I walked into my classroom 10 minutes late because I had no idea where the classroom was or even which class I had. I looked at my furious teacher and excused myself to my seat. She stared me down the entire time I was taking a seat. She was very old. Almost a fossil. I remembered her as she was a really spiteful teacher. Always tried to blame me and my friends for stuff we didn’t do and she would use her authority to bully students that were failing her grade. I think she was fired right after I finished middle school. Sadly time has been rewound.

‘Well, if it isn’t Mister I-Have-No-Respect-Towards-My-Teachers. How was your midday stroll? Very carefree, I assume. Please don’t forget that you had homework.’ She said while waltzing towards me menacingly. I hoped to the man that sent me here that I from the past did his homework. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a notebook. I handed it to the teacher and she took it out of my hands hastily. She skimmed through it and hit me on the head lightly.

‘I assume you know that this isn’t math class. This is English. And unless equations can relate to grammar, you better hope you’ve actually done your homework.’ I realized my mistake and reached into my bag again while excusing myself. My heart stopped as I realized that I hadn’t actually packed anything. The utter shock was easy to read on my face and of course, the teacher read me like an open book. She went towards her desk and wrote into the big book that she would use to write important notes or bad remarks. You could easily guess which one I was going to get.

We were sitting on double desks. My only option was to either ditch class or share with the person next to me. I lightly tapped the girl sitting next to me. She looked at me and pushed her book towards the middle of the table. I thanked her and started taking notes on a piece of paper I ripped out of my math notebook.

As I looked at the exercises it became clear to me that I could easily do each and every one of them because I had graduated high-school with an average grade of B. Math was my easiest subject. I've always loved the way the equations were formed and I thoroughly enjoyed solving them. English was my second best subject. I used to read a lot of books when I was younger. Mostly English books and rarely Russian. I stopped reading altogether when I was 18. I was too preoccupied with friends and renting an apartment that I forgot to buy books for my new flat. I guess now I will be able to rent a flat without getting ripped off, but I still have to wait for 3 years.

I solved all the exercises on my half-torn paper and waited for the bell to ring. I looked out of the window. The classroom had 3 rows of 5 beige desks, each accommodating 2 students for a maximum of 30 and a teacher's desk. Our room had a whiteboard that was almost never cleaned so it had black stains that were very noticeable. On the wall, we had a few cheap painting canvases with stupid projects we did 2 years ago. The windows were older than time itself and I remember a kid actually breaking off a window just by hitting it with a book. To be fair, the book was our literature book, which was around 900 pages. We used it for both 8th and 9th grade. I should have it buried somewhere in my room.

I was seated on the middle desk on the most-left row next to the window. Our desk was glued to the wall and I was on the outer side of the desk. The girl next to me was also staring out the window. I guess the exercises were easy for her too. I believe her name was Jessy and she was a really good student. Always did her homework and was never late. Something happened later on but I don't really remember what. I think it happened at the beginning of 9th grade. She suddenly stopped coming to school and nobody heard from her again. Her social media accounts were deactivated and her friends were confused as all hell. But I still have half a year to figure it out. I probably won't even bother.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The bell rang and it pierced my ears like a needle. The bell was old and very loud. It used a mechanism big enough to alert the whole school about the end of class. I was lost in thought and was caught off-guard. I jumped a little. Two guys from my class approached me. They seemed eerily familiar, but I couldn't remember their name for the life of me. The first one approached me and put his hand around my neck and greeted me very loudly. He was a skinny kid with black hair and a buzzcut. He wore army pants and a t-shirt with a skull painted with spray paint.

'Hey, Jakey! Did you really hand "that" teacher the wrong notebook.' his look shifted towards my crumbled sheet of paper with scribbles all over it.

'Did you even bring anything other than math?!'

'Do we even need anything other than math?' I proclaimed trying to save my already low reputation.

'Well... we do need math.' the other guy exclaimed. The other kid was a chubby kid. He wasn't exactly stupid but he wasn't the brightest. He was stronger than the average kid but he wasn't a brute. He tried his best and that was what drove people towards him. But I still couldn't remember his name. Guess he doesn't really leave an impact?

'Howard, please don't ruin my joke.' the skinny kid said in a deep, deprecatory voice.

'Got it chief!' the fat kid, whose name was apparently Howard, exclaimed full of energy.

Then I realized that I have no idea what was our next class. I looked towards Howard and the other kid.

'By the way... what's our next class?' I asked but I was aware that I sounded like a complete idiot.

'Actually...We have no idea! We came to ask you since you always take notes during school.' I realized that I had forgotten about my phone completely. I reached into my pocket and took it out. I opened the notes app and I scrolled all the way down. I saw a note named 'Schedule' but under it was a note with a name I couldn't recognize. It wasn't neither English nor Russian. It was eerily familiar. I checked my schedule and found out we had more English then after that, we had math. I wasn't too keen on spending 6 more hours in school but I needed to endure it.

7 hours later I was walking home from school. The math test was easy and the exercises we did in English weren't anything special. I was with Howard and the skinny kid, Mark whose name I learned through conversations. Our school was pretty much surrounded by dark alleyways and small roads. There weren't that many cars and most of them didn't speed.

I looked around and saw two girls bullying that girl I sat next to. I didn't really think anything of it. I decided not to butt in as I'm not really that strong and I will probably get my ass kicked. My friends and I walked home safely.

I opened my door to my house and was greeted by my cat. His name was JJ and he was a black cat. I didn't know what breed he was but that didn't matter.

I went back to my room and decided to explore my old files on my phone. I almost instantly remembered the note. I opened it and it looked like scribbles. I ran it through google translate. Nothing came up so I thought nothing of it... Until I googled the note's name. I got redirected to some site called 'thelostlanguages.org'. There I found a language that looked exactly the same. I opened the page and apparently, that was an extremely old language believed to be spoken by the gods themselves. It suddenly made sense to me. I took a pen and paper and wrote the language's alphabet and how to read it. To my surprise, it was actually just really old English. Only the letters were different.

I slowly but surely translated the letter. I probably made a few mistakes here and there but it was coherent enough. It said:

'Dear Cake Cains,

Hello from the heavens. Hope you are doing well. I have written this letter so I could explain what I forgot to explain during our meeting in heaven. First things first you will die again when your time come. That was estimated to be during your 20s.

I have a humble requesd. A lot of people around you have suffered a terrible fate and have lost their lives in ways unfulfilling. As follows they have gone to hell. Some for suicide and some for murders.

Please try to save them. If you succeed I will grant you passage onto the heavens

Sincerely yours,

-God'

I immediately knew what to do...