u/Immediate-Tap1925

Riot swaggered into the office, clad in black leather boots and black jeans. Her belt was studded, and a black silk jacket rested over a white dress shirt with flared cuffs. She flung herself onto the blue oval couch, draping her arms over the rests. Despite the rumors of her permanent disappearance from the club, she was clearly still operating within its secret properties.

"Whattaya want, doc?" She drawled, alternating between a crass accent and a sharp, clipped British tone.

Dr. Payton sat down across from her. He made no move to hide behind his desk, choosing instead to lean forward, hands clasped. He studied her, waiting for the flicker of someone else behind her eyes.

Payton lifted a clear glass bowl of hard candy. "Sweets?"

She rolled her eyes. "I like my teeth white. No thank you."

"I asked you to bring your art. Did you?"

"Quit calling me 'child,' wouldja? I’m twenty-four."

"You look quite young for that age."

"I have a youthful appearance, alright?" She made an ugly face. Her short brown hair was cropped neatly, framing her face.

"The art, Riot."

She fished into her purse and produced a small sketchpad and an old, dog-eared notebook, both sealed in plastic.

Payton took them with shaky hands and unzipped the bags. He pulled out the notebook first. "I’m going to look through this. Is that alright?"

"Whatever."

He leafed through the crackling pages. Pen scribbles. Then, he found it: a young woman with long brown hair, standing in front of a large yellow circle depicting the sun. She wore a blue top and a denim jacket over a white dress.

"Who is this, Emily?"

"My name’s Riot."

"I’m glad. But who is this, Riot?"

"It’s me."

"You’re wearing a very stylish outfit."

"Glad you approve." She tried to look disconnected, her eyes wandering to the ceiling.

"It’s a bit adorable. Almost too adorable."

She wet her lips, shifting in her seat.

He continued through the notebook. A single page was torn, evidence of a violent grip on the pen. Across the double spread were big, blocky letters: JUSTICE.

He held the book open between two fingers, popping a hard candy into his mouth. "What is this?"

"I don’t know. Just comic book shit."

"What is her role in the story?"

"She doesn’t have a story. Just something I drew while I was high."

Payton nodded. He opened the sketchpad. A page depicted a burning building; the woman in the denim jacket stood in the center, guiding people from the inferno. "A hero, Riot?"

"What are you trying to get at?"

"You agreed to come here. You know this goes against club ethics."

"You trying to frighten me?"

He gave her a venomous smile. "No. That would be the benefactor’s duty."

Her face went pale.

He flipped to another page: a tall man standing on a taxi, standing at the edge of a group of people, with the girl in the denim jacket at the center. She looked confident, beautiful, and happy. "Unless I’m mistaken, I see Macey. And I see..."

"Enough. Just get it out of me. I don’t know who this girl is, but she’s fucking up the vibe. Sometimes, when I’m having fun, she pops up. And… and..."

"We’re going to cut her out of you. But first, we have to make it real."

He stood up, bones creaking, and went to his desk. He returned a second later with a lighter in hand. "Give Justice to the fire. Burn away the rot."

Over a metal bucket, Riot tilted the lighter. Her hand shook as she touched the flame to the paper. She watched as Justice and the surrounding figures charred, the paper curling into black flakes as the orange heat consumed the sun, the hands, and the smile, turning them all to ash.

Read Part 1 here: [OC] The Biology of Monsters: Common Animals A horror/sci-fi short set in a world where things that go bump in the night aren't ghosts—they're just nature. : r/HFY

Payton West sat in the vast, lush conservatory, surrounded by the humid embrace of tropical plants and an artificial climate. He settled into a comfortable lawn chair, letting out a long, slow sigh of satisfaction.

A splinter of the Mournful Violet caterpillar coiled on the chair opposite him. It was the size of a large slug, purple and segmented, with greasy red eyes. It wiggled, its tiny red-mittened hands waving in rhythmic unison.

Payton lifted a cup of steaming chamomile tea from the ornate table and took a slow, calculated sip.

"I never asked you this, Payton," the creature rumbled.

Payton raised his head, a single eyebrow arching in inquiry.

"Seeing as how thoroughly exceptional you are in the art of causing misery to the young, I simply never thought it necessary to inquire. But now, I am sick with curiosity. I am at my breaking point."

Payton nodded, keeping his face impassive and devoid of warmth.

"Why did you find me? Why did you befriend me? Why create the Chrysalis Club? To recruit Anne, who brought in my little Corby, and all the rest? What twisted your heart enough for a kind old gentleman like you to serve the likes of me?" The caterpillar pointed at himself with a red-mittened finger, grinning coarsely.

"You could simply read my heart, couldn't you, young man? Or better yet, use your Compelling Truth. Or consume my thoughts with your proboscis."

"I prefer to maintain meaningful relationships. Even after my stepmother betrayed me, I insisted on holding truthful conversations with my loved ones… without the taint of the supernatural."

"I am extremely fond of science," Payton continued. "After all, were not many forefathers throughout history equally as fond? Laboratories in many countries have hosted members like me at one time or another, Robert."

"And didn't the results flourish!" Robert grinned, his expression wide and toothy. "You are my only friend, Payton. It is embarrassing to admit to such weakness—feelings. But you are. My best friend. You are my own thoughts and heart manifested in another being entirely. I cannot deny how much pleasure it brings—how much dopamine in my purple head—that I have found a kindred spirit. When you orchestrated that tragic accident, pulling her from the wreckage of her father’s car and turning her final, desperate moments into a private exhibition of agony... I had no doubts then that you were mine. My most capable soldier. My confidante."

Payton licked his dry lips.

"You are amazing, Payton. The other members on the board are lackluster. I suspect they are only in it for personal gain—vanity, wealth, immortality. But you… you seem to be in it for the pure love of the craft. You worship evil as a concept. It is a tragedy that you were ever overtaken by Corbin West as club leader."

"I was the founder. That is good enough for me, my boy."

"My boy," the creature teased, savoring the words. "Aren't I half a century older than you?"

Payton offered a crooked, humorless grin.

"Since you have been such a diligent friend, allow me to confide in you my greatest truth. Secrets and truths are merely alternate versions of one another, are they not? Forgive me, Payton. But you have known about Justice for quite a while, haven't you?"

Payton nodded slowly.

"I had Corbin recruit the best psychiatrists. The best gaslighters. Men after my own heart. They worked on young Riot, ensuring that whenever that dormant personality re-emerged, it was suppressed. She simply must not become Justice. She must not. I recall you double-majored in psychology, did you not?"

Payton nodded.

The nearby fountain trickled, splashing softly as Robert leaned forward amidst the wet leaves and bulbous flowers. "Then, treat her for a while. The best psychiatrists lack the grounded method that a Cricket Creek local like you possesses in spades. Suppress my Riot’s 'Justice.' I exhausted nearly all my greater powers to peer into the future once—just once—in my entire existence. And you know what I saw, don't you?"

"Justice."

"She terrified me. Her sister, Macey, laughed at me when she dismantled me in every reality. Her taxi-driving friend, Elijah, drove them to Coffee Heaven afterward to get lattes. Lattes!" He slammed a tiny red fist on the chair, making it rattle. "That future—the one I witnessed upon Emily’s birth—was bled of all darkness. You are not into animation, old friend, but that future channeled the power of friendship! It made Emily untouchable! Her psychic potential was fully realized, and perhaps even beyond. She had a girlfriend named Grace. Nine friends! Nine!"

Robert’s gaze grew distant, then hardened. "But I performed a little surgery—an event I will never tire of recounting, especially to one as learned as you, Doctor. I performed an internal edit on Emily’s fetus before her birth and hooked her to her own nervous system. I hijacked her reward mechanism so she feels like heaven, but only when she commits horrific acts against others. I turned her into Riot—the madness, the villainess, the protégé! I made her into my own reflection. That is why I value you, Payton. You do not commit these acts for money, like Corbin, or for vanity, like Anne, or even for simple dopamine, like Riot. You serve for the love of the sport."

"I serve and I obey."

"But you are my equal, Payton. Do not speak to me as if you are lesser."

"I will always be your loyal servant."

"Perhaps you are then." A shadow crossed Robert’s tiny, plump face as he stood like a snake on the floral chair. "But tell Riot to visit you during office hours. Please, get those Justice dreams out of her head."

"They are strange, Robert. Bizarre."

"Would you say so, Doctor?" Robert frowned in genuine discomfort.

"You say you aborted her hero’s journey, yet now she knows she is Justice, and these episodes are becoming frequent… this delusion. Could it be that the deleted timeline is trying to manifest in our reality?"

Robert paused, his mittens raised in the air. He looked stunned. Hundreds of butterflies zipped and fluttered through the moist, sticky air around them.

"Robert?" Payton asked, his voice a near croak.

"Her psychic powers will never be a fraction of what they could have been had I not enslaved her and isolated her from potential allies. I make her harm others so she has no friends. Justice derives her divine power from community. In this timeline, I gave her sister to a car crash, and gave you her torment. I targeted all the friends she would have had and destroyed them. Elijah has not escaped my radar—he would have been her taxi driver in that utopic future I squashed. Still… her recollection of an identity named 'Justice' is concerning. Your job, Doctor, is to find out why Justice is reoccurring within her. Squash it. Bring her back to us as fully as you can."

Payton inclined his head. "I live to obey."

For more recovered logs, biology reports, and the full Cricket Creek archive, join the investigation at r/cricketcreek

Anne saw Mr. Rupert in the darkened room. The only thing on was the projector, and he stood staring solemnly into its light. He didn’t seem to notice her until she was halfway through the door, her heels clacking sharply against the floor.

He lifted his head, his recognition appearing faint. “Hmm? Oh. Anne. Come in.”

“Not going to lunch today, Mr. Rupert?”

“Huh? Hmm? Oh. No, I’m afraid not, Mrs. West. The projector doesn’t seem to be cooperating today.” He stared up at the wall.

Anne stepped inside and turned to look at the projection. It looked like Melbourne, Australia, but filled with glass towers. In the center, towering in the hazy heights, was a bulbous creature with folds of flesh and legs the size of small islands, its head tiny in comparison, standing two hundred feet tall.

“Mr. Rupert?” she asked.

“This world is a deep, dark place, my lady.”

Anne shut the door. She walked back to him and folded her arms, feeling her throat tighten. “Are you being funny, sir?”

His eye lenses caught the light, turning sheer white.

“What… did I say… just now… that was funny?” He looked genuinely perplexed, his voice low and soft, his stance slightly aggressive.

“Are you feeling comedic today, Jonathan?” Anne asked.

He stared at her. His tongue darted out briefly to wet his lips. “I saw your Macey emerge from her… cocoon. But I did not go mad. No one knew I was even there. Now I have one more photo added to my collection.”

Are you… threatening me? she thought. Who are you?

His lenses were whiter yet, solid and opaque. “Moths. Butterflies. Some are known to be parasitic; they act with such astounding levels of duplicity that it is harrowing. A blue butterfly can convince an entire nest of ant soldiers that she is their queen. It is a chemical mimicry. That is real nature. People try to convince themselves there is a line between the normal and the abnormal, but that is pure arrogance. Your Macey Donaldson is no more abnormal than a Monarch butterfly. Macey is merely a new species, and she will forge the same path all others have—using chemical mimicry, violence, and a cold gaze. I am of no danger to your operations, Anne. I am just the photographer.”

He hit a button on the projector. A new picture filled the screen: a butterfly halfway emerged from its chrysalis. Its green eye was solid and unnerving, filling the screen. It looked like a cold man huddled in a sleeping bag, utterly alien.

The school had been sealed off since the chaos started. Anne had come today to link up with the Club under the school, but why was the biology teacher here? The bumbling man who had a crush on her? Who let him in?

“Who let you in?” Anne asked, angry. She straightened her gray hair and adjusted her blouse, standing tall. She was prim, elegant, and classical. In her classes, she did not allow poor grammar, and here, she would allow no insolence. Even though, on the inside, she felt rather ill.

“I could be asking you the same thing.” His small, cold smirk was infuriating.

She stood her ground. “Okay… enough.”

He shut off the projector and turned to face her, his eyeglasses still white even in the dark. “I have always been interested in biology, Anne. I’ve always been interested in your club. I want to join.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please, Anne, we’ve known each other too long. Stop being so coy. I don’t care if you and your husband are passionate. I just need to be a part of your life again.” He raised a hand toward her, then hesitated, adjusting his glasses instead. His hands played with each other by his waist; he looked like a guilty, whining child. “You let the fool Payton West onboard. Why not me?”

She hissed, “How much more do you know?”

“Your operation isn't that big. The legality of it is questionable. You don’t have many actual scientists onboard, do you? I was an advisor for a university in Melbourne. No one in school thought I would amount to much, but I did. I can be of great help. I snuck into this school. This proves how capable I am. I ignored all the hazard signs. I brought my photos. I started this projector again.”

My “operation” is being funded by a federal branch, she thought. “Can’t be too big?” You were an advisor at a university. Now you’re a 12th-grade science teacher. The fall from grace is subtle.

