Page 69 of The Library at Hellebore

The air had an odd crystalline shine to it like it had been greased somehow. That or I was in the throes of a migraine. It was hard to be sure. I’d been plopped next to Gracelynn, who was sat between Sullivan and me, with Kevin on my opposite side. Bracketing us was a pair of twins I’d only seen occasionally but knew by reputation, the two notorious for the ease with which they procured reagents for whoever had the money to pay: they could get anything so long as what you wanted came from something with a pulse. A few familiar faces were past them to the right: Stefania, Minji, Eoan, and Adam, who slouched almost entirely out of his seat.

“What is going on?” Kevin hissed to me.

“We have to go,” I said in lieu of an answer, standing.

The world stuttered.

I was back on the metal fold-out chair I’d been sitting on,like my muscles had changed their mind midway to rising. Except I hadn’tfeltmyself sit back down. Instead, it was more like the seconds had rewound, had flinched back from my decision like it was a hot stove. I tried again. This time, I felt it: reality slingshotting backward through linear time, not far enough to leave me discombobulated, but enough to have my ass on the cold, cheap steel. It hit me then that I was trapped. All my efforts, all those months spent trying to get out, and here I was with no place to go, a bunny with the hounds gathered all around.

The doors of the gymnasium opened, allowing our headmaster entry. She drifted down the aisle, splitting the crowd of so-called graduates, resplendent in a fawn-colored suit, the majesty of which was spoiled by the fact that her white hair was still in curlers. A clipboard was tucked in the crook of her left arm. She checked something off as she passed each student, her smile as it always was: slightly too wide for her face.

When she finally reached our row, she only said, with an effervescent giggle:

“Ah. It’s time for a speech by the valedictorian!”

I have to confess something: the claim I didn’t feel bad for Sullivan wasn’t a lie, for all that I might have implied that it was. I don’t. I doubt I ever will. I was positioned right in front of him when it happened, and I had a clear view of Sullivan’s face as the faculty crested over the podium to blanket him in their flesh. There’d been the wet shine of grateful tears along his cheeks. He had smiled. He had looked relieved. In the half second before they reached him, before he was leavened into their mass, I saw Sullivan open his arms, and while he mightnot have enjoyed the process of dying, for a moment at least he certainly welcomed it.

I hope you’ve been paying attention, by the way.

This wasn’t a lie but some of the rest is.

AFTER

I have been dreaming of my friends. I can call them that now, I think: hindsight creates a kind of affection and besides, the dead can’t hold anything against anyone, least of all grief. I dreamt mostly of Rowan at first; then it was Gracelynn and Kevin holding hands as they wandered through endless corridors; then Johanna, who no longer had a face, only a bleeding fissure where one should have been. I even dreamt of Delilah and Sullivan as he was before the faculty unmade him into bones and effluvium.

The night before this, I dreamt of all of them at the same time, coming together to sit in an open-air auditorium. The chairs were the color of fresh blood and the sky above was starless and black. Their faces were a bloodless white, cauled with a pink-tinged vernix. They looked like a wedding party on their high-backed, gore-red chairs, staring down at an empty stage. They looked like your judgment, a jury of dead waiting for the executioner to arrive.

If the arc of the moral universe truly bent toward justice, I’d be nothing but a honeycombed corpse right now. But such things like decency are nothing but human inventions. The cosmos bends nowhere except toward annihilation.

You showed us that.

By the time you read this paragraph, I should be at your door.I advise you to stay there instead of evacuating. Otherwise, I will have to look for you and in doing so, I will have to eat through everything and everyone you love. I will devour all of it. And as they die, I will make sure they know you’re the reason for their agony. So, for their sake, stay for me. Commune with whatever you hold holy. Leave instruction on what to do with your earthly belongings. Make peace with yourself.

Give me a moment and I will show you everything you taught us at Hellebore.