It Was Supposed to be a NORMAL Day

I am a little annoyed that today of all days is the time when I am a part of something unworldly. I mean, any other day, I’d probably be fine with it. Today, I am so exhausted that all I want to do is collapse onto my bed. School sucks, am I right?

Anyway, that’s not how I want to start this story.

I have a cup of coffee in my hand and a bunch of papers in the other. Stepping into the empty elevator, I tap the button labelled 6 with my elbow. I down the coffee in one gulp. If I drink enough coffee, maybe it would make me alive enough to get through this day.

The last thing I expected was for a blackout while taking the elevator. I groan as the light flickered out and I was left in semi-darkness. I place my empty coffee cup on the floor and pull my phone out from my pocket. Turning the flashlight on, I sit on the ground. If I’m lucky, this will get me late for the next period. Let’s face it, Physics can go to hell. I don’t need to know how Timmy can toss a coin into a garbage can while falling from sixty feet. I don’t need to know.

I am not afraid of the dark. I am afraid that I won't get to sleep in the next ten minutes.

It gets even stranger when a stranger opens up a hidden hatch in the elevator and drops in, landing beside me. I stare up at the strange woman, almost cursing out her existence because I know that something weird is going to happen to me and I won't get to sleep until much later in the day.

“Hello,” the redhead greets as if this happens everyday. “Care for a mint?”

It takes me a few moments to reply.

“I… don’t want a mint.” I move clumsily to stand up, leaving my phone and school papers on the ground. “Why the hell did you come from the ceiling?”

To this the stranger grins, showing pearly white teeth that almost look a little too sharp. She has bright red hair that is pulled back into a short ponytail. She wears a white tank with the words “Suns out Guns out” written on it in yellow letters. Her ripped jeans and a red leather jacket tied around her waist tells me that I wouldn’t normally be talking to a person such as herself on a regular day. I’m more of a comfy introvert than a person from a bike gang. I do like her studded boots though. I haven’t seen any adults wear studded boots before.

“Isn’t that a bit rude?” The stranger asks, her fiery red eyes glimmering in the darkness. “I just offered you a mint. Couldn’t you give me your name before demanding why I move about?”

Her demeanour makes me want to run from this situation. If only the elevator doors weren’t locked.

“Thomas.” I know that telling your name to a stranger that appeared out of nowhere isn’t a good thing to do, but honestly? I’m too tired to use common sense today. I just had a really excruciating math test. You can give me this much.

“Aw, thank you, Thomas.” The stranger’s grin widens and I swear to some deity that I saw that she had fangs. “My name’s… Scarlet.”

“Are you giving me a fake name?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

I let out a sigh and resign myself to leaning against the cold elevator walls.

The woman who was apparently named Scarlet also leant against the wall opposite me. She keeps on looking at something on her phone. Humming softly, she also looks me over.

“You go to this school, Thomas?” Scarlet asks.

“Yeah, why?” I raise an eyebrow and cross my arms.

“No need to get so defensive! Though I know you can’t really help it.” Scarlet shrugs, still smiling. “I only wanted to make small talk! Is that too much to ask?”

“Fine. Why did you appear from the ceiling, Scarlet?” I ask. “If you want to have a conversation with me, you could answer me.”

The redhead smiles mysteriously and giggles. “Because the elevator doors weren’t working, silly!”

I hate her, I hate her so much. I know that I don't know her and that isn’t a nice thing to say, but I despise her attitude.

Scarlet smiles almost apologetically. “Truthfully, I’m waiting for my sibling. They said that they’d show me something fun.”

I scoff. “Are they, by chance, the reason why I’m missing my fourth period?”

Scarlet sticks her tongue out at me. “Oh, come on. We both know that you’d rather be here with me than listen to some old windbag talk about math or science or whatever.”

I shrug and lean my head against the wall to look up. That’s when I notice something strange. The sides of the hatch on the ceiling are slightly burnt. It seems that is how Scarlet got the old hatch to open. But she doesn't have any tools or whatever. She can’t have done that with a lighter, right?

I look back down at the redhead who is now playing some game on her phone and tried to wrap my head around the fact that she managed to burn and pull open an extremely hot hatch without burning her hands. I’m thinking something is going to make this day even weirder for me.

“How old are you, Thomas?” Scarlet asks, her eyes still on her phone.

“17,” I answer. I might as well just tolerate this strange woman. Scarlet didn’t seem at all normal, but she was more interesting than Physics.

Scarlet looks up from her pink phone to glance at me. “You should stay away from the cafeteria for now, Thomas. I don’t think you should hang around when my sibling messes with your cafeteria lady.”

