Room 205 of Leesburgh General Hospital is a flurry of activity: nurses shuffling past one another, doctors donning gloves and gowns and masks at the door. The room is bare and beige and a fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling illuminates it in stark, sterile white light. In the center of the room is a hospital bed, and in that bed is a woman who is giving birth to her son. The woman is screaming and crying, her face a contorted red mask of pain and pressure. Her husband stands at her side, his face a porcelain white mask of fear, drenched with a healthy dew of sweat. The woman’s mom sits in a corner with a camcorder in her hand, recording the birth for some godforsaken reason. The doctors and nurses move around the woman in a flurry, checking vitals, whispering words of encouragement. Pulse? Elevated, but healthy. Cervical dilation? Sufficient. Spinal injections? Administered. Everything fell into place like cogs in a machine; the baby would be healthy, the mother would make a quick recovery.
The doctor whispers something into the woman’s ear. She begins to push with all her strength. The nurses gather around with scalpels and suction tubes and thick blankets for swaddling. The father is pushed out of the way like a stray shopping cart, his hand now sandwiched between two nurses and his fingers going white from the pressure of the woman’s grip. The woman cries out, a mixture of pain and barbaric might coursing through her. Within her womb, muscles contract. Fluid shifts. A new life is about to be abruptly hurled into a brand new world.
The doctor gasps as the baby’s head begins to emerge. Like a spotlight, a burst of light erupts from beneath the woman’s gown. The doctor stands stunned, his pupils dilating with the blinding light but unable to look away. A collective burst of shock and fear comes from the nursing staff. The mother of the woman, jockeying her camcorder between medical personnel, screams “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” She is pushed out of the way as one of the nurses moves to act. The doctor, confused and stunned, stumbled to the side as the nurse springs into action. The baby comes further and further out. He is crying, and his whole body erupts with light to the point where it burns to look at him. The nurse does it anyway. She delivers the baby single-handedly, the rest of the staff too shocked and confused to act. The umbilical cord is cut. The mucus is gently sucked from the baby’s mouth by a vacuum tube. He is wiped and wrapped in blankets and a little hat is put upon his head. The baby is still glowing. Its eyes are like looking into the sun. The woman looks down, exhausted and dizzy from the pain and pressure. She sees her son for the first time, and sees that he is glowing bright. Her jaw goes slack.
In other parts of the hospital, similar things are unfolding. In Room 207, a green baby girl is born. In 208, a baby slips through the doctor’s hands as if it’s made of maple syrup. In Room 210, a doctor towels wet cheese dust off of his face and gown. No one knows what is happening. Most people are too shocked to act. But the births happen anyways, and soon there is a maternity ward filled with very, very strange babies. By the end of the day, the hospital is more crowded than an ant hill. News reporters and FBI agents elbow eachother out of the way. EPA agents in full protective gear sweep maternity ward floors with Geiger Counters that buzz like beehives. Nobody knows what is going on, but it keeps happening: babies are born, and they are not normal.
The age of the Children of Lee has begun.
September 3rd, 2010
3:00 PM
Jack Kirby High School looks pretty much identical to every other high school in America. It’s two stories, a single large rectangle building with the gym sticking out of the right end, making the crook of an L shape. It has a bus loop in front of the glass double doors, a parking lot to the left, a soccer field, a football field with a red asphalt track around it and a set of rusty bleachers. Right now, a line of yellow school busses sit outside the front double doors in a neat row. A series of plastic tables sit to the right of the central stairs from the front doors, covered in various baked good. A boy and a girl sit behind the table. They have identical blonde hair and wear identical robin egg blue blouses. The distant sound of a monotonous voice over an intercom echoes through the doors and windows.
“Good afternoon Snow Leopards,” the voice says over the crackling intercom. “I hope you all had a good first week of school. This is Vice Principal Withers here, filling in for your afternoon announcements. We have just a few quick notes this afternoon: remember that there will be no school this Monday in observance of Labor Day. Please don’t show up to school that day, no matter how badly you want to.” The intercom cuts for a moment as VP Withers giggles to herself. She is the only person in school who laughs at the joke. “In addition, please note that school picture day will be next Tuesday. Pictures will be used for this year’s yearbook and for Student IDs. The Kirby Klefts, our brilliant and glee club, will be holding a bake sale outside of school to raise funds for their annual trip to the Pennsylvania Sing Off. Students reporting for detention should meet me outside of the Principal’s office immediately after announcements. With that, classes for the day are completed. Have a great Labor Day weekend Snow Leopards.”
