Chapter two: Winding Up.

  “I’m not fucking bombing my graduation, okay… for the last fucking time it’s not happening. Stop asking!”

  “Alright fine then, dear leader, what’s the plan?”

  “Plan? Why does there have to be a plan?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Well because there’s never a plan… and so far your life is a never ending train wreck and I’m going to keep it a buck with you, Vicky. It was only funny for like twelve years. Then it was sad and now it’s just ghoulish overkill.”

  “Fuck you. I don’t have to take this. This is my mouth, you’re done talking. Banned!”

  So much for freedom of speech, huh.

  “You’re not a person. You’re a thing. You don’t get rights,” I said, standing up more carefully and starting to slide into my loose black jeans and a thin long sleeve shirt that clung to my grotesquely muscled skeleton.

  “You should get us coffee.”

  “I am fucking working on it. Do you see any god damn service around here? No? Oh wow it’s not like I get coffee every morning and don’t need to be reminded by DID’s shittier little cousin with delusions of grandeur.”

  Wow he is in a fucking mood today, huh.

  Tell me about it, he won’t even let me talk anymore.

  Groaning, I rubbed my eyes and stumbled out of my bedroom, moving to the kitchen for the only other reason I had not gotten into politics and tried to nuke the earth.

  Hissing as my elbow snapped back into position with the extension of my arm, I filled the machine and stared into the grinder as it chewed the beans into powder. The swirling black liquid filled my view before I snapped out of the daze and looked away.

  My eyes cast over the counter, skipping past the notice of my expulsion and over to my phone as it lit up with unread messages.

  Big Brother the first: “Viktor. Today’s the day, you’ve come so far. I always knew you had it in you. Don’t go too crazy celebrating tonight.”

  I tapped a quick response into the message box. “Thanks. And I won’t. We should catch up before I get too busy again.” I dropped the phone back onto the counter with a startling smack, not interested in having to dance around the truth if he asked anything specific.

  A casting hand searched and found his hot coffee mug. Grabbing my phone, I stepped up to the sink and filled the concentrate with cold water before taking a long sip, draining it halfway.

  Fingers flashed across glass my expression eased slightly when Alice’s messages opened.

  Tinylittleshortass: “I’ll see you after the ceremony, we can meet by your old house.”

  I snorted, thinking of the cemetery bench she meant, and wiped my coffee stache away, lost in the haze of half formed plans, predictions, and things we would talk about. How I would ask her things. Dozens of approaches spinning up and disintegrating in my mind’s eye… before I remembered I should actually respond.

  “Sounds great. See you after school, my love.” Tapping send, I slid the phone into my jeans and chewed at my pointed nails for a moment, my teeth ringing around the curve.

  Feed us!

  The maw hungers.

  With a roll of my eyes I spun on my heels.

  My fingers twitched through the air as my nails hooked into my cabinet seams and pried the doors open, revealing enough seafood pot noodles to feed a single orphan, but for a very long time. A chorizo followed. Biting it into chunks, I dropped the oily sausage into the pot and filled it with boiling water and enough hot sauce to make a Korean cry. Then I consumed the red monstrosity I had made.

  I moved back into action even as my stomach growled with the hazardous level of acid I had added to the cauldron of rubbery flesh. Sitting before my laptop and scrolling through online schools, after killing a few hours I had sent applications to a dozen different virtual schools to finish out my education and take the tests. I even found time for a shower and shave.

  Running my fingers through my wet hair, I pushed it back and pulled the door open, only to find a street urchin at my steps.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I snapped at the kid still in his school uniform, curled up on the ground.

  “I was just… seeing if you might need anything?” he asked more than he said.

  My fists clenched in annoyance at the delay in front of me, who had somehow gotten it in his head that we were friends.

  Digging my boot into his side, I shoved him out of the doorway.

  “Kid… are you stupid? I didn’t get expelled for you. You were just a convenient excuse. We aren’t friends.”

  “Well I know we aren’t friends. I just… I feel… I owe you something, okay? More than being called names and being told to get you a KitKat is worth.”

  Locking my door and stepping over him, my narrowed gaze cast down at his stupid little face.

  “No you don’t. You’re lonely and you think you can have a friend in me, even if you don’t know it. You’re wrong… but I know someone who does like strays.”

  Flicking a pen out from my pocket, I scratched a time and the address to the soup kitchen Alice was going to be at tomorrow on his cheek. Then I walked away, not giving him the time to say anything else.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  That was nice of you…

  Yeah it was, he doesn’t do nice things.

  I do nice things all the time, just not for him.

  I settled down onto the bench beside a beautiful girl surrounded by stone tombs. Pale skin wrapped in a black gothic dress with long black hair falling down her back completely straight. My arm wrapped around her narrow shoulders.

  “Hey Hun, I know you always say you don’t get enough volunteers at the kitchen, so I found you one for tomorrow.”

  I felt her startle at my touch for a moment before she looked up at me, near obsidian brown eyes reflecting my malicious face. Her thin lips spread into a wide smile as she leaned into me.

  “Thank you Viktor, but you know I say that mostly to tempt you into working with me, don’t you?”

  “Oh of course, but as I always tell you, if I’m too nice I’ll die. It makes me feel sick when I do good.”

  “So that’s your reverse scale huh? Cars, murderers, and bombs can’t do it, but a little charity will put my big bad gang banger down?”

  I closed my eyes, running a finger through her hair, and chuckled softly, an easy smile crooking my lips into a smirk.

  “Un-ironically yes, and if you think about it, me avoiding charity is really the good deed. Because if I die you will obviously spiral, lose yourself to grief, then eventually become a supervillain as your heart implodes like the reverse Grinch. So if you think about it, me being a dick is the only thing standing between humanity and genocide.”

