Playground

                                                                                      Playground
                                                                                    A Short Story

                                                                                  By Ben Dakoske





    “You’re a faggot, Gary.”
    The insult was expected. Variations of it had been hurled at Gary the entire school year, and the year before. It seemed like an eternity.
      Though the insult was expected, the blow was not.  Charlie Reed leaned over the seat and punched Gary in the back of the head.  Gary turned, rubbing his head.

    “Cut it out, Charlie.  I’m serious!”
    Charlie’s head poked over the seat, his stocking cap pulled low over his eyes. “You’re serious, alright.  Seriously gay!”
    Charlie lifted his head so he could look Gary in the eyes. Gary looked into them, trying to peer beneath Charlie’s heavy lids and his hat, trying to see what could make a person so full of hate.
    “Screw you, Charlie,” Gary said.  He found a bubbling hotspring inside of himself at these words.  A feeling like he actually had a chance.
    Charlie punched him clean in the face.  He moved with a speed Gary knew in his heart he could never match.
    Charlie’s nose made a hollow popping sound and something warm ran down his face and neck.  He didn’t feel anything, other than his eyes stinging and watering up.

      “Oh, the little girl’s crying!” Charlie said.  “Look, Dennis, she must be on her period!”
    Dennis Fuller, Charlie’s buddy in crime popped up from two seats back.
    “Jeezus, Gary-fairy, that’s a lotta blood!  You need some Kotex for your schnoz!”
    He fell back in his seat laughing.  Charlie regarded him levelly.
    “You just gonna sit there and bleed, homo?”  Gary wiped the blood from his face and breathed through his nose with a sound that was dangerously close to a sniffle.
    “Leave me alone, Charlie.”
    “Turn around.”
    “I can look wherever I want.  It’s a free country.”
    Charlie sneered back at him.  “Yeah, right.  That means I got the right to beat your ass, then.”
    Gary stared back at Charlie.  This little bit of defiance was all he could do.  Even though Charlie was only a year older, he was lanky, wiry, and fast.  His knuckles were bony and sharp, and he could hit like the dickens.  His punches never seemed to miss, and the one time Gary had tried to fight him, it was like fighting a ghost.  Charlie was so quick and mean, Gary had ended up on his back after he took a few swings, none of which connected.
    He couldn’t beat Charlie.  So he had his little defiant moments.  What was left of his pride demanded it.
    “Turn around, Gary.  Or I swear to God I’m gonna pummel you at lunch.”
    Gary stared at him.  Charlie rose up in his seat, lightening quick.  His right arm pistoned back and snapped forward.  His fist stopped a few inches from Gary’s face.
    Gary turned around in his seat and hunched down. He waited for a moment, but no further action was forthcoming from Charlie.  With a sigh, he wiped blood off his face, trying to make it look like he was just clearing away an irritating mote from his eye.
    He was astonished to see how much blood was on the back of his hand.  He looked around for something to wipe it on, knowing that his mother would kill him if she found out that he had been in a fight and wiped his blood on his pants.  He settled for wiping it off on the institutional green cover of the seat in front of him. The cover, though roughly textured, was a poor absorbent.  Gary smeared the rough green surface with dried blood.

    The rest of the bus ride seemed to take forever.  Charlie was reasonably quiet behind him, but Dennis kept shooting paperclips at him with a rubber band.  Where they hit Gary’s head or bare skin, they stung like bees.  When they missed, they seemed even scarier, hitting the seat with a loud whop!

    Gary hunkered down in his seat and pulled his coat over him.  He knew this would make him an easier target, but he hoped the extra protection afforded by his coat was worth it.

    By the time the bus ride was over, Gary’s back was covered with welts.  Some of them would probably bruise.  As he stepped off the bus, Charlie’s foot hooked his own and he tumbled down the last step, the grooved edge of the stairs barking his shins.  He landed elbows first in a puddle with a splash and a flare of pain in his arms.

    Charlie said something, but it barely registered.  Gary struggled to his feet, his ears red.  Gripping his book bag tight, Gary scuttled into school.

    “Is that blood on your shirt?”
    Gary looked over his shoulder and saw Katy Letham. She had a locker two spaces down from his, and some of Gary’s favorite times were spent chatting with her as they got ready to start or end school.
    “Umm, blood?” Gary asked.  He looked down, and he had indeed bled all over the white turtleneck his mom had given him last Christmas.  Although Gary wasn’t fat, he wasn’t as skinny as the kids he envisioned as popular.  He hated this shirt as it showed every little crease in his skin.  It was like a wetsuit, skintight and revealing.  He was almost glad to see that it was ruined.
    “Uh, yeah, it’s blood. Sorry, its gross, I know,” Gary said, wiping ineffectually at the drying blood.
    “Jeez, Gary, it’s not even Halloween yet.  The slasher victim look is sooo out this time of year,” Katy said with a smile.  She moved closer and placed her hand on the blood on his chest.  Gary froze.  A girl.  Touching him.  A thousand thoughts swirled through his mind at once, some sweet, some unprintable.  They culminated with maybe I should get my ass kicked more often!