“I have developed a theory for your club, Anne,” he said, his eyes now visible behind the spectacles, looking desperate and strange. “They are called Common Animals—things that go bump in the night or fill cities with their size. Things that weren’t born but just materialized to fill a space we shouldn't occupy. We are hauntings on a cosmic scale. There are no aliens, ghosts, or demons. Just ‘Common Animals.’ Monsters appear. We just appeared. A wave of space energy could sweep over the galaxy and turn everything into nothing. Anything could happen in this world. And it’s terrible. I am a monster, Anne. You would do well not to take me lightly.”

You? A monster? she thought. Don't make me laugh. I’ve done things far worse than you.

Jonathan Rupert’s eyes widened when Anne stepped up to him, bit him on the cheek, and tore a large chunk free. He sprayed spittle and tripped, falling backward. Anne lurched toward him and picked up a heavy stapler from the desk, prepared to smash his head in.

Suddenly, her hand exploded in pain. Skin tore. Anne shrieked, dropping the stapler. Her bones felt like they were popping out of her skin.

Rupert scrambled away.

I didn’t just hallucinate that, she realized. He isn't a monster. But who stopped me?

She clutched her bloody hand and turned to see a figure slouched in the doorway. She had short brown hair and wore a black silk jacket.

“Emil—Riot?” Anne gurgled.

“Run,” the girl whispered. “Run. It’s not safe here.”

Mr. Rupert stared once at Anne, then at the girl, and fled the classroom, never to be seen again.

“Why did you do this, Emily?” Anne moaned, beginning to sob. “Now the club is going to have to find him.” Her hand burned as if molten lead were caking her fingers.

“My name’s Justice,” said the girl, her head still lowered. She was sweating, her teeth gritted.

“Snap out of it. You’re Corbin West’s daughter. Emily West. You are Emily and you are Riot, but you are not Justice,” Anne spat. “That’s just a childhood drawing you made. The psychiatrists told you Justice wasn’t real. Corbin paid for the best to get you to stop dreaming about her. Justice is a stupid idea you made up.”

The girl lifted her head. Her eyes were blue and haunted. “My stomach feels bad. My whole body is hurting. But still… Justice returns… when the time is right.”

“Shut up! You’re not a superhero. You’re a killer. Like all of us. Come back, Riot.”

The girl lifted her head fully, her coldness vanishing. She ran forward and hugged Anne, sobbing into her chest. “Oh, Anne, I’m so scared. I don’t know who she is, but she keeps trying to take me away… I’m Riot. But she keeps coming back and ruining everything! Oh, who is she, Anne? Why do I keep having nightmares about her?”

Anne trembled, smoothing Riot’s hair. “Oh… it’s alright now, hon. What matters is that it’s gone. Justice is gone. You’re Riot again, and that’s all that matters.”

I unlocked myself using the dead cop’s key. It took so long, and the sheer agony pulsing from my impaled hand nearly drove me mad by the end. It felt like I’d plucked my own eye out, or chewed off a limb. It took pure pain and a hell of a lot of luck, but in the end, I was free—and I was going to get the old doctor out of here, even if he was the monster who caused this.

I dragged the old criminal out of the smoking, half-burned dome by the scruff of his neck, my gun pointed straight to his temple. I marched him up the stairs, through the labyrinth as best as I could, forcing him to guide us out. Then we were in the basement, facing the final flight of stairs back up into the high school. Jamming the gun into the scruff of his back, I forced him to walk up.

We finally collapsed in the main hallway. I threw aside my gun, wrapped my hand around the old man’s neck softly, and just sat there on the floor. I was on my last legs, just trying to breathe. Panting. Inhaling the thick smoke in my lungs. The old man’s breathing sounded asthmatic, wet, strained, and heavy. Awful, dragging hitches.

He needs medical attention. Fast. Or else he’s a goner.

I dragged him up, then completely froze.

Someone was coming up the basement stairs.

Dragging, limping, shuffling steps. The hem of a skirt. Skirts. Hands trailing along the wooden railing. I heard it. I imagined it.

Was I crazy for real this time? Finally?

I turned, desperately trying to reach the basement door to slam it shut, but it creaked, squealing open on its own. Out stepped… a burned woman.

A blue blouse, once pristine, was now melted directly to the pencil-thin frame of its wearer. Her skirts were all charred, ripped, and tattered. Her feet were scraped, bloody, and bruised, with only one red high heel still on. And the face. Somehow, the face was the most terrifying thing of all.

It was a thin face drawn tight with agony. It was burned in a perfect circle, just barely missing the brow and one cheek. The rest of the flesh was mottled black, gray, red, and yellow. Her teeth were exposed on one side where the lips had melted away. Her eyes were flat, dead, white orb—and then the ruined lids closed over them with a dry, horrific sound like moth wings flapping. She lurched forward, her hand lifting, then dropping. Her fingers looked like blackened claws from the fire. Smoke hissed from an opening in her brow, from her back, and from the sparse remaining few strands of her iron-gray hair. Her eyes were closed, looking exactly like my grandma in her open coffin, but this thing was moving.

She staggered forward, skirts dragging against the linoleum floor. No, a better word would be shuffled. It wasn’t clumsy. It was dead, piloted by something like a forgotten intelligence. An intelligence forgotten by all.

Thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum.

Her charred blouse was burned completely off near the ribs, exposing the melted fat and blackened skin underneath. A white rib was peeking out. Blood slitered down her brow and down her black cheek. Her eyes were closed, yet we could all hear her heartbeat perfectly. Dark. Deep. Heavy. Like a ritualistic drum beating in the quiet hallway.

Her chest was shifting a little. She shuffled straight toward the doctor. I sprang away from him. My impaled hand was wrapped tightly with my own torn shirt. I had lost the old man’s scalpel, but I still had the cop’s revolver. Good. But was it empty? Six shots. Ryan had got off a shot without hitting anything when he shot Anne in the forehead. This thing. And I had shot a butterfly girl to bits in midair. I surely still had one bullet remaining. Even if I’d forgotten a fired shot, I had to try.

I pointed the gun right at what had once been Anne, right at the chest that was vibrating from that monstrous heartbeat.

Damn you. Collapse!

If only I had some bug spray—my industrial tanks of pesticide that could kill anything.

I fired. Using one hand, braced hard against my torso, my teeth cracking from the effort, the bullet went wild and hit the wall. The shambling revenant completely ignored me. The doctor was convulsing now, dying already. The woman leaned beside him, smoothing his sparse hair with a burned, ruined hand flaking with black crispy skin. Then, a black blade shot directly through his skull from her mouth. Blood splattered across the floor.

My stomach heaved. Sorry, Jazmine.

I got up, forced myself to look at the woman crouched over the dead doctor. Her butterfly feeding mechanism was impaled deep through his skull, and she was sucking greedily, her eyes closed permanently.

Skin and flesh were flaking off her with every movement, but she became totally still, lost in silent pleasure as she killed him.

I stepped right up to her and fired up close. Her head snapped sideways. Her proboscis jerked out of the doctor’s head, splattering his brains everywhere. Smoke poured from her burned temple. She gurgled, the proboscis obstructing her human speech, before it retracted with a loud, wet thwap—all at once, all shiny four feet of organic steel. She rose from her crouch, a corpse operated by a malevolent force, her eyes sealed shut.

She turned her head toward me with a sickening creak. Her closed eyes were facing me.

“You’re not scary,” I said, even as my stomach lurched. “You’re just fucking disgusting.”

In that empty high school hallway, flanked by rusted lockers and cinderblock walls, I faced the Mournful Violet once more, trapped in the body of my deranged schoolteacher.

I didn’t know what to expect when the "Monster Killer" agreed to meet me, but the reality was worse than I feared.

The man was older than I expected for this kind of work. It was an occupation I honestly thought only existed in cheap pulp magazines. He wore a grime-streaked green sweater with black stripes under a stiff, heavy winter jacket. Knuckle tattoos spelled out an abbreviated version of his title: MNSTR KLR. He reeked of stale weed and the sharp, chemical tang of heavier, farther-along drugs.

He thrust out a massive, callused hand, the one that read KLR. I shook it reluctantly.

"So, you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, huh?" he rasped. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a blender.

I just nodded, keeping my mouth shut and observing. As I stared at his weathered face, a sudden shock of recognition hit me. The phone call had hinted at it, but seeing him up close confirmed it. Joey.

Years ago, we used to smoke pot after class together and pull stupid pranks on the cheerleaders. Back then, Joey would wax philosophical about life before he abruptly moved away and quit his job as a high school gym teacher. Looking at him now, I hardly recognized him. I didn't want to.

Joey pointed a ringed finger toward the Cricket Creek Museum. "That place. Launderin’ mischief?"

I nodded again.

"Say, you don’t mind me askin’, but do you even speak our tongue?"

"I speak English," I murmured.

"Shit, man, that’s cool. You have to speak English if you're gonna kill monsters."

"I haven’t killed a single one yet," I admitted, my voice barely a whisper.

Joey settled down deeper into the bushes beside me. I nervously patted my pocket, ensuring my pocketknife was still there. I had brought it just in case this "Monster Killer" turned out to be more dangerous than the things he hunted.

Joey squinted through the brush at the museum, then turned and threw a heavy arm around my shoulder as if we’d been best friends for decades. Maybe, in a past life, we had been.

"Who knows?" Joey wheezed. "A month with me, under my tutelage, and you might just find yourself with a knife stuck deep inside a monster’s throat."

I shifted uncomfortably under his weight.

"The museum," Joey tsked, tossing his long, graying blonde hair out of his eyes. He scanned our surroundings. "I’d be careful if I was you. We’re both on Captain Carter’s naughty list."

"Who’s Captain Carter?"

"The police captain."

"Oh." My stomach dropped.

Joey’s face crinkled into a jagged grin. "Don’t worry, son. I’m an ace at break-ins. Even did time for shit like that. I’m proud of it."

If you’re an ace, why did you get caught? The question burned in my throat, but I swallowed it. I had no choice. Joey was the only person in this godforsaken town who would even listen to me, and the only one crazy enough to have actually encountered the unholy things lurking in the dark.

We waited until the dead of night. Under the heavy cover of darkness, we moved.

We pulled on our masks and gloves and darted across the empty street. Last time, I had trusted a female detective to help me break into the school, and that had ended in an absolute disaster. Now, I was taking an even bigger gamble. If I got caught tonight, the police would throw me into a cell and lose the key. I dreaded to think what that would do to my wife, Abigail. But I had to know the truth.

To avoid the ground-floor motion sensors, we targeted a second-storey window. I lost my footing on the slick ledge and almost plummeted to the asphalt, but Joey’s hand shot out, grabbing my wrist and dragging me inside.

We landed heavily on the floor. We froze, listening.

Nothing.

In the greenish, shadowed darkness, we crept through the exhibits. We didn't dare use our large flashlights, relying instead on tiny penlights to illuminate our path. The air smelled damp and choked with mildew. Joey stalked ahead of me, his hand resting on the grip of a handgun tucked under his coat, alongside an array of knives and screwdrivers.

Joey slid his palm along the wall to his right, knocking gently. He pressed his ear against the plaster, listening for hollow spaces. The only sound was the rhythmic, maddening warble of crickets outside.

I held my breath, wandering down a narrow aisle between two towering shelves. I adjusted my bomber jacket, pulled up my muddy pants, and wiped cold sweat from my forehead.

I doubled back to Joey, accidentally startling him. After he finished aggressively whispering a string of curses at me, I tried to steer him toward a weird discovery. "Joey, you're a local. Can you explain what’s going on in the treehouse room? The one with the strange photos?"

Joey swaggered in, shining his penlight down at the eerie photographs. His breathing grew raspy and wheezed, his face tightening with sudden suspicion. Finally, he looked up. "I don’t know what the hell that is."

We bypassed a nearby mannequin. In the endless, hungry darkness, the figure looked terrifying. The shadows consumed almost everything except for its dead, painted blue eyes and its bright red life vest. Joey scoffed and leaned in to spit on it, but I elbowed him hard in the ribs, shaking my head.

Suddenly, a sharp metallic click echoed from below. Someone was fiddling with the front door locks.

We scrambled behind a row of tall display cases, pressing ourselves flat against the floor. Below us, the heavy front door creaked open, followed by the heavy thud of footsteps. Whoever it was locked the door behind them and began marching straight up the short staircase leading to our floor.

"Stop breathing so loud," I hissed.

"I have asthma, man," Joey snarled back.

We both went rigid, holding our breath entirely as a figure emerged at the top of the stairs. The man walked right down the aisle adjacent to our hiding spot. Shrouded in shadow, I recognized him. It was the young museum staffer from earlier today.

He stopped in front of a wall lined with chalky, fake-gold wallpaper. He pulled a key from his pocket. He ran his fingers along the wall until he found a small, hidden bump, peeling back a section of the wallpaper with surgical precision. He inserted the key and twisted.

