“Who’s there…?” She calls quietly, a suddle hint of fear in her shy voice. Nothing answered her except for the hollow creak of the sticky black locker door opening with a thud. Being curious as she is, she walks slowly to the open door. Trying to make absolutely no sound, she tiptoes across the abandoned hallway.

As she gets closer her worst fears are realized and she sees’s locker number 619, with jet black footprints leading into its eerie depths. Heat emanates off the metal hinges and sticky goo drips out of the slits. She takes one dreadful step towards the locker, and is greeted by a gurgling. She see’s that the substance is hot tar, and questions herself as to why it is there.

“What the heck is going on…?” Meredith whispers to the desolate hallway. A shadow creeps forward from across the hall. It says nothing but reaches out its burned hand to touch her. The fingers sting her skin, leaving five white marks on her already pale skin. “WHAT DO YOU WANT!!!” She yells at the figure.

“I want you….to tell me…what happened last year…explains it in full detail…”
Says a voice she knows all too well.
“You already know. Why must you make me relive it?”
“Because…I want you to feel pain, the same pain I felt,”
“Fine…I’ll tell you everything,”

Last Year…

It was a regular day in April, Meredith and her best friend Jennifer were walking through the forest. They had left right after school, trying to escape to their own world. Lonely pits of heated tar dotted the woods, stored their for the construction workers.

“Don’t ever let me fall in one of those,” Said Jennifer

“Believe me, I wont,” Promised Meredith. They continued their walk, noticing the bits of nature everyone else missed. All of a sudden Jennifer’s foot slipped into the boiling tar.

“AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Jennifer let out a bone chilling scream as the tar engulfed her other foot and worked its way up to her calves.

“HELP! PLEASE!!!! MEREDITH IT BURNS PLEASE!” The desperation in her green eyes burned like embers and blood seethed from her wounds. Meredith grabbed her hand and tried to pull her out, but the pull of the tar was stronger. By now her entire bottom half was submerged and her last breath drew near. She died slowly, painfully, and with every breath her tears glistened brighter. Instead of telling the police, Meredith kept the story to herself and took no blame.

Present Day…

“Why are you here?” Said Meredith to her dead friend that she now realized was the shadow.
“I’m here to pay you back, for not telling anyone, for not taking the blame, for living a regular life when I couldn’t,” The figure suddenly grabbed Meredith and shoved her into the still burning locker. Tar engulfed her eyes, mouth, nose…Her last words were a muffled scream, heard by no one. In a few minutes of screaming the fast-beating heart slowly died and Jennifer let out a chilling laugh. She approached the steaming locker and entered her old combination. Slowly but carefully she pried open the locker, and viewed the burning corpse. She edged closer and whispered in the smoldering ear of Meredith.
“Now we’re even,” She alleged, and slowly walked down the hallway, still leaving dark. Black. Footprints.

The End