I'd never been one of those girls who dreamt about the kind of very first kiss that would resemble those movies that teenage girls always squealed about. Fiery, passionate, heart-pounding or whatever. Where I would smile at him as if he was my entire world and my heart would flutter at his husky voice.

But this...if I knew this was how I was gonna lose my first kiss I would've kissed the heck out of Harry Marvin (my prince charming from fourth grade) a long time ago and be done with it.

I stood paralyzed to my spot, as my breathing glitched. And I could feel the heat growing in my cheeks. I expected him to say something crude or inappropriate, maybe that would've made the awkward silence that preceded my foolish slip of tongue a bit bearable. But the silence laid on my skin like a poison. Making my anxieties mount into a circle, like a song stuck on repeat.

Now, I was literally begging him with my squinted eyes, Please! Just please say something.

"Why are you glaring at me like that?" He suddenly asked.

"Huh!" I was definitely caught off guard.

"I said why the hell are you glaring at me? Shouldn't it be me who should do the glaring since my lips were so brazenly robbed off?" He said and I still remained dumfounded.

'Brazenly robbed what...' "Wait! I did not rob you off anything." I frowned unpleasantly.

"Yeah? Then what was that shriek about being it your first kiss and all." I frowned back to his annoyed face.

"T-That...It's nothing. It's best to forget about this whole ordeal." I mumbled in retort.

"Ho, fine by me. I don't want to remember something as unpleasant as that either. So, it's better to act as if it never happened. By the way, your breath stinks." He spoke in all his haughtiness.

'Wait what! My breath stinks!'

I was left speechless. Who in their right mind would ever comment on a girl's breath after being kissed by her. Apparently, there was one lad known as Eric Warnard that was crazy enough to do so. Wait! That was not a kiss!

"I...I... You can't say that to a girl!" I exclaimed, quite miserably indeed.

"Oh! Are you being a sexist now?" He raised one of his pretty eyebrows. What the heck!

I understood, with Eric, even a small argument grew from nowhere into a tornado. So, I thought it was best to drop this matter with a forgiving heart.

"You know what, I think it's best I leave you alone as you don't seem to be in your right mind. And FYI, my breath does not stink." I huffed out loud.

"Yeah! Keep telling that to yourself if it makes you feel better." He retorted.

"God who am I even arguing with!" I questioned, rather to myself than to him. At times like these, heard its better to argue with a donkey than with an unreasonable prick. I sighed and turned around to leave the company of the irritated creature called Eric Warnard. But the moment I turned the doorknob and opened the door I saw something. A flesh of darkness maybe, I couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was, but I knew it was nothing good. Because I felt its breath in my face. Whatever it was, it had the darkness around the hallway as its cover. Like a chilling breeze it whispered into my ears, "Eeny meeny miney moe...caught a lassie by the jaw, if she hollers, slit her throat." And then it started giggling like a deranged child. Dread owned me at that moment, pushing me like an invisible gale and I stumbled backwards. Fear had my stomach tightened into knots as cold sweat drenched my back.

"AHHHHH!" I screamed to let out my fears known and slammed the door shut at the same time and in the blink of an eye grumpy Eric Warnard's arms became my tragic hero.

"What what! What happened!" He looked startled and puzzled at the same time as he unconsciously held me in place like metal bars of a roller-coaster in play.

"I...I think there's someone out there!" I shuddered in his arms, while trying to squeeze in some more.

"What? What are you talking about? How can there be someone at the west wing, and not to mention in front of my door? It's a forbidden area. You must've been mistaken." Eric shook his head, but I was adamant to stick to him like glue. I was very certain there was someone...rather something out there.

"No! I'm not getting out there alone." I grabbed onto him like my life depended on it.

"Alright alright, let me go for a moment. I will go and check who is this ballsy bastard that dared to step into my west wing." He huffed but I still didn't move an inch away from him.

"No way, I'm not letting you leave me here alone." I gabbled, quite scared.

"(Sigh) Alright, got it." Then he grabbed my hand and dragged me to the door. I was considerably reluctant but couldn't protest much under Eric's sheer force.

I could feel Eric was tensed as his body remained overwrought and his forearms were streaked with veins that popped out of his silky white skin. This got me even more nervous and when he finally opened the door, I simultaneously shut my eyes close in fright. Whatever was in there, I was so not interested in taking a look. But voila! Lo and behold, "I don't see any trace of an existing or corporal being here." Eric muttered with a snicker. "You sure you're not just a scardy-cat who would jump at anything unusual?"

