"You cannot be a hero without being a coward."

- George Bernard Shaw

Tim watched as the piece of white cloth inched closer to his arm. Seething through his teeth, he nervously voiced, “You know what? I don’t think this was such a good id-OOOOWWWW-my god! That really hurt!”

Getting angry, the girl with the white hair and dress yanked the knot of the makeshift bandage tighter, causing Tim to yell out in another round of pain, squirming in his seat. “Maybe if you’d stop moving and acting like a baby, it wouldn’t hurt so much!” Her voice was musical but slightly sharp like a violin.

“Maybe you’d like to try getting your arm cut off?” she pulled again at the snappy reply. His wail akin to that of a whimpering dog.

The twilight sun shone its orange glow into the classroom, birds chirping musically outside the whitewashed windows. Tim sat on the centre of the school desk in a puddle of his own blood that had faded into the light, as the girl with the white hair and dress tied the final knot in his newly acquired stump of a right arm. Surrounding the pair were dozens of empty desks and to the front, a chalkboard with the phrase ‘I will not be late’ repeated over and over again in different hand writings, small enough that there could be hundreds of the line recurring.

Raising what was left of his right arm, which had been sliced clean off from the elbows down, he stared at the blood slowly pooling at the makeshift bandage. “My shirt's the same,” he said nonchalantly.

“What?” the girl asked confused. She leaned lightly against the desk next to and facing him.

“I'm wearing the same shirt as last time,” he turned his attention to his black shirt and cargo pants which he wore in the day, apparently forgetting about the fact that he was one arm lesser than before. “I'm assuming I'm dreaming again. I changed my clothes before I went to bed so I guess I can assume the last time I was asleep was like a save point?”

“Wow...” the girl stared at him, her eyes wide opened. Her greyed out iris reflecting the orange sun. “At a time like this you can notice your clothes?”

“Yeah, maybe I'm a little short in the attention span department but-”

“No, no!” she waved her arms protesting his mistaken idea. “It's a good ‘wow’. Really. You’re observant, that’s good thing here.”

“Pfft, you’re just saying that,” he replied, slightly embarrassed.

The girl leaned across to him, forcing him to attempt to slink away. She followed relentless until he could no longer retreat in his seat and her entire torso rested against his. The fabric of her dress felt thinner than silk and she brushed her chest against the bare skin of his one good arm. Her face an inch away from his, their nose touched at the tip.

Her voice echoed operatically as she spoke with a seductive tongue, “Why? You don’t trust me?”

A haze seemed to engulfed his thinking as he tried to stammer out his reply. He opened his mouth to speak but only let out a soft wheeze. He noticed her dress was shorter and tighter than he had previously noticed, the skirt barely covering her thighs. He found his heart beating hard against his chest at the girl’s erotic movements and a tightening bulge in his pants. The girl let out a small, gentle, flower-sweet breathe against his lips and he fought the urge to lean in and kiss her.

She retreated back, and as suddenly as the lustful cloud engulfed him, it dissipated. His thinking cleared up as she settled back onto the desk, crossing her legs with a sly smile across her lips. Her dress was longer now, wrapping slenderly around her ankle.

After composing his breath, Tim tried to sit up straight again but forgot his missing right arm, slipping as his invisible appendage attempted to grasp the edge of the desk. Falling off the desk, he managed to land on his left shoulder, receiving a sharp pain on impact which he showed through a seething curse through gritted teeth.

The girl laughed loudly. A tomboyish laugh right out of an animé character.

With grunts and huffs, Tim managed to push himself off with his one arm. The floor was stained with his blood from the impromptu medical treatment and so was the desk he sat on. The girl’s snow-white dress remained unstained.

“You could have helped me,” he slowly got up, balancing his weight precariously on one arm.

“Why? It’s more interesting to watch you squirm,” another mischievous grin.

“Well, you’ve helped me so far,” his tone was more serious now as he gained momentum in the conversation. “I ‘woke up’ and there you were, bandaging me and all that. When I was panicking and screaming from the pain, because, you know, lost an arm and all that. You calmed me down. You bandaged me. Why?”

The smile faded from her face, an action that for reasons unknown to Tim, saddened him. “You managed to figure out it’s a dream on your first try. At the barn, before you got, well, you know,” she nodded towards his arm. “You said you were asleep. Most people survive the first time by instinct and figure things out on the second or third try.”

