She walked though the buzz of the crowds, the squawking coming from the intercom and the noise coming from the portable radios. She was quiet, not talking to anyone around her, not attempting to initiate conversations. Inside, though, she was screaming.

She dragged her knuckles along the lockers, trying to convince herself that she wasn't heading for the main hall. It was mid-June and all everyone was talking about was the prom queen. She could feel everyone giving her short-lived looks as she passed, some with smiles, some without.

Her stomach started knotting as she turned the corner in the lager corridor, slowly getting closer to the main hall where the list of candidates would be pinned up. The population was thickening here, all trying to see what names were on the list. She had her ideas, a specific group of people, but the question now was if she had made the list.

She started fiddling with her dog collar like she always did when she was nervous. Only today it felt tighter, as if the spikes were on the inside of the collar, digging into her skin, keeping her from breathing, stopping her from talking.

She pushed herself through the mass, one hand moving people out of the way, they other staying on her collar. With a final push she made it to the wall, almost slamming into it as the people closed behind her. She looked up and saw it, the last of the five names: Blake Richards, her own name.

"The votes for prom queen will be compiled in three days!" the intercom announced on morbid cue.
Blake's hand started shaking violently as her mind raced, thinking of what prom queen could involve: the dress, the party, the prom king... She yelped as she drove one of her collar's spikes into her finger. The blood beaded quickly and ran down her hand and arm. Only then did she look down at the floor to see Chloe, another of the girls on the list, slowly rocking herself on the ground, her eyes wide and glossy. She kept mumbling incomprehensibly as the blood from Blake's finger fell around her feet.

"You'll want to get that checked with the school nurse."

Blake jumped at the sudden voicing of her principal. She turned and faced the huge man who had a worrying, piranha-like grin on his face.

"You want to be fresh for the prom, don't you?"

Chloe stopped mumbling and looked up, her eyes filling with tears. Both girls had stopped breathing as their principal began to laugh. With a small cry Blake ran off as fast as she could, leaving Chloe too terrified to move, engulfed in the crowd.

--
That night Blake walked into her living room to find her parents sitting as far away from the drawn blinds as possible, her father holding her mother's tear stained face in his hands.

"Mom, I might be prom queen." Blake said lamely, without emotion.

Her mother sniffled. "We know. The school called."

Nothing was said for a few minutes and the only sound heard in the dark room was its occupants' difficult breathing.

"Why don't you just not go!" her father roared out, standing up and scaring her mother.

Blake laughed softly. "You can't do that, dad. You have to go, you don't really have a choice."

Her dad tried to say something but choked on the words and started crying, strangled and unpractised tears.

--

Changing rooms are breading grounds for rumours. Black showered quickly and tried not to listen to the girls talking all around her.

"I heard she hung herself," a girl said proudly, strutting around.

A few girls laughed, and a few others shared grossed out looks. Blake tried to ignore them.

"That's not what I heard; I heard she OD-ed." said another, her eyes open and hungry.

Blake shook her head and opened her locker; a white square of paper fell out and onto the floor. She looked around but no one else had noticed. Blake picked up the paper, unfolded it carefully and read: "Don't look at me. It's Corey. I made the list too. Chloe drowned herself, you know. In a sink. That's the power she had. You have that kind of power to. Don't be scared."

Blake fought not to look at Corey, who she knew was just across the room behind her. She tried to remember what the girl looked like, but couldn't; it wasn't for nothing she had made the list. The bell rung and everyone rushed out. Black thought she'd caught a glimpse of Corey in the mirror as the girl ran by, but it might have been someone else. She didn't know. When she turned around, Corey was gone.

--

Two weeks later.

The prom was off to a great start, the speeches and awards having got under way, everyone having started drinking early on in the night.

Alone in her corner, Black wasn't allowed to drink; she had to set the example, she had to stay clean. In another corner, she would see Corey arguing with another candidate, a tiny girl called Amy. It seemed she was disagreeing with whatever Corey was saying because she hadn't stopped shaking her "no" in the past minute.

Blake wondered what they were talking about, but more so she wondered where Naomi was, the exchange student who'd arrived too late in the year to make any friends and been a perfect candidate for prom queen. She hadn't been seen all night.

As if called upon the big double doors burst open violently, sending people running and screaming. Six boys came in dragging a girl by the arms. It was hard to see who it was but it was easy to guess it was Naomi. The boys dumped her body on the ground.

