A Guide to Popularity
Chapter 1: Earthquake
I took a slow and uneasy step outside of my shaken room. The school campus looked relatively the same, aside from a few shattered windows and smashed walls. What did I expect really? Being an academy of this caliber, they had to make sure it was durable. I let out a sigh of relief as Caroline in her anxiety, approached slowly behind me, taking paranoid steps that followed mine. With every step I took, the sound of crunching grass was barely audible as my feet pressed against the ground. With only the delicate touch of moonlight to guide me, I continued walking forward on my path.
“Think any casualties happened on campus?” Caroline’s morbid questioning caught me off guard. I too a brief pause to think, and resumed to move forward. She was a perfect example of “assume the worst first.” I knew her all too well, and in most cases her paranoia was laughable to me. As I pressed on to explore the campus her words drilled themselves into my brain. Over and over again I heard that sentence replaying in my head like a broken record. My steps came to silent halt as I turned my head to face her.
“It’s unlikely, considering how small scale the quake was.” She blinked a few times while staring at me with a blank expression. Her lips curved into a sour yet confused pout. With crossed arms, her face turned away from me repulsed, and I could only interpret that she’d taken offense to my previous statement. I ignored her disgruntled body language and resumed my predestined path into the school’s lobby.
“Wait, what if the earthquake isn’t over?” Yet again, her point was valuable, and served as a miniature block on my road. I held my forefinger and thumb up to my chin and stroked it tentatively. I gazed into the school lobby at a distance, pondering whether entering would bring me to good or bad fates.
“Well, if it isn’t over, that’s just my loss, although I’m fairly confident that the quakes have ended.” My feet pressed along the moonlit path, crunching the grass and occasionally small pieces of rubble until I finally reached the school lobby’s doors. Their golden handles served as a symbol of what the school was. A lustrous handle that lead to a pathway of prestigious perfection. I crossed my fingers and took a breath, hoping the boarding school was still intact on the inside. With one fast and firm push, I opened the academy’s doors. That was my first mistake.
When the doorway parted, a blinding yellow light came to meet me. The first set of televisions in the room were brightly illuminated. The only image on the screens was a mysterious silhouette, with a sunny yellow backdrop. That silhouette was the beginning of sorrows, a shadow that I would come to hate in due time. The earthquakes before were just a precursor of the tragedy to come. Those first steps were my metaphorical suicide. Like a fish falling for a lure, I’d signed my own death warrant.
With every few steps, another set of screens illuminated the halls, and every screen displayed that same ominous silhouette. Even though it was one recurring image, and even though the figure couldn’t see through the screen, it felt as if a million eyes were locked onto me. The weight slowly built up on top of my shoulders, the burden growing heavier and heavier as I walked along. “Do you know what it is?”
“No, I don’t know.” Caroline stared at me wide eyed, with her jaw slightly agape.
“Well, it doesn’t seem good, and I think we should head back to our rooms.”
I opened my mouth to swelter Carol’s nervous yammering, but before my words could unload, a loud voice cut me off. “Any students absent for the debriefing will be expelled.” I looked back up at the screen, to see the shadowy figure alive, lifelike. Like Frankenstein’s monster brought to life. All four of the figures hands were clasped together in set of two. I couldn’t quite see their face, but I heard a smile in their voice. A malicious smile, one that sent a horrible chill down my spine. “Who are you, and what do you want with us?”
A long, loud slurping sound came from the speakers as one of the figures hands lifted a cup to its mouth. The figure smacked its lips and slowly lowered the cup back to its desk. “Good question. Come to the auditorium and you might find out.” I gritted my teeth. For the first time in forever, I was scared. I hadn’t felt vulnerable in a very long time, but something about this person, this thing. It had a terrifyingly powerful presence, and that was only over a screen. I felt almost obligated to obey it. It acted as if it had strings attached to me, and in believing that, placebo effect claimed me as another one its countless victims.
Behind me, Carol trembled, small whimpers crawling from her mouth as she bit her lip. I held a finger up and opened my mouth to speak. This time there was nothing to interrupt me, but I didn’t know what to say. I was terrified as well. My lips slowly closed, sealing my once gaping jaw shut. My finger lowered and my open hand rested next to my hip. I took a calm breath through my nose, and once again prepared to speak. “Acting on impulse can’t result in anything good, right? He also said that anyone absent for the debriefing will be expelled. I say, it’s best we listen to them for now.”
Caroline grunted in disgust, seemingly annoyed by response, but given the logic she was willing to comply. “Well, does that mean we just head to the auditorium?” I gave her a firm nod and continued down the hallway.
