The hands of the clock tick by with an unrestrained monotony. This is a cruel and unusual punishment. Technically it should be unconstitutional, illegal. Not that it really matteres much considering that detention is a punishment congress is well aware- and even approves of. I hadn't really even done anything wrong though. I'd tried to tell the principal that when Mrs.Frisa had brought me in for superglueing Sam Pipers butt to his school desk. Which let it be known I did not do. True I did laugh right along with the rest of the class, guffawing into near hysterics. I wouldn't have done so though if Sam himself hadn't been laughing too. Sam had a great sense of humor and was very popular in our fourth-grade class. Nearly all the girls wanted him and all the guys wanted to hang with him. He was cute, funny, and very nice. I myself had a crush on him.

People played pranks on Sam frequently, mostly because he always took them very well. This was a bit of an escalation from the earlier pranks and Mrs.Frisa was finally fed up with her class being perpetually disrupted. For some reason her investigation led her to me. It was true that I had played a prank or two on Sam Piper, but never anything too terribly disruptive. Certainly not the one I was currently being punished for. Mrs.Frisa had simply taken me to the Principals office, told the principal that she thought I was the prankster and got me two months of detention! Two months and my protests went completely unheard. Mrs.Frisa hadn't even pretended to listen when I pleaded my innocence to her.

So now I was alone in a semi-dark empty classroom with nothing to do but listen to the hands of the clock tick-tock by. It had been an hour since I had been brought here and I had another 3 hours to go. My head began to droop over the desk, my eyelids forced down to closing by an unseen weight. Soon the arm that had been supporting my head slipped and became a pillow for my now unconscious head. I don't know how long I was out. It might have been a couple of hours, it may have only been a few minutes. I was awoken by an insistent tap-tapping on my shoulder.

"What?" I said sleepily, not remembering where I was or why I was here.

"Come on Lani we gotta go!" a voice said.

"Tom?" I said recognizing his voice. Tom was another one of my classmates. He was kind of the equivalent of a goth, although in fourth grade version. Some of the other kids were a little creeped out by his obvious interest in spiders, snakes, and other weird stuff but I kind of liked Tom. He was nice to me and we hung out sometimes.

"Come on Lani we need to go!" Tome repeated grabbing my arm and pulling me up.

"Why?" I asked, suddenly much more awake.

"There coming for you Lani we have to go before they get here!"

"Who's coming for me?"

"They are." Tom replied.

"Tom I don't know who they are and your not supposed to be here- I'm in detention!"

"Lani there going to hurt you if we don't go"

"Who's going to hurt me who's coming?"

A noise sounded from somewhere outside the closed classroom door. Tom groaned.

"There already here. It's too late We have to hide Lani, come on!"

I was really awake- and scared now.

"I'm coming Tom, but where do we hide?"

"Under here" Tom replied pointing to a tent our class had built and partially taken down yesterday.

We both ducked under they heavy cloth just as the door opened and Mrs.Frisa and the Principal stepped in. Through a slit in the cloth I watched them walk in- only they weren't really walking. Their feet never seemed to touch the ground and they sort of seemed to slither through the air. It was quite a peculiar thing to watch. They spoke then, but it was not a language any human tongue could form the words of. They spoke in the language of snakes, hissing and spitting to form the syllables of words. They searched the room. For a moment I was puzzled, what were they looking for? Then with the icy chill of terror I realized that they were looking for me. I shrank closer to Tom, away from the slit opening. My heart nearly stopped when the Principal came within an inch of discovering our hiding place. When they had searched the whole room they turned to each other and began to speak in that menacing language of theirs again. They spoke for about five minutes and then stopped.

"Come out, come out wherever you are Lani" Mrs.Frisa said in what was recognizable as English, but the pronunciation was altered in a way similar to the snake language she'd been speaking before.

She moved across the room, scanning the dark for me. She threw her head back and breathed in a huge breath of air, her black forked tongue flicked out to taste the scents carried on the air. She moved towards us then. Slowly, menacingly, inexorably closer. The clock hands beat like a war drum in my ears, my heart beat so fast I feared it would burst. Then Mrs.Frisa bent forward and ever so gently lifted the tent flap to expose Tom and me inside. All I could see was green eye with a black vertical slit, exactly like a snakes, as she came closer.

I woke with a scream.

"Are you alright?" Mrs.Frisa asked hurrying in from her office next door.

I blinked several times looking around in confusion. I had been sure that something terrible had been about to happen, although I couldn't remember what.

"Shh honey it was just a bad dream, you fell asleep." Mrs.Frisa said soothingly holding me while I shook.

I nodded silently.

"Come on I'll drive you home" Mrs.Frisa said as she put her arm around my shoulders and led me out of the classroom.

We walked side by side out of the classroom and through the schools empty halls. As we reached the car I looked at Mrs.Frisa's face. She looked the same as usual, brown hair, pale skin, sweet face everything was normal except for hr eyes. Her eyes- which were usually brown like her hair- were now green with black vertical slits.

Just like a snake

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