The eyes of all the little children collectively widened at the same time.

“What do we do?”

The body of the teacher was lying with his back on the floor, blood oozing from the wound on his stomach. The rich, red liquid was gushing out like a fountain and the blood was splattering everywhere and making the children’s clothes all messy. The body itself was not moving.

“Is he…dead?”

“What do we do?”

“Should we give him CPR?”

“We should check his pulse.”

“But I don’t wanna go near it!”

“What do we do?”

“Are we gonna get in trouble?”

“We’re gonna go to jail! We’re going to die!”

The children were very scared for themselves, and also for the body. The atmosphere was tense and jittery, the children all muttering and shrieking. The kids were not used to seeing such graphic scenes. Their teacher always made sure to check the film classification before allowing them to see any sort of movie, and if the teacher needed to kill anyone he made sure to do it away from the children.

But now their teacher was dead, and there was no one to protect them from such a sight.

Several of the students were crying, and some were trying to get closer to the body. But they all got frightened before they could go near it. The only one near it was the kid with the scissors in their hand. The kid was certainly out of it, their eyes glassy and unseeing, the scissors in their hand slowly dripping blood, plop, plop, plop. You couldn’t hear the plopping of the drops of blood because the kids were noisy. But that was all the kid with the scissors in their hand was focussed on.

Suddenly, someone came into the room. It was the very responsible kid, who was also the class president.

“Guys. Listen.”

The kids were still all talking all over themselves, and took a while for all of them to stop talking and let the class president talk.

The president made sure everyone was listening, and then began speaking.

“We have to solve this problem. We cannot let the police find out. We have to hide Teacher.”

Someone raised their hand.

“Yes?”

“How do we hide Teacher?”

“Yeah, Teacher’s body looks heavy.”

“Then we should cut Teacher up!”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, and then we should bury the pieces in secret places!”

“We can use those scissors.”

One of the kids pointed to the scissors in the hand of the kid who was close to the body.

“Hey, we have to use your scissors.”

The kid did not budge.

“Hello?”

“Are they dead too?”

“Oh, yeah, they look dead.”

The children came and prodded at the kid with the scissors. The kid came back with a start, and started screaming.

“My ears hurt! Stop screaming!”

“Yeah, stop screaming!”

“We need those scissors.”

They stopped screaming, and gave the scissors to one of the hands outstretched in front of them.

“There are more knives in the kitchen!”

“We should get the sharp tools from the garden shed as well!”

“We don’t have the key!”

“I have the key.” The class president dug in their pants and fished out a key.

“Yay, we get to go to the shed!”

“Let’s cut him up!”

The class president looked fondly at the children. Only a moment ago the room was in pandemonium, and now they were focussed on the task in front of them. How amazingly trained the children were, that when they were given an assignment, all other worries were forgotten. The class president supposed they should give the credit to their brilliant teacher in front of them. He had taught the class spectacularly.

Only one person was not in good spirits, and that was the kid with the knife in their hand. They had struck the blow, and so perhaps they were still shaken by the enormity of what had just happened.

The class president waited until all the kids had gone except them.

“Get out of it.” The class president shook the kid.

“He’s dead.”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“I didn’t mean to…I didn’t mean…”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to clean this up.”

“It’s because…because…he was mean…I just wanted him to stop…he was supposed to teach me…and I had scissors…I hate him.” The kid was sniffling now.

“Get out of it!” The class president shook the kid harder.

“No!” The kid yelled. “No! No! No!”

“It’s not a big deal! It’s red! You like red, yes?”

“No! No! No!”

The kid was sobbing really hard and was screaming now. Again. There was snot running down their lip and mixing with the tears running down their cheek. Their face was scrunched up like a dried plum and their eyes were shiny like diamonds. The kid suddenly dropped to their knees and plopped down on the floor, onto the red puddle of blood which splashed all over the kid. The class president decided to let them be.

Meanwhile, the blood had stopped spurting out of the body and was now only gently trickling down. There was also a lot less steam than before. The children had returned with the various assortment of sharp things and began to crowd around the body.

“It’s stopped gushing now.”

“Look what we got! We found a sword in the big room and we took it.”

“I got a hammer!”

“What’s that gonna do?”

(unfinished)