“You say most?” he asked. “There are others?”

“A few, yeah. About one in a hundred or so.”

“Do you help them like you did with me?” even as he said it, he wasn’t quite sure what sort of ‘help’ she had provided him, merely following a gut instinct that she did.

As if ashamed of herself, she looked away from Tim and down at her feet. A few quiet seconds passed before she softly let out, “No.”

“Why me?” he gave her no time to recover from her reply.

“It’s complicated.” she snapped back, force in her voice.

“I’ve got time.”

“No you don’t,” this time, she did not give him time to compose a comeback. Her stare was as ice cold as the scream that suddenly pierced the air around them.

“What the fuck?” Tim bolted to the windows to get a look outside for the source of the shriek though was overwhelmed with confusion when the school grounds ended at the gates. The ground floor was an empty dirt courtyard. No trees nor markings decorated the ground, nothing moved in sight. The walls surrounding the school were spiked with metal barbed wires, only relief of the fort-like defence at the single metal gate of the entrance. And beyond that, marmalade tinged clouds stretched far into the horizon of where the streets should be.

“I’m not the only one here,” the girl said. “There are those like you, like me.”

Zoot. Zoon. Zoot. Zoon.

The sound of a saw slicing into wood. The hair on Tim’s nape stood at attention, the temperature in the room dropping drastically as his skin stung from an unexpected dry, piercing cold.

Turning back to face the girl, she said, “You should run.”

Zoot. Zoon. Zoot. Zoon.

He waved his index at the girl. “You owe me an explanation.”

The back door of the classroom slid opened with a loud slam, the chirps of the birds, wherever they may be given the lack of any living things outside, instantly died. Behind the threshold to the corridor stood a man in a white shirt covered under blue overalls, with a straw hat covering his eyes and a piece of straw in his mouth. The classic farmer look. Bulked up and heavily scarred, his arms were akin to that of a rough tire. Cuts and bruises ran down the visible skin, barely hidden by the ragged arm hair. His beard was short and scraggly, with what looked to be pieces of red meat caught between them. The man held a rusted crosscut saw, which Tim assumed was the same one that sliced off his arm. The dried blood that plagued the edge of the tool sent shivers down his spine.

Zoot. Zoon. Zoot. Zoon.

The sound played even though the saw wasn’t cutting anything. An auditory hallucination echoing in his head.

The teen bolted for the front door, his adrenaline sky-rocketing in the process. He felt his face burn red and his body began sweating, even though he had moved barely five meters across the classroom. He wasn’t tired or worn out, but felt energetic. He was unsure why until he attempted to open the door and noticed his hands trembling.

Fear had engulfed him, his body moving on instincts, which can be bad when attempting to perform an action that required precision. Like opening a door. His sweating hand slipped on the handle, and again, and thrice, before finally grabbing the metal bar and flinging the barrier open. He turned and glanced as the Sawman strolled through the aisle, his crude weapon clinking against the metal desk legs as he did so.

Zoot. Zoon. Zoot. Zoon.

The girl in white had disappeared from the classroom. Rooted in his spot, Tim stared at the approaching ‘man’ in fear and awe. Towering almost two heads taller, the Sawman was perhaps the most intimidating being Tim had ever faced. Even though the man’s eyes was hidden, Tim could not help but feel as if he was being summed up, scanned from head to toes.

Zoot. Zun. Zoot. Zoon.

It was not the time to hesitate. Forcing himself out of his trance, he sprang out into the corridor, but his feet could not find any ground to grip to. The floor was there, ceramic tiles and all, but his feet phased through the floor, seemingly cut off by the tiles. Time seemed to slow for him, his right feet lingering behind in the classroom, teetering between the invisible line that separated it between the false ground and the classroom.

And he fell. Through the floor. Whirling and spinning as his mind made feeble attempts to grasp the seemingly solid surrounding. His legs completely phased into the ground, followed shortly by his body and arm. Finally, as his face melts into the floor, he managed one last glance behind him to see the Sawman standing over him at the doorway of the classroom, ‘I will not be late’ being repeated in white on black behind him, before finally vanishing into the tiles.