Ethan was slowly coming back to consciousness. What happened? Did he sleep in the class? No, Teacher Spencer wouldn't let him anyway. The guy took it personally when someone dozed off in his class.

He looked around him and noticed that he was in a dark room. Grumbles and grunts could be heard around him. He noticed some of his classmates sprawled in the ground.

He stood up and tried to make sense of where he was.

"...a prank" he said, with a bored face, vaguely remembering those funny pranks that he watched in YouTube. It was funny until now, at least. Now he just found them tasteless...

He seemed to be on a cave or something similar. The ground was unwoven and seemed to be made from some kind of white ceramic. It felt cold and wet to the touch. Blue fluorescent things...mushrooms... shined at the corners where organic material would normally accumulate. The scenario was very well made. Gods...Fred would go crazy over this.

Some people made tons of money suing the groups that create these pranks. He could probably fake a psychological trauma and get some money from this. "I might be able to buy wireless internet USB and tell my father to go fuck himself..."

"What happened?" he heard Jack saying. He rose up and helped his friends to stand. Brantley was waking up just beside him. Jack pushed him away with his feet went to the teacher, who was just helping a girl to stand. Not all students were here, only about twenty from his class of fifty. The rest were nowhere to be seen.

"What is this?" The teacher said, his voice sounded uncertain. The classmates started gathering in groups around the teacher  while speaking in low voices. "Ethan!" he heard. Kathy was there with them too. She had woken on a pool of water and her clothes were wet. Ethan blushed and went over to her. "This is weird isn't it" she said, with a nervous voice

"It's just a prank." he said, dismissively. "A poor idea of prank though, I just don't know how did they get the "ok" from the school to do this... There will be tons of pissed off parents when this ends." Whoever architected this won't have enough money to pay in restitutions.

"Are...you certain?" she asked. It was hard to see in the dark, but she seemed quite pale.

"Yeah, though it was very well executed, what else would it be?" He laughed and decided to mess with her. It helped to hide his embarrassment "Heh, don't tell me you are getting Fred's disease? This isn't a death game or anything like that." He smiled. So impressionable...

"Yeah, you're right." She said as she held his hand. Ethan was convinced that there was no weird meanings in her gesture. It was dark, and it was quite dangerous to walk in that unwoven ground unassisted.

"All right!" said the teacher. He was holding his smartphone to help illuminate the room. Some students followed his idea and held their own smartphones. Soon everyone were holding their own smartphones. "Does anyone know what happened." the teacher asked "We seem to be in a karstic cavern..." he said. What's a karstic cavern anyway? "It is weird, because this kind of formation doesn't happen in the proximity of Goldenfalls".

"Is this some kind of joke?" said Jack. Ethan rolled his eyes.

"This is so cool!" one of the students said. He was in one of the corners holding a mushroom in his hand. The teacher widened his eyes and shouted. "Don't touch it! We don't know if this is poisonous!" he said. The light from the smartphones reflected in the teachers skin. He was sweating.

The student threw the mushroom away as if it was a spider and started to clean his hands in his pants. A light blue color started shining from it. His hands were also shining. "Shit" he said and went to clean his hands in the same pool were Kathy was lying before.

"What the hell is he doing?" Jack said, while motioning to Brantley. The teacher was away scolding the student who touched the mushroom and trying to organize them.

Brantley was sitting in a corner, some feets away from a petite girl who was just there, hugging a book and trembling. He had a very dumb smile plastered in his face and was pointing to the air, making weird movements with his hand as if he was having some kind of delusion. "hehehe" His low laughter sounded eerie.

"Did he finally went crazy?" one of Jack's friends said. The other one laughed. "Maybe it was the mushroom?"

"Let's stay away from him." Ethan blurted out to Kathy. Brantley didn't seem right in the mind right now, there was something weird going on with him. Kathy nodded, making a scowl "I told you he was disgusting..."

The teacher organized the students in a semicircle with the help of one of vice representative, Jose..

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Does anyone here know what is happening?" said Jose.

The male student from the mushroom incident answered. "I have tried activating the GPS function in my smartphone." he said "It isn't answering. In fact, I can't even make calls right now, there's no signal."

Another student said. "Of course, Caleb" he rolled his eyes "We are underground, idiot."

Underground? They really went far with the prank.

"Isn't this just some kind of prank?" said Ethan, drawing some gazes to him. He gathered his courage and went ahead. "L-Like that ones from that Sunday night program? I have seen a lot of them in the Youtube."

Jose stopped to think about it, but the teacher quickly dismissed it. "I don't know what happened" he said. "But look at that thing" he pointed to the mushrooms in the ground. "I didn't touch it directly, but I can't tell that they are the real thing." he said. This time he drawn a long breath and said something outrageous. "The thing is... I have visited caverns before, many of them, during my days on the entertainment industry. I have seen fluorescent fungus before... But this...never once I heard of a blue mushroom shining this strong. I don't think there is a mushroom like this in our world's biological data.