    “What happened, Gary?  You look awful.”
    Gary smiled, with what he hoped was some sort of devilish charm.  “Oh, nothing happened.  I just get nosebleeds when the air is dry.  You know, we’re heading into winter here, and-”
    Katy pinched him through his shirt.  “It’s the middle of October, dummy,” she said with a smile.
    “Well, yeah, it is,” Gary replied, his face going red.  He ran a hand awkwardly through his hair.  “But I-”
    “I know, Gary,” she said, suddenly serious. “Now go to class, you’re gonna be late.”
    Gary stammered for a second.  Katy whirled away with a smile and headed down the hall to her first class.  Gary stood there for a moment longer, staring down at his bloody shirt. 
    Mrs. McClusky would throw him out of class in a heartbeat if he came in like this.
 
    With a sigh, Gary zipped up his coat and hurried to class.


    The day dragged by like a limp, dead thing.  Gary concentrated as best he could on his studies, but they all seemed blank and pale, the words and numbers blending together in a meaningless stew that seemed to clog his brain.  He was ridiculed all day for wearing his coat inside.  During lunch, it was especially bad.  He told his classmates that he was coming down with a cold.  During recess, he walked the playground by himself, stopping once to fill in for a lopsided game of foursquare. He was pretty good at that one, and he knocked out several other players before the bell rang to summon them back to class.  Charlie, Dennis and the others in their clique swung upside down from the monkey bars and had chicken fights on the balance beams.  Gary made sure to lag behind them as the students filed back inside.

    Gary drifted through the day, into his last class, Music. What a stupid idea, he thought. An entire class devoted to how vocally inept I am, and how badly I can play the recorder.  What a dumb instrument anyways.  I bet it was chosen because it was the cheapest thing they could shove at us.  God forbid we could get electric guitars and learn how shred and get the girls.

    “Gary!”  Mrs. Westbridge’s voice was shrill and clipped.  “Stop daydreaming and get with the program!”
    “Sorry.”  Gary looked down at his sheet of incomprehensible music and mimed singing along with the rest of the kids.
    Life sucks.
   


    The day finally ended, and Gary rushed out with the rest of the students under the gray skies.  He hurried to find his bus, number 971, which was usually the second to last one in line.  He boarded the bus and walked back, hoping to find a good seat.  He found one in the middle of the bus, not so far forward that he would be stuck with the little kids, and not so far back that he should arouse the ire of Charlie and his gang.

    The rest of the kids piled aboard, laughing and talking. Gary pulled out a book and thumbed through it, looking for his spot.  He found his page and settled down in his seat, looking forward to about a half hour of uninterrupted reading.

    Charlie boarded the bus and slapped the book out of Gary’s hands as he walked by.  Gary looked up to say something, anything, as Charlie walked by, but his tormenter was already gone.  He had knocked the book away almost as a reflex action, and continued to walk to the back, where he kicked another kid, a plump boy named Mark, out of a seat.  Mark hurried, red-faced, to the front of the bus, where he squeezed in with one of the younger kids, who protested noisily.

    Gary reached down and collected his book.  He wiped down the cover, which was now soggy from landing on the wet floor.  He paged in, noting with disgust that nearly a dozen pages were wet and wrinkled.  He pulled his wool cap out from his coat pocket and wiped them down as best as he could without tearing the pages, mentally noting that if they were still wet when he got home, he would have to put the book over one the floor heater vents.  Books were precious things to Gary, and he had lost a few of them over the years by having the pages dry stuck together.

    As the bus’ engine roared to life, Gary peeled apart the pages of his soggy book and wished for a better life.



    When he got home, he stripped off his bloody shirt and buried it in the bottom of the trash.  His parents wouldn’t be home for a few more hours yet, so he went upstairs and got a shower and threw on some fresh clothes.  His mother had a mind like a steel trap for details, and she would surely notice that Gary wasn’t wearing his white turtleneck.  When she came home, Gary would lie to her and say that he was all sweaty from gym class, so he got a shower when he got home.  He hoped that she would not remember that he did not have Gym on Wednesdays. 