“What, do you think I won’t ditch class for something like this?” I ask her. “You got me stuck in this elevator so now you’re stuck with me for the rest of this situation.”

To this, Scarlet grins. “Ah, that’s what I wanted to hear. You humans are so great.”

I was about to ask her about that weird statement when the elevator doors suddenly open, revealing someone that I didn’t expect.

A boy that looks a little older than me stood, smirking at Scarlet. His- ah, no- their white eyes glimmer with mischief. They had a denim jacket with various band pins, under it, a grey v-neck. I know from experience that I can't trust anyone with a “My Chemical Romance” pin and slicked back black hair. Scarlet may look like a biker, but her sibling looks like they were one of the students that sits in the back of the class, eating food with an open mouth.

“Hey, you told me that the blackout was only going to be thirty seconds long!” Scarlet’s whole demeanour changes from chill biker to pissed off biker really quickly. “I had to actually pull out my phone!”

Scarlet’s sibling rolls their strangely white eyes and blows a raspberry. “Come on, you know that I don’t mess with time. That’s what De-”

They stop talking when their eyes land on me. I feel my skin crawl as the strange teenager’s smirk grows.

“Hey, my name is Joey, Joey Tribbiani,” says the clearly lying stranger as he held out one of his gloved hands for me to shake. “What is your name, kid?”

“For the last time, your alias cannot be Joey Tribbiani,” Scarlet groans, putting her face into her hands.

“Why not?” the boy with the alias Joey Tribbiani asks. “It’s a great name, and I was the one who thought up the character in the first place.”

I think I was there, standing awkwardly for about five minutes as the two siblings argued. I don’t have any siblings of my own, but my friends who have say that this is pretty much how interactions between them go.

The open elevator doors were tempting me to run out of this situation and leave it behind. I however do not want to sit in a classroom filled with people that I couldn’t care less about. Scarlet and Joey are interesting. I’ll hang out with them for a little while longer.

“So,” I interrupt them as Scarlet brings something out from the pocket of her jeans that looked suspiciously sharp. “What is interesting about the cafeteria?”

The different duo finally stop to look at me. Joey looks somewhat apologetic while Scarlet still is a little peeved.

“Right. Red, you sure that you want to take this kid around with us?” Joey asks their sister.

Scarlet shrugs with a toothy smirk on her face. “Why not? It’s not like little Tommy wants to go to class anyway.”

“Thomas. My name is Thomas,” I correct her as Joey steps into the elevator and taps the button for the ground floor. Scarlet doesn't seem to care. She moves away from Joey and leans on the wall beside me.

“Ah, isn’t my sibling the best?” Joey asks with an annoying smirk on their face. “Their hatred for me is so fiery, don’t you agree?”

Oh, damn, Scarlet was a they.

“Uh… yeah?” I mutter out a reply.

“It’s not like you give me a choice!” Scarlet practically barks. “You are so insufferable-”

As she-damn-they move to grab that very sharp looking knife in their pocket, the elevator doors ding as they open.

Joey pretty much dashes from the elevator with Scarlet yelling insults at them as they go. I grab my phone, coffee, and papers and rush after them. There’s nothing better to do, right?

We finally arrive at the cafeteria. It was a very barren place that had stalls where you have to buy expensive food and drinks. The chairs aren't that comfortable, and some tables had stains on them. You don’t want to know what kind of stains.

The only person that was there was the guy who mans the place where they sell pizza. Cold, and not that tasty pizza. It’s a wonder that the school has this.

He looks up from his phone and sees the three of us.

“Hey, shouldn’t you-uh-two be in class?” the guy with the goatee that he was trying so very hard to perfect asks us.

Joey and Scarlet walk past me and to his stand. The pizza guy seems a little intimidated. I see why. Anyway, Scarlet and Joey are looking up at his small menu of slices of pizza.

“Wow,” I hear Scarlet say as I made my way over to them. “Is this really real? One measly slice of pizza costs this much?”

“Yeah, can you believe it?” Joey asks, sounding like it was out of their world. “100 pesos or more for a cold slice of pizza? Tommy, is this a school for rich kids?” The white eyed teenager cranes their neck to look at me.

I raise an eyebrow. “Uh, no? I mean, it’s a private Catholic school, what did you think?”

The two siblings turn around to look at me with surprise in their very different eyes. It didn’t occur to me earlier how different they looked. Were they really related? If so, wow age gap.

“You can’t be serious.” Scarlet’s red eyes are suddenly flaring angrily. “This is how much you little kids have to pay for lunch? That can’t be right.”

