*Chapter 4: Knock-Knock (Who’s Screaming?)*
664 Words
You know that feeling when you’re about to sneeze, but it never comes, so you just walk around twitching like a haunted raccoon?
That was my brain now.
**Full of punchlines. None of them mine.**
By third period, I couldn’t speak without a joke coming out.
Like, I’d try to say, *“I didn’t do the homework,”*
and what came out was,
**“I did do the homework, but my dog read it, cried, and shredded it in protest.”**
My history teacher laughed so hard he had to sit down.
My classmates? They thought I was a comedy god.
But inside, I felt like I was on a carnival ride I couldn’t get off—and the clown at the controls was flooring it.
---
At lunch, I found Maya again.
She was hunched over a laptop so old it might’ve predated YouTube.
“It’s getting worse,” I said, plopping down beside her with a tray of pizza that looked suspiciously like a melted action figure.
She didn’t look up. “Define ‘worse.’”
“I said the word ‘toaster’ and three kids collapsed laughing.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t even trying to be funny!”
Maya finally looked at me. “Then it’s evolving faster than I thought.”
“…‘It’?”
She spun the laptop around. On screen: grainy footage from a school security cam.
Locker 108.
The timestamp: **last night. 3:08 a.m.**
In the video, the locker door… **shifts.**
It doesn’t open—not fully—but it **twitches**. Like it’s breathing. Like something inside it *stretched.*
Then, in the bottom of the frame, a shape passed by.
**A shadow.**
Tall. Wrong-shaped. Like someone wearing a human suit inside-out.
It paused in front of the locker.
Tilted its head.
And let out a sound I could only describe as…
**A laugh.**
But not *a ha-ha* kind of laugh.
More like… static mixed with choking.
And then?
It looked directly into the camera.
I felt cold all over.
“That,” Maya said quietly, “is the punchline.”
---
The next weird thing happened in gym.
We were playing dodgeball, the ancient sport of gladiators and middle school grudges.
I tried to stay out of the way.
But then a ball came flying at me and I yelled—
> “I’M TOO YOUNG TO BE TURNED INTO SPORTS EQUIPMENT!”
And boom.
**Laughter.**
Even the coach chuckled.
Then someone else yelled something dumb.
And *they* got a laugh.
And another.
Suddenly… *everyone* was trying to be funny.
Even the shy kid who never spoke tried a pun about dodgeballs being emotional baggage.
Everyone laughed.
Too hard.
Like, falling down. Clutching their stomachs.
Some of them weren’t even breathing.
One girl was laughing while crying.
One kid was hitting himself with a dodgeball and shouting knock-knock jokes through gasps.
And me?
**I couldn’t stop them.**
Because my mouth kept going.
One-liner. One-liner. Quip. Sarcasm. Zinger. Zinger. **Boom. Boom. Boom.**
It was like something inside me had grabbed the mic and decided it was time for the **final act.**
The laughter kept rising until it wasn’t laughter anymore.
**It was screaming.**
---
Later, in the nurse’s office, with kids still giggling down the halls like they were *possessed stand-up comics,* Maya found me.
She handed me something.
A printed list.
“Every time someone makes a wish,” she said, “the locker writes a joke.”
I stared at the paper.
There, in plain black ink, was a single joke.
But the punchline was smeared. Like someone had **scratched it out.**
The setup?
> **“Knock knock.”**
> **“Who’s there?”**
> **“You.”**
> **“You who?”**
Then nothing. Just torn paper.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
Maya looked grim.
“I think the locker’s saving the punchline for you.”
- Writer
