Episode 3:Detention with the Undead
582 Words
Episode 3: Detention with the Undead
Kai didn’t mean to set the librarian’s beard on fire.
It just… happened.
One minute he was reaching for a copy of Hexes for Beginners, the next minute the book hissed, “Don’t touch me!”, and spat a small fireball directly into the librarian’s face. The librarian, Mr. Fizzlestone—a ghoul with a doctorate in ancient sarcasm—was not amused.
“Detention,” he grumbled, patting the singed remains of his beard. “Room 13, after sundown. Don’t be late or you’ll clean up ghost slime with your teeth.”
Room 13 was under the school.
Way under.
Past the cellar, beneath the haunted staircase that played smooth jazz, and just beyond the locked door marked “ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY (unless you're already dead)”, Kai arrived.
Waiting inside were three other students and one extremely undead supervisor.
“Welcome to Detention,” said Miss Grinwell, a reanimated skeleton with gold teeth and eyes made of glowing blue marbles. “Tonight’s lesson: don't tick off the supernatural.”
The room itself looked like a regular classroom… if regular classrooms had moving walls, floating desks, and bats instead of lightbulbs.
Kai took a seat beside a tall girl with mushrooms growing from her hoodie and a guy who looked part shadow.
Across the room sat Lira.
Oh no.
She noticed him, raised an eyebrow, and smirked. “Let me guess. You talked back to a book?”
Kai flushed. “Technically, the book started it.”
Lira rolled her eyes. “Of course it did.”
Miss Grinwell clapped once, making her fingers fall off. “Today’s task: ghost retrieval. One of our wandering spirits has lost its... coherence. You’ll find it and return it to its haunt.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” asked the mushroom girl.
“Only if you blink at the wrong time.”
The group trudged through Nightmoor’s fog-drenched gardens, their flashlights flickering like nervous children.
“Ghost hunts,” Kai muttered. “Because regular detention would’ve been too boring.”
“You’re lucky,” Lira said, walking beside him. “My last detention involved milking invisible cows.”
“That... feels fake.”
“It was. That’s what made it hard.”
As they reached the abandoned observatory, a sudden chill swept over them.
There.
The ghost.
It floated mid-air, twisting like smoke, whispering things like “turn back” and “I miss my sandwich.”
Mushroom girl ran. Shadow guy vanished into his own sleeve.
Kai stood still.
“I can help you,” he said.
The ghost paused. Its smoky eyes locked with his. It drifted closer—and with a soft sigh, settled into the lantern Miss Grinwell had given them.
“...You have a calming effect,” Lira said quietly, as they returned to the surface.
“Or I’m just really good at talking to lost things.”
She looked at him again—curious, but not unkind.
Then she said, “You really don’t know what you are yet, do you?”
Kai blinked. “I’m... a guy who burned a ghoul’s beard?”
She laughed. “You’re something more. I can smell it.”
That night, back in the dorm, Kai asked Nox, “What am I?”
The ghost floated upside-down, thoughtful.
“You? You're the mystery plot in someone else's story,” he said.
Then he added, “But maybe... it's time you write your own.”
- Writer