A hidden door swung open. A draft of icy, freezing air whistled out of the dark opening. Even from several feet away, the sudden drop in temperature made the hairs on my arms stand up.

Through the mouth hole of Joey's mask, I saw him grin.

He pulled a small glass marble from his pocket and flicked it across the floor. It rolled and clattered loudly against a shelf four feet away from the secret door.

The staffer whipped around, his eyes darting frantically through the darkness. He froze for a tense, agonizing second. Hearing nothing else, he began to turn back toward the hidden room, but he never finished the motion.

Joey’s heavy boots thundered against the floorboards. Before the staffer could react, Joey's fist smashed directly into his mouth. The man's head snapped back with a sickening crack. Joey instantly grabbed him from behind, looping an arm around his forehead and jamming a chemical-soaked rag into his face.

The chloroform worked instantly.

The staffer's eyes rolled back, his body going completely limp, collapsing into a heap like a rag doll.

"You killed him!" I gasped, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"We got ourselves about seven chloroform hours, and by that I mean hurry," Joey barked.

Swallowing down the bile rising in my throat, I followed Joey into the secret room.

Inside, we both stopped dead in our tracks.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were a violent, blood red. Bizarre, alien scripture was mounted along the right wall. The carpets were woven from a strange, coarse material that didn't feel like wool or nylon. Joey and I instinctively ripped out our cameras to document it, but the digital screens just flickered wildly and died.

"Damn it!" Joey hissed in frustration.

We bagged the dead tech and hurried toward the text on the wall, desperate to scan it. At the far end of the room, next to a ceramic vase painted with a screaming human face, the red paint on the plaster shifted. I held my penlight close to the wall.

The blood-red paint formed rows of tight, sweeping cursive. I tried to sound out the words, but it was complete gibberish. They were symbols and words that defied human language.

Joey and I stared at each other in sheer horror.

I went home after that, seriously tired and fearing the consequences of what we'd just done.

I went to sleep. i was out for a pretty long while.

And then a sharp, aggressive knock at the front door jolted me awake.

I sat upright on the couch, my heart instantly racing. It was 4:00 PM. I had drifted off into a restless nap. In the adjacent room, I could hear the rhythmic humming of the washing machine where my wife, Abigail, was doing the laundry.

I reminded myself to stop the shaking in my hands. I burned the muddy clothes from last night. There was no evidence left.

I unlocked the deadbolt, unhooked the chain link, and pulled the front door open.

My worst nightmare was standing on the welcome mat. A police officer.

She was young, maybe her early twenties, but her uniform was crisp. Despite the heavy gray overcast outside, she wore thick, pitch-black aviator sunglasses. A row of silver studs lined her earlobes, ending in crescent-shaped earrings. I forced my throat to swallow the lump forming there.

"Hello. How may I help you, officer?" I asked.

I tried to force an eager, helpful smile, but I knew I probably looked like a guilty idiot. We had committed breaking and entering, battery, and assault. My life was over. I had ruined everything, and it was going to end right here in this doorway.

I noticed she was alone. Aren't cops supposed to travel in pairs for backup?

Behind those dark lenses, I knew her eyes were boring holes right through me.

"I didn’t mean to disturb you, sir," she said, her voice chillingly professional. "But there was some trouble down the lane last night. Mind if I come in?"

"No. Certainly not."

I stepped aside, holding the door open wider. She stepped past me, her boots clicking against the linoleum of our tiny, cramped apartment.

From the laundry room, the door clicked open.

"Elijah?" Abigail asked, stepping out.

“Hey? Where we going, buddy?” His own voice sounded

nasally from the beating he got from Carter. His teeth still felt numb from the

tasing he got at the hands of this sir, Ryan, hair of the ginger variety.

Yes. They weren’t going to the station. Cause if they

were, they were going the wrong way. Sweat spiked down his back.

Ryan didn’t say anything no more, face drawn in

shadow, hair curly and swept back with a shaking hand, other on the wheel,

guiding it slow and soft. The tire sounds on asphalt didn’t sound so relaxing

as they did when Elijah was a kid living in Highrise City. He’d been born

there. He had every right to shit as they did.

But he was getting frightened now. Didn’t sound like

he could take one more bout of these frights, especially at his advanced age of

forty something. His mind was scrambled. He couldn’t even remember his ma’s

name no more.

Ryan stopped the cruiser in the lot of the sealed-off

Northend High School.

His old friend.

Ryan dragged him out, hand in his hair. Then the

officer whispered in his ear, mouth smelling of mint, whiskey, tiredness, “But

don’t get the wrong idea. I hated your people way before I ever started working

for the government. Now git going!” A shove. Elijah went down on his knees,

arms ripped apart, felt like, and the bastard’s hand in his sparse few hairs.

They took the same entrance as Elijah did when he

snuck in here the first time. They entered the darkened courtyard first, before

going to the maintenance dock by the kitchens where Ryan went through the lock,

which was now secured with a keypad. He had official access codes.

God. God. God.

They stepped into the mouth of hell. This damned

school, covered with snow, was cold, yes, cold even on the inside. It made his

balls shrivel up. He coughed, sputtered. The cop gave him a push, told him to

get going faster. They stepped through, or stumbled in Elijah’s case darkened

halls, past wide disused corridors, past lockers where kids once fucked around

by.

“You don’t have to do this,” he muttered.

He was numb, then scared, then numb, then scared. Piss

trickled down his pant legs.

“Did you piss yourself, visa boy?” demanded Ryan.

He hung his head down in shame.

They took the basement stairs. The lighting became

more ominous, even by Northend Highschool standards. A mixture of green and

blue. Water dripped. The walls were cinderblock, concrete, cracked, flaking

with paint. This place would never be renovated ever again.

“Where we going?” asked Elijah. He thought about

fighting his way out but this wasn’t a fucking action movie. This was going to

be his execution. “What are the others going to do with Jazmine?”

“I ain’t working with the cops. They were true cops.

However true you could get…as a cop. My niece doesn’t know either. And I don’t

want her. Here. Turn. Don’t fall.” They turned in this twisting labyrinth that

most definitely, in his eight plus years as night guard, plus his tenure as

student here, hadn’t been a fixture of this school before. “I would do anything

to protect my niece from this. She’s a good girl, always wanted to be a cop.

But who knew our precinct would’ve presided over this shitfest, am I right?”

The officer let out a hideous chuckle, ginger hair demonic in the low yellowish

green tint of these winding tunnels, racks, shelves, all empty. Pipes

crisscrossed above on the endless ceiling. Mold grew everywhere. Didn’t skip a

spot, seemed like. “Our town’s never going back. You can have my word on it,

visa boy.” Elijah shuddered. The floor became slimy, wet, sludgy, like the

floor in a mine shaft Elijah once trudged through when he worked part-time as

contractor. Then the floor became smooth as egg shell, colored light green, the

walls around them an off yellow, smoother, newer. The echoes of their

breathing, footsteps became throatier. The space became bigger and bigger. The

tunnels weaved into sections with twice the number of tunnels.

“Stop it, R-R…Ryan,” Elijah croaked. “Just let me go.

You don’t know what you’re doing. Your niece is in danger, just by you doing

this, don’t you understand?”

Ryan didn’t say anything anymore.

Elijah began flailing, thrashing, kicking, rocking his

head back and forth, trying to get him in the nose. He stomped, missing the

man’s polished shoe. The chains to his cuffs jingled. Clinked. He screamed, “Oh

help me! God! Help me! HELP!”

A service revolver pressed against the small of his

back, barrel cold, steady, unyielding.

“Do that again, Elijah, and you’ll be pissing blood

down your legs next.” The gun prodded him into moving forward again. He

stumbled, careful not to break down into outright sobs. He hated when people

got involved. With monsters, you had a chance.

They walked in silence, through the strange gloom for

a minute or so and then glass doors opened and Elijah gaped, gawked at what he

saw ahead. All around. Above.

The room was a massive dome. Like a science dome, and

he instantly knew where this was. Or more accurately, what kind of place he had

stepped into.

The horticultural garden look wasn’t purely a lie.

Only it was tropical plants, leaves plump, wet, in otherwise good health. The

air smelled sweetly of nectar, fruit juice and other things. The glass was

clear, all around but this dome, no matter how big, was inside a concrete

bunker the size of enormity. He lurched forward, cuffs grinding into his bones

nearly, felt like. The heat in this place stuck to his lungs, hugged him, made

him feel nauseous. Made his taser shock, wounds feel worse. Felt like the worst

hangover of his life. This horrid heat. Made Ryan’s skin clammy against his,

the officer’s hand around his forearm.

Massive banana trees, pools of steaming water.

Colorful greens. Delicate butterflies, wings in iridescent greens, blacks that

thrummed, fluttering, swooping, resting. In thousands. He could even hear them,

in his imagination. He could taste the fermented fruits on his tongue. He could

recoil and gasp. This place was the most beautiful room he’d ever had the

pleasure of being inside. Why did he think that?

What the fuck. He didn’t realize he’d actually said

that aloud. Ryan stood beside him, revolver holstered. A butterfly, a Monarch

perched on his shoulder, then fluttered off. Elijah watched it in petrified

awe, saw its butterfly straw was unfurling. He walked the moist stone floors,

followed by the officer acting as the chaperone. No, he could hear them. The

thousands of paper-thin wings, their flapping, the gentle ascent and descent of

their  owners. Tiny eyes on either side

of strange alien heads, but they were the most standard organisms you could

find on planet Earth.

“I’ve been to one of these,” whispered Elijah, tears

forming, gathering, pouring. He sniffled. He almost fell. Ryan steadied him.

Massive reinforced glass panels to the right. Whispers of beating wings.

Butterflies, darting, weaving, spinning, careless, and a few even brushed him.

Drip-drip-drip. Condensation on walls. On the glass. And the heavy

thrum-thrum-thrum of industrial machinery below, working to make this heaven

underneath all that WL State desolate winter. The machinery sounded almost like

the purple caterpillar thing that had tried to eat his face when he’d

encountered Macey, dead girl, for the first time in the halls of this school.

The school above.

Why was something this evil so beautiful?

The butterflies were normal. Flying all around them.

But there was something unsettling about them even still. Maybe it was just his

association with the demonic one.

The place was well-lit, fountains everyplace. Large

trees, leaves shimmering. Large butterflies, smaller. A color paradise.

They stopped, and in a cluster of the most beautiful

exotic plants. The fourth-story-high concrete shell around this glass enclosure

was flawless, without a single crack, everywhere. A buffer against the hideous

winter outside.

“The temperature is kept precisely between 85

Fahrenheit and 95 Fahrenheit. A marvel in scientific engineering,” said the

officer, who before this, had looked anything but a man of precise science.

“There are hidden nozzles, tubes that spray a water rich in glucose. Very

opposite to the filth you try so desperately to feed to our Mournful Violet.”

“What is going on? How did you construct this?”

“This area was quarantined from September all the way

to last June.” Ryan’s finger rubbed at the revolver’s handle, holstered to his

hip. “Any more inane questions to ask?”

Waxy palm leaves, huge growths, plants that only

existed across the ocean. The defined the landscape. The butterflies flew

around the stone basin which circulated water all around, steaming, rich in

minerals most definitely. Elijah had been reading up on butterflies ever since

his near death at the hands of a human-faced bug lady.

“So, you-you built this thing after the first killing?

You didn’t create the Mournful Violet?”

“My benefactors worship it. They hope to receive

supernatural benefits from it. I am just the muscle. They promised they’ll

leave my niece alone.”

“So, you’re not a bastard at all. Just get that

fucking gun out of my face.” The man had drawn it again. “And do something

about all this hideous shit!”

They stopped by a few large swollen leaves.

Butterflies dotted it. Perched, straws piercing the flowers nearby, sucking

greedily. Eyes blank, glassy, large and filled with black spots.

“My benefactors, Elijah, tried to figure out the truth

to the Mournful Violet’s nature. They ran experiments. This place, where all

butterflies flutter and roam, what more perfect natural environment to run the

most accurate tests? They fed a single caterpillar the silk residue from the

school’s roof, the site of the metamorphosis. They fed it and now it’s

metamorphosized itself. Do you spot it, Daypheo? Do you spot it in the air? It

looks a bit different than the others.”

Elijah’s vision was swimming again. From the humidity

of this conservatory, from the tasering, the beating, the fear, all magnified

by each other into one big fuckery. But it cleared. He squinted so it did. He

looked. Red, blue, yellow, black, orange. Butterflies drifted by lazily. Tiny

whispering wings. A fruit on the ground, multiple perched on it, wings still,

otherwise twitching.

The butterflies in the air were dizzying in their

flight patterns. He looked and looked and looked.

And then he saw it.

A butterfly with normal patterns on its wings, a

butterfly he could name, among the others, but its head was skin-colored, small

but bigger than a normal insect’s head. It had short cropped brow hair. Eyeless

face. Small nose, pretty. And the face was freckled.