The intercom clicks off and the school bells ring. Students explode from their desks, elbowing past one another as they rush through the doors and out into the linoleum halls. A sea of writhing acne and body odor erupts from the front doors of the school, accompanied by laughter, shouts, and the rhythmic bump of a handheld speaker blaring the musical stylings of B.O.B. It is sunny and warm, and the weekend looks full of promise.
H E L E N
The sky was clear as glass in the gaps between the branches of the trees. A warm wind blew between the trees, rustling the grass and lifting the first few fallen leaves of autumn skyward. The grass rippled along the hillside as dandelion spores danced in the summer wind. In the trees above, robins and blue jays and cicadas sang a discordant symphony of life. In the center of a circle of trees, Helen Hart lay in the dirt, hands behind her head and eyes closed gently. The wind rippled her green sundress around her knees and whipped her mess of straight red hair into a bird’s nest. Beside her, on an old tree stump, sat two books: a leatherbound journal with a heavy-duty strap on it and The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson. This is how Helen planned to spend all of her free periods as a senior: fully relaxed, at one with nature.
As the bell rang in the distance, Helen’s eyes fluttered open. On the tree stump next to where she lay sat a pudgy crow which eyed her books curiously. When she saw it, Helen’s eyes grew large; she had been waiting all her life to get this close to a crow. Slowly, she reached over to her backpack, a green canvas pack covered in pink flowers a mere arm’s length away. She grabbed the side pocket and pulled out a granola bar. The crow turned to look towards Helen. She froze, terrified of scaring it away. Instead of running, the crow hopped its way around to face her and looked down at the bar quizzically. Helen pointed at the bar and then the crow. It blinked. She assumed this meant the bird understood. She ripped the plastic packaging off the bar, crushed it in her hands, and held it out to the crow. It turned its head sideways in that way animals do, then pecked gingerly at the granola.
“Well what a beautiful boy you are!” Helen said. “What a gift from the Mother to see such a pretty bird up close!” The bird continued to eat, gulping down chunks of the granola neatly. Slowly, Helen shifted the food into her left hand, and with her right began to move to pet the creature. Before she could, though, there was a rustle in the grass nearby and a masculine grunt. A streak of grey shot across Helen’s vision and impacted the bird. It cried out in pain and stumbled with the weight of the impact, from the edge of the woods, a teenaged boy screamed:
“WORLD STAR”
Helen looked over to see two boys: one skinny and dressed in a dirty wife beater, the other fat with a mullet and literal tusks sticking out from the corners of his mouth. Helen’s eyes widened. She grabbed for her backpack and her books as the two boys ran forwards. The crow, aware of the mortal peril it was in, flew off, though its left wing twitched a bit.
“Nice shot Jack!” Mateo roared. His voice was nasally and deep.
“Thanks! Missed the other bird though!” His voice dripped with aggression. Mateo laughed, snorting a little as he did. Jack reached down and grabbed the empty beer can from where he had thrown it. Helen dashed off fast as she could as the two boys laughed and stood in what had before been her peaceful glade. She knew they wouldn’t bother chasing her- Jack and Mateo only got away with their behavior because they were just annoying enough to make you hate life but not dangerous enough to make your parents call the principal. For a split second, she considered turning around and giving them a facefull, but no, it wasn’t worth the risk.
After a few minutes of downhill jogging, Helen reached the parking lot of Kirby High. She darted past a moving school bus, the driver leaning on the horn as she did, and ran to her car. Helen’s car was, to put it gently, an acquired taste: a 2004 Toyota Prius painted pea green and covered hood to bumper in flower decals. On the back of the car, Helen had added some of her own personal touches to the deluge of decals: a pentagram, a Pride flag, a UFO, one shaped like a whale’s tail that said, fittingly, “Save the Whales”. The car was speckled with rust and peeling paint, but it ran like a charm (if you ignored the squeaky brakes, and the shitty AC, and the faulty gas gauge, and the solid minute it took the car to start some days). But Helen loved the car anyways. It was a gift from her mom for her sixteenth birthday, and to her the car was like a sibling. She called it “Doug”, which stood for “Da green car.”
