Jason Crodich entered through the side door of his former high school and walked past the cafeteria imagining that he had an AK-47 and would spray the eating students if any were at the tables. It was early summer vacation, so the school was nearly uninhabited. Jason didn't actually make any gunman like gestures. He just imagined it. There were screams of pain and horror. There were cries for mercy. There were shards and blood and falling trays of nearly edible food. There was reeling and collapsing. Most of all, he wondered how anyone could actually do such a thing.
He rounded the corner to the main hallway and loped toward the administration office. It had been two years since he graduated, but the echo and the lockers still felt familiar. He had returned to get a transcript to settle a bet with Ian. He would win ten dollars if he had made better than a C in Civics class. That was the class that Ian and he had often skipped to go smoke a joint in the student parking lot.
Mrs. Kiernan was at her desk as he rolled up to the counter. She smiled and said, "Steven, how have you been?"
Jason blushed and felt a little angry. He corrected her, and she said, "Oh, of course. I had you confused with the Biernbach boy."
Jason explained that he needed a sealed, official copy of his transcript to sign up for the Marines. Jason was good at lying. He found it easy when it made his life easier. Yet he was careful to only lie to protect himself, and, sometimes, other people's feelings. Mrs. Kiernan had Jason sign some piece of paper and she walked through the door that led to the private offices of the Principal and Vice Principals. Jason thought it was odd for a moment, and then thought that one of the officials may have to sign off on his request before it could be honored.
He looked through an open door and saw rows of filing cabinets. He thought it would be really dramatic to open the sealed envelope in front of Ian and win the bet. Although, he wasn't sure that he would win it.
Mrs. Kiernan had been gone for fifteen minutes or so. Jason was getting edgy and agitated. He was starting to have more AK-47 fantasies. Did she go to lunch? Was she having a quickie with Principal Mandlowe? He had considered every object in the office three times. He considered urinating in the center top drawer of Mrs. Kiernan's desk. Then he had his most considerable thought. He would go into the file room and have a look at his permanent record. What was really in that thing anyway? Was every mishap and detention in there? Did it contain commentary from the teachers? Did Kate Nelson, the biology teacher, write that he couldn't seem to take his eyes off of her breasts for the whole school year?
He decided to act. If he was caught, he could say that he had grown tired of waiting and thought he would help by retrieving his own transcript. What could they do? Expel him?
Jason lifted the walk-through on the countertop and crossed to the file room. He found his bearings on the alphabet and homed in on the Cs. He leafed through the third drawer of Cs, near the floor, and found his folder. He lifted out of his crouch and listened for Mrs. Kiernan's footsteps. There were none. She and Mandlowe must be having a not-so-quickie.
His folder was three quarters of an inch thick. He was flushed with curiosity. He wanted to stuff it under his shirt and run off with it so he could study every detail, but he froze on the idea. Instead he flopped it open and the first document he saw was in some odd Cyrillic looking script, and had a black spider shaped seal on it.
"What the fuck is this," streamed through his mind. He touched it and felt the unmistakable feeling of a spider web. It was creepy. When he took his hand away, the web followed. He waved his hand about, but it wouldn't free itself. The web wove itself to follow and capture his arm. Jason began to panic a bit. His waving became more emphatic and the web coolly and methodically spun along. The web found it's way onto his face and became more than Jason could bear. He dropped the folder and tried to wipe the web from his face. The web persisted. Jason turned and bolted for the doorway. His fight or flight response decided that he needed distance and the outdoors.
As he made his way through the office, and over the counter, he could feel layers and layers of spider web giving way and creepily tickling him. The whole school was enmeshed. He clawed and cleared the webs from his face, only to be replaced by another one. He bolted for the most direct route out of the school through the front doors. The webs stopped there. The whole front grounds of the school had become ranks and files of razor blades on edge. As Jason cleared the webs from his face, he made out the horror in front of him. He lost his footing on the step and fell awake.
Jason bounced on his bed in terror. He had felt the razor blades begin to slice into his body. His thirty-seven year-old brain felt relief and agony at the same time. His wife was already up and in the shower. Just to be certain, Jason checked to make sure that his genitals weren't bleeding.
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