text: I was alone in the library when I heard the first scream. I had snuck off to take my own tour of the museum. Don’t get me wrong, the teachers were doing great--it was the students who were driving me insane. Sure, field trips and museum tours were probably lame for a senior in high school, but I was loving it. The museum made me feel like I was in Europe, and since I’d been dreaming to get out of Oklahoma my entire life, I was soaking it up. I had left my group and made my way to the ancient library when it all started. I was browsing through the shelves and admiring the heavy leather texts when I heard the sound that made everything go cold. Quietly but quickly, I made my way out of the library and toward the cafeteria. There hadn’t been any more screams. Is that a good or bad sign? I forced myself to go down the stairwell instead of running away. Everything in my body wanted to sprint the opposite way, but something in my gut was telling me to figure this out. Again, good or bad sign? I had to see where the scream came from. It wasn’t a playful scream like you’d be unsurprised to hear from high school students having a day away from classrooms. It was a scream of pain that slipped into a guttural cry by the end. I’d never heard anything like it, but I imagined it’s what dying animals sounded like. When I found the cafeteria, everything was quiet. Maybe the scream hadn’t come from here? Or maybe I’d imagined it? Maybe it *was* a dying animal- something had probably made its way into the museum from the outside and gotten itself trapped. I almost convinced myself, but that same gut feeling from before told me I needed to stay and watch this unfold. That’s when I understood the danger. There was no screaming, but it was completely silent. When I had walked past the cafeteria on my way to the library, I’d heard the usual sounds of students and friend groups as they ate and hung out during the lunch break. Now there was nothing. I made myself control my breathing as I felt my stomach making its way into my throat. I wanted to throw up, something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t move from this spot. I had pressed myself against the wall and now I slowly moved to look around the corner into the cafeteria. The adrenaline pulsing through me got stronger and I felt like my entire body was moving with it. I moved until I had the cafeteria in full view. At first, it looked empty, but then I realized that all the students were in the wrong places--under the tables. Except for two. Two students were slowly walking down the center aisle of the room. They seemed...off. They were walking too slow, too calculated. There was something else too, but I couldn’t place it. I looked at the students under the table closest to me. One of them was staring at the two walking students, but the other was looking at me with wide, fearful eyes. I think she was shaking her head at me. *Was this a horror movie?* Suddenly, noise and movement erupted from the center of the room. One of the walking students had flipped a table with incredible ease. The other reached out and grabbed one of the hiding students and lifted him off the floor. Then, as easily as you’d move a bite of food to your mouth to eat it, he brought the student closer. And ripped his throat open. Now it was color’s turn to erupt. Bright red flashed almost instantaneously over the boy’s body. Everything moved in slow motion as I watched the liquid flow over his clothes and onto the floor. I looked up at his face. In the slowest moments in time, it changed from confused and panicked to completely empty. The blood stopped flowing from his throat and his body drooped, only held up by the arm of the attacker. Without so much as a breath, the attacker dropped the boy and his body hit the floor with a thud. Somehow, no one was screaming. The students under the tables weren’t moving. They were staring at the lifeless body of their classmate as it lay in the puddle of blood on the linoleum. I think we were all waiting for what was going to happen next, even though there’s no way any of us saw it coming. The two walking students hadn’t moved since the attack. The one who had flipped the table was standing cooly and looking around, except his eyes didn’t really seem like they were seeing anything. The other student was staring down at the pool of blood on the floor, his eyes also slightly out of focus. There was something extremely off about them, and I was clenching my jaw in an attempt to get my brain to work faster. I know I had noticed something, I just needed to make it clear. Then three things happened in the same instant. The lifeless body on the floor twitched. The attacker’s eyes came sharply into focus. And I realized a piece of what was happening.