A cough from behind me woke me from my daydream. When I glanced over my shoulder, my friend Tilly smiled back at me. She could tell I had started drifting off. This two-hour lecture was so boring, and I had already learnt it all from the textbook. Mr. Man, the silver-haired teacher, droned on, his head glued into the fat textbook he was reading word-to-word from. I sighed and rested my elbows on the table. After awhile of studying my colour-changing screensaver, I noticed the teacher's dreary voice had died off. Confused, I lifted my head. We still had over half an hour of this lecture to go. My eyes found Mr. Man, and I almost gasped in surprise. His drooping, fair-skinned face was sagging more than before, his skin turning from normal to ashen coloured. His lips were still moving, but no sound was coming out. After another five seconds, his eyes closed and he slumped to the ground, unconscious. I started, half-standing in my seat to go and help. When I saw everyone else though, I froze in my tracks.
Everyone was falling asleep. No, it was more than that. They were passing out.
I whipped around to face Tilly. Her slender body was already sprawled gracefully over her desk, her pale lips parted. A sudden thought struck me, and I raced over to her desk and pressed my fingers into her neck, praying for a pulse. I felt a fluttering under my fingertips, like the beating of a moths wing, then suddenly, nothing.
That's when it hit me.
Darkness swam at the edges of my vision, and I clutched at the nearest desk to stay upright. A feeling unlike one I had ever felt before clutched at my chest and lungs. It felt as if a huge hand had closed over my torso, squeezing the air out of my lungs until they were shrivelled, dried sacks of nothing. I felt my face burning and greying from oxygen loss, and desperately tried to think as the blackness of death drew closer. My unfocussed gaze swept over the rest of the class, taking in the unmoving, lifeless forms of my fellow classmates, and I realised suddenly: I would never get out alive.
I tried to take a step, but my leg failed to take my weight, collapsing under me. Struggling to keep my heavy eyelids open, I rolled to the ground. My lungs blazed with flames that licked their walls, charring them beyond oblivion.
The last thing I saw before I died was the maroon coloured carpet, upon which my deceased friend Tilly's legs rested upon.
Everyone was falling asleep. No, it was more than that. They were passing out.
I whipped around to face Tilly. Her slender body was already sprawled gracefully over her desk, her pale lips parted. A sudden thought struck me, and I raced over to her desk and pressed my fingers into her neck, praying for a pulse. I felt a fluttering under my fingertips, like the beating of a moths wing, then suddenly, nothing.
That's when it hit me.
Darkness swam at the edges of my vision, and I clutched at the nearest desk to stay upright. A feeling unlike one I had ever felt before clutched at my chest and lungs. It felt as if a huge hand had closed over my torso, squeezing the air out of my lungs until they were shrivelled, dried sacks of nothing. I felt my face burning and greying from oxygen loss, and desperately tried to think as the blackness of death drew closer. My unfocussed gaze swept over the rest of the class, taking in the unmoving, lifeless forms of my fellow classmates, and I realised suddenly: I would never get out alive.
I tried to take a step, but my leg failed to take my weight, collapsing under me. Struggling to keep my heavy eyelids open, I rolled to the ground. My lungs blazed with flames that licked their walls, charring them beyond oblivion.
The last thing I saw before I died was the maroon coloured carpet, upon which my deceased friend Tilly's legs rested upon.