    Gary parked himself on the couch and watched TV until his parents came home.  They ate dinner in partial silence and made small talk about how their days went.  Gary lied about his day, and when dinner was done, he went to his room and picked away at his homework.  No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to remember much of the day’s lessons.  Finally, he turned to the back of his math book and copied the answers down for the odd questions, and muddled his way through the even numbered questions.  After he finished the last of his work, he went downstairs and watched a movie on the TV for a while before turning in for a fitful night of sleep.
    As he closed his eyes, he mumbled the meaningless prayers that he had been taught to recite.  When he was done, he said a more heartfelt version for himself.  He prayed to God or anyone else who would listen that he could be older, that he could be stronger.  He prayed for a big set of muscles, the kind with all the fixings that got the girls and made bullies back off when they saw him.

    Before he fell asleep, he wished for one last thing.  If no one would make him bigger or stronger, he wished that there were some way that he could even the score.  His tired heart opened up, and he wished for the darkest, blackest revenge he could get.  The kind that would be spoken of in hushed tones in the hallways as he passed.
    He wished for the kind of power that would make the other kids say “that’s Gary Keenan right there.  Don’t mess with him.  The last kid who did that was never found.”


    As Gary passed into the dark of slumber, he had no idea that something that was older than time and full of hate heard his cries.  It couldn’t come to Gary quite yet, for it was not of this world, and it had much space and time to cross.

      But as Gary slept, unaware that his dark wishes were bearing evil fruit, something awful stirred in the nightmare consciousness of a thousand worlds.  It drew its many black legs up and began the long journey to find a little boy; Gary’s hate and loathing guiding it through the dark like a beacon.


    Gary got through the rest of the week with few beatings.  He was tripped in the halls twice, and had his lunch money stolen once, but that was the worst.  He was even able to concentrate in class a bit, and he felt like things were looking up a bit.

    It was the middle of the day and he was walking to the bathroom.  There was no one in the halls, and the school hummed with the dull throb of a world pinned under low-hanging gray clouds.
    Life seemed to be in stasis.  As Gary walked down the hall, it seemed that the air itself was thick, draining him of purpose, making him slow, begging him to stay, for no particular reason.
    Gary puttered down the hall, glancing through the narrow windows into the other classrooms as he passed.  It was like a time machine; he saw the teachers he had in previous years with younger students, progressing from the teens of his grade to kids in the single digits.
    Gary looked through a wide set of windows and realized that he had passed the bathroom and had made it to the library.  Sheepishly, he looked over his shoulder to see if anyone had noticed him missing his destination.  The hall was empty, its massive length covered by scuffed-sea blue carpet and broken by small islands of trash and stuff that had fallen out of kids’ lockers. 
    He turned back to the library and walked over to the large metal racks outside the doors that housed the library’s for sale section.  This is where all the old books the library no longer had room for went, and then sold for pennies and dimes.  Gary knew that there were some real treasures in here, just last summer he had gotten a copy of The Five Fingers, a bloody and relentless military novel that seemed neither fact nor fiction, but an eerie combination of both.  Before that, he found a handful of tattered mystery novels, his personal favorite.  He had taken special care with these, making sure each ripped, wrinkled page was back in place, so he wouldn’t miss a minute of the action.  Gary had read enough mystery novels to know that the smallest of clues could be hidden on any page, and that if he was missing a page; well then, he was probably missing the clues that would help him solve the case.

    Gary peered through the novels, finding a few dog-ears and grabbing them up eagerly.  He also found an old science fiction novel that reminded him of a short-lived TV series about people colonizing the moon.  When he flipped it over, the back proudly proclaimed that it was soon to be a major television show.  Back in 1978. 
    Someone cleared their throat behind him and Gary whirled around brought his hands up in a defensive posture.  His right hand was loaded with old books, his left clutched a ragged hall pass.
    “Gary,” Mrs. Zimmerman said, her face severe, “you know that this is not the bathroom, I assume?”
    Gary stared up at her, Mrs. Zimmerman, the old matron of the library.  She towered over him, her steel-gray hair pulled back in a strict bun, a few shades lighter than the gunmetal dresses she always seemed to wear.  She had been with the school for so long that he remembered her from kindergarten.
    “Yes, Mrs. Zimmerman, I’m sorry, I just got a bit sidetracked, it won’t happen again,” he said hastily.
    Mrs. Zimmerman regarded him levelly.  “And in your travels you stopped here and picked up a few books?”
    Gary looked at the books in his hand.  “Yes, ma’am. I’m really sorry, I’ll put them back right now.”
    “Let me see what you have there,” Mrs. Zimmerman held out her hand and Gary gave her the books.  She flipped through them, her face impassive.  She came to the science fiction novel and paused.  “This one’s good,” she said with a small smile.  “I remember the show that they did from this, this book is actually just the pilot of the series.”
    Gary didn’t know what to say.
    Mrs. Zimmerman handed the books back to him.  “Well Gary, run along now, you’re probably missing an important lesson.”
    “What do I do with these?”
    Mrs. Zimmerman sighed.  “Put them in your locker.  I’ll note them as sold in the records.  But get back to class, you hear?”
    “I’ve got some money for them, I was going to come inside and pay…”
    “Gary, the library is overflowing with books.  Even at a dime a pop, we can’t get rid of some of these golden oldies fast enough to make room for all the new stuff.  We practically have to give them away,” she said, her lips cracking into a genuine smile.