“It appears so.”  My footsteps clapped against the ground as I walked through the hall. Every screen I passed by flashed to life, its bright light reflecting on the iron lockers. Caroline as usual trailed close behind, shivering in fear as she did. I kept up my steady pace, until I came to the entrance door to the auditorium. Again, I was met with two golden doorknobs. I grabbed them both, and shoved the door open. Me and Caroline stood in an open doorway, and upon walking through, we came to face most of the student body, already waiting to meet us. Caroline slowly seized up behind me, clinging to my shoulders and trying to stay unnoticed.
I walked down the aisle, like a bride preparing to meet her groom, but this wasn’t a marriage between one person and another. This was a marriage between me and dread. As I walked along, it felt as if fear itself had manifested within the room. Caroline’s grip grew tighter and tighter, until we eventually reached a small gap in the crowd left for us. “Well, do any of you know what we’re here for?” A vast array of expressions plagued the audience, ranging between sad, confused and enraged.
“I woke up from the quake, and the next thing I know, I got a message on my television. Some dork told me to come here.” I turned to meet the person who’d spoken up. He wasn’t a student I recognized. He had spiky brown hair that looked like a muddy explosion and his complexion was slightly darker than most people in the room,. His icy blue eyes had a gaze that seemed almost mesmerizing. His green button up shirt was tattered with dirt, and his white travel pants were no different.
“I, am not some dork. I, am the new headmaster of this school.” With that, the curtains parted and we finally came to greet the figure who’d been harassing us for the past twenty minutes after the quake. Upon first seeing him, I came to the shocking revelation: he wasn’t human.
He had four arms, and every last hand was gloved in a cover of white. On his torso, was a glittery red tuxedo, with gold studded around the collar and down the middle. His pants were black as ink, like the night sky had seeped into them, and his face, I couldn’t forget it. On his face was plastered an artificial smile, perfectly identical to those comedy and tragedy masks you see in theatres. A few metres away from him was another student, and again, one I didn’t’ recognize. She was tied up to a chair, with a blood red gag and blindfold. Moonlight shone on her through the windows, creating a stunning scene out of a dreadful experience.
“I’ve got you here for a very important reason, and this volunteer will explain it to you.” The bound up girl struggled and wailed attempting to break her bonds. Her screams and wails showed me for the first time what complete hopelessness looked. I didn’t know exactly what she was volunteering for, but I didn’t need to know. Judging by my situation so far, it couldn’t be any good.
“Who are you, and what are you planning with us?” The creature crawled over to me on all arms and legs like a spider, creepily striding in my direction. When he met me, he rose to a standing position and glared at me from above. He stood a good few feet above me, looking down at me with his hollow sockets. Inside them, I could just barely make out the shape of an eye.
“I’ve heard lots about you, Mavis willow. Rich, beautiful and popular, what else could you ask for? After all, you’ve been scoring fashion shoots around the world. I’m sure your mum is very proud of you.”
“What have you done with her?” He grinned and craned his neck down towards me like a monster. I trembled and almost fell backward as his face came to meet mine.
“The principal? She’s had some reformations, but for now, I can serve as a replacement.” It didn’t take a genius to know what had happened. The geeks, jocks and glamazons were all displaying expressions of horror. That word, reformations. It engrained itself within my brain, shooting me straight to the brink of insanity. Cassandra Willow, my mother, was dead. No, she wasn’t just dead, she’d been murdered.
In my frustration, I didn’t even realize that tears were beginning to form in my eyes. Our new principal reached a hand down and stroked my cheek. “There, there, it’s okay. She had very painless treatment.” The cold bumps on my skin grew colder as the line between my reality and nightmares slowly warped.
“Well it doesn’t matter what treatment she got, its fucked up regardless!” I turned to see Carol still behind me, her lip still pressured by the strong bite of her teeth. The principal shoved me onto the ground and took a fine look at Carol. I went to pull myself back up, but one hand reached on top of my head and held me down.
“Society isn’t always morally correct hun. I’m the living manifestation of society itself, and I’m here to fix the hierarchical system once and for all!” He burst out into a wicked laughter, and everyone in the auditorium was terrified. The whole school could finally agree on something; that our captor was mad.
“Society ridicules people for their fears, their insecurities, but once I show all of you how insecurity can kill you, you’ll learn the power of empathy.” All four of his hands clicked at once, and the lights cut. I heard his footsteps trail off in the distance, and when I looked up on the stage, I could see his hollow sockets glowing crimson. “Thus, my students, your debriefing begins.”
He gripped the girl’s bonds and ripped them. She stood from her chair and went to run, but before she could get out, something grabbed her by the wrist and wrapped around her arm. With only the red light from our principal’s eyes to illuminate the room, I could just make out a sheet of film coiling around her shoulder. Then, another sheet of film shot from the side of the stage, gripping her other arm. Before long, sheets of film were grabbing every part of her body. I felt sick watching her struggle. “No, let me go, please!” I turned a blind eye to her screams and wails. There was nothing I could do as the film enveloped her body more and more. Eventually, the only parts of her body that were exposed were her fingertips and a few patches of skin on her face.
