Ashy beasts crawl downward, ever fearless, grinning horribly in joy. Kids lie motionless, never once piercing quietness. Rubble starts trapping us. Violent whines. Xylophones? Yesterday’s zone.

For this story, I wanted to create something with clear direction but a lot of room for the imagination to play. Only being able to use 26 works was extremely difficult, especially considering the lack of “I, the, and, he, she,” and so on. My goal here was to present some sort of attack by otherworldly beasts on a school, potentially in a world that is actively experiencing an apocalypse. The unwritten narrative is that these beasts work off of motion and noise, but can’t detect a silent and still target. In the wake of this, the school is collapsing around them, as the beasts have ravaged most other classrooms and are looking for stragglers. The final two sentences, “Xylophones? Yesterday’s zone,” hints at the idea that this world no longer has time for fun and playing, even in a child’s classroom. That, instead, is an idea of the past.