Afterlife Highschoolers - 2006
Millpond High was always full of bright-eyed students lookin’ toward the future. With their whole lives ahead of ‘em, they’d leave with smiles as the day is long and ambitions louder than a banshee’s wail. At the end of every summer, they’d put on a ‘Leaver’s Ball’. Usually it would be out on Pete Higgins farm - the same place where they’d party all night for Halloween, but this time the teachers and officials wanted to keep it in-house. Thought they’d start a new tradition in all of the fifty-seven years it’d been’ goin’.
Due to the rising health and safety concerns of the parents, the main hall seemed like a good idea. The only problem with such a venue was… well, it only had two exits. And one of those exits was blocked by the enormous stage that’d been built for such an event.
It was the summer of 2006 and the place was being organised and decorated by teachers and students. They built a stage, rather stupidly blocking the rear exit. They had a sound system, balloons, a dance floor and tables all laid out for the caterin’. From the folks that were there that night, it looked rather magical. The event started at seven pm, but the doors opened at six. Carriages were at midnight.
They poured into that place, dressed in their best. Having finally graduated, they were just happy to be with celebratin’ together, for what should have been the last and happiest time they’d see each other. Until the reunions of course, but, sad to say, there would be nineteen individuals that would never attend a reunion ever again.
The place was pumping. The kids were dancing, eating, laughin’ and havin’ a great time. But something else was watchin’ that place. Scowling at its beauty. Its innocence. Wanting to take it all away. It was Death. It must’ve crawled out from its dirty ditch and decided that if Millpond town wanted a night to remember, then it would oblige in the most notorious and down-right horrific way possible.
A series of events unfolded which, if pieced together, would make it all seem like a natural occurrence. Causality, if ya like. But remember, this is Millpond and ain’t nothin’ normal happens in this town for no reason. The main entrance to the school hall was a set of three swinging glass doors. But due to the break in only a few weeks prior, meant that one door had to be boarded up and sealed shut.
Now the middle set of doors had been jamming a lot recently because them latches were old and broke. Jimmy, the caretaker, was supposed to fix them, but he’d been laid up in hospital for months prior after he got hyperthermia from falling drunk, into Crystal Pearl Lake just down wind of Makeout Point. So it was just one set of doors in operation that night, but by comparison of Pete Higgins place, where rusty nails, broken wood slats and farming equipment were laid out, two unused doors didn’t seem like too much of a hazard.
On the other side of the hall, the stage blocked most of the exits there which was an undeniably fatal oversight. That side was made of glass panelling, mind you, but with stage and curtain decorations covering it all, meant you wouldn’t wanna mess with it. A lot of time and effort had been put into shapin’ those drapes and they were floor to ceiling. Covered in sparkles, glitter and velvet which looked awful pretty, but they masked the damn emergency exits!
One of the few health and safety concerns the school board didn’t know about was the pooling of water in the ceiling above. The storm of February 2006 brought so much rainfall that most of it had seeped through the outer roof-felt and laid to rest inside the shaft of the ceiling. With the air conditioning running through there meant it was kept cool and didn’t evaporated. But it got heavy and bowed the ceiling. Now, water just ruins anything and everything if it gets in. This time, a small trickle had made its way through a piercing in the ceiling panel and ran along to the wall where it dribbled down. But hidden from plain sight it trickled down the wall right onto the plug socket at the bottom.
At around ten o’clock, a small drip must’ve landed on the plug socket and sparked it. Of course, this was the only socket to house the lighting rig. The socket fizzed and caught light, instantly igniting the decorative curtain that lay beside it. The thing went up in flames so quick you could’ve blinked and missed it. Panic set out. Everyone rushed for the doors in a frenzy, including Mr. Hanson, the old and wirey lookin’ history teacher that had a pacemaker for his heart. In the crush to get through the doors he must have tripped the wiring in it and collapsed, creating a blockade to the exit. His body was trampled by a hundred feet that night
A few teachers and students tried throwing water on the flames, but it was a monstrous inferno. The stage began to collapse and fall to the ground. Part of the stage fell onto two best friends, Doug and Niles. They were a bit slow off their feet as they’d been spiking their own drinks with vodka for the whole evening. A little bit of cheekiness among friends, turned out to be fatal for them. When the fire spread up the curtain, the hooks melted and the entire blazing blanket fell and smothered Shelly and Tina, killing them.
Some of the students that made it out of the exit, past the Mr Hanson blockade, ran out into the street screaming for help. It only took about ten minutes for the Millpond PD and Fire Department to show up. But the hall was a towering inferno. This is where Death decided to strike up the final, fateful note.
The fire brigade began squirting water onto the roof to put the fire out but they didn’t realise that they were making a huge mistake. The hose water, along with the pool of rain water that lay inside, began to boil from the flames. Then under the weight, the whole roof collapsed. The students inside must’ve felt like it was them Twin Towers down in New York. Fiery hot debris and boiled water plummeted down ontop of them.
Donna. Mavis. Richard. James. Radick. Cybil. Peter. Nory. Jess. Michael. E were killed by the falling rubble and another dozen students were critically wounded. Safe to say since then, the tradition of the “Leavers Ball” ended. From then on, graduates would often gather in their own collectives, even some of them putting on house parties - but one thing is for sure: Whoever and wherever the parties are held that night, the fateful eight will show up, not to scare, but to linger and watch quietly with those fortunate enough to to see a bright future. They remind them that life is fragile and never take anything for granted.