    Gary smiled back.  “Thanks, Mrs. Zimmerman. I still have to use the bathroom though.”
    “Well then go and make it quick.”

    “Thanks again!” he said and skipped off to the bathroom.
    He never should have gone in there.


    He walked into the boy’s room, the old white porcelain fixtures gleaming dully in the overhead lights.  He walked over to the urinals, and stood at the left-most one, placing his books on the middle urinal to free his hands. He unzipped his pants and let fly with a soft sigh.
    He was halfway done when he felt hands on his hips.  Before he could respond, the hands pulled his pants roughly down to his ankles, exposing his Jockey shorts.  His stream shot up at a sharp angle as his pants dropped before dying abruptly in stage fright.

    “What’s up, queer?”  a high, crackly voice came from behind.
    Gary quickly tucked his business back into his shorts and tried to grab his pants, all the while facing away from his attacker, who had to be Travis Martin, that voice could belong to no one else.
    “Nice whitie-tighties, fag,” Travis said, and shoved him roughly against the urinal.  Gary could say nothing, this was all too much.  He leaned over and grabbed his pants, puling them up with a mighty tug.  As he leaned forward, Travis pushed him again, slamming his head into the backboard of the urinal, pressing his face where his piss had been moments before.  Gary backed out and turned on Travis, bringing his hands up like the fighters he saw on TV.

    “What are you gonna do, baby?”  The question was a good one, since Gary was actually bigger than Travis, only the other boy’s mean streak and who his friends were made him dangerous.
    “One more time, Travis, and I swear,” Gary said, surprising even himself.
    “Oh, yeah? Come on then,” Travis stepped forward and threw his first real punch, his thin right arm shooting out at Gary’s face.
    Gary stepped forward as well and flailed his left arm up, knocking Travis’ arm away. As he stepped in, he caught the edge of Travis’ sleeve and pulled him towards him, and he threw his own right hook with all the hate and anger of the world driving it.
    The combination of pulling Travis forward and swinging for the fences was astounding to Gary.  It was a simple equation of physics, the kind of stuff they had in store for him once he hit senior high.  Here and now though, Travis was off-balance, and Gary’s fist smashed into Travis’s left eye like a freight train.
    Travis squalled and went down in a heap, clutching his eye and screaming. Gary stood over him for a few moments, watching his attacker thrash and squirm on the floor, screaming cursed up at him.  He wondered if this was how it felt to win a fight.
    Gary felt sick.  He snatched up his books and ran, leaving Travis on the floor, shouting curses and threats after him. 


    Gary sat in class, trying to look as preoccupied with his studies as possible.  Mrs. Burnham gave him a look when he got back to class, but her raised eyebrows didn’t mean anything to Gary if she wasn’t going to push the issue.  He buried his head in his books and begged for the day to end.
    If he was caught for what he did to Travis, he didn’t know what he would do.  He had never been in a real fight before, just a few scuffles and push matches where you bounced off the walls like a rubber ball, but no one really got hurt. And any time fists had been thrown in anger, Gary was on the wrong side of the winner.  What did teachers do when they broke up a fight?  It seemed like both kids would get into trouble, whether or not they won. Or started the fight in the first place.

      These thoughts ate at Gary for the rest of the day.  He expected the principal, Mr. White, to come in at any time and snatch him from class.  And give him a referral.  Gary had known students that got those, and they were invariably bad kids.  Good kids like him never got referrals.  His parents would be appalled, and probably ground him for life.

    The class bell rang, loud and strident.  Gary almost screamed.


    The bus ride home was full of quiet tension.  Apparently Charlie had heard about what had happened to Travis, because he stayed well away from Gary, only shooting him mean looks to let him know that he was still a punk, a loser.

    Travis rode a different bus, so at least Gary didn’t have to deal with his nonsense.  When Gary got off the bus, he was left with the feeling that, for the first time in his life, he had stood up for himself and won.

    As he walked home under the gray sky, his chest filled with pride.  Faintly off in the distance, he could hear a swarming, buzzing noise, like a cloud of flies circling a carcass.  But it was mid-October, shouldn’t it be too cold for flies?

    As he made his way home, the flies sounded like they were laughing somehow, the buzz of their wings making some inhuman sounds of mirth.  When Gary smiled at the silliness of the thought, the flies seemed to buzz louder.

