No one questioned the new student at Westbrook Academy. They were tiny, quiet, always perfectly in uniform, carrying a neat little backpack. Teachers thought they were shy. Students thought they were weird. But every day, someone went missing. A locker broken into, a notebook stabbed, a faint smear of blood on a desk.
Detective Fred didn’t believe it at first. How could a child do something so precise? The wounds weren’t clumsy they were surgical, pinpoint, deadly. Then came the first witness. A trembling student said they’d seen the small figure twisting a pen between their fingers like a knife, eyes glittering with unnatural focus.
Fred staked out the school late one night. The hallways were empty, the lights flickering. And then a soft click of a pen. From the shadows, the tiny student emerged. Uniform crisp, hair neatly parted, eyes wide and cold. Rowan raised his flashlight too late.
The pen flicked upward, stabbing the wall inches from his chest. Another pen flew, spinning like a thrown knife, embedding itself into the floor with a thunk. The figure laughed, a tiny, chilling sound.
“You didn’t study for this test,”
They whispered. Fred dove, barely avoiding another pen. By the time he recovered, the figure had vanished, leaving only the sound of small footsteps echoing down the hall.
The next morning, the classrooms were quiet. The students pretended nothing happened. And the tiny figure sat in the corner, sharpened pens tucked neatly in the backpack, ready to take their next test one victim at a time. Because at Westbrook Academy, exams were graded in blood.
