Sara, pacing the halls, was mightily interested in getting to her next class. Her heels let out awkward arrhythmic clicks as she scurried clumsily through the throng of people in front, beside and behind her. She slipped, nearly falling face first on account of her footwear's lack of traction and refusal to afford her proper humanoid balance, barely managing to catch on to her friend Sheila (who coincidentally) just happened to be there, avoiding the tragic embarrassment in front of a large crowd the spill would inevitably have brought.

It was at this point that Sara seriously considered not wearing heels anymore.

"Thanks Sheila," she gasped, pushing off her savior friend's spaghetti strapped shoulders into a wobbling upright, "I could have died!"

"Yeah!" her friend answered, "You're so lucky I was here. Maybe you should stop wearing heels!"

It was this point that Sara altogether stopped seriously considering not wearing heels. Clearly Sheila was trying to exploit the situation and her momentarily foggy, exasperated mental state as a way of convincing her to do something that would make her look less pretty. CLEARLY. Because Sheila was a totally jealous tramp who would totally do that sort of thing. For real. Sara's face went cold, angry at the thought for a small moment - before she become aware and quickly remade it into the glazed, oft-practiced plastic cherub's half-smile people knew her by.

So, she had to, absolutely had to keep wearing heels. Looking pretty was a very important thing to Sara. It was the only way she could find a boxy, successful hunk of a man with a shiny car to impregnate her.

"Maybe I will!" Sara laughed out in grainy high pitch, a half second late answer to her friend's insidious attempted life-sabatoge of a suggestion.

The pair continued walking, not wanting to interrupt the flow of scurrying student.

"So how's stuff like?" Asked Sheila, not looking Sara in the eye.

"It's all going in, like, kind of a good way, I think," Answered Sara, not looking Sheila in the eye.

And two silent minutes later they'd arrived at the door of their classroom, Senior Economics.



--
Sheila brushed Sara's hair as the teacher talked, hating her, wanting more than anything to rip out a big chunk of it in one stiff stroke, because it was better than her own.

"Good morning class," their teacher spoke in a pained high volume husk, like she'd been screaming, crying, sobbing for some reason and was on the verge of doing it again.

"Good Morning Mrs. Kavenaw," the class responded in grey voiced unison. One student let out a loud yawn.

"Now obviously...today, today we're not going to be doing what we normally do," her voice cracked, "It just wouldn't be appropriate." Mrs. Kavenaw fished a handkerchief out of her blouse pocket and whispered a soft "Excuse me."

"So, instead, we're going to take some time to discuss what happened over the weekend, as a class. I understand the state of grief and shock all of you must be in right now. It's ok, I'm there too. I think we all are. And if can we just come together and help one another, and realize our shared humanity, I think we can all get through this."

"So does this mean we're not going to have any homework tonight?" Asked a sunglasses clad boy slouch-lounging in the back of the classroom.

"Um, well, yes." Answered the teacher.

Another boy uttered the lyrics to a topical pop song in celebration. Everyone started laughing.

"Oh god," sobbed Mrs. Kavenaw, face in hands, "It's so beautiful that you all can muster humour at so horrible a time as this."

A girl raised her hand.

"Yes Belinda? Do you have something to share with the class?" The stricken teacher inquired.

"I don't get it..." The girl whined inquisitively.

"Get what?"

"What happened..."

"That's inconceivable. There's no way you could possibly have not heard anything about what's happened in the past three days. I mean, christ, aside from the noise of it all being impossible for Helen Keller to not notice, every able media outlet on the planet has been documenting it nonstop-"

"Well, I heard something, I guess..."

"Something as in what?"

"Like, something about...Nukler?"

"Yes, Nuclear holocaust, honey. We had one."

"Oh," the girl said, putting her hand down and fishing some nail polish out of her purse.

Another student, a boy with spiky purple hair, raised his hand timidly, "So is that why my dad became a flesh eating zombie and killed my entire family?"

"Yes." Kavenaw began to redden, losing her temper.

At that moment a loud, piercing siren went off, causing a few of the students to nonchalantly look up from what they were doing. Just a few, though.

"Ok, stay calm, that just means a mutant gang or two have made it onto the campus, no need for alarm, the security forces should have it taken care of in no-"

Before she could finish her sentence the devil was spoken of and a gnarled walking starfish shaped beast with a vaguely humanoid face dominated by a dripping set of razor sharp dog's teeth came crashing through the window, heading straight for the TA, who was intently playing a game on his cellphone.

"Dude, I totally had a high score," the assistant yelled, mildly annoyed as he was violently ripped to pieces.

At this Kavenaw let out a mad shriek, pulling a 9mm glock out of her pocket, unloading an entire clip into the monster without so much as blinking. Blood flew everywhere as the monster desperately lunged for the temporarily insane faculty member. A bullet connected with it's head and it collapsed.

Mrs. Kavenaw, drenched from head to toe in red mutant plasma, threw the gun to floor, slumped against the classroom wall, and began to sob uncontrollably.

Someone yawned.