    I fought back and won today.  Tomorrow will be a better day.  And the next day, even better.

    As Gary fell asleep that night, he heard the buzzing of the flies again. They seemed to echo unnaturally in his head, as if they came from down a long, dark hallway.  The kind of hallway you didn’t go down by yourself, if you knew what was good for you. Gary tossed and turned, half asleep, half awake.  The worst part was that the buzzing seemed to be with him both in his dreams and in his waking state.

    The buzzing intensified, becoming almost a physical thing.  Gary covered his ears and curled into a ball with his hands over his ears. 
    Then the buzzing spoke to him. It was a deep voice, a dark voice that seemed to come from a dark place both inside and outside of Gary at the same time. It spoke some other language, but not one that Gary had ever heard.
      If the sound of the voice was terrible, what it said was worse.
    I’m coming for you Gary.  In fact, I’m already here.
    Gary screamed and hurled his blanket aside, fully intending to leave his room and get his parents.

    His blanket flew up and then froze in time, a blue cascade pouring down onto his bed, a flood of water poured from an invisible pitcher.  His scream died in his throat, which felt like it was choked with dust dredged up from a forgotten tomb.
    Gary froze too, in fear, half-on and half off of his bed.  He knew he could move, but for a moment, he just couldn’t.

    That was when he noticed that he wasn’t alone in his room anymore.  Something was in the middle of his room, something huge and black.  It was roughly dome-shaped, but its form seemed to shift as Gary looked at it.  He instinctively shied away from it, and almost screamed again as he backed into his bedroom wall.  The thing reared up and regarded him with a million red eyes.  Below its eyes a wild tangle of tentacle-like mandibles writhed and twitched, seeming to move with their own life. 
    I have come to help you with your… problem.  And when we’ve taken care of your situation, you will help me…
    Gary almost vomited.  Whatever he had wished for, this thing was not it. 
    And now, Gary, I’m going to become a part of you, so that we can do what we need to do.
    The thing reared up on countless legs, looking like nothing more than a giant black spider.  Instead of crawling or scuttling like a spider, it seemed to walk like a human.  Gary tried to scream again and pulled away, but it was too late.
      The giant spider-thing seized him in a grip that seemed both firm yet gentle, its front legs scooped Gary up and laid him on his bed.  The thing ducked its head, inhumanly quick, and spread its mandibles to cover Gary’s face.  He tried to pull away, but the thing held him in a vice-like grip.  It breathed into Gary’s mouth, its breath smelling like some horrible dead thing.  Gary went numb and began shaking like he was having a seizure as the thing lowered itself over him.  The creature shook in time with Gary, and in a mist of black light, it sunk into his body, becoming smaller until it finally disappeared.

    Gary dropped back to his bed, his eyes rolled back in his head, exposing pure white.
      He shook for a while longer, gagging sounds coming from his mouth.  Finally, he lay still.

    Next to him, in the dark, his blanket rejoined the timestream and fell to the floor in a lumpy heap.



    The next morning Gary awoke moments before his alarm went off.  Instinctively, he reached over and shut off the alarm before it could blare in his ear.  He walked to the bathroom in his underwear, heedless of what his parents would say if they saw him.  In fact, as sensitive about his person as he normally was, he was heedless about that too.

    When he entered the bathroom, the wall-length mirror facing the door showed Gary that he had wet himself.  He stripped off his shorts and went over to the toilet and take care of his morning business.  He finished and flushed the toilet with a mechanical motion, and stepped back in front of the mirror.

    His normally pale brown eyes turned suddenly black.  Something moved in their depths, long thin fingers in oil.  Gary reared his head back and screamed, a terrible ripping sound, the rape of a new life in the darkest corners of reality tearing from his lungs.  His teeth were fangs of jagged glass, expanding from the ever-widening black slit of his mouth.
    Black, multi-jointed limbs rose over his shoulders, caressing his screaming skull and scratching at the mirror with talons that shone wetly with sticky green venom.

    Gary stopped screaming and looked into the mirror.  His eyes were brown.  He smiled at the mirror to check his teeth.  It was more of a sneer.  His teeth were normal.

    Gary balled up his fists and began throwing punches at the mirror, stopping his fists short mere inches of the glass.  With each swing, he felt the strength in his body grow.

    Today was going to be an excellent day.


    Gary got on the bus with his back straight.  He walked to the back of the bus and took a seat.  A few stops up, Charlie would get on, his ratty black hoodie smelling of weed and cigarette smoke. The back of the bus was Charlie’s domain, where he could catch up on his sleep before skipping class and plan with his buddies who they were going to rip on, or when they were going to get messed up on cheap booze. He would be pretty upset to see Gary sitting in his little court. Gary could care less. 

