Disclaimer: This is a work of adult fiction which contains sexually explicit themes, violence and plentiful foul language. It is not for the faint of heart, nor for anyone under the age of 18.
The Forest Lake Incident
By NFalc
On June 7, 2008, the Forest Lake High School of San Pequeno, CA disappeared without a trace. A four-year investigation proved inconclusive. Of the estimated three hundred students and faculty present that day, none were found.
This is their story.
***
7:00
I woke up this morning and immediately wished I could go back to sleep, and sleep until school was over and I could go to college.
This was, of course, impossible. Senior Skip Day had come and gone, and now the so-called "educational institution" of Forest Lake High was making us pay for it. Since every senior had skipped this year (most of us completely unexcused), the school had decided to compensate by giving the lower three classes the day off. We had to come in on the hottest day of the school year, one week before graduation, and toil away at our classes while the other kids stayed in their cool, air-conditioned rooms and slept beautifully long hours...
Of course, there were benefits to Senior Day. Or so my parents had told me. Half-conscious on the bus ride to the teenage equivalent of prison, I couldn't seem to remember what exactly these benefits were.
The school bus stops outside of a dull gray concrete compound which the casual viewer would think was a factory or chemical plant. We all knew better. The school had been designed during the Sixties to be "modern" and "modular". It looked like a clump of highly solidified dust bunnies in the middle of the desert. The school was split into six buildings: a lobby, four hexagonal, multi-story "learning centers" and a gym, all connected both by poured concrete paths and elevated tunnels placed roughly twenty feet above the ground. The buildings were placed just far enough apart that you had to sprint to get to class on time. I often wonder whether the building was designed by the worst architect ever, or someone so fiendishly brilliant that they dared themselves to make the most horrible school complex ever known to man.
I jump off the bus and head into the lobby, which is also where all the lockers are located, and consequently where most people hang out before school. Not that they hang out with me. I'm not exactly the most popular kid; I've never been at ease with social situations.
I did have my own group, though, and it was towards our little dingy corner of the hallway that I gravitated after grabbing my stuff from the locker. There were five of us: Max Chong, a skinny Asian kid with thick glasses; The Schnitzer twins (Bruce and Dan) who were tall, bulky, Germanic and almost identical; Jacob Weisbaum, a curly-haired, gawky Jewish kid; and me, Zach Berger, short, thin, big green eyes and brown hair. I hate looking at myself in the mirror; I remind myself of a newt.
We were the nerds, the geeks, the socially rejected. None of us really liked each other all that much, but we had to stick together. We had no choice. Who else could you talk with about role-playing games and science fiction?
Today, however, the subject was different.
"Aw man, I wish I could screw Alexa Briscoll." said Jacob. He gazes, mouth slack, down the hallway, where the tan, curvy little girl is leaning against a locker, chatting with her friends.
"The school slut. How original. Forget about it, she's already with Paul Linnerman." Max scoffs.
"I thought Paul was with Jen Asafrago."
"He is." Max chuckles.
"Damn jocks," I mutter. "He's not content with the most beautiful, popular girl in the school -"
"- Don't forget the bitchiest," Max chimes in.
"- but he has to cheat on her with her best friend, too." I finish.
A pause.
"We could be jocks," Bruce says, elbowing his brother.
"Yeah right," Dan replies. "Last thing I need is to hang around with a bunch of meatheaded jerkoffs."
"You'd prefer eggheaded geeks?"
"Any time."
"Good, me too."
This pleasant, if brainless conversation is interrupted by me being shoved against a nearby locker. It takes me just a second to realize that the hand has long fingernails on feminine fingers. Here we go again.
"What the hell are these nerds doing next to our lockers?" The voice and the hand both belonged to Jamie, a dishwater-blond who was six inches taller than me and had been making my life hell since the fifth grade. It's bad enough getting beaten up, but when you get beaten by a girl it's just embarrassing. Jamie had done this to me. Six times. She and her friends Carla and Rose wore lots of black, leather and eyeliner, had one too many piercings for my taste and could often be seen lighting up in the parking lot. I could hear her friends snickering behind me.