The abnormal butterfly fluttered cheerily around the

others, perched on a tree, wings slowing in flapping, stilling. Then just as

abruptly, took off again and vanished among the flowering vines.

Paralysis took him. He fell, gasping. Then he picked

himself back up.

“Don’t be frightened. You’ve seen enough horror. This

should be nothing for you.” Ryan chuckled, eyes in merry crescents. “I don’t

know why the Mournful Violet has neglected to drive you batshit like it did the

others. But we’ll see. We’ll see in due time. Now come. You have yet to meet my

benefactors.”

“Why are you talking all weird?” he asked.

“You’ve just seen a butterfly with a human head on its

neck and you’re focused on my speech?” Ryan chuckled, slapping him on the back

friendlily with the revolver butt.

They exited the cluster, turned a corner where Elijah

saw lawn chairs, metal, dark, and a table with ornamental glass in four

different vibrant colors set up in a clearing. The set-up looked like the table

his boss set up for he and the other workers for a construction project at this

university campus, where they sat, talked, ate their sandwiches or pizzas and

joked about the students, and had a coke or two. He’d even played cards on it

once with a coworker named Jordan who overdosed shortly after he’d been let go.

The set-up in here was decidedly more sinister. A

middle-aged woman, thin as a pencil, with hair fastened into a visceral bun was

seated in one chair. The old man the other.

Both of them he recognized.

Mrs. West and the medical examiner Payton West.

Butterflies were perched on her shoulders, on her

head, on her angular nose. Her eyes were small, shifty and blue. The old man

looked ancient. Hair clung to scalp like seaweed, mottled scalp, and teeth

rotted, missing. He wore a simple doctor’s white coat and crisp brown trousers.

He looked ready to perform an autopsy on a teenage girl.

“How’s your heart, Mrs. West?” the officer Ryan asked

her. He looked small, diminutive before them despite being fit and young and

physically domineering over them.

“The visions have stopped,” she said. “I am feeling

quite well, sweetie. Thank you!”

Dr. West glared at Elijah. Elijah knew why. Before

saving Jazmine from the first ghost body, he’d beaten and throttled and tied

the suspicious doctor up, acting solely on a hunch the doctor was dirty. The

doctor still had bruises on his face. An eye still discolored.

“How’s the eye, Doctor?” Elijah inquired.

The doctor licked his upper lip. He lowered his

steaming cup of coffee, withered blue lips once wet with it, before the lick.

“Tsk tsk tsk. Where did you take my daughter, young man? You beat me, tied me

up, which I was lucky to even have escaped! You took my daughter.”

“You left her. We were right there in your

house.”

“You.” Fury took the doctor’s eyes. He straightened

his thick glasses.

“Do you like our contribution to the school?” Mrs.

Anne Elizabeth West asked sharply. “My husband was so eager to pitch in.” Her

husband was a rich man. Corbin was his name. Corbin West. Cousin to Dr. Payton

West, if Elijah remembered correctly.

“I’ll be wanting my daughter back, you…brr…night

guard,” said Dr. Payton West.

Elijah snarled.

“You rotten boy,” growled the teacher, straightening

her blouse with a huff, whole body pinched and thin.

“We’ll be needing his daughter back, Mr. Daypheo,”

Ryan told him from beside him, all professional cop again. Switching in and out

of roles, shoving useless ones aside like a spoiled chick did clothes in a

closet.

Tap-Tap-Tap. Elijah saw it was Mrs. West’s long

unpainted nail tapping against the glass tabletop, which he saw was actually a

mosaic of colors, a circular version of a butterfly’s wing. A rendition. Or was

it real? He could suddenly feel warmth exuding from the table, as contrasted to

the icy chill coming off the skinny teacher’s eyes. “Legal traps everywhere for

you, Elijah, night guard, villain. Now, where did you put the

neurotoxin?”

“Huh?” croaked

out Elijah.

Her eyes bore

into his, blue, gray, green and still changing. “Cars can’t kill our dear Macey

Donaldson, the Mournful Violet again, but your weapon can. I asked you,

sweetie…where…did you put the neurotoxin?”

It’s in police

custody, the real ragged police if they combed the superstore. Are you crazy?

Why are you asking that? And the poison? For a citywide extermination project

tailored toward rats and bedbugs that never got carried out. I got a

disgruntled maintenance worker to get me access, with just the right amount of

cash.

“Where did you

put the neurotoxin? Where did you put the neurotoxin?”

The doctor

glared at him. “You stole my daughter. My sweet Jaz-mine BEAN!”

Anne smiled. “We

don’t really want to hurt you here, kiddo. Can’t you see this is a conservatory

for peace and beauty? You should’ve never been born. Without you, no one else

would’ve discovered the Mournful Violet’s pet peeve. She is a ghost but if you

cover all the bases, she will be extinguished. I’m telling you this to get you

to understand the size of your malevolence. You are hurting an innocent

creature made by God to delight the children. Watch!” She gestured

up, flung her arms up to gesture toward the butterflies, the swarm, a dozen

perched all over her. “Refuse your inner evil. You’re nothing but one step away

from Marvin, economy-wise who was but an old janitor. This isn’t your fight.

You have kidnapped my colleague’s daughter and you have a weapon that you’ve

told others about. Who? Who?”

“Where is the neurotoxin?” asked Dr. West.

“It’s not neurotoxin. It’s just pesticide!”

“Oh! Really?” Anne rolled her eyes in a big

exaggerated fashion, then they stopped on his trembling form again, and she

barked, “Is it in that grocery store? Because if it is, then who knows where it

could be now. The Mournful Violet will have no choice but to kill those

officers now. Good boys with mothers.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. “But my niece…you promised…”

Dr. West attempted to calm the situation down with

fluttering hands. “Anne! Anne! The teen is in a coma right now! Her body is in

effect, dead. She’ll be doing no killing.”

“You promised!” cried Ryan, eyes starting from his

head, moving closer toward Anne West on her ornate lawn chair.

Anne stared at him, eyes seeming to slide down the

man’s throat and dig out his organs. “I promised.”

“You did!”

“…to the Mournful Violet. That I’ll do whatever I need

to ensure its continued perfection.” Her voice was frigid.

Ryan choked. Then he drew his revolver.

Oh, his niece was that female officer Elijah knocked

out. And the teacher was saying all the police were going to die.

“We will all be benefitted!” crowed Anne West, rising,

pushing the table aside, Dr. Payton’s cup of coffee spilling, going over onto

its side. Spit poured down her chin, black as death. “Don’t you see? If we

quarrel not we who belong in the priesthood, then eternity is promis—”

Ryan shot her in the forehead. The gun, so weak, went

off and a hole slightly scorched appeared above the middle-aged social studies

teacher’s eyes.

“Gurk. Grrrk… Guh. Guh…. Guh…” hissed the teacher. The

doctor tried to get up but knees cracking, he sat back down, in horror. Anne

West staggered there, kicking the chair aside, wandering out away from the

trio, toward the flowers and leaves and trees, brushing aside vines, smoke

issuing forth, curling from her forehead hole, a crater tiny.

“Guhh...”

Elijah stepped aside, watched her stumble, then regain

her balance. Looked like a marionette.

“No! You sit!” Ryan bellowed, turning, and the gun was

pointed at the old doctor who quickly sat back down, frozen. With how

trigger-happy the young officer was, with his red hair and sandy fuzzy

mustache.

Mrs. West hit a tree and finally sat back down. Her

body spasmed on its back, spindly arms and legs jerking. Eyes wide open, in

shock.

“In the throes of death!” the old

doctor bellowed from his seat. Ryan’s finger tensed on his gun.

“I’m taking my niece out of here, you hear?” screamed

Ryan, eyes bulging, gun levelled at Payton West’s old mottled head. “We’re

leaving the town today! Fuck your bug woman!”

“Do what you like, young man,” croaked the doctor,

spittle leaking down his wrinkled chin. His hand was shaking uncontrollably

now. The geriatric old medical examiner lifted his head up, eyeglasses catching

the artificial lights above, trained them on the officer.

“Ah!” His gun went off. The tree to the left lost a

banana from the ricochet. Elijah turned, saw in horror, a butterfly the size of

a small pear, was latched onto the young cop’s spine, having bitten straight

into his neck, a small human mouth the size of a bullet casing. The bite must

have been poisonous because the officer instantly stumbled forward, chin

hitting the table, and went down hard, limbs tangled. The butterfly with the

human head had grown in size the past few minutes. Its abdomen was swollen with

blood, seen under the fuzz and it throbbed. Its pincer hands were skin-colored.

Its wings were large and a wailing woman’s face was on either wing, imprinted

with decorative fuzz. The straw came out of the woman’s mouth, the tiny woman’s

head, size of a grape attached to the abnormal butterfly’s torso. The straw was

thin, like a juice box straw. It pierced his head, going past the red hair.

Then the straw began bulging rhythmically, as it began draining the man’s brain

fluids, was what it looked like. The girl’s grape-sized head bulged and shrank,

bulged and shrank and the eyes were merry, slitted. It perched on the cop’s

neck like a small winged beautiful mouse, slurping away with a joy that was

both human and butterfly.

The doctor had his mouth open.

Elijah gritted his teeth, throat burning, chest rising

with bile. He used his restrained hand to get in his pants pocket, and very

carefully came up with his lighter. He was a smoker. The fuckhead cops hadn’t

done a full-body search after tasing him, beating him and this one asshole

driving him to the school where he was now trapped inside a bio nightmare.

He got the small flame into existence. He hopped,

stumbled toward the twitching cop, with the rat-sized creature on his back, too

gorged on blood and brain and viscera to notice. It was steadily growing larger

and larger, the wings crackling, growing more elaborate with its fuzz art,

design and contours. He gently had the flame touch its right wing, with the

screaming face on it and the girl-thing fluttered those wings violently,

jerking back, straw emerging from the man’s neck with a soft wet thuk.

It fluttered its wings. Only made the burning worse. He stumbled backward, as

the flaming butterfly flew at him, darted aside when he fell, kicked. It tried

to get closer but now the fire had crept up its furry body, across both wings

and now he heard a girl’s shrill scream, small, pinched, coming from the

flaming rat-sized thingy. It flew around the clearing, getting its fiery body

brushing up against leaves, bananas, lilies, flowers of all kinds and even

other butterflies. The place soon became utter chaos. Dr. West, he saw, had

raced to the cop’s body with a surprising agility, shocking really, for a man

of his age and previous vitality. He picked up Ryan’s fallen gun, came up. But

too slow.

Elijah’s double fists came down hard, like a hammer,

against the old man’s mottled filthy head, down on his skull. His glasses

shattered at his feet. He went down, gun dropping. Elijah went on his side,

tripping, but got the gun up, and then he turned.

He went out of body for a second, at the sight of what

was happening.

The girl-butterfly, plump mouse soft thing was flying

toward him, burning, a girl’s face, without the straw now, just a screaming

girl’s head getting closer and closer, tiny human eyes locked in rage. She was

as big as a bat, only with immense wingspan, over five-feet now and all on

fire. It looked like a girl’s face was screaming in hell. Inferno. Getting

bigger as the distance closed between them. The flaming fiend sailed closer and

closer.

Miraculously, the gun went off.

He wasn’t even aiming.

The butterfly flew apart about two feet from him, bits

of furry flesh, legs and hair sailing in all directions. Flaming. Sparks flew.

Nearly got in his eyes. He cried out.

He put his palm out, just before the doctor could

lunge from the floor to plant a scalpel through his neck. The scalpel pierced

his palm, went clean through. Elijah howled. He slammed the revolver, barrel

and all, straight into the old man’s mouth, into his throat. He had used his

shoulder to brace from the recoil after having shot the butterfly to bits. He

was cuffed, bleeding from a stabbed hand, and pain lanced up every bit of him.

Damn. The man’s breath was foul. The conservatory was

burning, smoke everywhere, ashes of dead butterflies. He was about to press

down on the trigger, when suddenly, he remembered this was Jazmine’s father.

The father she had joined him in the first place to find. The father he’d

beaten and had tied up but who later escaped before he could question him, a

father Jazmine had no idea was caught up in all this. Was so deep.

He coughed, coughed, sputtered, vomited beside the

doctor, gun still in the latter’s throat. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it.

He owed enough to the girl to at least get this old criminal out so he could be

arrested in another town.

Scalpel stuck in his palm, his other hand gripping the

gun which was rammed inside the old man’s jaw, teeth scraping the barrel,

Elijah pondered. In a burning glass dome. Shit. He was going to die if some

strange quality about this place interacted badly with fire. Could create toxic

fumes. Then the sprinkler system kicked in, no glucose in this water, he

guessed, began pouring and soon it was a wall of steam, smoke, fire getting put

out, seemed to be.

He unlocked himself, using Ryan’s key, but which took

so long, so much pain from his impaled hand, and he was nearly mad by the end.

Felt like he’d plucked his eye out, chewed off a limb. It took pain and a hell

of a lot of luck but in the end, he was free, and he was going to get the man

who did this to him out of here.

