a run, Brian!”
Brian smiled, before dipping his eyes back into the atlas. I decided to sit down before Mrs Benson told me to and ponder the meaning of the door. It was certainly a mystery indeed.
Louis walked up to my table and leant over to my ear.
“One more lesson until lunch time,” he said.
I nodded. The lunchtime detention. With the head teachers new found suspicion of us, I had no doubt the detentions would be enforced. I scanned the classroom for the aliens and found them sat at their desk. I was underwhelmed with a wave of absolutely no surprise at all. What was interesting, however, was that both Sam and Chris were looking at something under the table. As I continued watching, however, they quickly raised their gazes and sat straight and as casual as aliens can be. They continued sitting and acting normal, causing me to question if they had actually been doing anything suspicious at all.
I shook my head, causing a minor headache and the expulsion of several insects from my hair. This was just what they wanted! I made it firm in my mind they’d been looking at something and I was going to find out what it was if I had to lay down my finest stabbing pencil.
“Everyone, reading books out,” Mrs Benson clapped. She was taking no chances with the usual art lesson today. Her words were obeyed, on the principle that getting ones reading book out of ones bag was an excellent excuse to make rather a lot of noise and waste rather a lot of time
“Louis,” she said, quieter this time, “come here please.”
I stopped making a lot of noise and leaned back on my chair to see what she was doing. I couldn’t hear over the noise people were making, but I saw her wave her finger around several times then hand him a small book. I glimpsed the word “bible” on the cover.
I presumed it was not the Pillow Fighting Bible, nor did I imagine it was the Zombie Evasion Bible, infact I could only think of one thing it could be, and it was not cool at all. The Christian Bible. I felt sorry for him. The writing was really small and hard to read.

Nothing much happened for the rest of the lesson. Mrs Benson was enforcing quiet reading on us. Actually doing the work I was supposed to was actually quite bizarre, which is testimony to the amount of actual work I usually did. I was more fortunate than most, though. I had an atlas to read. Brian seemed to be faring the best out of the current situation. His entire mental outlook enabled him to generally have a vague smile no matter what was going on around him. I had fleeting visions of the Titanic sinking and him sitting on his bed in his dressing gown saying: “Well, this is all terribly exciting, isn’t it?!”
However, I decided not to dwell on thoughts of my best friend dying. It wasn’t normal. Mind you, I pondered, turning a page, reading an atlas wasn’t entirely normal either.
I decided to learn every single city on the current page. The page appeared to be about Pakistan and the first city I saw was Rawalpindi. I quickly abandoned my plan.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It would be thirty minutes until lunchtime. I did the math and discovered that it was really only five minutes, six times until lunchtime and five minutes was no time at all. I settled into my seat happily, pleased to be waiting the short time until lunch. There’s nothing nicer than waiting for something you know will be along shortly.
After five minutes of sitting pretending to be reading, a thought struck me. It was lunchtime next, which meant detention, which meant the aliens. I slowly remembered about them and how they would be monitoring the classroom while me, Brian and Louis were sat down, no doubt at opposite sides of the classroom, with Louis cleaning the tables. The magic circle remained untouched.
I began to think about the aliens and what they were up to. I’d not seen them change forms since the beginning of the narrative, but there really hadn’t been any opportunity, things were so busy, what with hinges disappearing and such.
My mind swirled the events of the door and the aliens around, like a mental soup. As I idly disrupted the broth of my brain, I decided the two events had to be related. My discovery of the aliens disguised as the new kids a few days after they arrived, followed by the mysteriously disappearing hinges. Something was going on, and I was determined to find out and suddenly, my lunchtime detention changed from an hour of avoiding the aliens wrath to an hour of disrupting their nefarious plans.
This was rather lucky, because the lunchtime bell just went. I guess I think pretty slowly, at times. Must be all that soup.