Bell Knoll Academy

The young man had just gotten home from work. He was weary as he sat on his couch and pulled a beer from the case he had next to it. The sound of the fizzing and popping was a welcome sound as he laid his head back and turned on the television. He enjoyed this ritual every night after coming home from work, tired as a corpse and hurting as if he went three rounds with Mike Tyson.

He turned the television to a horror movie, as was part of this Friday night ritual. He drank his beer and ate some pizza that he later ordered through an application on his phone. His roommate didn’t come down stairs to talk to him tonight. Or maybe he was still at work at the bar. The young man was too tired to remember. By the end of the movie, he had run through half his thirty-rack and decided he needed to save some for tomorrow before he went to the around the corner.

He wanted to get up off the couch, but couldn’t force his tired aching body to do so. He slowly lost consciousness from the lethargy induced by his nightly beverages. As he drifted to what he believed to be a welcome break from reality, he heard a faint voice. “Welcome to the Academy, child.”

The young man found himself lying on the floor. He stood and studied his surroundings. There was nothing familiar. This wasn’t his house, his couch and TV were gone. The room was empty with only one door across the black and white checkered floored room. The walls were white and barren and there were no windows. There were no lights hanging from the ceiling, yet the room was illuminated. He crossed the room and entered the door.

On the other side, there was a corridor. Once again, there was no windows, photos, anything. He began to cross the hallway, and when he got about halfway across, he heard the door slam shut behind him. He turned and the door was only a couple of inches behind him. What the hell, he thought. He turned back around and found that where he was standing before, there was a small object sitting on the floor. As he approached it, he found it was a doll. Just a small porcelain doll.

This posed a problem. When the young man looked at porcelain dolls, they made a chill go up his spine. And if he was handed one, he would not move. He could not move. So he just stood there. Staring. The doll sat there silent for about three whole minutes. He then heard a small girl’s voice. “Won’t you play with me?”

The young man’s knees began to shake and he began to sweat. The doll then looked up at him and opened her mouth to reveal two rows of shark-like teeth. He then ran as hard as he could towards the doll, shut his eyes once he was in range, and launched his foot. He struck nothing but air.

The young man opened his eyes to find there was nothing there. He was standing before another door and was at the end of the corridor. Or was it the same door? He turned around to find that there was no other door behind him. He hesitated before turning back around, remembering the satan doll just seconds ago. He was beginning to regret… He couldn’t remember anything from before he woke on the floor in the first room. He reached behind him for the door knob, found it, twisted it and then turned back around. He entered the room, and saw yet another empty room.

Wait. No, it wasn’t empty. There was a TV in the room. It looked familiar. It was almost as if he had been looking at this exact TV not long ago. Before he could have any more thoughts on the matter, the screen switched on. It displayed static like it would have on the old cathode-ray tube televisions. The young man took a step toward the television.

“Halt, child.” The voice coming from the screen also sounded familiar. “Welcome, you have entered into the esteemed academy of Bell Knoll,” it continued, “this school is not of the world you come from. I have chosen you for this examination because of your wit and desire to live, though you bumble through life pretending you don’t care about it. This is not only a test for your determination of life, but it is also a lesson as to just how important your life actually is to you. You are to escape the confines of this school before the sun rises in your world and for extra incentive, I have wiped your memory while you are here and you will have no sense of what time it actually is. Do you have any questions?”

The young man thought about what the monitor had said. “What’s your name, Mr. All Knowing Television?” He asked in a sarcastic tone.

“You may call me Dean, as I am somewhat of the dean here on campus.”

The young man once again pondered Dean’s proposition. “What if I refuse? What are you going to do, kill me?”

The television was silent for a moment. “Yes and no. Your body outside of this world will cease to function, as I only transferred your spirit here. But you will never be able to leave this academy. It will become your new life and you will serve as a lesson to those who come after you just as the students here will serve as your reminder of what fate awaits you should you fail.”

