The smell somehow wasn't the worst.

The sight of it was.

Of a rotting carcass

The bone was showing in some places. Leaking organs in others.

There were no eyelids, there were no beautiful green eyes. No pouty lips, it was degraded down to the bone.

Some bits of muscle stuck around near the nose and cheeks. The clothes were scraps on the skeleton. Skin, rot and a few weaselling worms still feasted on the body.

She could see through the ribcage, where his heart was supposed to be.

The knife was stuck in him.

But his hands, feet, were all tangled up in wire. His bony jaw set in an open scream.

Tara couldn't bear the smell, nor the sight.

She emptied her stomach in some corner she was able to find.

The smell was so bad, so so bad. Like the vomit of Hyena's after they had a year old rotting body of a whale, infested with rat dung.

Tears leaked down her cheeks.

She couldn't breathe.

She couldn't hear anyone else. No one left the own retching sounds she made.

When she had nothing left to vomit, she dry heaved, suddenly she felt more exhausted than she'd ever felt in her life.

"Breathe through your mouth," Alastair whispered. But he wasn't looking at her.

She didn't know how long she heaved and retched out the water and saliva in her body.

Or when she took his advice and breathed through her mouth. But it felt like she could taste the smell. The moisture of degrading flesh.

She panted at Alastair, a delta of tears paving a path through the mud on her face.

She could see Alastair, through the blur of tears. He wasn't moving. He had no expression on his face. No single crease. No single sign of life.

It was as if he was well and truly dead.

More dead than his rotten body.

"Are you... Are you okay?"

"He did this to me." No anger or rage was in his voice. Just sadness. A simple sad truth.

"We'll... get him." It was hard, very hard for Tara, she was weak, so weak. Exhausted, after all that vomiting and breathing in those horrific fumes. But she pushed herself up off the ground, hobbling in front of Alastair to block his view of the rotting corpse.

His body, that was so beautiful. Now a stinking, rotting cadaver.

If only it wasn't so dry, all that would be left were bones.

Fresh tears were brewing in her eyes as she thought of the remains behind her and the ghost in front of her. Healthy. What he used to look like.

"I p--promise, we'll get this J-Jake." She said in between coughs.

Alastairs' reply was monotone, lifeless. "Will we? What if I told you who Jake really is now?"

He let out a psycotic laugh. "Don't you remember what your dear, terribly young professor of physics looks like?"

Tara's mind routed back to when Alastair showed her Jake, and how familiar he looked.

She realised, with a beard and longer hair, and with glasses - that was the man she had seen stalking the hallways at her school, always an easy smile on his face. A man she always secretly admired.

Tara's breath got caught in her throat as she realised she had gotten yelled at, gotten sent to countless detentions by a murderer. If she had pushed him a little further, would she also be in Alastair's place right now?

"What?" She whispered.

His look was sad, not accusatory, not glaring, just sad.

"You knew? That there was a man, who had killed you and God knows who else and you didn't tell me? That everytime i decided to push his buttons, i could be the next target on his list?"

"No, I didn't."

"Why?" Tara's heart felt heavy. Heavy like it was chained with weights in a limitless ocean.

"What was I going to say? How was I to know to were going to help me - hell, even believe me?"

"You could've said that i was in danger, that the entire student body was in danger, that we spending time with someone who did... That to you. Did you even think about what could happen to us - to me, no matter if I believed you or not?"

Alastair said nothing.

"Just admit it. You were mad. You were mad that no one listened to you, so you wouldn't give a shit if he killed them too, right? You'd feel like they deserved it."

Alastair said nothing.

Which told her more than anything she could've asked.

Tara let out a sob. This was too much, too much for her.

The walls were closing around her. She felt her legs moving of her own accord. She vaguely registered her shoulder hitting something as she dropped to the ground.

Even though she breathed through her mouth, it felt everything in her body was shutting down closing.

Alastair, Jake - everything was spinning in her head. She couldn't get the image of Alastair's body out of her head, when it suddenly became her corpse, rotting on the very floor she was on.

Her hands clawed at her throat as she wheezed in breaths.

She couldn't remember how to breathe.

It was as if a rock was beating her heart to death. Slamming, crushing, shredding.

It hurt so bad.

She didn't even hear when Alastair rushed to her side. How he screamed her name.

How her sweat froze and clung to her body. Her tears freezing her eyelids shut.

Through a single ray of vision she had left in her right eye, the last thing she saw was a panic-stricken blue face and the sound of a ringing alarm in the distance, before darkness swarmed her vision.

School was out.