A Cold Day in Hell

The characters and incidents portrayed and the names of herein are fictitious and any similarity to the names, character or history of any person is herein coincidental and unintentional.

The chill air in the room pierced my skin like daggers. I was cuddling myself in my place. I took another glance at the time. It passed extremely slow, for some strange reason. Every second in the stone-cold room was torment. The silence between me and Wilee stretched out. She looked tired and wretched, as usual. She told me she just slept for an hour or so. I was with her. Our conversation ended at that point.

A few moments passed and I heard footsteps walking up the hallway. I closed my eyes and listened. The footsteps were getting louder as he walked into the room. The voices of chatter from the back fell into a grim silence. All eyes were on him as he was setting up his equipments. The room became strangely silent, I could hear my own heart beating.

I took out my notes from my bag, so as the others. The first half an hour of the lecture went smoothly and the tension in the room mounted. A sudden chill swept over the room as he raised his voice. I feel my stress level rising as he began to pick random students to answer his hardcore questions.

However, our lamentation did not last long, before he left the room for a break. I witnessed as almost more than three quarters of my classmates were leaving the room. Even Wilee grabbed her bag and was leaving.

“One and a half hour of this torment is enough for today,” she said with a sigh, before she went out of my sight.

My eyes glued on her back until the last strand of her hair went out of sight. Then, I turned at the people sitting behind me.

“You staying?” I asked.

“Why am I staying here? To disturb him some more?” she replied moodily.

The conflict between my heart and my mind arose. I heard a whispering voice in my brain, urging me to leave the room. Maybe my ‘flight or fight’ response had been activated.

After a while, only ten or so were staying, scattered around far from each other. Some of them were copying each other’s answers at the back. Some were emo-ing. I took a long, hard stare at them. Then, I made up my mind, grabbed my bag and walked to the back of the class to get myself a seat near to the others. I would never sit alone in front.

The other classmates of mine started to grab their belongings and sat near to each other until we formed a small crowd at the back of the room. Even the foreign student in our class, who wasn’t so close with us, came to sit with us.

“I didn’t bring my questions,” he said, “I don’t want him to ask me ‘where are your questions? where are your questions? where are your questions?’ again.”

We burst into laughter. Suddenly, we became like a family. That was the great source of warmth in the cold room. As everyone had found themselves a safe place to sit, he slipped in again like a shadow, through the back door, controlling every one of us through fear. No one ever dared to look into his fiery eyes.

He put down his belongings, his eyes ran over the room.

“Why are you all sitting at the back?” he asked.

“It’s cold in front there,” some of us said in unison.

“What? I don’t believe you,” he said, smirking, “This is ridiculous.”

[to be continued, for the torment never ends]