I shrug at them and place my stuff on a table next to me. “I don’t know what to tell you, Scarlet. This is just how this school works. Maybe it was different back in your time, but-”

“What are you three doing here?”

I turn my head to see a truly unpleasant sight. My homeroom teacher, Ms. Yvette is standing behind the pizza guy with a gross expression on her aged face. Truly, she was Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter just a little bit tamer.

“Are you serious, kids have to buy overpriced pizza from an overpriced school like this?” Scarlet, the peace-maker, stomps over to Ms. Yvette, fuming.

“The juice boxes are 15-20 pesos,” Joey says, out of my range of vision. I hear them cough and spit. “And aren’t good!”

“Try the apple ones,” I tell Joey and make my way over to them. The fridge that holds all of the juice boxes is open and Joey stood inside, apparently unaware of the word cold. “They always were nice.”

“These?” Joey holds up a white cardboard juice box with an apple on it.

“No, those ones aren’t unhealthy enough to taste good,” I tell them and took out a plastic juice box. It was all red with a cartoony apple on it with large text saying, 83% apple juice! “Here, try this.”

Joey takes it and struggles to open it for a moment. They find a straw from under the counter opposite the juice fridge and stick it in the juice box. They take a sip and their eyes widen.

“Wow, that’s sweet.” Joey looks down at the juice box and reads the ingredients. “And unhealthy!”

“Do you not go to this school, Joey?” I ask them as they place the opened and not emptied juice box on the counter, apparently done with it.

To this, Joey scoffs. “School? Do I look like I’d go to this school, Tommy?”

"Thomas," I correct them.

Now that they say it, they don’t look the type. Besides, no one would be so clear about having no gender. This is a Catholic school so LGBTQ+ is practically null and void when you enter.

We hear Scarlet yelling angrily. I think I hear Ms. Yvette too, but her voice was drowned out in Scarlet’s rage.

Joey grins and grabs my wrist to drag me farther into this stupid situation. What I saw baffled me.

Scarlet was standing on one of the stained tables, stomping on it with her studded boots. Her face is red from anger, and her red hair gave the impression that Scarlet was just a pillar of fire wearing a tank top.

Joey snorts and takes a familiar phone out to photograph the situation.

“Hey, when did you get Scarlet’s phone?” I ask them, recognising the pink case.

“You’d be surprised at how easy it is to pickpocket my sibling,” Joey easily answers. They then toss the phone over to me and walk towards them. “Well, I’m off to fuel the fire even more. Take care of that.”

I catch the phone out of the air and watch in awe as Joey and Scarlet tell off Ms. Yvette and the pizza guy. It shocks me that they don't know how expensive it was in private schools like these. Also the quality of the foods. They do seem foreign.

Making things worse, Scarlet’s phone starts to ring. The lit up name on the screen reads Pestilence. Who nicknames someone the word ‘Pestilence?’

I know that I probably should let it go to voicemail, but for the heck of it I answer

.

The voice who answers was of an authoritative older man. Just listening to him, I feel both bored and a little annoyed.

“War, are you still at that school?” he demands. “I told you already! You can’t mess so eagerly in humans’ affairs like this. You have to be careful and not rush into it.”

I find myself smirking at this old man’s words. Humans’ affairs? What the hell does that mean?

Then a little voice in my head reminds me of a lecture in CLE. What was it about? Ah, yes, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Weren’t two of them called Pestilence and War? And the way that… Pestilence asked about humans’ affairs…. Wow, I thought they were foreigners.

I think I’m about to have a heart attack. I’m currently talking to a being that could give me cancer, leukemia, something worse… as War and another being argue with my homeroom teacher. Yeah, I think this is what a heart attack is. Hey! I might meet Death too! Isn’t that just swell?

Pushing me out of my panic attack, Pestilence speaks again.

“War? Are you even listening to me?” they ask, irritably. “I hope that I don’t need to come over there and pick you and Famine up. I’m not your babysitter.”

“I-hm… they aren’t here right now, sir…” I manage to mutter out. Scarlet and Joey who were beings that lived way longer than humankind were arguing with my homeroom teacher. This wasn’t how this day was supposed to go.

The call was quiet for a few seconds.

“Who is this?” Pestilence asks with a quieter voice. “You are a teenager, correct? How did you get a hold of War’s phone?”

“Um… they’re arguing with Ms. Yvette, sir,” I explain to one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “Joey- uh- Famine gave me Scarlet’s phone for safe-keeping.”

