She slipped the phone into her pocket. Another look around in hopes of somebody over forty appearing, but no one. With the burden of adulting weighing on her shoulders, Phebe stepped off the walkway onto the scraggly grass lawn and proceeded towards the girl.
“Excuse me?” Phebe called. No response. “Hey!”
The girl stood frozen in place, partially bent over, with her limbs at weird angles like a 19th-century automaton doll abruptly turned off.
“Do you need help?” Phebe asked. “I can call 9-1-1 for you and get you help.”
No reaction.
“Miss?” she asked.
Long blond hair hung in front of the girl’s face like a taller version of Cousin Itt from The Addams Family.
“Are you okay?” Still no reaction. Phebe sighed. “Crap.” She looked around again for help.
A boy shouted, “She’s high, lady.” The immature group of guys laughed.
Phebe thought about just leaving the girl there. But that would be irresponsible. Another sigh.
“Can I help you, miss?” Phebe craned her neck downwards to get a glimpse of the girl’s face under the blond hair covering. “Do you need medical care? I mean, like, I can call 9-1-1 for you.”
“Hey,” one boy shouted in a serious tone. “Get away from her. Hey, what’s-your-name? Phebe. She’s on Zombie. She’s on that drug we talked about.”
Phebe looked over at him. She recognized him as Tucker from the intro class she had taught a little while ago.
“I’m serious,” Tucker yelled. “They’re dangerous. Don’t be fooled by the frozen act.”
Phebe looked back at the girl. The hair now parted, revealing what was beneath. Phebe gasped and stepped back.
The girl’s face looked terrible. Her skin was the color of gone bad chicken. Foam freely flowed from her mouth and snot from her nose. Pupils dilated, causing the blue iris to disappear into the black, making her appear almost shark-eyed. Brutally chapped lips split into a menacing grimace as if she walked right out of a horror movie.
“Oh, sh*t,” Phebe muttered. Goosebumps charged up her arms.
She regretted trying to help. She could be safe in the warm library right now.
The girl made a cough-hiccup-choke sound. It reminded Phebe of the noise the creature Gollum made in The Lord of the Rings. The girl’s whole body jerked with it.
Phebe stood planted in place, her mind dazed. An accelerated heart rate was the only movement from her body.
The girl screeched. It reverberated against the surrounding buildings of the campus quad, making it louder and more surreal.
Shouting came from the group of boys, no longer laughing. They ordered Phebe out of there. But she stood fixated on the face in front of her. The black eyes. The mouth.
The girl’s body began to shake like a revved-up engine ready to bolt forward in a shift to drive. The shrieking continued.
Phebe’s frozen state broke.
Author Katie J. Jones Home 