“Dad. Are you crazy? We’re going to do a séance?”

“You don’t know how much crazier I can get, Jazmine Bean,” whispered her father. He set Grannie’s old sweater in the middle of the salt circle in their living room. In all of Jazmine’s fourteen years, she’d never seen her father act like a lunatic. I mean, he’s a doctor!

The curtains shielded the window to their little rowhouse. The chairs, the flowerpots, and the TV were all still. The dust in the air levitated. Time slowed because Jazmine was feeling afraid. Her father had insisted they do this, claiming the West family had an old trick to communicate with the departed. Jazmine insisted it wasn't true, but Dr. Payton West insisted they give it a go.

The ceiling seemed oppressive outright today during this moody noon. The ceiling fan was turned off. The house, for all intents and purposes, was wholly quiet. It was just them, breaths booming, air humming with anticipation. Her father got out two candles, lit each, and clicked off the lighter.

Their rowhouse unit on the hill overlooking Cricket Creek had always seemed so cozy, but today, with Dad’s eyes intense behind his large glasses and her stomach coiling, the living room seemed unfamiliar. As if her own home had become hell when Dad made the decision to try and communicate with her Grannie, whom she missed so bad.

“The biggest spice to our West séances is desperation,” he said. “Do you hold desperation in your heart, dear? To see Grannie back?”

“I hold the opposite. I don’t want to do this, Dad.”

“You turn that around, dear, if you want to be special. All of your cousins have powers that are not of this earth. You are the only one who was born bare. I want you to have this edge. Even if you’re scared. You will be desperate for this to succeed. Because if we succeed, Grannie gets another shot at life.”

“Dad…”

“Speak the chant I taught you. And try to cry for real.”

“Grandma’s dead.”

“And our job is to rectify that. Do what I told you.”

His old hand gripped onto hers. She blinked hard, swallowed, and began the chant.

The room did not get colder. It stayed quiet. The ceiling did not shift. Grannie’s sweater stayed on the floor inside the salt circle. The clock tick-tocked away. The fridge was silent. The dining table did not creak. Nothing shifted.

Dad’s face was shadowy, and his wrinkles did not grow deeper. She stared at him, her hoodie heavy from sweat, gooseflesh sweeping across her skin. She felt warm, overly so. No frost from the other side.

“You’re not desperate,” said her father. “That’s why she’s not showing up.”

“I-I’m sorry. But I don’t believe in games, Daddy.” She hadn’t called him that since she was five.

“Science is only one way of measuring the supernatural,” whispered her father, lips tightening. “But it is not the be-all-end-all.”

They waited. The clock continued making its quiet, sullen sounds. Jazmine began to feel hungry.

“I’m going to the fridge. Get something—”

“No,” commanded her father in a hiss. “Stay right here. She will arrive. If only for a brief second.”

They waited. Her father was crouched down, long white hair clinging to his mottled scalp, eyes rheumy and tired behind his heavy pair of spectacles. He wore a white shirt with a cord for knotting the garment at the collar. His pants were brown, dirty trousers. His eyes were fixed on the salt circle.

She wanted to go to the fridge. Get a drink. A soda. She looked toward the kitchen, then turned back, and the white-haired man continued staring at her.

He had taken off his glasses, she saw. Hair white, pasted over his mottled scalp. His eyes were narrow, and his teeth were messily grown. He stared at her.

The curtains stirred. A soft draft. But the window was closed, and those curtains were heavy. Her eyes darted around the room, desperate for any sign Grannie was not back.

Grannie had died with a full head of hair, white over her mottled scalp. She had been buried in a white shift dress with a cord for tightening the collar. Her eyes were bright, she never needed glasses, and she’d had crooked teeth. Grannie had been found dead inside her bathtub.

Minutes turned into many minutes, and noon slipped into dusk. She was dozing off when she heard the sound of crickets. Loud, insistent chirping. At the same time, someone pressed a cold can into her hand. The surface was beaded with condensation. She tilted her head up and opened her eyes.

The cord at the collar to the white shirt. A smile. The chirping of the crickets grew louder, harsher.

“Thank you…” Then she really saw.

The wrinkled face with the hollow cheeks. The grotesque smile filled with rotten, crooked teeth. The bare feet on the floorboards. Water trickled down Grannie’s ankles. Jazmine screamed and dropped the can.

She smelled awful rot. She smelled glee. The shift dress trailed against the floor, getting soaked with the water slithering down the old woman's ankles. Her eyes were bright. Spit coated her crooked teeth like mismatched tombstones.

“He’s coming for you,” she whispered, spit drooling from her grinning mouth. “He’s coming for you, dear.”

Jazmine closed her eyes. When she opened them again, an arm poked out from the staircase, followed by Dr. Payton West. He rushed down the stairs.

“Did you see her? Did you break the salt circle?” He nearly tripped running toward her. “Sorry, Bean, I had to relieve my bladder… at my age, a stakeout is darn impossible. Oh my god.”

She stared up at him, her whole body trembling, having pissed her pants. She lifted the soda can and said, “D-Daddy. T-Throw this away. Oh God, throw this away.”

His teeth were fine. They weren’t crooked. His eyes were behind spectacles again.

Good.

 

Far back as I could remember, this town had always been strange.

One night, I could remember, I could remember having the living daylights frightened out of me. That afternoon, toward evening, I’d gone to sleep with the radio left playing on the windowsill, sun orange and basking the yard in gentle oven hues. The radio had been playing a distinct song. I remember it now.

Eat the Violet Gummy And the Violet will Eat you

It sang in an eerie old 1930s baritone voice, but flat, bland, straight, with no changes in rhythm, and heavy static.

I woke up before my actual bedtime to turn it off and go watch the toons with my dog and family for a while before I retired back to my bedroom, and fell back once again into the arms of Mother Slumber.

I woke up. Can’t remember when, but it was smack in the middle of the night probably.

I woke up and a man was at the foot of my bed. His hair was greasy, clamped across his scalp. His little shiny eyes were starting from his head, behind his spectacles. He lifted his head, peeking over my toes, staring straight at me. The room was dim blue in some parts, black in others.

He had wrinkles deeply embedded ‘cross his broad brow. His lips were thin. Long, dry as sandpaper in the dark. I did not move and he stared at me. He wore a long tuxedo, with deep pockets.

He watched me with those beady little eyes and I imagined he would do it forever. He had leather shoes on. Pants like the ones church boys wore. His face morphed, to become my sister’s ex, my best friend’s. Long smooth face. Late teens. Long shiny smiley face, smile full of big horsey teeth. His eyes stared and stared, brown while the prior ones had been blue.

His brown eyes looked like soft runny chocolate in the room’s dim light. He smiled at me, wider, horsey teeth prominent. There was an insincerity in his eyes, like a fake friend’s, and he did not make a sound. My toes wriggled, yet I still did not speak or cry out. I moved nothing else, besides my toes.

He still wore the tuxedo, ill-fitted but he was taller, longer, and more animalistic than his prior appearance had been.

“I’m at the university,” he said, voice clear as bells. Nice. Open. Boy scout cheerfulness. A truth as wrong as a lie.

I said nothing in return.

“I’m at the university,” he said. “Come see me.”

He crawled back off my bed after having been straddling my thighs for a bit. He stood up, lines of the old man on the young face now, brown hair cropped short. Brown hair cropped short turning gray. He bounced on his feet standing there. Then nodding one last time, he turned and walked out of my door, shutting it closed behind him with exaggerated care.

I lay there in my bed, sweat on my face. Heart beating.

Beating.

My mother came in a moment later, asked if I was alright, asked if I’d like a glass of water. I said yes. She nodded. Said poor baby and left.

She was wearing the long tuxedo with deep pockets. But it fit her pretty okay.

A cold, paralyzing dread locked my throat. I couldn't scream. I couldn't even breathe. I just pulled the covers up over my face, squeezing my eyes shut in the pitch black, praying to God that morning would come.

“Mom but Mom—”

“No.” Kenji Hori’s mother was a tall woman among Japanese and well-styled, hair trimmed short and streaked with iron. Her stare was hard. Her orders were non-negotiable. “There is bad air in town. You go out, you get in trouble. Police can’t help you.”

“But Mom, I’m with a friend.” He hated how whiny his voice was.

“Ok. Alright. But go out and come home before dark. That’s my order.”

“Yes, Mom,” said Kenji sheepishly.

He ate inside the dirty diner downtown with Jacob before the man had to go, left without dropping him off, which meant he had to walk two miles all the way home. He stood up in the diner, sighed, stretched and took out his wallet, paid the bill and stepped out of the restaurant, door swinging shut behind him. A stiff autumn breeze. A cold crisp autumn afternoon, orange and red leaves swirling at the end of the parking lot. An old knotted tree stood. An owl perched on it, even though it was the middle of day. A large broad head, feather intricate with patterns, and its eyes were gold slanted orbs, pupils black and round as the inside of a coffee cup. The owl sat still, talons on the branch, gripping with an eternal dedication, and to move the owl seemed to be a defiance against law. It had the stillness of a tombstone. Its primary feathers did not rustle. White, black patterns and tawny overall. The eyes looked like a father’s in a dream, and it was so high up on the tree, far away, looked small and large at the same time. The sky was gray, all around it, casting its body in gloom.

The amber eyes which had been gold had no lids as owls weren’t often to possess, and its feathers pulled upward, bunched around its back, wings, and to reveal legs yellow and long, longer than snakes, making up more than half its body, like a naughty striptease. Kenji stared. He’d heard owls once lifting their plumage possessed legs that were surprisingly long, about half the body but he wasn’t sure if they could just display the legs on instinct like this.

Then the stillness broke entirely. Its eyes fixed on him one last limitless second before it took off, making no sound as its heavy head, body, wings lifted it into the gray gloom and it flew across downtown, over the furniture store, before fading into the distance.

Leaving Kenji still seeing it on that knotted old tree at the edge of the parking lot.

******

So, Jacob used to drive him around town. One night, snow blowing, night starless, they stopped, on the highway. Kenji needed to be driven back home already. His mother said he wasn’t 18 yet and he can’t stay out too late. Oh, he was in trouble today. He was out past 12 and his phone kept ringing.

Sheep were crossing the road, big coats curly, shaggy, yellowish in the illumination of headlights. They had broken out of the fence. Walking slowly. This had happened. Jacob was fascinated and they sat in the car, waiting for the sheep to finish crossing but there were cows among them as well, heads straight, knees bending.

Five cows stopped; two sheep did. The beams of light from Jacob’s car shone over them. The sheep’s black pupils were big as small donuts, and illuminated by headlights so they smiled. Their eyes were stupid, big, dead, wet, soft. But their teeth were heavy, in big helpless smiles. The cows did too, three of them.

Jacob didn’t make a sound. And neither did Kenji.

Their wool was pristine if you ignored the yellowing. The sheep had the uglier smiles. More human. Ecstatic. Eyes wide, deep and black with the whites swollen in the illumination. Kenji could feel his breath catch. Jacob’s hands fell onto the wheel.

Do something. Do something. Back up.

Snow was gathered in messy piles along the road, stripes bright from Jacob’s car. The music had been turned low, then off altogether by Jacob. The engine began sputtering. An old car.

No, Jacob. Drive. Drive.

Don’t let them see us.

But they already saw them. The rest of the sheep and cows moved on but two stopped at the front, and they turned as well, tails not moving, and their eyes were muddy, vacant. A sheep had eyes like a black egg yolk on a white pan each. The cows, who should be without blue eyes, stared out with large silent blues, baby blue. Their teeth were yellowed, long and square but too human. Blues could occur in sheep and cows. Kenji didn’t know why that thought had just occurred in his mind. But were rare compared to brown or amber.

The sky was a painful sort of dark, blinding in its nonlight. The highway had no other cars. The peeling blue fence lining the field along the road made for startling silhouettes once out of the light. The cows had hooves which dragged against the road, tail limp on each, and their heads kept being twisted to look at their car with growing interest and fixation. Saliva hung from the furry chins like from rabies.

Jacob came to life like a mechanical figure. Throwing the car in reverse, he turned the wheel, got into a full-on car sprint, peeling off, and Kenji looked in the side mirror and the rearview and still the livestock stood there, swaying. The smiles were quiet.

Kenji and Jacob never went back to that highway again, nor did they tell anyone after this.

They just forgot it.

Marvin had been janitor for eight years. He always made sure to get the corners. There was a certain pride he took in his work. This school began to feel like something of an old friend to him after all these years. He didn’t even listen to music while he worked. The silence became its own ambience. It suited him just fine. Mop and broom, vacuum cleaner and old soapy buckets. He never felt any discomfort from the filth the children sometimes left in this place. Children. Heh. A high school but in his forty-five-year-old eyes, children all the same.

Fucking didn’t make you any more mature. Your eyes said it all. All the eyes in the classrooms during the daytime always bespoke innocence. He knew that. He knew that in his gut.

