Poetry & Creative Writing

The Boy Who Cried COVID

The classroom felt like a fridge, as it always did after a Decon Fog. Elias could taste the chemicals in the air, like sweat in a changing room when changing rooms were allowed. Not that changing rooms were a thing anymore since the virus took a hammer to everyone’s life. Heavy steel scraped the floor, announcing the arrival of the ninth French teacher to hit S2 this year; her decrepit features could not be masked by the flowery silks hanging like preaching scarfs from her pale, turkey neck as she trudged towards the tired oak desk. A green light blinked as if Daisy’s dock was embedded in the stone wall.

“Bonjour les enfants. Je suis Madame Malade. Notre lecon d’aujourd’hui… ‘’

Eeeoooeeeoooeeeooo bleepbleepbleepbleepbleep…

A dozen teenage boys hurtled towards the exit like a herd of startled wildebeest. Elias sauntered past upended chairs and slipped into the hallway as the decontamination sprinklers started to spit. ‘Happy Birthday, mate’, he murmured as he shoulder-barged a boy with perfect skin and slick blonde hair. The air wheezed out of Elias with one gorilla punch.

‘The suits have been here three times this week, you little runt. Why d’ya keep setting the bloody thing off!’

The corridor emptied and Elias was left alone with a mouth full of blood the same colour as his cheeks. In the classroom Madame was cuffed and recited the Riot Act, before being extracted for ‘cleaning and exclusion’. She was reminded that COVID 666 had taken millions of teenage lives; the ten percent of teens left to tell the tale must be protected at all costs.”

In the Hazz-dome a thousand eyes were on Elias. He was relieved when the alarm signalled classes could resume. By the time they reached room 101, another teacher had already been installed and bags had been incinerated. Thirteen weary and sullen body’s slumped down into their workplaces. Elias had lost his appetite for pranks. He tried to focus on the translation in front of him when the air turned crimson once again. The alarm detonated in his skull and his heart became a wild animal trying to escape his chest. In a flash he was out the door. No one else moved.

“Let’s go!” he shrieked.

“This is new,” Nicolas mocked, “Nice acting.”

A disembodied voice bellowed from the intercom, “T minus ten seconds until Section C lockdown.”

Elias’ screams were drowned out by laughter. The colour drained from the teacher’s face, as he became more and more frantic.

“Five, four, three, two, one.”

Tssssssss…

Elias pounded his fists on the viewing window. Inside, his classmates were violently clawing at themselves; their vanes began to turn charcoal black. As if in a silent horror movie, Elias watched Nicolas’ throat dissolve, and blood pour over the desk they shared. His oesophagus parted, exposing bone, and his head began to wobble like a macabre bobblehead. Elias sank to his knees. His heart froze.