The Hostage 1 (version)

It was an autumn afternoon when the high school building was shut down. Everything was done quietly, almost secretly, as the wet leaves drooped from nearby trees, and slight whisks of wind stirred them up into piles.
The school itself was grey, solemn, with dark windows and a fearful, forbidding air. The hostages were grouped together in a high room, overlooking a grim parade-ground. The room had formerly been utilised as a headmaster's study, and was filled with collegiate accoutrements, rather dusty and old-fashioned in the dimness of the room. There was a mortar-board, an old globe beside bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes. The window was of a handsome old construction, rusted-shut long before. In that room one had the feeling that something beautiful had once taken place there, looking from the windows had once been a joy, you could gaze on a bright emerald cricket lawn bathed in glorious sunlight, and wet with dew.
Beyond the window you could see the crumbling granite cornices and cupolas of this neglected building.
Incongruously, though, there was also a large, old-fashioned kind of double bed in the room, with crisp linen and a heavy wrought-iron bedstead, which took up a lot of space so that the people in the room had to manoeuvre around it uncomfortably. Assembled in this brown, dusty room were perhaps a dozen people, all of them frightened out of their wits, for they were being held hostage. All of them were confused and sweating, afraid for their lives.