Chapter 1: A Death In the Classroom
Change often comes from the most unlikely places. Even in the most lowly of places, one subconscious choice can have power to alter the fate of nations. When Death announced his arrival on Earth, one seemingly random choice did not just alter the fate of the world, but everything.
Everything and nothing.
It all began in a dilapidated, run-down school class set in the heart of the Bronx. Children at the height of their puberty lazily lounged on the broken chairs and worn-out desks, with loud chatter reverberating off the plaster walls splattered with graffiti. The teacher had obviously given up trying to teach the class, hiding in the front corner of the class with his head buried into his phone. The class was a wreck.
"Hey Ollie, you wanna play some b-ball after the delivery today?" A boy with dark Indian skin asked.
A plump black boy lifted his head from his phone.
"Say what Omesh?" Ollie asked obliviously, not hearing what his classmate had just asked.
"You wanna play basketball after school? Shroud said he'd play." Omesh answered.
Ollie's eyes suddenly shone with awe and excitement.
"Shroud? He's pretty high up in the gang! Hell! This is a great opportunity to prove ourselves."
Ollie suddenly turned around tapped the shoulder of a skinny white boy.
"Hey Jamie, you wanna join us with b-ball? Shroud's coming to play with us."
The boy who could only be Jamie turned around to face Ollie and Omesh.
"You mean the Shroud?!" Jamie stated in disbelief. "Why's he offered to play with us?"
Omesh let out a cocky snort.
"He must have taken a liking for some reason." He answered confidently.
"Yeah true." Ollie quickly added. "We are locally famous for our drug dealing after al-."
Jamie aggressively elbowed Ollie in the stomach, a short grunt escaping his mouth from the pain coming from the nudge.
"When will you learn to shut up Ollie?" Jamie whispered with annoyance imbued into his voice. "You know we can't talk about our dealing in front of the class or the teache-"
Jamie abruptly stopped mid-sentence, frowning in annoyance.
"Hey, you fatso!" Jamie shouted rudely as he pointed at the front of the class. "I thought we told you not to leave your chair!"
Omesh and Ollie swivelled their heads to the front of the class. Their teacher was no longer hiding in his usual abode in the corner of the class, instead approaching the tattered blackboard at the front of the classroom. The fear that typically consumed his features were replaced with fury which emanated from dark brown eyes gouged deep into his chubby face.
"Get away from the chalkboard you fat-ass." Ollie chided. "No one told you to leave your chair!"
"Go back to your corner Mr. Evans." Omesh added. "No one wants to listen to you."
"Yeah Mr. Evans!" A black girl with a sleazy voice joined in. "Go back to your desk ya fat fuc-"
"SHUT UP!!"
The chatter instantly cut out. All eyes were suddenly on the obese white-skinned teacher standing at the front of the classroom.
"I'm done with your clowning around!" Mr. Evans bellowed at the top of his voice. "I'm about to lose my job because all of you nimwits won't let me teach!"
The loud voice violent echoed throughout the ruined classroom. In spite of the teacher's words, the students started chuckling. His face quickly grew cherry red, twitching with anger before exploding.
"SILENCE!"
Silence followed.
"I have had enough with you!" The teacher shouted. "I have put up with you for far too long! From now on, you will follow my rules and listen to my classes!"
"Or what?" The girl with the sleazy voice interrupted. "We don't have to listen to ya if we don't wanna. It's not like you can physically force me to work."
A smirk appeared on the girl's face, and a few kids nodded in agreement. Unfortunately, the teacher did not take it that way.
"You really think that?" Mr. Evans replied with a chilly tone, slowly walking over the girl with his fist clenched.
"You really think I'll just sit back and lose my job because a bunch of bitchy teenagers ordered me to stay quiet?"
"Yeah of course I do." The girl answered cockily. "Ya won't do anything. I don't know why you're so fiery today, but I do know that ya won't get us workin'. I mean, what can ya do? No one wants to listen to your shitty lessons and ya can't force us."
The class began laughing wildly as the girl arrogantly ridiculed the teacher, and her smirk quickly transforming into a triumphant smile. Unsurprisingly, the teacher was not too pleased. His face was as bright as ever, his jaw madly clenched in anger and frustration.
"You're just an coward." The girl concluded. "No. Actually, you're an idiot. You let a class take control of you for six months, and now you speak up? What a joke." She finished arrogantly, allowing her words and the relentless laughs from the students to deepen the teacher's wound.