The young man was quiet for a second and the TV spoke again. “Remember, child, you have only a limited amount of time and you are wasting it, standing there and asking me questions. When you are ready, turn around and go back out the door from where you entered this room.”

The young man did as he was bade. As he exited the room, he entered another hallway and saw lockers and doors. A bell rang, so he went into one of the classrooms and sat at a seat. People began to shuffle in as a second bell rang throughout the school. About ten minutes passed with no instructor entering, so he turned to a student and asked “Hey man, how do I get out of here? I’m trying to ditch this class.”

The student lifted his head from his notebook and the young man was startled to see he had no face. It was just skin, stretched over his skull and small hints of facial features. He picked up his notebook and showed the young man what he was writing. “What are you doing, he will kill you. Run, man!”

And as soon as the young man had finished reading, the door burst open with a staticky cathode tube TV on the carts they used to push them around on for movie days rushing through it. Although the cart had two metal arms and they picked up a table and smashed it to pieces. It then turned to him.

A jolt ran through the young man and he flipped the desk next to him on his way out the door. He could hear the static dying down as he turned corners and cut through classrooms. He came to a locked door with a chain running through the handles at the end of a corridor. He pulled and pushed the door as hard as he could, punching and kicking it at times, since the sign above it had those illuminated magic four letters: “EXIT”.

Apparently his sudden fit had garnered attention. He could hear more static beginning to come his way. He thought he could pick out three different sets of static coming from three different directions. He thought for a moment and began rifling through the lockers. He found a girls hairpin and shoved it into the padlock on the chain as hard as he could. He then ducked into a locker and waited.

About forty seconds passed and one of the monitors came into his vision through the slits of the top of the locker. He watched as the they illuminated from the left, moved to the right and disappeared again. The static then got much louder and the young man struggled to contain his breathing. He began sweating profusely and he held his hands to keep them from shaking, as if the televisions could hear the rattling of his bones and would surely find him.

He was relieved when they finally started rattling the chain and he heard it snap. More static. Even louder than before. It was making his head hurt. The young man’s head felt as if it was going to pop. The slits at the top of the locker illuminated once more and then went dark again. He waited until he could no longer hear the static and exited the locker.

Sure enough, the chain lay on the floor and the door was clear. He took a step toward the door and heard the static again, this time growing more loud more rapidly. “Oh fuck this,” he muttered. The young man ran and threw the doors open. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the doors slammed shut behind him and he heard the chain slide back into place.

In the room he entered there was another TV. It was exactly like the first one. Except in the screen, he saw a room. He saw a bed with a figure lying in it. He saw a fat, grey and white cat pawing at the figure as if trying to wake him. He stuck a hand into the TV and saw the hand of the figure move. He saw light coming through the window and leapt through the monitor.

The young man’s eyes opened and he heard a faint voice, that of the Dean. “Don’t make me drag you back here again, child.”

The young man pet his cat and tried to remember the hazy details of the nightmare. Of what he thought was a nightmare, but when he tried to recall it, it just gave him a headache. He could remember the boy without the face, the notebook, and the Dean. He most of all remembered the Dean, and the bastard’s sick game.

He heard his roommate screaming at what he assumed was his gaming console, or the idiots he was playing with, or just the game in general. He shrugged it off and went and knocked on the door. “Come in,” replied the gruff voice of a man who spent all night drinking and playing video games and not sleeping. The young man opened the door.

“Hey man, I fell asleep drunk on the couch last night, did you help me to bed?”

“Nah, I came in late from work and you were heading up the stairs, I asked if everything was alright, because I didn’t see you at the bar… like at all. You just said ‘I have to pass this test’ and went upstairs, I’m assuming to bed. You good?”

“Man, I have absolutely no idea, but I think it’s best that I start accepting rides home from the bar instead of crawling home.”

“What are you talking about, my guy?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.” The young man turned and left the room, and as he made his way downstairs, he could swear he heard Dean chuckling from his bedroom door. When he turned around, there was no one there.