    He sat staring straight ahead, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

    The bus roared on through the rain, a big orange beast under the low gray clouds.  Kids got on and took their seats, a few of them sparing a quick glance at Gary, who was normally at the front of the bus to avoid any trouble.  For someone like him, sitting in the back was a deathwish.  Or, for someone like who he used to be, it was a deathwish.  Now, it was a challenge.

    Charlie got on the bus, his stocking cap pulled low over his eyes, his thumbs hooked through holes in the sleeves of his hoodie.  The headphones of his Walkman sat on his pale neck, and for a moment Gary was struck that this kid looked like a druggie version of Frankenstein.
    Charlie’s eyes widened a bit at seeing Gary back in his space, then they narrowed.  He shrugged his backpack over his shoulder and walked to the back of the bus.
    The eyes of the snake. Gary had no idea where that thought came from, but it was fitting, so he didn’t question the origin when the message was right.
    A snake has its poison, but so do we…

    Charlie sat down in the seat kiddie-corner in front of Gary and turned to him, leaning in just like they were old friends.
      “Hey Gary.  There’s a faggot in my seat.  You mind telling him to move?”  His breath smelled like old beers and stale smoke.
    “Blow it out your ass.”
    “What did you say to me?”  Charlie’s voice, far from being incredulous at this defiance, seemed to radiate joy at the fact that Gary was finally standing up for a beating.
    “You heard me, bitch.”
    “Who are you calling bitch, you little queer?”
    “You, bitch.”
    “Me, huh?”  Charlie leaned in close to examine Gary’s face.  He also unhooked his thumbs from the holes in his sleeves.
    “Yup.”
    Charlie exploded into motion.  His left hand shot out to grab Gary’s jacket, and his right hand pistoned forward to smash Gary’s face in.
      There was a loud snap that was somehow barely audible on the edges of perception, and Gary was no longer in his seat.  He was in the seat across from Charlie, regarding him levelly with dark eyes.

    Charlie covered his surprise well.  Maybe he was still high or hung over, and these things happened to him often.  Gary could care less.  What mattered was the next few seconds.

    “Pretty slick, kid.  It’s not gonna save you when we beat your ass, though.”
    “We, huh?”  Gary asked with a laugh.  “Too scared to get it done yourself?”
    Charlie shook his head.  “No.  But Travis’ gonna wanna kick your ass, so I figured I’d throw a party on your dumb ass.”
    Gary smiled, and Charlie flinched a bit.  Something in the way that kid moved creeped him out big time.  But he had taken little turds like him to the trashcan his whole life, and Charlie would be dammed if he would back off now.

    “I’m giving you a warning right now, Charlie.  Only the fact that you’re too stupid to accept it and move on makes me do this.  If you try to touch me again, I will put you through such horrible pain, you’ll wish you would die.  But you won’t.  You’ll die the next time you try my patience.  And I can’t wait for you to try.”

    “I’ll do more than try, you little faggot,” Charlie snarled and leapt, swinging punches with both hands.
    Gary caught him easily, grabbing Charlie’s left forearm with his right hand, and clutching Charlie’s right fist in his.  Charlie had a brief second to be astonished before Gary changed.  It only took the briefest of instants, but it would haunt Charlie for the rest of his life.

    Gary’s eyes became the darkest black Charlie had ever seen, and his teeth seemed to grown right out of his mouth, becoming slivers and needles.  Something black and hairy shot out of Gary’s right hand and punched deep into Charlie’s forearm.  The wound immediately felt like it was on fire, coursing in time to the beating of Charlie’s heart.  With a silent scream that seemed to split the air, Gary lunged forward and threw Charlie back into his seat with enough force to dent the metal back wall.
    The bus rocked with the force of the impact, and the driver called out shrilly in alarm, but her words seemed to be a thousand miles away.

    For Charlie, reality seemed to bow out in front of him, and snap back into place like a rubber band.  He swore as he slid the sleeve of his hoodie in panic, searching for the wound on his arm.

    There was nothing there.  No cut, no stab mark.  But it still hurt like the devil himself had bitten him.  Charlie leaned over the site of the wound and saw something green pulsing under his veins.  Unwillingly, he looked up at Gary, afraid of what he would see.

    Gary sat there, his eyes brown, not black.  His teeth weren’t fangs.  There was nothing crazy about his arms or hands.  In fact, if Charlie hadn’t been sure of what he had seen, he was sure that this was just some wuss he was about pummel.

    “You’re in trouble now, buddy,”  Charlie growled, clutching his arm.
    Gary shook his head.
    “Yeah.  You know my dad has a gun?”
    Gary’s mouth moved like he was gulping for air. He spoke, but Charlie was sure that it really wasn’t Gary speaking.  The voice buzzed like flies, and somehow sounded dusty, like the oldest tomb in the world.