My explanation is met with a loud sigh.

“I’ll be there in two minutes,” Pestilence tells me. “Don’t let War kill anyone.”

Pestilence ends the call, leaving me, an anxiety-ridden teenager, having what seems to be a stroke.

I find my feet walking towards Scar- War and grabbing her jacket and tugging it for their attention. Ms. Yvette was yelling at me, but I don't really care.

War looks down at me with an annoyed expression. “What do you want, Tommy? I’m in the middle of a-”

I show them the still lit up phone screen and all the red in her face disappears. War actually looks a little afraid.

“Fami-damn-Joey, we have to leave!” War yells and jumps down from the table.

“They actually said that they were coming here,” I tell them as they grab Famine’s denim jacket.

War looks back at me with fear clear in their eyes. Famine looks at me, grinning confusedly. I hold up War’s phone for them to see and their eyes also fill with fear.

“Will anyone care to explain to me what’s going on here?” asks Ms. Yvette’s miniscule voice. “If not, I’ll call security, and-!”

"No worries, I've come to pick them up," says an authoritative voice.

If I were to see them on a random day, I wouldn’t think that they would be Pestilence. They have wispy white hair and wore a red bowtie. My imagination of what Pestilence would look like looked very different. For example, they don't wear a brown striped button down and glasses. Still, Pestilence has the same strict and commanding aura of someone who was on top of the food chain.

A little girl appears behind them and smiled, looking around. For a moment, our gazes lock and a shiver runs down my spine even if the little girl’s smile is so innocent. That seems to make the kid’s smile waver.

“War, Famine, you know what to do,” Pestilence calls out, looking behind me with a scary look in their discoloured eyes.

I silently ask myself what they needed to do when both War and Famine step next to me. I glance at the two of them. War has one of their hands on their forehead. Famine also has one. I open my mouth to ask why when both of them place a hand on my forehead.

“Huh?” I try to look at them, but before I could do anything, a bright light shines through the cafeteria.

I screw my eyes shut at the sudden bright light. It was there and gone in an instant. Opening my eyes, I see Ms. Yvette and the pizza guy standing with blank expressions on their faces. They seem to be staring into nothing.

“You didn’t have to do it too! I was going to do it!” War yells and takes back their hand.

“I just didn’t think that you’d do it, what with your general bad attitude,” Famine shoots back and retracts their hand as well.

“The question is why you two saved that little boy from being under my spell,” the little girl speaks up. I find it a little weird that a little girl would- oh wait a minute. That can't be the fourth of the horsemen? Death wouldn’t choose to disguise themself as a little girl?

“Why not?” War asks. “Tommy is a nice kid.”

“And he’d rather go with two suspicious strangers than go to class, so what does that say about him?” Famine asks and I can hear the smirk in their voice. It takes a lot in me to not ask if that was an insult or not.

Pestilence sighed and steps towards me. War and Famine back off, leaving me alone with the man who could give me tuberculosis. Thanks, you two.

“Little boy, do you promise that you won’t tell anyone about this encounter?” Pestilence asks. “That you’ll let us still stay a secret?”

“Uh… yes?” I clear my throat and stand straight. “Yes, I will, sir.”

That makes Pestilence crack a smile. “No need for the formalities. Just call me Pestilence.”

“You’re lucky, that’s their nickname,” Famine jokes from behind me.

“This boy won’t protect you from the punishment you two will get later,” Pestilence says as their eyes darken.

I hear them blubber behind me, but Pestilence apparently had enough of this. They walk past me and grab the two of them by the ear. It was apparently painful because even the embodiment of War was yelling in pain.

“Well, I hope to see you soon,” says the little girl. Their appearance made me forget that they were in fact, Death. Death’s strange brown eyes filled with panic as they realised what they had just said. “Ah, no not that way. I meant to say that I hope we meet again! No, that’s not actually different-”

“No problem. I got it.” I try for a smile, but it probably looks like a weird twitchy defect.

Death smiles up at me. Wow, that’s not a sentence I would ever say. Oof. Anyway, they hold out a hand to me as a polite gesture.

“See you later, Thomas Williams,” they say as I take their hand.

In a flash, I find myself falling asleep with one hand supporting me. I look around and realise that I was in my Physics classroom. No one around me seems to notice that I just popped in out of nowhere. Was that a dream? No, it couldn’t be.

The teacher interrupted my train of thought, causing me to forget about the whole ordeal until I went home. For when I turned on my phone I saw a new photo in my gallery. It was of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine must have stolen my phone.

Oh, why the hell did this have to happen to me?