"We found her at her house, cowering in her bed!" yelled one of them, his face flushed.
Naomi's nightgown was ripped to shreds, her exposed breasts and thighs covered in finger-shaped bruises; her face and stomach caked in thick, brown blood. She was dead. The boys looked proudly at one another.

"No!" Amy yelled from the corner of the room. Corey tried to hold her back but she struggled free and lunged forward. She was small and wormed easily through the panicking crowd, and for half an instant Blake had hope that Amy might actually make it out of the room.

But as Amy ran past a group of tall cheerleaders, one reached down and grabbed a fistful of perfectly placed hair, stopping the run and sending Amy fling to the ground. The girls moved forward, practised and synchronised, as one shook the torn blond locks from her fingers with disgust. The first to reach Amy started ripping at her dress, the next at her hair, and the others fell on her with they manicured nails as Amy shrieked in pain and fear.

Blake turned around, her hands trying to hide her eyes from the massacre happening behind her.
"Be strong," said a voice beside Blake's ear. Her head shot up and she found herself staring into Corey's eyes. "We have no time." Corey said, loud enough to be heard above the screams that were becoming more and more desperate. "Same deal I tried with Amy. This is poison." She held up a syringe filled with a clear liquid. "It'll kill you in 20 minutes. Half in my blood, half in yours. We do this now. You in?" Corey's eyes were cold and steady as the screams became gurglings.

Blake, trying to hold back her tears, put out her arm, and with a practised move, Corey jabbed they needle into the pit of her elbow. The liquid burned and pushed it's way into her bloodstream; just as fast the needle was out of her arm and into Corey's emptying itself out. Two seconds later the syringe was thrown under a buffet table, out of sight.

They turned and faced Amy, who was now a naked mass of clawed flesh. Her throat was ripped open, and one of her eyes had been gouged out. The screaming had stopped.

A girl, still wiping her blood covered hands on a napkin, walked up to the microphone on the stage, her face illuminated by joy. "And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: the prom king and queen!" She forced her voice to sound even more high-pitched than usual, more fake. Two boys grabbed Corey and Blake and dragged them in from of the small stage.

"Our prom king was school president, on both the soccer and basketball teams, and," the blond girl gushed, "I'm proud to say he's also my boyfriend! Cameron, get up here!"

A cute, well-groomed boy walked up through the clapping and handshakes, a huge smile on his face. He kissed his girlfriend then picked up the sealed envelope and dagger, grinning down at the crowd.

"The competition was rather interesting this year, but now we only have to candidates left!" He took the dagger and cut the seal, getting a few laughs in the process. "And our winner is... Blake!"

Everyone started laughing as Corey and Blake's eyes met for the last time and Blake was dragged onto the stage. Corey tried to mouth the words "be strong" before she was pushed to the back of the crowd, having been deemed uninteresting. Everyone was trying to get as close to the prom queen as they could; most people only saw a prom queen once.

Blake was trying to ignore the people in front of her, trying to ignore her heart that was beating so hard that she thought it might kill her there and then. She didn't hear the prom king's small speech, only seeing the dagger he was holding proudly over his head. The school's crest was on the hilt, and the motto was engraved on the blade itself. Blake couldn't remember what the motto was, but it was in Latin, something about 'equality' or something of the like.

She barely screamed when they prom king slit her throat, barely noticed when they collected her gushing blood in wine cups, and barely made any noise when she fell dead on the stage.

The cups passed around as everyone drank their final right of passage out of high school. No one in their right mind would think of continuing their studies without tales of a prom queen to pass on. As they drank, the students thought of the stories they would have to tell about tonight.

No one noticed Corey starting to throw up in the back of the room. A painful smile was on her lips as the bile dribbled from the corner of her mouth. "Quicker ingested than injected..." she managed softly before throwing up again.

As she looked with half closed eyes, all over the room people were starting to spew their freshly drunken blood and overpriced prom suppers. The gentler stomachs of the bunch, most girls, were throwing up more blood than the others, most of it being their own.

"Someone..." a girl gasped, clutching her stomach as she wriggled on the floor. "Someone spiked the prom queen!"

With the last of her strength, Corey sat herself up and looked over the mass of dying teens into Blake's dead, smiling face. She coughed up thick black blood that stained her hands and face, her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell dead with one final giggle.