    “Your threats mean nothing.  Your father’s gun means even less.  Before I am done, I will eat your father’s guts while he screams.  I will tear a hole in this world.  Everyone will die or serve.”

    Charlie sat stunned for a second.  Then Gary waved a hand dismissively at him.
    “For now, your pain must start.”
    Charlie’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the floor, still clutching his arm.  Foam roiled at the corners of his mouth.

    “Uh, oh.”  Gary said.

    He leaned back in his seat and enjoyed the ride while Charlie convulsed and vomited at his feet.


    The flash of the ambulance lights reflected in his eyes as they pulled Charlie from the bus. 
    “Do you think he’ll be okay?”
    “Don’t know.”

    Katy looked up at him.  “You don’t really care, do you?”
    Gary shook his head.  “No.  Not really.”
    “I know what he did to you.  It’s okay if you don’t care what happens to him.”
    Gary looked down at her.  His eyes were dark pools.  “No, you don’t know what he did to me.  And yes, it is okay that I don’t care, thank you.”
    Katy’s brow creased in worry.  “Do you think he’ll die, Gary.”
    “He won’t die.  At least, not because of this.”
    “Gary… did you have anything to do with what happened to Charlie?”

      Gary turned away and watched the orderlies raise Charlie’s blackened body into the ambulance and slam the doors.
    Without looking at her he said, “You should really stay away from me.”
    He shouldered his book bag and went inside, leaving Katy alone in the rain.


    He climbed the side of the big glass building like he was born to climb.  The glass slid smoothly under his hands and feet, and he went up, up, up.
    He could make out his reflection in the mirrored glass, and he could hardly recognize himself.  His head was a mass of red eyes, and long black limbs sprouted form his back, clutching at the glass with diamond talons, speeding his ascent.
    He looked past his reflection, and saw the people inside.  A woman saw him and screamed, dropping her coffee cup.  A  man did a double take and dropped his stack of papers in a whirl of white sheets.

    Gary sped past.  Let them laugh.  It would all be over soon.
    He wasn’t sure of why he was so confident of that thought, but he was, nonetheless.
    Then he reached the top of the skyscraper, and he knew.

    The world below him burned.  He climbed to the top of the tower, his talons guiding him up the lightning rod so he could perch at the top, a bloated black dot on an upside-down exclamation point.

    Below, Gary could see cars and busses, flipped over and burning.  From this distance, he could barely see the people, and they were burning too.  He turned atop his vantage point so he could look out to sea, and that too burned.

    The voice spoke to him again. Look at all we’ve done.  It’s glorious, no?  We must finish with your business, so we can get onto bigger and better things.  It didn’t sound alien or like a flyblown carcass anymore.  It simply sounded like his own voice.
    In spite of himself, Gary nodded.  It was too late to turn back now.

    He awoke with grim purpose.


    That week, Gary picked a fight with Travis.  He pushed him down the stairs that led to the school’s front walk.  He also tripped Dennis in the lunch line.  Dennis tried to fight him then and there, but Gary had done something weird, and was across the room, enjoying his lunch before Dennis could lay a hand on him.
    In such a way was the fight planned.  Fights in school were almost always like that.  A mutually agreeable time was set, and the fighters would either show up or chicken out, and whoever was there would have at it.

    The fight was set for after school after the busses had left, right in the front walk.  Dennis and Travis figured that Gary would need an ambulance to take him home, and they lived close enough to the school to walk home, so whatever happened, it wouldn’t be a problem.

    They went back to class with smug looks.  Gary went outside and climbed the tallest tree he could find, and hung there, waiting with lessening patience.

    The bell rang at last, ending the day.  The students filed out, pushing, joking, eager to go home to their toys, games, pets and families.  If they could remember this day as anything special, they would remember it as the last normal day of their lives.

    The busses pulled away.  Katy ran down to the playground and called Gary’s name.  He hadn’t finished  the day, and when he was down, he usually hid in the big red tube of the covered slide.
     
    As one of the most senior teachers, Mrs. Zimmerman was one of the last people to lock up.  The library served the entire school district, so it kept later hours than the rest of the school.  She busied herself with putting back all the books the kids had taken out during the day.

    Dennis and Travis waited outside, cracking their knuckles and grinning nervously.  After today, they were ready to beat Gary’s ass a good one.  Still, the way he seemed to move, and his newfound confidence was slightly off-putting.  And that business with Charlie getting sick was freaking weird too.
    Travis pulled a padlock from his pocket and stuck a finger through the loop, making a makeshift brass knuckle.  Dennis saw it and laughed a little, but deep down, he wished he had a weapon, too.
    In the end, it wouldn’t matter one bit.

