Innocence Lost

     Amidst the ominous silhouette of an elementary school, a place once resonant with the laughter of youth, I found myself enveloped in an eerie foreboding. This institution, a supposed haven for childhood whimsy, had now seemingly devoured a young soul within its grim facade. The little girl was a ghost, her absence a haunting melody that strummed fear through the heartstrings of every adult present, each one a restless moth spiraling in the harsh glare of concern.

     I ambled through a corridor that resonated with the eerie echoes of lost innocence. From the depths of her classroom emerged a teacher, her complexion a stark pallor. As she spoke, her words, tinged with an odd worry, fluttered about the presence of any fingerprints the lawmen might have unearthed within her realm.

     Clinging to my father, I voiced my thoughts in a soft murmur by his ear. A strange worry, I noted, a peculiar fret amidst the storm of a child gone missing. We, a disparate crew of truth-seekers, crossed the threshold into her realm, a space tinged with the ghostly aroma of chalk dust and fear.

     Standing guard at the entrance were rows of lockers, their cold metal forms serving as silent sentinels. A sound echoed from within one, a noise that seemed like a secret yearning to breathe the air of revelation. As I pried it open, the sight before me was a gut-wrenching reality. The missing blossom lay there, but life had mercilessly fled from her form.

     The bitter truth wound its way through my veins. The teacher, the one fretting over fingerprints, was the dark mastermind behind this horror. The realization hung in the air like a chilling phantom, a grotesque truth that bore the metallic taste of fear and dread. It was a haunting enigma, encased within a mystery, nestled within a tale of terror. Life, it appeared, was laden with such grim spectacles, echoed through the endless corridors and mirrored in the eerie hush of a forsaken locker.

I wake up