"What! No!" I skimped my brows together, "Of course not, Eric, I'm telling you. There was someone here. I could feel his breath on my cheeks. And he was whispering too."

"Oh? What did he say? 'I'm coming tonight to get your brains?'" He sniggered again.

"No!" I was getting irritated by him now, "He sang me a nursery rhyme." I mumbled.

"Really? Was it Hickory dickory dock, Phina's on the clock?" I could see he was finding my plight a tad bit too amusing.

"You know what, forget it." Sometimes I wondered how I stop myself from choking the daylights out of this guy.

••••...

By the time I returned to my dorm, it was pretty late. My roommate was asleep on the desk and I silently put a blanket on her sleeping form, an act I was accustomed to by now as Lena had a habit of sleeping on her study desk.

After tucking her in, I got changed for bed and finally got under my comfortable sheets. It felt good to be bed after such a toilsome day, but I couldn't help thinking about the incident in front of Eric's door. Its true that I didn't actually see anyone there, but as hard as I might try, I couldn't forget its bone chilling voice. Recollection of that insidious voice evoked fear and tension into my system once again. The dread creeped over me like an icy chill, numbing my brain. In this frozen state my mind offered me only one thought. I was not gonna get any sleep today as well.

••••...

I was never a fan of who conquered who, who killed who, people who rose to power and abused it. Some people might find it fascinating but not me. It was just blood and gore and boredom to me. Boredom, people say boredom is that invitation for the brain to play, to let oneself soak into a moment and see the richness in the minute subtlety life offers. In the gist of boredom, as I stared blankly out the classroom window, my thoughts floated without direction. Mr. Fratom, our history teacher was cool and all, but his classes were not. I unlocked my phone for the 1000th time and sighed. Time flowed like cement. A minute had passed since I last checked an hour ago, or so it seemed. Sitting there with nothing to stare at but the view outside was excruciatingly dull. I began to drift into an unpleasant daydream or was it a paranoid fantasy? So hard to tell but I kept going back to that incident yesterday. Its voice was something I couldn't get out of my head.

And then my thoughts jumped back to all the incoherent whispers I thought I heard in the west wing. It was all very creepy and uncanny if my thoughts trained back to all the strange events that occurred there, which I apparently chose to ignore to achieve my peace of mind.

"I would love to see what captivating view your eyes can see outside the window Miss Valdez," Someone suddenly whispered in my ear and the fright I got from the whisper almost got me a heart attack.

"GYAAAAAH" I let out a not so lovely yell as I jumped off my seat and my chair fell apart. The very next moment, I found Mr. Fratom staring down at me with a foreboding glare as the rest of the class broke into soundless tittering. Remember what I said about Mr. Fratom being a cool teacher and all, well yeah. He was generally all nice and cool but there were days. Days such as today where he came to class with an overshadowing scowl on his face and on such days, no one dared to tick off Mr. Fratom. Rumors say that when Mr. Fratom wears such scowls to school one would know of the bout he had with Mrs. Fratom and that day was officially recognized as the FratomOFF day.

And just my luck, today had to be the FratomOFF day.

"Yes Miss Valdez, can you witness the history of our nation from our classroom window? Please do tell." His smile was sinister, and I gulped in response. "No Mr. Fratom." I mumbled in a frail tone as I blushed at the continuous sniggering around me.

"My, then might I enquire what is so fascinating outside our window that had your undivided attention during class hours?" His smile was getting stiffer by the second.

"I...Er..I'm sorry Mr Fratom." I hung my head low in a miserable mutter.

"I do hope you are Miss Valdez. I would like you to write an essay on the Stamp Act fair. And repeat it ten times just so you can memorize your history lessons along the way." His smile got contorted into something which barely looked like a smile by the end and I think I swallowed hard enough for the whole class to hear.

"Yes Mr. Fratom." I muttered back.

"Good. Now you may take your seat." He said curtly and went back off to his lessons.

I was so not having a lucky day today. And that proved to be true when I found Dilylah hanging out by my locker again. God, I disliked this girl so much.

"Hey there Sera. What's up." Dilylah waved her hand enthusiastically while looking at me like she just found her long lost sister.

"..Err..Hi Dilylah." I muttered back likewise in indifference.

"Dear! Sera, why do you look so out of it today? It can't be because what happened in class just now right?" She seemed to sound empathetic but her facial expressions said otherwise. I should stop using my locker from now on. "You know Sera, Mr . Fratom is a nice teacher. He was just having a bad day is all. Please don't take it to heart. If it were some other day, he wouldn't care even if you were ogling at his ass." EWW! Who wanted to ogle at Mr. Fratom's ass.

