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unbound from the confines of his belt and shirt and was precariously swinging over the carpet.
    “Janice , just stay here, I'm going to close the door and keep you in here. I'm going to get you some help.” Keith walked backwards out of the room while rolling a chair in front of him as a temporary barrier from another violent lunge. She continued with her aimless kicking and grunting. Keith closed the door and looked back into the conference room through a glass panel. The blood on the projector screen was starting to darken into a black stain.

Chapter five
     
    “Good morning, ladies and gentleman. We are now prepared to board flight 5328 to Holland. At this time, we ask all passengers that need extra assistance in seating children to board first, followed by rows 15-20. We will also begin boarding all our preferred platinum members at this time. We will be seating the other rows shortly, thanks.”
     
    *****
     
    A gray smeared sky covered the playground at Oak Brook Elementary School. Concerned teachers looked up at the low lying clouds, grimacing at the prospect of bringing the children in early from recess. The courtyard was full of screaming and laughing with feet stomping repeatedly in gravel. Thirty children twirled, chased, tripped and cried. One organic mass of skin, hair and teeth swirled like a stream eddy around the circumference of the playground.
    M s. Stutsen sat several yards from the playground on a shallow knoll and watched the children. She sat with her arms behind her back, propping up her torso. Every now and then, a boy named Andy would peek out from under a purple plastic tube and wave at her. After the fifth time, she had grown weary of waving back and pretended to read the book lying on her lap, but she really stared into the remote distance of suburban homes. She could see the very top part of the roof from her own home which was two blocks away and started to think about the pot roast that had been cooking in the kitchen for the past three hours. She methodically organized how she was going to prepare dinner when she got home. Then she started worrying about her class. She recounted in her head how many children were absent today: Danny Allen, Craig Ebert, Jen Lippitt, Jackson Bladen, Sarah Conrad, and Jared Freeman... there were at least two more, she thought. She knew she had never had that many children at home sick in her four years teaching. In addition, she heard that three faculty members had called in substitutes as well.
    M s. Stutsen could feel misplacement about something throughout the day. There was something caught in the back of her mind that she could feel herself consciously picking at but never quite uncovering. The layered gray clouds clinging to the base of the mountains and the sighing wind mixing with the laughter of children stirred a maternal instinct within her to protect her young students. She quickly cast the notion out of her mind and subdued her paranoia but knew she could easily summon her hostile instincts at the first sign of more imaginary machinations.
    Closing her eyes, she became very aware of the wind as it bathed her arms with warm air. Relics conjured in her mind of a recent trip to the ocean making her feel like she was on the beach. She heard the sound of pebbles being crunched under someone's shoes coming closer to her. Jayne Sanders was quickly approaching her, holding her elbow. Her pigtails swung from the back of her head and she continuously brushed her bangs out of her eyes as she ran.
    “ Jayne, what’s wrong? Did you hurt your arm?”
    “No, I fell.”
    “Well, did it hurt when you fell?”
    “ Yes, it hurts.” Jayne put out her bottom lip, which puffed up her entire face into an exaggerated expression of sadness.
    “ Okay, you just need to be more careful.”
    “But it wasn't my fault, M s. Stutsen, it was Jacob's.”
    “Where you two fighting?” Stutsen looked around the playground to find Jacob but she couldn't see him. “Where is