"Maybe we should teach 'em a lesson."
"Could steal their lunch money," Rose suggests. Seriously, why did these girls have such huge chips on their shoulders, anyway? And why did they always feel compelled to take it out on me, in the most humiliating way possible?
"Back off, girls." Bruce says, flexing in a somewhat threatening manner. Maybe I was saved after all.
"Ha, like you could do anything to us." Carla lifts a shapely leg, showing off the spiked heel at the end of it. "You get anywhere close to me, I'll ram this into your balls so hard, you won't remember you had them."
"If he ever had them," Rose snorts.
I turn slightly, ready to start begging Jamie to lay off, only to find she isn't even looking at me anymore. Her eyes are following a tall, dark figure down the hallway.
It's the school badass. He's got jet black hair, dark, haunted eyes, a certain natural cool. He's everything a chick could want. I'd kill to have what he does, but I know that's just not in the cards. I'm not sure of his name, because no one ever calls him by it, but I think it's Carl.
Jamie lets go of me, turns to her friends. "This shit is boring me. Let's go do something else." They head off in Carl's direction.
"That was close," I sigh.
"Close for you," Max laughs. "It's not like they were going to kick MY ass."
"Fuck you," I say casually.
The bell rings, loud, shrill and obnoxious. It's the cue for me to turn my brain off and get ready for busy work. My friends and I nod, wave, part ways and start trudging through the crowded hallways.
First class was Honors Chem, aka The Period Where You Do Homework You Didn't Do At Home. Being an Honors course, the class contained the kids that were deemed a cut above the rest in terms of brains. Unfortunately, this included people from every social group in the school, most of them hostile to me. My only real friend in that class is Jacob, and he always has his nose in his book anyway.
We take the lower walkway to B building, home of the science department, and climb the two flights of stairs to the Chemistry floor. First room on the left, and I walk into the room without once having to think about where I'm going, like my feet are moving themselves.
I get into class, take my usual seat, and close my eyes. I swear, I could fall asleep, right here and now. But I can't. So I sit up and try to force myself awake. After all, I have homework to do. Of course, when I sit up I can't help but notice Laura Davids across the room. She's one of the few girls I've met who's actually shorter than me (I'm 5'4", just in case you're keeping track). Then again, at four foot nine, she's shorter than most people, although she's got plenty of curves to compensate. She's batting her eyes and tossing her long, curly brown hair, and occasionally throwing a pointed look in my direction. I think she wants me to ask her to prom, but I'm not sure I want to go with her.
Then again, I am friends with her group. She's with all the arty girls, the misfits and obsessives. Drama kids, art students, songwriters. They're basically parallel to my group, and they're not bad to hang out with. Most of them are pretty in their own ways, even if they can't hold a candle to the popular chicks.
The aforementioned popular girls file in a few seconds before the bell, chatting with each other, taking their seats in a small cluster towards the front of the room. There were four of them in this class, and they happened to be the ringleaders of the pack: Jen Asafrago, Alexa Briscoll, Aisha Thompson, and Christine Colby. All four of them had beauty in their genes and ice water in their veins. Jacob, me, and every other loser in the school could dream about fucking them, but wouldn't go anywhere near them in real life. A single word to them, and they could shut you down faster than a PC thrown out a window.
The only guys they'd talk to were their social equals, the jocks. Creeps like Paul Linnerman, who were blessed with rugged good looks and the ability to chuck a leather ball really far. They got girls like Jen, who was probably the closest to perfection available in high school. Long eyelashes over big brown eyes, high cheekbones dusted with the slightest amount of freckles, a cute upturned nose, full red lips, lustrous brown hair streaked with blond, done up in a ponytail. She didn't quite have the world class smile yet, but I heard she was getting her braces off soon, and then she'd be the real deal, the total package. The embodiment of pretty much every male fantasy.