  Her soft hands crawled up my shirt and ran over the slash scar on my throat before she leaned up and huffed slightly as she had to prop herself on her knee.

  “Oh honey, of course I’m certainly the type to burn the land and boil the sea; also darling as cute as the attempt is, we both know you’ve never watched a Christmas movie.” Her lips pressed against mine and I felt a soothing wash of cold stream over my skin, distancing the omnipresent burning that covered every inch of my body.

  “Ow… you bit me.” I smirked, pulling my teeth from her lip.

  “So I did darling. Should I kiss it better?”

  “You’re gonna bite me again, aren’t you?” and I promptly bit her cheek, leaving a set of red teeth marks on her face.

  “Now tell me, little one, how was your graduation?”

  I watched her shoulders subtly fall and the exhaustion in her tone creep out.

  “It was fine, nothing special. Just a long boring ceremony. Spent nearly an hour being talked at by that.”

  “That self-important jackass who’s under the insane impression his students care about his opinion despite his rampant incompetence?”

  “I wasn’t going to say it like that.”

  “I know, but you were thinking it.”

  “Which is your fault. My thoughts used to be nice, then I started dating a serial killer.”

  My hand sunk into the soft fabric on her back, rubbing slow circles into her skin, my pointed nails scratching softly. “Yes darling, all my fault,” I said, chuckling into her ear.

  “Did you manage to send those applications today?” she asked, her big dark eyes looking up at my jaw even as she attempted to eliminate negative space between us, slowly migrating into my lap like a lazy cat trying to make affection look like an accident.

  “Yeah I did. I’ll have to do a full semester, but I’ll be joining you in university before the years up.”

  I felt her twist and squirm in my lap, clawing herself out of my suffocating grip to sit upright and lock her eyes right on mine. My beloved little girl somehow felt the tension I kept entirely out of my body and face.

  “Hey… You’ve come so far. It was just a backslide Viktor, we’re so close.” She pushed herself off me, standing up, which hilariously still didn’t make her taller than I was. I smiled bemusedly looking down on her.

  “I mean it Viktor. You’ve been chasing redemption’s song for years. Well here you are. I can hear it calling you… you’re going to win. We’re going to go away together and you’ll never need…”

  She tugged on my hand, her face lighting up into a beautiful smile, eyeliner crinkling in the corners of her eyes. Her hand was insistent but lacking any real force. “Dance with me?”

  My joints screamed through my nerves. Hot needles of glass were being jammed into every moving piece in my frame. Still I stood, straightening to my full height, my mind already hammering the impulse to stop and flinch with the pain into a bloody pulp.

  Memories overlapped in my vision. The ghost of a larger strapless and veiled dress traced her frame in my eye. Her eyes overlapped with that expression in hundreds of memories, all the way to the first. That face, those enamoured eyes that seemed to lose the rest of the world. They hadn’t changed even slightly from our first dance.

  I wrapped my fingers around hers, my long digits seeking and sinking into her shoulder.

  I pulled and she pushed. I took the lead and she followed me in the dance. Our feet fell together as we waltzed across the grave soil and I saw her and nothing but. The chaotic screaming in my head fell blissfully silent as we all indulged in this beautiful memory and recreation.

  The glint of light in her eye, the shine of my toothy grin reflected in her dark eyes. The feeling of being found at last, of having a hand hold to drag myself above the black sea for the first time in my life. The moment I realized this wasn’t just fun but love, something I needed, someone I wanted to need in my life. That moment was reborn with my hand in hers.

  “You gave me a life, and I can’t imagine it without you my love… It’s not the occasion I imagined it would be but.” I released her hand and shoulder, slowing us to a sway. My hands slid down her shoulder and arm; slowly I sank to a knee, pulling out a small velvet box, my nail catching its seam and flicking the box open to reveal a golden band with a black gem set in it.

  “Will you marry me Alice?”

  She stood there stock still and frozen, her heart pounding in my ears, dozens of scents and pheromones filtering through my nose. Some familiar, others not so, but I blocked it all out. I wanted to hear her answer, not predict it.

  “Yes… Of course I’ll marry you Viktor.” I caught a hint of the tears brimming in her eyes before she tackled me, burying her face in my shoulder and hugging me, even as I tried to slip the ring on her finger.

  “I love you.” We both whispered in unison.

  Eventually we had to part. My not so subtle warning that the eastern seaboard could fall if she wasn’t around apparently was not credible enough to skip the soup kitchen.

  I smiled at the text I received just as I closed the door, and as I’d promised I walked up into my bathroom and had my one glass of water for the day before diving into my studies, pulling a few weeks ahead and doing a couple mock tests before finally hitting the hay.

  The graveyard fell away. Alice’s waiting eyes, covered by a black veil, slowly washed away from my mind as I was roused by the sound of a hissing pop. The darkness greeted me, all my lights and lamps switched off. An acidic scent of plastic smoke wafted up into my nose even as I palmed and recoiled from my phone's burning hot surface.

  I flipped out of my sheets, rolling to my feet, my hand sweeping back with the motion and dragging a large hunting blade free of my pillows.

  What the hell is that?

  I twisted, looking out the window that remained in the corner of my eye and scanning the horizon. A red sun sat high in the sky, illuminating the pitch black streets in bloody light. I was entranced, watching the massive spheres of light multiply in the sky. Red streaks formed a cage of energy around the planet as they crisscrossed the atmosphere before slimming into missiles of light and falling below the horizon.

  My heart hammered, restarting in my chest as I watched the light fade away. Then the earth shook. My feet shifted underneath me as the support beam I smacked into almost nightly splintered and cracked.

  I spun as it fell, the end smashing into the side of my temple and knocking me to the ground before a blood red screen filled my vision.