Second hour of history and last lesson of my day. I’m knocked out. I can’t take my life anymore. Why learning who did what and in what year, when I can’t even remember what I ate last night?! I look at the board and try to understand the teacher’s hieroglyphics. No, but it’s a “d” or an “f”?! I continued like this for a few minutes when I felt a cold atmosphere around me. Another idiot who had opened the window, it’s the middle of December, shit!

 

Night was falling, I looked at the time: 5.49 P.M. 6 minutes left. 6 long minutes to resist before being able to join my soft and comforting bed. My eyelids feel heavy and I begin to sink under the heavy weight of the clock’s regular ticking. Falling to the dark and infernal abyss of the sleep of the last hour of class. My eyes sting and close automatically …

 

The full dark …

 

Tic Tac Tic Tac Tic Tac

 

I open one eye, then the second and …

 

What?! What is this mess?!

 

I’m in the same room as before, the same cold atmosphere, the same place and the same position. But yet, everything is different. There is no one left, everything is dilapidated, and the black board is swept away by several more or less huge scratches. I turn inward and notice only the state of things : dark, grim … I try to get up but I am glued to my chair. I touch my desk without doing it on purpose, I feel that a sticky substance is clumping there. Then I feel it dripping down my pants … Oh shit ! Brand new, all white jeans too !

 

A familiar noise makes me turn my head and I see the door open to reveal a huge dark figure, which then enters the classroom and what I see makes my blood run cold. At the bottom of this figure, two sparkling rubies are staring at me. I knew it was advancing but its footsteps were almost inaudible. It slowly approaches me, gets to my level and pauses what looks very much like its finger on my forehead, gently. I then feel a kind of electric stream going through my whole body, my muscles are burning and my head is heavy. It’s then that I’m like propelled against a hard thing that seems to be a wall, a transparent wall, as when we enter another dimension in the movies. I now hear a voice calling me, but it is far away, like millions of light years from me …

It’s getting louder little by little, and I can distinctly hear :

 

“Miss Ross … Miss Ross … Miss ROSS ! AMELIE ROSS !!!”

 

I feel myself falling and find myself on the ground. Laughter burst from everywhere. I get up and notice that everything is back to normal, no more scratch board, dilapidated class and above all no more dark mass but Mrs Pouchnavov, my history-geography teacher. I sit back down and she asks me a question about the lesson :

 

“Well, you, Miss Ross, what can you say about the black mass that these peasants would have seen ?”

 

I look at my sheet of paper and my eyes start glancing at the black stains on my pants. I mumble an answer :

 

“What is … A … Real creature ? …”

 

“False ! The “Black Mass” represented the Black Death in the Middle Age …”

 

She continues to talk but I’m already not listening anymore, I look at the time, and one more strange thing, it hasn’t moved and has remained the same : 5:49 p.m., before gently switching to 5:50 p.m. The endless minutes I spent in this kind of … Alternate universe ? would never have happened ?!

 

But it’s not possible ! I couldn't dream anyway ! It’s impossible ! I couldn’t dream of this !