    Something heavy landed behind the boys.  They turned at once, and Dennis was reminded briefly of that thing from Aliens, that queen, when she was hanging up in her chamber.
    Gary was shirtless, his chest bulging with dark muscle that gleamed wetly.  His eyes were sheer black with tiny red pupils, and his mouth seemed to be filled with broken glass.  Black spidery arms shot from his back, tipped with greasy green talons.
    Dennis tried to scream, but one of the arms shot out and punched through both of his cheeks.  His scream turned into a squeak of bloody terror as the talented arm slammed him headfirst into the concrete.  Gary turned on Travis, his mouth split in a bloody black grin.

    The atmosphere seemed to become black, dark motes almost visible to the naked eye swirling and dancing through the air.  Gloom seemed to pervade everything, and outside the bubble of their conflict, time seemed to slow.
    In the midst of these changes, both Katy Letham and Mrs. Zimmerman heard screams.  Had they known what was going on, they would have run screaming.  But of course, they couldn’t imagine what they would see, and so they ran to the sounds of the screams.

    Incredibly, Travis waded in and threw a punch with his makeshift brass knuckles.  Gary leaned in and bit his hand off with his glassy teeth.  Travis screamed as Gary swallowed his hand, padlock and all.
    Travis couldn’t believe it.  He stumbled backward, clutching the stump of his hand, and landed on the hard concrete of the bus yard. 
    He gibbered and begged for mercy as Gary leapt on him, pinning him to the ground with his spear-like talons.  Travis howled in agony.
    The sound was cut off with a strange burble as Gary leaned down and bit his throat out. Travis’ head shook spasmodically as Gary’s teeth flayed his throat.  With a shake of his own head, Gary tore Travis’  head off  in a fountain of gore. 
    He turned back to Dennis, his face covered in blood.  It looked like he had developed a red, spotty rash all over his forehead.  Dennis moaned and tried to stand.  It took him a few tries, and Gary watched, hissing as he flexed his talons.  If this was to be the start of something big, he would savor the moment.

    Dennis regained his feet at last.  Coughing up blood and spitting out of his mouth and both sides of his cheeks, Dennis did the last thing he would ever do in his life.
    He gave Gary the finger.

    Gary leapt with a screech that seemed to rip time and space, crossing the twenty feet between Dennis and himself in the blink of an eye.  Something moved behind Dennis, and Gary could hear shouting, but he had gone too far to stop now.  He swept his talons down, cruel scythes that cut Dennis messily in half.  His talons reached through Dennis and gouged deep into the innards of the person standing behind him.  Katy’s face was splashed with blood and she collapsed.

    Gary landed and his feet tore through his shoes, gnarled black claws that tore at the pavement.  Before him, both halves of Dennis slid wetly to the concrete.

    Katy hit the ground hard.  Mrs. Zimmerman collapsed beside her. 

    What had once been Gary turned to them.  In the sudden dark, Katy could make out his beastly outline, and the rash of red dots that covered his forehead and cheeks.  When his face suddenly darkened for a second before glowing with the rash again, she realized in horror that it wasn’t a rash at all.  What was covering Gary’s face was eyes, and they had just blinked.

    The Gary-thing moved its mouth, but no sound seemed to come out.

    Katy screamed as the thing finally found its voice.  It was a deep buzzing sound that seemed to come from inside her own head.
    “I’m so sorry.  For everything.”

    The thing that had been Gary turned away and leaped into the sudden night with a snarl.  Katy collapsed in shock, her body going numb in the dark.  Next to her, Mrs. Zimmerman breathed her last in a choking spasm and lay still in a pool of dark blood.



    “I think we should turn this crap off.”
    “Why? He’s passed out, and even if he was awake, this has to be some kind of joke.”
    “Well, it’s giving me the willies.”

    Charlie opened his eyes.  He hurt all over.  Nearby, two hospital orderlies were arguing over the television set in his room.  They blocked his view of the screen.

    “What are you guys talking about?” he asked, his voice a dry croak.
    One of the orderlies looked at him over his shoulder.  “Nothing.  I’m gonna go get some coffee, you guys can watch this horror show if you want.”
    The orderly left the room, and Charlie got a glimpse of the television. It was the news, live, it appeared.  Some great dark thing was rampaging across the camera’s field of view, slicing and stabbing at a shrieking crowd of people with arms that ended in wicked talons.  Where it stabbed people, they collapsed screaming, only to choke on their own bloody vomit as some sort of vicious poison did its work.

    Charlie tried to turn his head and look away, but he couldn’t.  He was paralyzed.

    He could still scream, however.