Our teacher, Ms. Doane (or as I call her, Short, Brown and Ditzy) came in wearing her trademark sandals and cargo shorts. She had to be the most boring nature freak I'd ever known, and for someone teaching an Honors class, she was incredibly dim. She once called the space between atoms "anti-matter". Still, she was far from the worst of my teachers - at least she had good intentions. Plus, the fact that she was so oblivious made it easy to get away with things in her class.
I got out my other homework, and tried to concentrate, but my attention kept drifting. It usually gravitated to one of three girls in the class: Jen Asafrago, Laura Davids, or Tara Holmes. Tara didn't seem like much to look at, at first. She had very pronounced curves, which would be cartoonish on most girls, but which somehow fitted well on her 5'8" frame. Her eyes were hazel, flecked with blue and brown. She was pretty and extremely intelligent, but there was also this sort of girl-next-door vibe about her. You felt like she was someone you could talk to, who'd you want to get to know better. Of course, I didn't really know her at all, but hey, in my imagination we were better than friends.
"Isn't that right, Mister Berger?"
Wait. What? Oh shit, Doane just asked me a question. Fuck, what page are we on? This is why I should be paying attention in class. Now everyone's staring at me. What do I say, what should I do?
"Um... I guess?"
"You guessed wrong. Oxygen is most definitely NOT the first element on the Periodic Table."
The entire class erupts in laughter. I sink a little further in my seat. Ditziest teacher in the world, and she still manages to humiliate me in front of my peers. Serves me right, I guess, for not listening.
"Now then, class, today's a lab day, to make up for the one we didn't have on Senior Skip Day. I trust you all have your prep sheets and partners?"
Jen raises her hand, her nails painted sparkling pink. She's clutching a scrap of green paper, a school pass. "Um, excuse me Miss Doanes? I have an orthodontist appointment." Lucky. Doanes was well known for giving the most boring labs in the school. The teacher nodded, and Jen got up and left the class, her perfect ass wiggling in its miniskirt.
I snapped back to the task at hand. Found my prep sheet, met with Jacob at the other end of the classroom. "So, what wonderful lab does Doanes have for us today?"
"Actually, this one might be interesting." Jacob said, looking over the sheet. "We're doing controlled combustion."
"Heh, not bad. I guess since it's one of the last days of school, she's going easy on us."
"I knew you'd like it. You're such a pyro."
We grab Bunsen burners and vials. Jacob goes off to get the required chemicals while I set up the burner, and scan over the prep sheet. Simple stuff, really. Get a flame, heat some chemical powders over it, see what happens. I secretly hope something will spark, or blow up, or at least do something somewhat cool.
Jacob comes back. Everyone takes their places, and Doanes gives us the signal to begin. Jacob begins measuring out powder, while I fine-tune the flame to get the right balance of heat.
Suddenly, there's a shout in the corner of the room. I look up, and there's a scuffle in the area near the storage closet. "Fight! Fight!" Someone shouts, and soon the others are cheering as well. I can't even see what's happening, my view's blocked by the ventilator. I angle around to get a better glimpse, just in time to see a Bunsen burner tip over, falling directly into a large container of powders, which promptly goes up in green flames, spurting up three feet in the air. The girls begin to scream.
Doanes, clever as she is, has put on heavy rubber gloves and now lifts up the container, instead of going for the fire extinguisher in the corner. She looks around wildly, then chucks it towards the closet. Another student slams the closet door, and the flames are gone. Out of sight, out of mind.
Brief panic for a second, then everyone calms down. Doanes pulls off her gloves, looking relieved. "Is everyone all right?"
Before we can nod, there's a tremendous whump, and the supply closet door blows clean off its hinges, a shockwave rushing through the room that feels simply unnatural. Something is very wrong, I think, as I'm blown off my feet and into a lab counter. There's a sharp pain as my head bangs into the counter's corner, then it all goes dark.