Hours passed as I sat huddled under the water tower muttering to myself trying out different words and phrases to try to learn more about this game-like reality, all to no avail. No help, information, or God-mode (I had to try, no matter how unlikely it was to succeed.) No option settings that I could find, I was hoping for an “easy mode” if nothing else. No luck with finding a save command or a reload command. No luck trying to toss balls of magic or anything else either. A whole afternoon spent basically just twiddling my thumbs and wishing for something, anything, that could get me out of this mess, all with nothing much to really show for it. Truthfully, I would have probably stayed out under the water tower even longer except for two things. One, I was starting to get quite hungry, and two, it was beginning to get dark and I really didn’t want to be on the open rooftop alone when I couldn’t see what might be out there and coming for me.

As the light of the day slowly started to fade away, I finally worked up the courage to slowly approach the smashed in door which led to the steps down to the 5th floor. Cautiously, I peeped around the edge of the doorframe and was relieved to see that the emergency lights were still on. Looking out over the town, almost everything was dark now except for the buildings which still burned and smoldered in the distance. Apparently, the town had lost power but the school was still running on the juice provided by the solar panels here on the roof. I guess there really was a benefit to going “green and clean” after all!

Slowly, nervously, I tip-toed past the splintered remnants of the door and tried to ease my way downstairs. Let me tell you, if you’ve never had to move cautiously past splinters and pieces of jagged wooden doorframe with your bare toes cringing and crying from fear that they might get hurt, you’re not missing anything. I’ll just say it’s one of those experiences that I never want to repeat again in this lifetime. (Or ANY lifetime in my case, as oddly as that sounds.) I managed to avoid hurting my feet on anything, but I couldn’t avoid the pains in my heart from where my mind kept imagining me hurting myself and then screaming and drawing a swarm of beasts which then proceeded to sit down and eat me over and over again for… well, ever!

After what felt like a lifetime later, I managed to reach the bottom of the steps where I was greeted with the remains of what used to be someone at the school. I say someone because the body was so badly destroyed I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, or even young or old. I didn’t know if it was a student or a teacher, and to be honest, I’m not even 100% certain that it was a human. What it was was a blob of mangled flesh pieces that vaguely resembled a human. I was fairly certain that there was an arm mixed in the hodgepodge jumble of flesh, but honestly I didn’t try to look to close. What I saw already was more than enough to make bile rise in my throat and make me feel faint and lightheaded.

Easing past the fleshy splatter at the bottom of the steps, I slowly stuck my head around the corner and looked down the hallway. Carnage and mayhem was all I could see, with blood and parts of flesh all smeared and tossed haphazardly around the passage. I knew, rather intimately, what the minotaur was capable of doing to a human, and whatever caused this slaughter was something much, much worse than it.

The scene before me looked like something from a lunatic’s nightmare where a giant meat grinder had rolled down the hall and simply scattered chunks of whatever was in its way. I couldn’t imagine what would cause such complete and utter destruction, and I didn’t want to! All I wanted was to empty my stomach at the moment, and that’s exactly what I did – all over the glob which may have been a person. I was doubled over with dry heaves and gagging for a long time after I’d quit puking, but luckily for me the floor here appeared to be completely empty at the moment.

After I’d coughed up all the stomach acid in my gut – I suppose my new body didn’t regrow itself with the remnants of my lunch in it -- and I’d finished heaving, I slowly staggered upright and down the hallway. I could feel pieces of people squish between my toes as I gingerly wobbled to the nearest classroom and inside it. If I could’ve puked again, I would’ve, but my stomach was empty and my mind was blanking out once more.

In a daze, I staggered into the nearest classroom to the stairs and slumped through and door and into a scene of even more madness. Chairs were scattered and tossed haphazardly around the room; blood and bodies were intermingled amongst them, and broken shards of wood and twisted metal were all around. And in the middle of the carnage was what looked to be a large mound of corpses and chairs with a little green man-like creature happily sitting on top of them and painting himself in the blood of its victims.

For a few moments, this beast – I suppose I’ll call it a goblin as it rather reminded me of what those monsters from RPG games look like – this goblin, didn’t even notice me. It was simply too preoccupied with splashing its hands up and down in the blood around itself and then smearing them all over its own body to even know that anyone had came into its little domain.

Feeling anger and indignation for both myself, and the rest of humanity, I grabbed up the nearest piece of splintered stick, I think it may have been part of the table leg from the teacher’s desk, and I wordlessly charged the goblin. Without any warning whatsoever I hit it from behind as hard as I possibly could. And then I hit it again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

DING!

I heard the dinging sound which indicated some sort of message had popped up, but I didn’t care at the moment. This… this THING was here before me, and it was all I could currently see before me. Smack! Smash! Crash! Splat! Thwack, thwack, thwack! I beat it with the stick I had until I couldn’t beat it any longer – and the one that gave up on the beating first wasn’t me, but was instead the stick I was using which finally just splintered and shattered completely..

When I was finished, I could hardly even tell the difference in the goblin’s remains and the remains of the people around it. They were just an intermingled smear of flesh and blood, and when I realized this, my brain could take no more and I gratefully passed out in mindless slump of mental exhaustion.