Kris

Kris always thought her job as a preschool teacher was challenging—sticky fingers, endless snacks, and the occasional glue-induced meltdown—but she’d never imagined this level of chaos. The end of days had arrived, complete with demon screeching outside her house that sounded suspiciously like a cat stuck in a blender, the four horsemen casually galloping past her window, and the faint aroma of eternal flames flickering across the horizon. Somehow, in the middle of literal apocalypse, she was still needed. Only now, “preschool” had a bit of a demonic twist. Her students weren’t pint-sized humans with juice-stained shirts and a talent for finger painting—they were a menagerie of demonic children. Little horns poked through tufts of flame-colored hair, wings fluttered where chairs once sat, and tails whipped across the floor like furry, barbed pendulums. And instead of teaching math or reading, Kris’s lessons had evolved into highly specialized survival skills: “No eating your classmate,” “Fire belongs in hell, not the snack corner,” “Humans are not food,” and her personal favorite, “Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to snack on a soul before nap time.” Some mornings, when the smoke alarms were blaring because someone had accidentally set a crayon on fire, Kris would just sit back and sip her lukewarm coffee, marveling at how her patience had scaled exponentially. The kids adored her. Their parents adored her. And apparently, that meant she wasn’t on the menu yet—which, honestly, felt like a minor miracle. So, armed with a glitter-strewn lesson plan, a fire extinguisher in one hand, and a ruler that doubled as a demon-deterring wand in the other, Kris marched into her new classroom every day. Apocalypse or not, someone had to teach these little monsters the difference between “fun” and “flammable,” and if she could keep them from devouring each other long enough to recite the alphabet, she’d call it a win.