A piercing scream

You run to the door; several fellow students follow you, while others back away further into the chemistry building, nervous. Across the courtyard of the college, past the library, you see a crowd of students pouring out of the physics block, apparently trying desperately to escape. They fight and trample each other in their desperation to get out, and the first to leave flee in all directions, soon followed by more.

As you watch, rooted to the spot in shock, you see the walls of the physics building bulge impossibly outwards and suddenly give way, the masonry falling to the ground with a deafening crash. From the rubble emerges something utterly out of place in your rational, scientific world – something you thought could exist only in myths and stories.

The blood-red body resembles that of a muscular man, but grotesquely large and punctuated with sharp spikes, and the face it turns from side to side, apparently searching for something, can only be described as demonic. Curved horns protrude from its head, and its gaping mouth is impossibly full of numerous razor-sharp teeth. Most of all though, your gaze is drawn to its searing red eyes, glowing with an incandescent rage. Despite your distance you feel certain of the anger which it exudes; this is no animal following instincts, it is a conscious entity, full of a terrifying wrath.

Purposefully, the creature – you find yourself thinking of it as a demon – steps out of the wreckage, lifting one clawed foot after the other, and crushing more of the ruined building with each step. Its gaze scours the fleeing crowd, and with a sudden lunge it grabs a man in one huge clawed hand, and raises him into the air, struggling and writhing. You half-recognise the man: you’re pretty sure he’s one of the physics teachers at the college. The demon regards its victim for a moment, and then, as you watch helplessly, it grasps his shoulders in one hand and waist in the other hand, and in one powerful movement, tears him in two. You hear a thud as someone beside you faints, but you are too transfixed by the scene to even turn around and help them. The beast lets out a bloodcurdling roar, making you shudder.

You realise that although you are some distance away from the scene, the demon might well come in search of more destruction. You begin to wonder if you could outrun it, and where you would actually go, but none of the possibilities you can think of seem to give you any chance of survival. Just the panic sets in to your mind, you realise that the monster is beginning to fade. A sharp flash of light momentarily casts strange shadows across the rubble of the physics block, and when your eyes recover from the brightness, you see that the demon has vanished. The air around you seems to move all at once, and a muffled boom resounds in the wreckage.

You stagger back through the doors of the chemistry building in shock, and fall back into one of the chairs in the study area. This morning’s strange occurrence seems like nothing, and you wonder with a detached horror how much worse things can get. Are the two incidents related? What caused them? You muse on the questions, unable to fathom any answer.

Around you, those of your classmates who have not already fled are standing around in shock, or cowering in groups, trying to find someone who will tell them what to do. You find yourself torn between finding a safe refuge and looking for answers to the mysteries.