7x — Classroom

The door to Classroom 7X had no window. That was the first warning. The second was the smell: old paper, dry chalk, and something faintly sweet, like overripe fruit. The third was the timetable pinned to the corkboard, the ink so faded it looked like a ghost of a schedule.

The room was exactly seven rows deep and seven seats across. Forty-nine desks, each one a different shade of wood, from pale birch to almost-black walnut. Forty-nine empty chairs. At the front, a single piece of chalk rested on the lip of the blackboard. classroom 7x

The fifth chime. Desks began to hum. The students’ uniforms darkened, bleeding into the chairs. The birch desk turned to ash. The walnut desk split. The door to Classroom 7X had no window