"Yeah. Thanks Dilylah, so why have you taken the striving trip to visit me?" My sarcasm was clear in my voice and I think she got it too, since her brilliant sunshine smile suddenly dwindled a tad bit.

"Well you see Sera, I have this really juicy info about Eric Warnard which I thought I should share with you 'cause, you know, we are same birds of a feather." She had this evil glint in her eyes that told me whatever she had learnt was not some happy news. And we were sooo not Birds of a feather.

I gulped hard for the third time today when I heard her words, "And I think this might be the reason why he is so attracted to you Seraphina. Apparently, I found this book, I guess its more like a dairy when I was arranging the records in the registrar's office. Its pretty old and all but listen to this," the glint in her eyes shone brighter all of a sudden, as if she had uncovered an unfathomable mystery, "There's this photo of Eric...No, maybe his great grandpa or something. He was in there, with a lady right beside him. And you know what, the lady..." And I wasn't listening after that, because something more unfathomable just occurred right in front of my eyes.

The numbers looming over Dilylah's head suddenly started getting blurry. And in the very next second, they started changing erratically. Back and forth they changed as I watched with my mouth hanging open and my eyes expanding to their utmost limit, to the point where they seemed like they were about to fall off my sockets.

And then suddenly, they stopped.

201119

That was the date. Three days from now.

What the hell was going on in here? Dilylah Adwell, who was supposed to live to a happy ripe old age was suddenly going to die three days from now!

"...llo, hello! Sera? Sera! You with me?" Dilylah's strident voice broke my stupefied trance and my eyes finally trained on her face from above her head.

"H-Huh! Y-Yeah. I-I'm sorry. I have an appointment with Lena. Talk to you later." I stuttered in a hurry as I almost run-walked out of there.

I could hear Dilylah's hollers from behind me, but I was just so freaked out that nothing was making sense to me anymore. I knew I was anxious and blowing a gasket, I knew I needed to shake it off to think more clearly but as I ran I felt the wind more keenly in my eyes, my heart was pounding and my mind blank.

And then, suddenly I bumped into someone and my high-speed marathon immediately came to a halt. That's when a realization came to me. My luck apparently, was so bad that if I bought a cemetery people would stop dying.

"Miss Valdez!" The Viper shrieked in rage.

"I'm sorry Miss Helen, I-I wasn't looking." I lowered my head to apologize. It was never a good idea to get on the Viper's bad side.

"That, obviously I can see." She screeched as if I had just raped her. God! That came out wrong. Oh! The mental image.

"Miss Valdez, are you certain you have read the school regulation? 'Cause I highly doubt that." She scoffed.

"I-Yes I have ma'am." I gulped for the fourth time today.

"Oh? If you have then you should be aware that running in the hallways is forbidden." She grumbled in ire.

"I-I'm sorry Miss Helen I won't..." and again, I was forced to stop in my tracks. I couldn't make a sound as I gawked at the suddenly but rapidly changing numbers over her head. The numbers were going back and forth just like they did with Dilylah's. But when they finally stopped, I was rendered speechless. I could somehow accept if a death date changed to a later or a sooner date than the originally devised one. I had seen it happen to Rudy before, and just now I had seen it happen again with Dilylah. But how could you accept if the death date was switched already to a past date. The smoky date looming over Miss Helen was 130868, and consequently I had my breath hitching in my lungs.

When I was a kid, I loved climbing trees. I felt a strange pleasure in being able to climb them and watch the mundane view of the world from above. One such time when I climbed the biggest tree in our garden, I dozed off while enjoying the view. Hence fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.

That's how I felt right now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as my skin became greyed, my mouth hung with lips slightly parted and my eyes were as wide as they could stretch while I stared dumbfounded at Miss Helen. At that moment, everything seemed surreal. And nothing made sense.

"Yes Miss Valdez? I am still awaiting your response." Miss Helen said in an uncouth voice. But I still couldn't get a word out.

"Hello? Miss Valdez? Earth to Miss Valdez?" She hissed in a shriller tone and I finally snapped out of it.

"...Huh! Yes, yes I'm sorry Miss Helen. I am very sorry. I will keep your words in mind and will not run in the hallways in the future." I mumbled in an awkward dazed tone.

"Well, I do really hope so for your own good Miss Valdez. Hope you enjoy detention today; Mr Ronald is a lenient teacher on duty today."

Crap!

I stared at Miss Helen with resentful eyes as she sauntered off clicking her old-fashioned heels. However, my eyes still couldn't help following her smoky numbers till she disappeared into the hallway.

What the hell was happening in here.

TO BE CONTINUED...