He kept up with the gossip featured here. He had his ways. He sold weed and crank sometimes to the less fortunate, and he always gave them good discounts. He whistled as he vacuumed near Mrs. West’s classroom, looking at all the drawings made by students nailed on the wall, and nodded in appreciation. The darkness was tinted blue and made it an impossibility for anyone other than Marvin to see alright.

He saw alright.

He opened the door with his elbow which was already ajar, dragging the heavy machine in, its sound deafening in the silence throughout. But first he had to turn away from the drawings, and just when he did, he heard distant chirping. Crickets.

He fully entered the room, and gasped.

In the middle of the classroom, amidst all the desks and chairs sat a young woman. No, a girl. Maybe sixteen. He saw her hair all drenched in shadows and her slender frame all dressed in the same. He gulped and he turned the vacuum cleaner off, and the silence returned, but not comforting. No. The silence returned with teeth.

The girl sat with her back facing him, long smooth brown hair running down her back. He recognized her. He didn’t know how but he did. The girl who had died in the car crash on 67. It was in the papers. He kept up with the papers.

He kept up with the gossip.

The hat on his head covering his silver hair began to itch. He gripped the brim, adjusting it and he tried to speak, but felt his throat was jammed. Young lady, what are you doing in here?

It was late into the night. No one should be on the premises. No one.

Especially not her.

A strange thing, he heard from his dad. Those with inner priviness heard the reason Macey Donaldson crashed her Chevy was not due to poor attention but because she’d swallowed a rare kind of caterpillar, a purple kind no one’s ever seen but all heard of, called the Mournful Violet. It was big and fat and plump, colored purple like an intestine with some spunk.

She had swallowed it and it’d caused her to go into cardiac arrest, prompting her to swerve off the lane and hit a guardrail at 120 miles per hour. The crash had caved her face in. Just like that. Macey Donaldson was just gone. The autopsy had found the bug inside her body. No foul play had been suspected.

Now she sat in the middle of the dark, silent, empty classroom. He knew it was her. He didn’t know how. He had only seen her in the papers. Or maybe she still wore that white sweater with the frilled sleeves and ruffled collars. Macey Donaldson sat quiet and unmoving in her seat in the middle of the class.

His heartbeat sounded audibly in his own sweating ears. Along with the crickets, getting farther but somehow heavier in the sound of their legs and wings.

Why are you here you’re not s’posed to be here.

Macey sat up. The desk groaned. She began walking toward him and the back of her hair parted, parted until he saw the vaguest implication of white eyes with dark pupils and a shy small smile, black as the shadows. She wobbled and walked toward him, skirt facing the front, sweater facing the front but she stared at him while walking backward, at him. He groaned, shuddered back a step, feeling his trousers fill with warm piss.

Youre not s’posed to be here.

Her sleeves filled up with ballooning flesh, flesh turning angry purple, plum purple and he heard a grotesque creaking sound as her head ballooned as well, hair falling off like a discarded wig. He saw her legs grow longer and fat layer atop one another and her torso begin to become segmented, meaty, heavy and pulsating. She slipped out of the cluster of chairs and desks, sweater clinging to her torso to become fuzz, light white.

She said to him, voice quiet and somber, “I was never a human person. I was always a caterpillar named Mournful Violet.” Her face was facing him now, her head twisting round, followed by her once doll-like body. “I was always Mournful Violet.”

“But you died,” he gurgled, pointing at her, falling onto his other hand. The seat of his trousers hit the cold linoleum floor. “You died on 67.”

She was a few feet from him now, feet wearing muddy slippers. Her jeans were caked with mud and grass. Then they tore and big bulbous purple flesh bubbled out, gurgling. She wobbled there, as she stood there, an insane Jell-O thing. Wobbly. Massive. Hulking. She loomed over him and it was only Macey Donaldson’s head hanging off the top of the enormous monstrous bug’s wriggling body. The floor groaned beneath her. “Will you help me, janitor boy? I’m so hunnngrryyy. I’m so huunngrry, you’ve gottaaa heeelllp meeeee.”

 

Marvin had been janitor for eight years. He always made sure to get the corners. There was a certain pride he took in his work. This school began to feel like something of an old friend to him after all these years. He didn’t even listen to music while he worked. The silence became its own ambience. It suited him just fine. Mop and broom, vacuum cleaner and old soapy buckets. He never felt any discomfort from the filth the children sometimes left in this place. Children. Heh. A high school but in his forty-five-year-old eyes, children all the same.

Fucking didn’t make you any more mature. Your eyes said it all. All the eyes in the classrooms during the daytime always bespoke innocence. He knew that. He knew that in his gut.

He kept up with the gossip featured here. He had his ways. He sold weed and crank sometimes to the less fortunate, and he always gave them good discounts. He whistled as he vacuumed near Mrs. West’s classroom, looking at all the drawings made by students nailed on the wall, and nodded in appreciation. The darkness was tinted blue and made it an impossibility for anyone other than Marvin to see alright.

He saw alright.

He opened the door with his elbow which was already ajar, dragging the heavy machine in, its sound deafening in the silence throughout. But first he had to turn away from the drawings, and just when he did, he heard distant chirping. Crickets.

He fully entered the room, and gasped.

In the middle of the classroom, amidst all the desks and chairs sat a young woman. No, a girl. Maybe sixteen. He saw her hair all drenched in shadows and her slender frame all dressed in the same. He gulped and he turned the vacuum cleaner off, and the silence returned, but not comforting. No. The silence returned with teeth.

The girl sat with her back facing him, long smooth brown hair running down her back. He recognized her. He didn’t know how but he did. The girl who had died in the car crash on 67. It was in the papers. He kept up with the papers.

He kept up with the gossip.

The hat on his head covering his silver hair began to itch. He gripped the brim, adjusting it and he tried to speak, but felt his throat was jammed. Young lady, what are you doing in here?

It was late into the night. No one should be on the premises. No one.

Especially not her.

A strange thing, he heard from his dad. Those with inner priviness heard the reason Macey Donaldson crashed her Chevy was not due to poor attention but because she’d swallowed a rare kind of caterpillar, a purple kind no one’s ever seen but all heard of, called the Mournful Violet. It was big and fat and plump, colored purple like an intestine with some spunk.

She had swallowed it and it’d caused her to go into cardiac arrest, prompting her to swerve off the lane and hit a guardrail at 120 miles per hour. The crash had caved her face in. Just like that. Macey Donaldson was just gone. The autopsy had found the bug inside her body. No foul play had been suspected.

Now she sat in the middle of the dark, silent, empty classroom. He knew it was her. He didn’t know how. He had only seen her in the papers. Or maybe she still wore that white sweater with the frilled sleeves and ruffled collars. Macey Donaldson sat quiet and unmoving in her seat in the middle of the class.

His heartbeat sounded audibly in his own sweating ears. Along with the crickets, getting farther but somehow heavier in the sound of their legs and wings.

Why are you here you’re not s’posed to be here.

Macey sat up. The desk groaned. She began walking toward him and the back of her hair parted, parted until he saw the vaguest implication of white eyes with dark pupils and a shy small smile, black as the shadows. She wobbled and walked toward him, skirt facing the front, sweater facing the front but she stared at him while walking backward, at him. He groaned, shuddered back a step, feeling his trousers fill with warm piss.

Youre not s’posed to be here.

Her sleeves filled up with ballooning flesh, flesh turning angry purple, plum purple and he heard a grotesque creaking sound as her head ballooned as well, hair falling off like a discarded wig. He saw her legs grow longer and fat layer atop one another and her torso begin to become segmented, meaty, heavy and pulsating. She slipped out of the cluster of chairs and desks, sweater clinging to her torso to become fuzz, light white.

She said to him, voice quiet and somber, “I was never a human person. I was always a caterpillar named Mournful Violet.” Her face was facing him now, her head twisting round, followed by her once doll-like body. “I was always Mournful Violet.”

“But you died,” he gurgled, pointing at her, falling onto his other hand. The seat of his trousers hit the cold linoleum floor. “You died on 67.”

She was a few feet from him now, feet wearing muddy slippers. Her jeans were caked with mud and grass. Then they tore and big bulbous purple flesh bubbled out, gurgling. She wobbled there, as she stood there, an insane Jell-O thing. Wobbly. Massive. Hulking. She loomed over him and it was only Macey Donaldson’s head hanging off the top of the enormous monstrous bug’s wriggling body. The floor groaned beneath her. “Will you help me, janitor boy? I’m so hunnngrryyy. I’m so huunngrry, you’ve gottaaa heeelllp meeeee.”

“Nooo. No! No! NO!” He scrambled off the floor, onto his shaking, quivering standing power, and he turned and slipped and hit his face off the doorframe and fell, and she, the caterpillar-thing warbled out laughter behind him. He grunted, as lights filled his vision and he tasted the smell you tasted when you hit your nose real bad.

She groaned close, body tense and huge and oily. The vacuum cleaner was knocked aside by her segmented body, small mitten-like hands waving in their dozens. Her human head wailed, “I’m so hungry!”

Her head split open and a large grinning bug-eyed visage replaced it. The teeth were still human except as big as cinder blocks and the cheeks were purple and bloated, like a suffocated victim’s. “Mournful Violets don’t exist. I am the only Mournful Violet. Only me. Only me. Only me. Only me!” It was eating him. Macey Donaldson, dead girl from Highway 60 something, where her head was open like a watermelon, she was now eating him. And it hurt. But it didn’t hurt as much, when he realized she would soon turn into a butterfly.

The first and only Mournful Violet specimen in the world ate him carefully.

IMAGO

Elijah lifted his flashlight, keys jingling. He approached the hallway where the strange wails were coming from. Muffled, quiet but wails. The wails shouldn’t be this tormented but so quiet. He swallowed, inching closer and closer to the hallway. He would turn the corner, and be inside it, and at the end of it would be Mrs. West’s classroom. A chair clattered over. Desks squealing, their legs against linoleum. Shit. Definitely a trespasser. The large ring of master keys jangled against his thigh. He felt like a fraud as he went around the corner, lifting his LED flashlight. He straightened his back, shook the limp hair from his eyes and then he stopped. The door was open all the way in Mrs. West’s classroom. Shouldn’t it be locked?

Bumping. Rustling. No more of that quiet pinched wailing. The dark hallway seemed like a rectangular tunnel through hell. The shadows dropped and lifted, like spirits. His legs were shaking so badly. He took the flashlight in his other hand. Clicked it off. The whole hallway went into utter darkness. The classroom at the end of the hall, it was dark, dark, only with the merest blue tint, but this only served to somehow make it more ominous. What looked like a bear inside, but bigger, longer, its dark shape could barely be seen but as night guard for the past ten years, Elijah’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness of this high school.

He stared from the other end of the hall, stared straight into the classroom so far away and heard and recoiled from the crunching, the wet squishing sploshing sounds. A vacuum cleaner was on its side near the doorway, just barely out of view. He could see it. The mass inside shifted, swelling, pulsating and he could hear the pulsation. Like a low whrom-whrom-whrom.

Shit, if he hadn’t seen anything ever like this.

Tears began forming in his eyes. He couldn’t help it. He turned, and tried to grab at his radio but it crackled.

The wet squishing sound, the slopping sound stopped in Mrs. West’s classroom. The whrom-whrom-whrom did too.

Elijah, are you there, asked his radio?

Elijah let out a quiet squeal, in utter disbelief. Terror. He ran a hand through his hair. He tried very carefully not to ruin his pants. He ripped at the sleeve of his dark blue button-up shirt. His company patches on his shoulder were getting soaked in sweat along with the rest of his matching uniform. He had left his bomber jacket in the other wing. He didn’t know why he thought about that.

His lips quivered. His teeth chattered. His brain went spinning and leaping. He could temporarily feel disassociation, his body failing to hold onto his soul. Was he already a dead man?

The shape lifted, seemed to expand in the classroom. The vacuum cleaner was knocked aside as the thing slid out of the doorframe, barely able to do it at all. The hallway echoed with its wet gurgling, its wet chuckling. The huge black orbs on what should be its face looked like the texture of screen doors. The kind that blocked mosquitos. Or the eyes of mosquitos. The head was smaller than its segmented body but was still huge, easily the size of a small rug in span. The thing brushed against the lockers with its big pulsating fleshy body, colored purple, he could see now in the darkness tinted with blue. He subconsciously felt for his flashlight. He picked it up, then dropped it. His radio buzzed.

“God,” he said.

It drew closer, crossing the vast distance between them, filling the hall like a tidal wave of meat and stink. It smelled like soap, fabric and a rosebush. With the slight tinge of copper, spoiled milk.

Stuck to its huge tombstone teeth, he saw tatters of light gray fabric. Blood ran down its purple chin, greasy with it.

Over thirty small hands like swollen red mittens moved its hulking tumbling form across the hall, toward he, toward him.

His boots had non-slip soles. He turned and he ran. He used to be a badass sprinter in school when he’d been going to one of these high schools. He wasn’t from here, he was from Highrise City but this didn’t need any more thought. He ran, boots pounding on the linoleum floor, nose still full of the thing’s foul and fragrant smell, and he felt about to puke. He flew across the stairs, leaping down several and twisted his ankle upon landing and slammed into the trophy wall, glass hitting him in the teeth. He tasted metal in his mouth.

