𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓽𝓮𝓵𝔂 𝓞𝓷 𝓔𝓭𝓰𝓮
>Cindy flew down the steps two at a time, not caring if she fell flat on her face in one inch pumps.
>The green goblin chased her indiscriminately. The steps slowed it down, but Cindy could clearly hear the slobbering sounds as it rounded >the corner after her. "Here here!" it kept saying. "Here heeeereee!"
>The twelve-year-old girl tried desperately to slip out of one of her heels to fling the sharp object back at the goblin with just her foot. >Instead of hitting the goblin in the face, all her effort at ingenuity received was a bloody nose. Smack! Cindy fell face first into the >wall. The wet crunch of her nose against the bumpy plaster made her start to go into shock. For a second, the entire world narrowed to just >the musty smell of the old lead-based paint that coated the inside of the stairwell (and most of the walls of the school of which she remained trapped).
>Heehee! Hehehehe! Heeheeheehee! The goblin, at least that is what Cindy thought he was, or it, lumbered after her, reaching for her with a massive warty green hand. His green midriff showing between a white tank top and the smelliest, dirtiest, used-to-be-white pair of browning underwear that Cindy had the misfortune of smelling.
>The sight of his massive bulk helped somewhat, but the outright reek of him did more to overpower the lead paint flakes coating her nostrils than eyes alone ever could. With that, she ran down the last flight of stairs to the bottom floor. Her tiptoes ached from running solely on them. The bottoms of her feet felt like they had just been over a bed of hot coals. Not that an innocent Catholic girl was supposed to know that, but Cindy was no ordinary Catholic girl; hence her classmates and teachers vanishing into thin air and being replaced by a goblin in the middle of a school day. Screw you, Satan she chanted, now on flat ground again as she raced for the front doors of the school that lay right next to the small front office.
>"Screw. You. Satan. Screw. You. Satan." The steady, pounding cadence of her footsteps grew to match the rhythm as the simple metal-and-glass doors that signified freedom loomed ahead of her. She smashed into the glass, simultaneously shoving at the metal bar with outstretched hands, only to fall flat on her khaki-clad buttocks a moment later. Cheeks reddening with needless embarrassment and righteous fury, Cindy scrambled to her feet and tried to futilely kick and punch the glass.
>A surprisingly dry hand grasped the sky blue shoulder of her short-sleeved polo shirt. The hand, half on skin, never made it farther than her shoulder as she whirled around, punching the goblin square in the nose before darting past the stunned creature. Why in the world is the main entrance to the school locked? muttered Cindy to herself both in her own head and aloud. This was what happened when you experimented with black magic. Weird shenanigans went down. Ha! Shenanigan. That little darling had been on the unfinished spelling test that now lay on the floor next to her overturned desk in the third floor Language Arts classroom she recently had vacated. Spelling was clearly not her superpower; while running from mutants, demons and other mythological creatures did not seem to be either.
>Cindy O'Brien raced for the gymnasium, sandy blonde hair streaming behind her. Eager she was to find anything that could be used as a weapon. She considered it pointless to try any other exit door if the main doors out of the school were shut tighter than the young Sister Vega after her vow of chastity. Cindy barreled into the gym noisily, not even caring if the goblin followed at this point.
>She ran, arms and legs akimbo, bypassing the assortment of balls and track-and-field equipment on which the school prided itself. Instead, she ran to the opposite end of the gym where the makeshift auditorium lay. Despite running at full speed, Cindy found that her short stature was too short to climb the high dais without steps. Naturally, the steps were nowhere to be found. She stopped, turned around to put both her hands behind her - palms flat against the smooth, waxy wood of the stage - and boosted herself up with her arms until she wormed her way backwards onto the stage where she lay for five seconds gasping like a fish out of water and clenching her visibly broken and bleeding nose.
>In front of her and between her legs, the goblin's corpulent form burst through the swinging gym doors, better late than never. It stopped to take in its bearings for a second, bulbous fully black eyes that made up 30% of his ponderous head, with another 60% being his drooping jowls. It swiveled roughly 120 degrees to take in the entire gym. His eyes finally settled back on the middle of the stage just as the middle curtain flapped shut, signifying the girl's escape through it a half-second prior.