The man found himself in the cafeteria. He walked along the clean tables, examining their shapes and those of the benches for seats. He found vending machines in the cafeteria and the many bags of chips, bars of candy, and drinks inside, but when he pressed the buttons, they would not budge. He tried to shove his hand through the flap near the bottom to find…something, but even the flap would not move. The man gave up on the vending machines.

He moved towards the back of the cafeteria, where the large displays of empty trays, which once held food to be served to the students, rested. He examined these large metal tables and, again, none of the trays would move. He led himself further back into the kitchen rooms, where there were locked closet doors, sinks, empty shelves, and peering out from under a smaller metal table was a black handle. Pulling the black handle from under the table, the man found a rusty kitchen knife.

The man studied the beveled edge of the curve along the blade, feeling its dullness on his skin and the cheap handle in his hand. The man passed his index finger along the rust that has formed on the faces of the knife and witnessed the chaotic rust turn into lines, then pictures, and then into reality. The kitchen turned dark, there were two women facing each other, one of which in close proximity to a shining kitchen knife. They were arguing.

The woman close to the kitchen knife was visibly shaking, her hands and lips trembling, her eyes wide at the other woman. The other woman was especially hysterical, waving her hands in the air while making herself look bigger than she really was. The screaming was audible but distorted. The sounds propagating through the air could only be recognized as warbles and shrieks, nothing resembling language. In those distorted shrieks, however, were fragments of sound that were actually comprehendible. Words like “husband”, “wench”, “children”, and “bastard” were isolated in the air.

Finally, the shrieking woman rushed at the shaking one, shoved her to the ground, and grabbed the kitchen knife on the metal table. She stood there, for a moment, relishing the difference in power between her and this teenage child. The woman got on her knees, raised the knife above her head, and swung down. The kitchen knife pierced the girl’s throat, and she looked at her, enjoying the pain in her eyes as her voice escaped her throat as bubbles of blood.

The woman raised the knife and swung down, again, and again, and again. The woman did not stop the massacre until the girl’s body resembled mesh more than it did a person. There were tens of holes in her torso, her ears and tongue cut off, eyes gouged out, fingers and toes gnarled by the woman’s teeth. Blood pooled around the girl and stained the woman. The woman tossed the knife to the side, stood up, and left the kitchen.

When the man became conscious of himself again, he was gripping the rusty knife, now covered in blood instead of rust, so was the man. When he looked away from the knife, he saw bodies. Hundreds of bodies piled on top of each other across the cafeteria, even pinned against the walls and hanging from the ceiling. They were all mangled and no square inch lacked at least a speck of their blood.

The man stared at the knife in his hand again and placed it gently on the small metal table. Almost ignoring the dead bodies, the man shoved them out of his way and approached the cafeteria exit. His hand on the handle, he turned around and the bodies were gone, so was the knife. He left the cafeteria.