"All you are is a cowardly, fat-assed idiot who will go nowhere in life. No wonder you're at this shit school and at risk of losing your low-paying, depressing job, ya fat fuc-"
CRASH!
The back of a wooden chair suddenly slammed into the side of the girl's head. The teacher had snapped. Consumed with fury, he swung a chair with full force at the girl's head, launching her off seat and onto the cheap tiled floor. Almost immediately, blood began seeping out of her scalp, creating a puddle of blood beneath her head.
She was dead.
It was also at this exact moment that our main character entered the classroom, finding his rage-driven teacher hovering over a bloody corpse. With a slender stature and considerable height for his age, Elijah Crawford could be considered handsome by some. His skin was pale white and his face was long and lean. However, his long and flat nose combined with his resolute stare often gave off a cold and demeaning expression.
'What the fuck?' He thought to himself, seeing the bloody corpse on the ground. 'What in the hell happened.'
Eli made sure to quietly close the door so that the teacher would not notice him. Normally, a student in that situation would have bolted the other direction and went straight to the police. But not Elijah Crawford. He knew better than to bring the police into this situation. The Bronx was ruled by gangs alone. Even the police ruled by the gangs. At least the local police were, and alerting clean police about this situation would be suicide. Maintaining this control meant that the gangs had to cover up as much murder and public commotion as possible. In effect, this would ensure that the outside authorities wouldn't check on the condition of the city and the gangs would remain undetected. So if Eli suddenly decided to alert the 'clean' police about this incident, the gangs would be finished. And the gangs knew that. So they had counter-measures. Radical counter-measures. After all, dead men don't speak, do they?
So Elijah began walking into the class, keeping his head off the scene of the crime until he reached the back corner of the class. Many students noticed his entrance into the classroom but ignored it. They had just witnessed the murder of their classmate. Surprisingly, the students weren't the ones to overreact. It was the teacher.
"No. No. No." Mr. Evans muttered to himself as the intense fury thawed away and realisation set in.
"What have I done?" He wailed in guilt.
Mr. Evans looked down at his hands, stained by the blood of the teenage girl, before gazing back at the students. They all stared at him with fear written on their faces. The broken chair slowly slipped out of his hands, crashing like a (?) on the tiled floor. Like a coward, he dashed out of the room, muttering words for whole class to hear.
"Not again. Not again. Not again."
The teacher dramatically exited the classroom, leaving the dumbfounded students with a dead body. Silence ensued, with no one wanting to break it, especially Eli, who was inconspicuously scrolling through his phone.
'What just happened? 5 minutes late to class and a student gets killed by the teacher?'
Eli decided to stop contemplating the circumstances behind the murder. It did not matter. He just had to make sure the blame was not put on him.
"He's probably going to blame it on us." Omesh suddenly pointed out, ending the deafening silence within the room.
The students all cocked their heads towards Omesh.
"What do you mean?" Said a small boy in the front row. "He's got no evidence to support that we murdered her."
"And we don't either." Omesh responded. "No one filmed that did they?"
"Not really." One girl suddenly spoke up. "But I took a photo of it to show to the police-"
"Delete it!" Omesh suddenly shouted. "We can't have the police finding out. Telling the police is out of the question. If we tell, we get shot. The gangs want the authorities to think these schools are run by qualified teachers, and that also means that the teacher can blame it on us without having his life at risk. Either way, delete it now. We've got to figure this out on our own."
The girl nodded slowly, quickly deleting the photo of the dead body on her phone. As she finished, Omesh suddenly spoke up again.
"Does any ideas of how to get out of this mess?"
No one responded. An eerie silence enveloped the room as time ticked slowly in the tense environment. Everyone was stumped.
"C'mon guys." Omesh finally stated, breaking the silence once again. "We have to do something or else we are getting blamed."
...
"Not necessarily."
Everyone's heads swivelled behind them towards the source of the voice at the desk in the back corner. Sensing everyone's eyes on him, Eli lifted his head from his phone.
'Shit. I didn't say that out loud, did I?' Eli thought to himself.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
NotBlind
NotBlind Hi. NotBlind here!
I published a few chapters of this book on another account back a few weeks ago, but I was too busy to continue then, so I here I go again! Hopefully I continue this time...
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