"Where the hell are you bringing us, Ella?"

The boy wiped the sweat dripping down the side of his forehead, his steps long, trying to catch up without tripping on tree roots of the forest. Three others followed behind him, while a girl with long dark blonde hair lead up front, almost leaping across the forest ground as she avoided roots and mud and ants nests as if she had memorised the floor plan. She only glanced back a bit, pausing for a few seconds to let her friends catch up before starting again. The boy at the end of the line scrunched his eyebrows at the top of his nose in frustration.

"We'll be there soon enough, come on," the girl ahead replied.

"Will, you're not much slower than her," a girl with jet black hair and a nose ring called from behind. "It's really getting on my self esteem."

"Your constant refusal to join me at the gym calls for it," Will replied, smirking while wiping his blond hair back. "Hey Ella, break time," he called at the girl further up. She glanced back, rolled her eyes and stopped in her tracks, crossing her arms.

"I'm not into putting myself through voluntary pain," Lorenza told.

"Can we not talk about working out right now?" the girl just behind Will asked. She was two feet shorter than him with glasses slipping down her nose bridge, and just as much sweat as Will but refused to slow down - she'd rather not be left behind. "Ella, can we please know where you're bringing us? Maybe we'll be a bit more excited about this."

"We would have found out by now if you guys wouldn't be such babies about this," she replied from afar. "Literally, we're a minute away."

"I better not be disappointed," the other boy, standing at about Lorenza's height, said in a low voice as he passed the other three, wanting to get a head start. He had dark skin and curls at the top of his head, his temper holding up only until now.

"Chill out, Chad," Will patted the guy on the back before he followed along.

"Come on, Hedy," Lorenza said as she passed the girl with glasses. Hedy gave a deep sigh. At the back of the line, as expected, she thought to herself.

Not far from where they had stopped, Ella turned to look at the team. She gave a grin, holding her arms out at the clearing. The patch contrasted to the rest of the forest, in which the trees had turned into stumps and roots into bumpy soils, leaves gathered into patches randomly. On top of one of the stumps lay a shovel and gardening gloves. "You will never guess what lies beneath these soils."

"Dead bodies?" Will joked without smiling.

"Actually, you're spot on."

The rest of the group went silent. Lorenza spoke up first.

"Are you... serious?"

"Yes, I am," Ella grinned as she reached for the shovel and started digging at one of the what seemed like random bumps of soil, but now resembles graves to the group, with the patches or leaves cleverly disguised as headstones.

"You're really creeping me out, Ella," Hedy announced as she hugged her own torso in discomfort.

"It's like what we talked about, guys," she told in between breaths. "The world isn't going to make anymore sense if we keep letting idiots lead us. We have to do something about it, and where do we start? Right at home, of course." She stopped digging, wiping at her forehead. She then reached down to dust off some of the soil, then pulled out a detached head by the hair from the ground. Hedy gave a half-screech half-gasp, but stopped herself, closing her mouth with her hands.

"What the fuck?" Chad shouted. "Is that... Principal Gully?"

"Yea that idiot of a principal we have. Shouldn't have suspended me for writing a paper on how the government was spending too much on military. Sucks to be him."

"Ella you not only insulted the president but also the entire office for a class taught by a proud Republican. It was called for," Lorenza tried to reason. It seemed useless now though, since the principal didn't even have a drop of blood in his brain anymore. "Is there... more of these?"

"Well the principal and Ms. Shrewder, that proud Republican is a good start, but next, the president, then, the world, of course."

"Ella you're fucking insane," Chad said in a shaky voice. "We can't go around killing people for the small stupid decisions they make."

"Oh, yea, we're not gonna kill every single idiot out there, well not yet," Ella explained as she waved the head around with pride. "We start at the top then we work our way down. See how easy it is to get to the principal? With a few more practice killings we might as well book for a flight to DC now."

"I'm getting the fuck out of here," Chad announced, pacing towards the way they came from.

"Not so fast," Ella said calmly, pulling a pistol out of her jacket pocket, pointing at Hedy. "You go and this girl dies."

"Bullshit," Chad called. Ella pulled at the trigger, and Hedy screamed as a bullet shot through her thighs. Chad stopped in his tracks, and Lorenza went to catch the girl as she dropped to her knees, both trying to stop the blood from flowing out.

"Anything else you're gonna call out as bullshit?" Ella asked. She tossed the head at Will, letting him see it up close. "As you can see, I'm not about bullshitting."

Will had a good look at the principal's wrinkled face - his thin lips were curved downwards, slightly parted, his eyelids revealed the maggots underneath already starting to feast on his eyeballs. The boy dropped the head at the sight of the maggots, almost bursting into tears out of fear and disgust.

"Ella, it was all talk, okay?" Lorenza said, her voice a mixture of fear and calm. "We didn't really think of killing anyone. We can stop this right now. Killing is wrong, especially when they didn't do anything to deserve to die. We won't be able to get away with it anyway. We're just five high school kids."

"I didn't think of you as the cowardly type, Lorenza," Ella sighed. "I gotta say, I'm disappointed."

"It's not about being brave, it's about doing the right-"

Another bullet went through Lorenza's forehead, in between her eyes. Hedy screamed again as the body next to her turned limp. Tears started to form as she sobbed. The two boys shook in their places as they glared at Ella in fear. The girl looked away, her hands shaking. Despite being the new girl in town, Lorenza had been the one who let Ella into her circle. For once in her five years of switching schools every few months, Ella felt like she belonged somewhere. Why did Lorenza had to defy her like this? Why couldn't she just accept who Ella was for who she is?

"Bitch was the one who said Principal Gully deserved to die."

Labels: death, horror, murder, the unreal, violence

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