Ethan's eyes widened. Kathy's grip in his hand tightened.

At that moment a loud booming noise resounded in the cave. It sounded like the screeching of a beast and it was coming from every direction. It wasn't possible to pinpoint it. The girls started screaming and some students fell in the ground.

The moment Ethan heard that sound, he felt unnatural fear gripping his heart. His pupils constricted, he started to sweat and he felt that his bladder was about to empty its contents, he was lucky he had gone to the bathroom when he had brought Fred to the infirmary. His Knees gave out and he slowly lowered himself to the ground. He hugged his legs in a very pathetic manner and started trembling.

He took some seconds to recompose himself and stood up again to look as his classmates around him. A slightly smell of piss drifted in the air. Katharine was hiding her face between her knees. Balancing back and forth. He quickly went to help her. "Hey everything is okay...There's nothing here" he said, soothingly.

"No!" She screamed, drawing the attention of everyone. She stood up and grabbed Ethan by the collar "Not okay! Not okay at all! You told me this was just a prank!" she pushed him away and started looking around in terror. "How can a scream be so terrifying? What the fuck is happening here!" she said.

"Calm down Kathy!" Ethan said, quickly grabbing her by the elbows. He didn't knew what to say to her, so he kept telling her to calm down. At one point her breathing slowed and she seemed to settle down. She sat in the ground and ignored him. He kept trying to reassure her , but she was just keeping to herself. He looked around him and noticed that his other classmates weren't better than them.

Ethan was terrified. He didn't want to believe, but he knew this was no prank anymore.

"Shit, shit, shit..." He was starting to gnaw his nails, an embarrassing nervous tick he had.

He had to control himself. He drew a deep breath to calm down. There was no use throwing a fit right now. This wasn't a match were he could curse and scold his team members to get them to work. Nothing would magically happen if he started screaming in rage.

"Fuck, Fuck..." he started mumbling to himself while pacing nervously.

He looked around him again. Jack was trying to calm down a girl who was crying, clearly terrified.

"Hey, calm down, this will soon be over" Jack said. He seemed calm, but Ethan could see that he was trembling slightly, he didn't expect such a show of goodwill from the guy... He soothingly rubbed her shoulders "C'mon, we need to move". The girl slowly nodded her head, but she didn't seem calmer at all. Her movements were mechanical and her eyes still showed terror

All around him, students that had gotten over the terror were helping the ones that hadn't. The president, Jose,  was going around the group with four other students just behind him trying to get a feel of the situation.

"Fells like a movie scene where the leader counts the causalities"  Ethan though grimly.

He looked at the corner where Brantley had hid himself and was surprised when he saw him gleaming manically. And waving his hands through the air while mumbling words that he couldn't make out.

"What the hell is going on with that imbecile?"

The way Brantley was acting angered Ethan. He seemed so calm...

While everyone was literally pissing their pants in fear, he was sitting there smirking to himself. Couldn't he see what was happening? Couldn't he see that how everyone was fucking terrified? That moment Ethan wanted to get right in front of that bastard and fucking punch him in the face. He would be happy to feel that idiot's nose breaking in his fist.

"Fuck that idiot. This isn't the time to get bothered by him, I need to calm down."

Beside Brantley, the girl had retreated even more in her shell. She was hiding among some rocks in a corner hugging her knees. Her book was lying in the ground. Only her eyes could be seen from behind her knees.

"What was that..." The teacher finally said something. He had been silent since the screech was heard. Jack looked at him with a very pissed of face.

"Aren't you the oh-so-great Mr-fucking-Spencer?" Jack said, furiously. "You tell me, what the hell was that!?" he said, seething, gesturing around them.

The teacher looked at Jack dazed "That scream..." He said "Tigers are said to have a growl that can have a paralyzing effect by inducing fear on its victim...But this was too abnormal..."

Abnormal...it was truth...now that he was calmer, Ethan could tell that the kind of reaction  that he and his classmate had to that scream had no explanations. Sound was, after all, just waves of air vibration, would such a scream have the same effect if it was coming from loudspeakers? Somehow he had a hunch that it wouldn't.

It was almost...almost as if the scream had magical effects...

"Damn, now I am sounding just like Fred..."

He should stop being stupid.

Ethan tried to talk with Kathy again and, this time, she smiled apologetically and hugged him. He returned the hug without bothering with the smell of piss that came from her, she needed him right now, he couldn't ask for more.

That moment, Jose, backed by four other students, said loudly. "Guys. I know everyone here is apprehensive, I myself shuddered in fear a while ago" he said. "The thing is, we can't stay here, we need to move."