The Weird Day

By Amy, Sancta Maria College Mayo

I am running for my life! What is happening? Will I make it out alive?

It is a dark dull Tuesday morning as I set off for school. Today feels weird. I can’t quite place it, but I sense weirdness. 

That mightn’t make sense right now, but I was right. 

As I walk down the drive with a slice of burnt toast in one hand and my phone in the other, I wait for the bus to come collect me as it does every morning at the same time, in the same spot, without fail. My phone is buzzing as I peep down and see that my best friend has texted, and I quote, “today feels so off.” THANK GOD I’m not the only one. She gets me. I reply with a quick “I know right” and shove my phone in my left trouser pocket. I scoff the rest of the toast down and now stand waiting for the bus to come. 

It’s late today, I think in my head, but I continue to wait. 

As I’m standing with my heavy bag on my back, arms crossed, shivering with the cold I think to myself, I wish I was in bed right now. I then imagine my sister, who got the day off for being “sick”, lying in her cosy warm blanket, sleeping like a baby. 

“Lucky her,” I whisper aloud.

It’s five minutes later and there is still no sign of the bus. This is odd. It’s weird. With both my parents now gone to work, asking them for a ride is not an option. I could stay home? No, no, no. I can’t be killed by my mother who, unless I have an extremely good excuse, won’t let me take a day off. She thinks that, as a Leaving Cert student, if I miss a day I will fail the Leaving Cert. Could she be right though? She’s not. However I am an anxious person and I overthink quite a lot, so if I did miss a day I would just feel guilty with myself. So this is not an option either.

I text my friends who also get the bus asking, “Has the bus come yet?” I get no response. Strange… I am now overthinking everything in my head from “What will the teacher say if I’m late?”, “How will I get to school”, “What if the bus driver just forgot me, and my friends are all in school?”, “What if today we had no school?” The thing is, I know the answer to almost every question I form in my head, but I just can’t help but think of every other possible situation.

I look both left and right, peering down and up the straight narrow road, squinting to see if I see a bus figure in the distance. I don’t. But I do see a human-like droopy figure running up the road at a fast pace. Neighbour on a run, maybe? But as the figure gets closer I realise this is definitely not a neighbour, nor a human. It’s a scary, pale, bloody, droopy zombie-like man with a ripped T-shirt and almost green skin with loads of cuts.

What

The 

Hell??

 Is it approaching me? Should I run? Am I being stupid? Is this my imagination? Is this a real zombie?

Don’t be stupid, I say in my head. That only happens in movies… right??