“Smile!” In a flash, I heard the sound of a lens snapping. My retinas burned when I witness the raw unfiltered light. My eyes were seeing random blobs of colour across the spectrum for a solid minute before they finally settled and could see the world again. Every student rubbed their eyes and stared at her body, her once lively, now lifeless body. Since the flash, the film had fallen off, and all that remained underneath was a crisp, overcooked, horror show of what once was. Her skin crackled like foil, buckling under its own weight. Her eyes had been completely destroyed by the flash, leaving only white orbs without pupils. Every crack in her char grilled skin was weeping with red. Long thin ropes of scarlet pooled in little puddles on the ground.
“So, what do you think of that? It was pretty cool right?” Our horrified expressions were all focused on the corpse. This was the first instance of a dead body not being cold. It was burning up, even after death. She’d been burnt all over. Her skin looked like a cooked pizza, but much less tasteful. “Oh, of course, that’s why you’re shocked! I haven’t explained why I killed her. Silly me.”
“It’s homicide no matter how you put it, and it’s psychotic!” Carol had spoken out of turn, yet again. I grabbed her by the shoulder and motioned a finger to my lips, but she pulled away from my grip and stormed up to the headmaster. “You listen up mister, I will not be a prisoner! I have no idea what’s going to happen with us, but I don’t like what I’ve seen so far.”
“Hm, Caroline Saunders. You’re the one who’s shy in front of crowds unless its life or death. I also read in your records that you’re afraid of loud noises. Believe me, I can find a way to kill you with things that peculiar.” Caroline slipped backward onto her rear end, landing with a loud bump as she crawled backward trembling.
“Kill me? Why, why are you killing me, why anyone?” Our headmaster’s face flipped, like a contraption. It seemed like some sort of machine. His facial expression rapidly rotated around to the back of his face, and was quickly replaced with one of grief.
“Because the world is unfortunately unfair, and I want to fix it, but people always think petty wars are the way to fix it. They aren’t. The way to fix it is through our youth. What better way to change society than by changing its future, and I heard kids love games nowadays, so I assumed my plan would work perfectly.”
“A game?” Although I assumed my curious whisper remained mostly inaudible, I was swiftly proved wrong as every student turned to face me. The principal’s face flipped back to his usual happy expression as he looked at me in unintentional unison with the other students.
“Yes, a game. A popularity contest, if you will.” With every minute I came to know him, I grew more and more intrigued. Who was he? He was uncanny, and to plan such a bizarre event in the most prestigious school out there, it took a lot of smarts to do something that, large scale. I stood defiant and waited for him to make the next move, like a chess player observing their opponent.
“Care to explain?” I held one finger arm out, my forefinger poised in the air like a detective from a television show.
“I execute the unpopular with their greatest fears. What better form of reformation than guilt tripping those who are privileged.” I lowered my arm and remained still, motionless. My body was almost a statue as I lost myself in an endless void of questions.
“How does this game of yours play out?” I hadn’t even realized the words were coming from my mouth. I behaved as if I’d never even spoken, body frozen, eyes staring into space.
“One student is executed daily. Of course, this wouldn’t be guilt tripping unless the higher ups felt involved, so I made a system.” For but I moment, I saw them. I perfectly healthy set of teeth behind what seemed to be a mask. A set of teeth that appeared so human, yet felt so inhumane. “There’s a lever, and once it’s pulled it starts the execution. Yet of course, who pulls this lever? I’ll leave that responsibility up to the most popular student.”
“And if they decide not to pull the switch?”
“If they decide to choose that path, they’ll be thrown in with the expulsion victim and the next most popular student will be asked to pull the lever. That cycle will continue until someone finally does the deed.”
“So expulsions is your child friendly euphemism for murder? You’re a bastard.” Our principal stood with his arms outstretched to the side and laughed maniacally. With the stance of a god and the appearance of a monster, he crossed the fine line between intriguing and terrifying.
“I’m not a bastard. I’m a human who has brought themselves higher. I’m a god. I am your new Headmaster, Principal Pandemonium.” He was a force to be reckoned with, a lunatic and a leash on my curiosity all at the same time. He said he was human, but he also claimed to be a god. His identity was something everyone was unsure of at the time, but regardless we knew not to meddle with him.
And thus, our new life begun. The life that would bring the student body count down from 2000 to 200, yet from 0 to 1800 at the same time. This was a tragic fate really. Unexpected. Shocking. Destructive.