He lay on his hands and feet, and he reached for his radio, once clipped so snugly to him. Once. Clipped. So snugly.

He had lost it.

His body felt like the hull of a ship. His lungs felt made up of the sails to a great unstable ship in wind. He got up, dizzy, stumbled and tripped and hit his head again. He was by the front entrance. He needed to get out of the front entrance.

He looked up. The railings were felt by red mittens, and the shadow was large and it crossed the entirety of the small stairway and a great toothy grin was across that purple angry face.

The thing was looking right at him.

He couldn’t keep staring at it. Or else he’d go fucking crazy. It seemed faster than it looked.

It allowed itself to tumble down the stairs, body snapping the railings with loud clangs, like tooth picks and he screamed, shouted, bellowed and got up and slammed his shoulder, his side into the front door of the school. He felt a give. Fell outside with the opening doors and landed on concrete, rolled aside and got onto his feet, laces coming undone on his boots. He heard the creature snarl behind him and force its way out past the doors, teeth chomping for his feet and he squealed, kicking himself away, dragging himself up and he threw himself cross the path, past the sign of the school, out into the parking lot where his shitty Honda was parked alone by the dumpster, just a few more paces away. He screamed, went down again, chin hitting pebbly ground, because his twisted ankle had flared up in a big way. He clawed, pulled himself like he’d still be in war, and pushed himself up, and he reached toward his car, so far away, yet so close.

He looked behind him. His blood went cold.

The bulbous gelatinous thing, lit by the lights in the lot was now flattening its bulk as thin as grape skin against the ground so it instantly became wider, expansive, covered over twenty feet of ground in just a few seconds. A low sigh as the flat thing slid toward him, bigger than most unmade tents, becoming the new ground texture. Purple, veiny, wet and dry in parts, wrinkled in parts. The big cinderblock teeth were ridging along its center, still solid, still wet with blood and cracked and dry in others. The mitten hands had vanished.

But somehow, he scrambled into his car after somehow manipulating the keys with righteous ease and got himself inside the car, after hopping toward it on what felt like a broken ankle. Blood swam in his vision. He had hit his head so many times.

Was he hallucinating all of this? Was he going to wake up again, find himself in his bed, not a night guard, still ten and in his mom’s arms when she saw he’d had a bad dream?

He’d stopped telling her about his dreams when he’d started having sex ones.

He looked back out through the fogged glass of his car, the chilled glass, ice forming and managed to see just right out of it so he could see where the damned thing had expanded off to. Was it already over his car? No. He squinted blinked. The lot was empty. No huge expanding skin-thin layer of its whole body across the lot. The lot was empty. Pebbly ground clear. It was gone. He pawed through his deep pocket on his pants, came up with his phone and yipped in delight, tears streaming down his bruised face.

He swiped it open. The tab it opened to wasn’t the one he’d been on prior though.

His blood went cold once more. His fingers were frozen.

The screen was open to a tab on the papers. The papers. The Daily Report. It had a picture under a title in big letters: ALCOHOL DEEMED NEW FACTOR IN CRASH

Below, the picture, it displayed a girl. Big open smile, soft skinny face with light blue eyes. Looked melancholic. Like she’d just learned something worthy of it. She wore a white sweater with frilled sleeves and ruffled collars. Her smile was so wide, so happy but the melancholy was there in those eyes.

He read the first few paragraphs without even meaning to.

The Mournful Violet a non-factor. Hoax. Poor taste. Autopsy flagged.

The Mournful Violet isn’t real, said the police chief.

Marvin had been janitor for eight years. He always made sure to get the corners. There was a certain pride he took in his work. This school began to feel like something of an old friend to him after all these years. He didn’t even listen to music while he worked. The silence became its own ambience. It suited him just fine. Mop and broom, vacuum cleaner and old soapy buckets. He never felt any discomfort from the filth the children sometimes left in this place. Children. Heh. A high school but in his forty-five-year-old eyes, children all the same.

Fucking didn’t make you any more mature. Your eyes said it all. All the eyes in the classrooms during the daytime always bespoke innocence. He knew that. He knew that in his gut.

He kept up with the gossip featured here. He had his ways. He sold weed and crank sometimes to the less fortunate, and he always gave them good discounts. He whistled as he vacuumed near Mrs. West’s classroom, looking at all the drawings made by students nailed on the wall, and nodded in appreciation. The darkness was tinted blue and made it an impossibility for anyone other than Marvin to see alright.

He saw alright.

He opened the door with his elbow which was already ajar, dragging the heavy machine in, its sound deafening in the silence throughout. But first he had to turn away from the drawings, and just when he did, he heard distant chirping. Crickets.

He fully entered the room, and gasped.

In the middle of the classroom, amidst all the desks and chairs sat a young woman. No, a girl. Maybe sixteen. He saw her hair all drenched in shadows and her slender frame all dressed in the same. He gulped and he turned the vacuum cleaner off, and the silence returned, but not comforting. No. The silence returned with teeth.

The girl sat with her back facing him, long smooth brown hair running down her back. He recognized her. He didn’t know how but he did. The girl who had died in the car crash on 67. It was in the papers. He kept up with the papers.

He kept up with the gossip.

The hat on his head covering his silver hair began to itch. He gripped the brim, adjusting it and he tried to speak, but felt his throat was jammed. Young lady, what are you doing in here?

It was late into the night. No one should be on the premises. No one.

Especially not her.

A strange thing, he heard from his dad. Those with inner priviness heard the reason Macey Donaldson crashed her Chevy was not due to poor attention but because she’d swallowed a rare kind of caterpillar, a purple kind no one’s ever seen but all heard of, called the Mournful Violet. It was big and fat and plump, colored purple like an intestine with some spunk.

She had swallowed it and it’d caused her to go into cardiac arrest, prompting her to swerve off the lane and hit a guardrail at 120 miles per hour. The crash had caved her face in. Just like that. Macey Donaldson was just gone. The autopsy had found the bug inside her body. No foul play had been suspected.

Now she sat in the middle of the dark, silent, empty classroom. He knew it was her. He didn’t know how. He had only seen her in the papers. Or maybe she still wore that white sweater with the frilled sleeves and ruffled collars. Macey Donaldson sat quiet and unmoving in her seat in the middle of the class.

His heartbeat sounded audibly in his own sweating ears. Along with the crickets, getting farther but somehow heavier in the sound of their legs and wings.

Why are you here you’re not s’posed to be here.

Macey sat up. The desk groaned. She began walking toward him and the back of her hair parted, parted until he saw the vaguest implication of white eyes with dark pupils and a shy small smile, black as the shadows. She wobbled and walked toward him, skirt facing the front, sweater facing the front but she stared at him while walking backward, at him. He groaned, shuddered back a step, feeling his trousers fill with warm piss.

Youre not s’posed to be here.

Her sleeves filled up with ballooning flesh, flesh turning angry purple, plum purple and he heard a grotesque creaking sound as her head ballooned as well, hair falling off like a discarded wig. He saw her legs grow longer and fat layer atop one another and her torso begin to become segmented, meaty, heavy and pulsating. She slipped out of the cluster of chairs and desks, sweater clinging to her torso to become fuzz, light white.

She said to him, voice quiet and somber, “I was never a human person. I was always a caterpillar named Mournful Violet.” Her face was facing him now, her head twisting round, followed by her once doll-like body. “I was always Mournful Violet.”

“But you died,” he gurgled, pointing at her, falling onto his other hand. The seat of his trousers hit the cold linoleum floor. “You died on 67.”

She was a few feet from him now, feet wearing muddy slippers. Her jeans were caked with mud and grass. Then they tore and big bulbous purple flesh bubbled out, gurgling. She wobbled there, as she stood there, an insane Jell-O thing. Wobbly. Massive. Hulking. She loomed over him and it was only Macey Donaldson’s head hanging off the top of the enormous monstrous bug’s wriggling body. The floor groaned beneath her. “Will you help me, janitor boy? I’m so hunnngrryyy. I’m so huunngrry, you’ve gottaaa heeelllp meeeee.”

Marvin had been janitor for eight years and these are entries from his journal and that of a coworker. make of that as you will.

I always made sure to get the corners. There was a certain pride I took in my work. This school began to feel like something of an old friend to me after all these years. I didn’t even listen to music while I worked. The silence became its own ambience. It suited me just fine. Mop and broom, vacuum cleaner and old soapy buckets. I never felt any discomfort from the filth the children sometimes left in this place. Children. Heh. A high school but in my forty-five-year-old eyes, children all the same.

Fucking didn’t make you any more mature. Your eyes said it all. All the eyes in the classrooms during the daytime always bespoke innocence. I knew that. I knew that in my gut.

I kept up with the gossip featured here. I had my ways. I sold weed and crank sometimes to the less fortunate, and I always gave them good discounts. I whistled as I vacuumed near Mrs. West’s classroom, looking at all the drawings made by students nailed on the wall, and nodded in appreciation. The darkness was tinted blue and made it an impossibility for anyone other than me to see alright.

I saw alright.

I opened the door with my elbow which was already ajar, dragging the heavy machine in, its sound deafening in the silence throughout. But first I had to turn away from the drawings, and just when I did, I heard distant chirping. Crickets.

I fully entered the room, and gasped.

In the middle of the classroom, amidst all the desks and chairs sat a young woman. No, a girl. Maybe sixteen. I saw her hair all drenched in shadows and her slender frame all dressed in the same. I gulped and I turned the vacuum cleaner off, and the silence returned, but not comforting. No. The silence returned with teeth.

The girl sat with her back facing me, long smooth brown hair running down her back. I recognized her. I didn’t know how but I did. The girl who had died in the car crash on 67. It was in the papers. I kept up with the papers.

I kept up with the gossip.

The hat on my head covering my silver hair began to itch. I gripped the brim, adjusting it and I tried to speak, but felt my throat was jammed. Young lady, what are you doing in here?

It was late into the night. No one should be on the premises. No one.

Especially not her.

A strange thing, I heard from my dad. Those with inner priviness heard the reason Macey Donaldson crashed her Chevy was not due to poor attention but because she’d swallowed a rare kind of caterpillar, a purple kind no one’s ever seen but all heard of, called the Mournful Violet. It was big and fat and plump, colored purple like an intestine with some spunk.

She had swallowed it and it’d caused her to go into cardiac arrest, prompting her to swerve off the lane and hit a guardrail at 120 miles per hour. The crash had caved her face in. Just like that. Macey Donaldson was just gone. The autopsy had found the bug inside her body. No foul play had been suspected.

Now she sat in the middle of the dark, silent, empty classroom. I knew it was her. I didn’t know how. I had only seen her in the papers. Or maybe she still wore that white sweater with the frilled sleeves and ruffled collars. Macey Donaldson sat quiet and unmoving in her seat in the middle of the class.

My heartbeat sounded audibly in my own sweating ears. Along with the crickets, getting farther but somehow heavier in the sound of their legs and wings.

Why are you here you’re not s’posed to be here.

Macey sat up. The desk groaned. She began walking toward me and the back of her hair parted, parted until I saw the vaguest implication of white eyes with dark pupils and a shy small smile, black as the shadows. She wobbled and walked toward me, skirt facing the front, sweater facing the front but she stared at me while walking backward, at me. I groaned, shuddered back a step, feeling my trousers fill with warm piss.

Youre not s’posed to be here.

Her sleeves filled up with ballooning flesh, flesh turning angry purple, plum purple and I heard a grotesque creaking sound as her head ballooned as well, hair falling off like a discarded wig. I saw her legs grow longer and fat layer atop one another and her torso begin to become segmented, meaty, heavy and pulsating. She slipped out of the cluster of chairs and desks, sweater clinging to her torso to become fuzz, light white.

She said to me, voice quiet and somber, “I was never a human person. I was always a caterpillar named Mournful Violet.” Her face was facing me now, her head twisting round, followed by her once doll-like body. “I was always Mournful Violet.”

“But you died,” I gurgled, pointing at her, falling onto my other hand. The seat of my trousers hit the cold linoleum floor. “You died on 67.”

She was a few feet from me now, feet wearing muddy slippers. Her jeans were caked with mud and grass. Then they tore and big bulbous purple flesh bubbled out, gurgling. She wobbled there, as she stood there, an insane Jell-O thing. Wobbly. Massive. Hulking. She loomed over me and it was only Macey Donaldson’s head hanging off the top of the enormous monstrous bug’s wriggling body. The floor groaned beneath her. “Will you help me, janitor boy? I’m so hunnngrryyy. I’m so huunngrry, you’ve gottaaa heeelllp meeeee.”

“Nooo. No! No! NO!” I scrambled off the floor, onto my shaking, quivering standing power, and I turned and slipped and hit my face off the doorframe and fell, and she, the caterpillar-thing warbled out laughter behind me. I grunted, as lights filled my vision and I tasted the smell you tasted when you hit your nose real bad.

