Loving a Monster

I Get to Live in a House Full of Murderers!

Jack carries me out of school, careful he doesn't shift so the jacket falls and starts flashing my ass to people. Every student is in the hall, and right now all of them have frozen from their panicking to gawk at us. Tim and Brian join us the second we leave the classroom. Ben, Jeff and Jane rendezvous with us at the exit with a flurry of questions mimicking Tim and Brian's.

No one answers them, and eventually they fall silent. I hear sirens wailing in the distance, coming closer. But no one even glances at that.

My vision seems to be getting hard to maintain.

They keep walking, one after another shedding whatever human masks they had, and properly assembling their outfits.

I must have passed out somewhere along the way, because when I  open my eyes again, everyone was sprinting through a pine forest.  I hold onto Jack's neck a little tighter, trying to make sense of where we are.

"Good afternoon, sleepy head. Good to know you aren't dead." Jack mutters, a smile in his voice.

"Where are we going?" I make out in a whisper. My voice doesn't seem to want to work.

"We're taking you to our home. You need to meet someone. We need answers." His response is short and strained.

"Need answers? For what? What happened? I want to go home, Jack."

Even with the rush of being carried by Jack and running through a pine woodland, the air being chilly enough to nip at my exposed skin, my brain doesn't seem to be working. I can't figure out why we're running, or what happened before I passed out.

"You turned into Fire at school when you got upset over a bit of, uh, art some girls left for you at your desk. We're taking you somewhere safe. Mostly." Natalie calls.

Looking at her, something seems different. It takes my brain a moment to process that her eye patch is gone, and underneath isn't an eye, but a clock. And her mouth has stitches at the corners, pushing her mouth into an almost permanent smile.

That's when I take a good look at everyone else.

Tim and Jane have white masks, each looking respectively masculine or feminine. Jeff is badly burned all over, his skin is white. A red, scar of a smile was cut from the corners of his mouth. And from the looks of it, it was a while ago. He doesn't seem to blink. Ben is literally flying in a full Link cosplay with black, bleeding eyes and red pupils. Brian has a black mask with a red frowny face woven onto it with his hood pulled up, making it look like he has no face, just a dark hood with red glowing mouth and eyes(which don't really look like eyes, but you know that). Toby has his scarf pulled up around his mouth and nose, his goggles pulled down and hood up. Jeff, Jane, Natalie, and Tim are all running with knives, Brian has a hand gun, Toby has two hatchets, and Ben has chains cuffed to his ankles and wrists.

Jack and I are in the center of the little circle. After the shock of everyone's changes, my brain finally wakes up. Sixth period crashes into me and I look down at my hands, making sure I'm not still on fire. No flames, but my skin is still red and slightly scaly, my fingertips and nails are more like claws. I reach up and feel horns on my head. Two big, twisting, curling horns. (Imagine whatever horns you want, but there's only two and they're horns, not antlers.)

I wish Jack wasn't holding me, then I could take full inventory of what I look like now. Shakily, I raise my foot and see it's still very animalistic, except now I have a bit more time to look at it. It's definitely more (cat/dog)ish.

When I manage to get over the shock of my new body, I manage to drag my eyes and attention away from my skin, hands and legs, and instead look around, trying to make sense of my surroundings. This is when I realize that everything I see doesn't seem as confusing as it was a moment ago. I can focus on a tree, and see each individual pine needle, even as we're blowing right past it. I focused on Jeff, and find he has no eyelids. Looking at Natalie, I notice subtle indents in her skin around her clock. She must have shoved it in extremely forcefully. Her stitches are off, too. I look at Jack, who's wearing his mask, and see a distinct difference between the real wood, and where I had fixed the cracks.