The town had recently reinstated a long time gone tradition of having a secondary year of senior year, so, all in all, 5 years of high school.
I arrived on campus a little late as I tend to do, and each time I took a handful of steps across campus, I was naked except for my combat boots and panties. This kept happening… but either nobody noticed, or nobody cared.
By the time I got to my classroom, everybody else was seated. And damn there were a lot of freakin’ people. At this point I had lost my purse about 3 times, and my bookbag twice, so I was already frazzled.
The classroom held an assortment of kids I knew, kids I had class with, and kids that were fuzzy around the edges. Andrew from Hellblinki kept passing in front of the classroom window, which really wasn’t so much as a window, but a wall of glass with reinforcements. He looked tired and wasn’t responding to the silly faces I was making at him.
We were given sheets of paper to fill out, a lot of really random questions and pictures from comic books. This black kid next to me for some reason kept trying to “share” my seat…and once again, I was naked, so obviously, also very uncomfortable. Eventually I was able to shove him into the empty seat NEXT TO HIM.
Just before the first class was over, Andrew slammed himself up against the glass window-wall, scaring half the class. We proceeded to make faces at each other for the rest of class. When the bell rang, I tried running out to meet him, but he had disappeared by that point.
I started to wander around looking for my next class, and realized… all the merch booths from Dragon*Con were set up in the courtyard. I started looking around, traversing the rather hilly campus. I picked up a humongous tin of tea and opened it to take a sniff, but smelled nothing. Coming around from behind me was the merch booth guy…I thought I recognized him and I made an ass of myself by saying, “Oh hey! What’s up! I haven’t seen you in awhile!” He let me give him a hug, but I chalked that up to me startling him, and replied, “I haven’t seen you, ever…” I blinked and walked off dazedly.
Running across some friendly faces [actual friends, not faces just hanging about, thank you very much], I asked what the fair was about. They told me it wasn’t due to the first-day-of-the-second-senior-last-high-school-year, but due to AQUA, the new aquarium setting up down the road, and warned me the booths weren’t going to be here all day.
I walked on and heard terrifying screams.
Blood curdling screams.
And someone yelling my friend’s name.
“KARSON!”
Mary was yelling Karson’s name, facing what looked to be a portable. There was a struggle going on in the portable, and Mary kept screaming, though not moving. I took a couple of steps up meaning to open to door, when Karson flew out and ran behind me. Her shirt was barely hanging on and she had no pants on. A guy stepped out of the portable, naked except for a towel over his junk. Karson was strangely calm, though she made it clear she wanted to leave. The guy just stared at us as Mary and I walked Karson away, up the hill to take her to … somewhere.
That’s when I saw her back.
Right along her shoulder blades, her skin had been torn away in huge chunks. Where flesh had gone missing, it was just black. Dried, crusted blood ran all along the border of her massive wounds, and down her back. There were fingernail marks on the rest of her back too. When I gasped and started crying, she was calm still, but asking me what was wrong.
“YOUR BACK! What did he DO?!”
“What do you mean, my back? What, what is it?”
“It — it looks horrible!”
“What is it?!”
At this point, she’d gotten panicky and was trying to see her back.
I blinked, and where the huge black pits of emptied flesh once were, were now well healed scars.
“Nothing…nothing,” I said, and we carried on up the hill.