She groaned close, body tense and huge and oily. The vacuum cleaner was knocked aside by her segmented body, small mitten-like hands waving in their dozens. Her human head wailed, “I’m so hungry!”

Her head split open and a large grinning bug-eyed visage replaced it. The teeth were still human except as big as cinder blocks and the cheeks were purple and bloated, like a suffocated victim’s. “Mournful Violets don’t exist. I am the only Mournful Violet. Only me. Only me. Only me. Only me!” It was eating me. Macey Donaldson, dead girl from Highway 60 something, where her head was open like a watermelon, she was now eating me.

And it hurt. But it didn’t hurt as much, when I realized she would soon turn into a butterfly.

The first and only Mournful Violet specimen in the world ate me carefully.

IMAGO

I, Elijah, lifted my flashlight, keys jingling. I approached the hallway where the strange wails were coming from. Muffled, quiet but wails. The wails shouldn’t be this tormented but so quiet. I swallowed, inching closer and closer to the hallway. I would turn the corner, and be inside it, and at the end of it would be Mrs. West’s classroom. A chair clattered over. Desks squealing, their legs against linoleum. Shit. Definitely a trespasser. The large ring of master keys jangled against my thigh. I felt like a fraud as I went around the corner, lifting my LED flashlight. I straightened my back, shook the limp hair from my eyes and then I stopped. The door was open all the way in Mrs. West’s classroom. Shouldn’t it be locked?

Bumping. Rustling. No more of that quiet pinched wailing. The dark hallway seemed like a rectangular tunnel through hell. The shadows dropped and lifted, like spirits. My legs were shaking so badly. I took the flashlight in my other hand. Clicked it off. The whole hallway went into utter darkness. The classroom at the end of the hall, it was dark, dark, only with the merest blue tint, but this only served to somehow make it more ominous. What looked like a bear inside, but bigger, longer, its dark shape could barely be seen but as night guard for the past ten years, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness of this high school.

I stared from the other end of the hall, stared straight into the classroom so far away and heard and recoiled from the crunching, the wet squishing sploshing sounds. A vacuum cleaner was on its side near the doorway, just barely out of view. I could see it. The mass inside shifted, swelling, pulsating and I could hear the pulsation. Like a low whrom-whrom-whrom.

Shit, if I hadn’t seen anything ever like this.

Tears began forming in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. I turned, and tried to grab at my radio but it crackled.

The wet squishing sound, the slopping sound stopped in Mrs. West’s classroom. The whrom-whrom-whrom did too.

Elijah, are you there, asked my radio?

I let out a quiet squeal, in utter disbelief. Terror. I ran a hand through my hair. I tried very carefully not to ruin my pants. I ripped at the sleeve of my dark blue button-up shirt. My company patches on my shoulder were getting soaked in sweat along with the rest of my matching uniform. I had left my bomber jacket in the other wing. I didn’t know why I thought about that.

My lips quivered. My teeth chattered. My brain went spinning and leaping. I could temporarily feel disassociation, my body failing to hold onto my soul. Was I already a dead man?

The shape lifted, seemed to expand in the classroom. The vacuum cleaner was knocked aside as the thing slid out of the doorframe, barely able to do it at all. The hallway echoed with its wet gurgling, its wet chuckling. The huge black orbs on what should be its face looked like the texture of screen doors. The kind that blocked mosquitos. Or the eyes of mosquitos. The head was smaller than its segmented body but was still huge, easily the size of a small rug in span. The thing brushed against the lockers with its big pulsating fleshy body, colored purple, I could see now in the darkness tinted with blue. I subconsciously felt for my flashlight. I picked it up, then dropped it. My radio buzzed.

“God,” I said.

It drew closer, crossing the vast distance between us, filling the hall like a tidal wave of meat and stink. It smelled like soap, fabric and a rosebush. With the slight tinge of copper, spoiled milk. Stuck to its huge tombstone teeth, I saw tatters of light gray fabric. Blood ran down its purple chin, greasy with it.

Over thirty small hands like swollen red mittens moved its hulking tumbling form across the hall, toward me.

My boots had non-slip soles. I turned and I ran. I used to be a badass sprinter in school when I’d been going to one of these high schools. I wasn’t from here, I was from Highrise City but this didn’t need any more thought. I ran, boots pounding on the linoleum floor, nose still full of the thing’s foul and fragrant smell, and I felt about to puke. I flew across the stairs, leaping down several and twisted my ankle upon landing and slammed into the trophy wall, glass hitting me in the teeth. I tasted metal in my mouth.

I lay on my hands and feet, and I reached for my radio, once clipped so snugly to me. Once. Clipped. So snugly.

I had lost it.

My body felt like the hull of a ship. My lungs felt made up of the sails to a great unstable ship in wind. I got up, dizzy, stumbled and tripped and hit my head again. I was by the front entrance. I needed to get out of the front entrance.

I looked up. The railings were felt by red mittens, and the shadow was large and it crossed the entirety of the small stairway and a great toothy grin was across that purple angry face.

The thing was looking right at me.

I couldn’t keep staring at it. Or else I’d go fucking crazy. It seemed faster than it looked.

It allowed itself to tumble down the stairs, body snapping the railings with loud clangs, like tooth picks and I screamed, shouted, bellowed and got up and slammed my shoulder, my side into the front door of the school. I felt a give. Fell outside with the opening doors and landed on concrete, rolled aside and got onto my feet, laces coming undone on my boots. I heard the creature snarl behind me and force its way out past the doors, teeth chomping for my feet and I squealed, kicking myself away, dragging myself up and I threw myself cross the path, past the sign of the school, out into the parking lot where my shitty Honda was parked alone by the dumpster, just a few more paces away. I screamed, went down again, chin hitting pebbly ground, because my twisted ankle had flared up in a big way. I clawed, pulled myself like I’d still be in war, and pushed myself up, and I reached toward my car, so far away, yet so close.

I looked behind me. My blood went cold.

The bulbous gelatinous thing, lit by the lights in the lot was now flattening its bulk as thin as grape skin against the ground so it instantly became wider, expansive, covered over twenty feet of ground in just a few seconds. A low sigh as the flat thing slid toward me, bigger than most unmade tents, becoming the new ground texture. Purple, veiny, wet and dry in parts, wrinkled in parts. The big cinderblock teeth were ridging along its center, still solid, still wet with blood and cracked and dry in others. The mitten hands had vanished.

But somehow, I scrambled into my car after somehow manipulating the keys with righteous ease and got myself inside the car, after hopping toward it on what felt like a broken ankle. Blood swam in my vision. I had hit my head so many times.

Was I hallucinating all of this? Was I going to wake up again, find himself in my bed, not a night guard, still ten and in my mom’s arms when she saw I’d had a bad dream?

I’d stopped telling her about my dreams when I’d started having sex ones.

I looked back out through the fogged glass of my car, the chilled glass, ice forming and managed to see just right out of it so I could see where the damned thing had expanded off to. Was it already over my car? No. I squinted blinked. The lot was empty. No huge expanding skin-thin layer of its whole body across the lot. The lot was empty. Pebbly ground clear. It was gone. I pawed through my deep pocket on my pants, came up with my phone and yipped in delight, tears streaming down my bruised face. I swiped it open. The tab it opened to wasn’t the one I’d been on prior though.

My blood went cold once more. My fingers were frozen.

The screen was open to a tab on the papers. The papers. The Daily Report. It had a picture under a title in big letters: ALCOHOL DEEMED NEW FACTOR IN CRASH

Below, the picture, it displayed a girl. Big open smile, soft skinny face with light blue eyes. Looked melancholic. Like she’d just learned something worthy of it. She wore a white sweater with frilled sleeves and ruffled collars. Her smile was so wide, so happy but the melancholy was there in those eyes.

I read the first few paragraphs without even meaning to.

The Mournful Violet a non-factor. Hoax. Poor taste. Autopsy flagged.

The Mournful Violet isn’t real, said the police chief. She’s a filthy bitch who would’ve been jailed had she not been absolutely wrecked by the ensuing crash.

Found drugs in her system.

Janitor Marvin will be looked into. Several students have come forward, citing his tendency to supply those he knew to be vulnerable with narcotics.

“He’s going to be out of a job soon,” I whispered, and I threw the phone aside where it bounced off the dashboard to land below. I didn’t know why I knew that. I didn’t know what I was doing. What was happening?

The dome light above flickered, after having just come on.

I jumped, looked at it and I shook my head, plucked my phone back up while shooting a terrified glance back out the foggy window but I could no longer see out of it at all. I needed to get going. Fuck. I tried to start the car on, but first I needed the keys and where were the keys I used to unlock the car with fuck fuck fuck fuck

I went to the chat between me and my wife. I needed to either call her or call the police but my mind was acting irrationally, full of jelly, full of gelatin and then I saw my wife had sent me a text.

1:02 am ABIGAIL: She’s a big bad caterpillar. She’s a big bad caterpillar. She’s hungry. She’s HUUNNGRRRY!

“No!” I howled, and turned off the phone, then turned it back on and went to the keypad for dialing 911. But my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly hold onto the phone. Suddenly, music started playing over it from another app, from the music app, the fucking music app

SHE’S A HUNGRY CATPERILLAR BIG AND HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY SHE’S GOING TO EAT YOU AND SPIN A SILK COTTAGE SHE’LL EAT YOU RIGHT UP AND HAVE A DRINK!

“Shut up!” And I began bashing the phone against the ceiling, against the dome light which was still flickering, bashing, bashing, bashing.

The squeaking sound drew me back to the window again. The frost on the window was getting cleared off, messily, grittily. Squeak. Squeak. Rub. A mitten hand on it. I saw the big angry face, purpled like death after suffocation. Then it slid out of view but now I could see out of the window.

I didn’t dare to get out. I didn’t dare to even breathe anymore though I was hyperventilating. I looked down at my hand, gripping the broken phone, glass spiderwebbed. The phone I’d gotten myself as a present last year.

I found the pepper spray hooked to my belt. I ripped it free, held it, thumb on the top, to spray the fuck out of this purple bear mountain when it should stick its head forward again. When I should see it again.

I stared down at my phone. Despite the cracked screen, the dented frame, I saw it was open to a tab. The white glow blinded me in the darkness of this car. The dome light had shut off.

The news article. But a slightly different one: LOCAL TEEN DIES IN WRECK ON 61.

It made my mind begin to move, irrationally. I’m in a car. I’m in a car. I’m in a car. But I’m not going to crash. I’m going to get eaten by a fucking bear.

The picture underneath the words was a different one, but still about the same girl, Macey Donaldson (17). In this picture, half her face was eaten away and big purple angriness stuck out of it and her smile was joined with the creature’s vile hungry one. She was gripping the wheel, someone had taken this picture from the dashboard, like a…anyway, and on her hands, on each of her hands she wore a red plump mitten. It was winter, cold, better get your hands protected, sweetie but mom it has a bad grip on the wheel it—

I’m going to kill you, she said, because the picture was now a video, of her going off the road just moments before her crash, a dashcam video. And then the screen went black.

She had stuck her tongue out at me and wiggled it but it was purple, segmented and with tiny red mittens, a pair for each segment.

A head slid into view outside, outside my unfrosted window and the head was small, delicate and brown-haired, long brown hair, smooth and glossy, like silk. The eyes pored into me, as the head slowly slid into view, the face. A red mitten hand went on the glass, pawing at it, and I didn’t make a sound. I was petrified.

Squeak squeak.

The mittened hand pawed at the unfrosted glass.

“Drive away, security boy,” she said in a voice I could hear past the glass. Clear as a crystal bell. “Drive away. Please. Or I’M GOING TO CHANGE SOON!” The last scream startled me, made me bang my head against the ceiling. Then I went out.

Blackness was everywhere.

The next time I awoke, gentle yellow sunlight was on my cheek. I groaned, stirring against my smelly old car seat. The smell of my own old cigarette smoke hit my nose, when it hadn’t last night. What happened last night? Was I working? I lifted my body from the seat, sniffed my arm. God, I needed a shower.

I saw the parking lot was full of people. News crew, mostly. What was going on? People seemingly ignored me in my little battered Honda. What were they looking at?

I turned, saw the school, big yellow and blue faded paint, the exterior needed renovation.

On the edge of its roof by the big Beautiful Countryn flag, I saw what looked like a mass of twisted branches, no, it was silk. Some kind of big bug’s nest except if magnified to cover a quarter of the building and the playground to its right with its shadow. People gasped, and pointed.

A crack. A split ran down its side.

What stepped out of it to perch against the roof was a woman. Nude as a pin-up girl. Long silky brown hair streaming down her skinny back. Big luminescent wings in the particular contours of a Monarch butterfly except painted in blues and golds and greens. The wingspan was about thirty or forty feet, if I was any judge.

I saw the school math teacher and Mrs. West herself lift up their phones, Mrs. West a blocky camera and the shutters go off.