Upon reaching Doug, Helen opened the door and sat down in the driver’s seat. Willow would be there soon, she knew, and then the two would commence their Friday ritual. Helen would drive to Mooncash, where she had a part-time job. She’d work four to eight while Willow occupied herself, and then the two would go out into Main Street and find something to spend their evening doing.
The school day ends. Three days of free time begin.
Willow stops drawing, like she always does in her algebra class, her last for the day. Everyone else rushes for the door, like a stampede of ornery bulls. Willow is the last one to stand up. She closes her journal and tucks it into her satchel - an antique pilfered from the Rustic Palace. No bookbags for this girl.
She could phase. Fly away. She doesn’t. She likes to walk sometimes. She heads for the door. The teacher, a tall and burly man who would look less out-of-place if he were in a military camp, halfheartedly says three words to her.
“Stop drawing, Willow.”
She may as well have been deaf.
He says it almost every day. She doesn’t listen. If he confiscates her journal, she doesn’t object - just waits to get it back later, because he certainly isn’t allowed to keep it. At some point, he gave up trying to pressure her - if she wants to fail math, she can go ahead and fail math.
Willow leaves the classroom. She lags behind everyone else in the wing as they vacate the building. She makes it outside the front doors amidst the crowd, casually phasing into her ethereal form to avoid being mashed by a barrage of shoulders. Out into the parking lot she walks, catching sight of her good friend Helen’s car. Her old, decorative, impossible-to-miss car, with the mightiest of names - ‘Doug’.
Fridays are when the two spend time in close proximity. Helen works at Mooncash while Willow sits nearby and sketches, occasionally ordering something from the menu. After that - the late evening to do whatever’s to their liking.
Willow nears Helen’s car. Helen does not bother to open the passenger door for her. She simply phases into the interior in one swift motion, recorporealizing in the passenger seat.
“Hello,” Willow says plainly, with a gentle smile aimed towards Helen. She does it this way every time, without fail, like clockwork.
Leesburgh, statistically speaking, in the year of our Lord 2010 A.D., would have been divided religiously as follows. Roughly 45 percent of the population would have been Protestant, with an above-average smattering of Quakers in the mix. A little over a fifth of the town would have been Catholic, a hearty 8 percent a mish-mash of non-denominational Christians. The Jewish members of town comprise a humble 2 percent, as do the Mormons. Others too splintered and scattered are lumped into the 5 whose god is listed as Miscellaneous, and 14 percent hold no god at all. I will leave it to you to calculate how many of the inhabitants of Leesburgh, powered or otherwise, recognize a God, or many, or none at all.
There is something that nationwide and Pennslyvania-specific surveys of faith are unable to account for, however. Had they surveyed, they would have found something curious in the town of Leesburgh as far as these statistics go.
Regardless of religious leanings, 100% of the 13,000 citizens of Leesburgh believe in the devil.
She was presently sitting in the back row of Mr. Algorizzo's study hall, chewing gum that she was not allowed to chew and swiping through Facebook, on a phone she was not allowed to swipe through. Evelyn Noblezada could have told you in precise detail information on the students in the class, or the teacher, or the rumors about the classroom itself (Jack Marsen and Kelly B. hooked up in it last Homecoming, because Mr. Algorizzo always left the windows open and forgot to shut them that Friday). Likely nothing that would have been really grounded in hard fact, or anything that they may have considered important, like genetic predispositions for heart conditions or the likelihood of their family needing to file for bankruptcy that year. She could, however, tell you other things.
When Vice Principal Withers took a moment to giggle at her own voice, Evelyn said to the girl beside her - one of the interchangeable crowd of disciples that curried favor with the premier information and shit-talk broker of Leesburgh - "You know she had a miscarriage last year?" Evelyn did not look up to see the girl's response, much in the same way Christ did not bother to poll the audience for their reactions to the Sermon on the Mount. As the announcements rolled past, Evelyn's mind chewed over each piece of information and swallowed it whole even as her eyes never left her phone. The Klefts? Doing a fundraiser? There's no way they could raise the money for good enough singing lessons to win state. Evelyn had done glee club one year, but been asked to leave by the teacher given certain elements of her personality that were considered less than gleeful. In a rare moment of mercy, Evelyn conceded this was pretty much fair. Picture Day next Tuesday. Evelyn idly recalled a handful of girls throwing up in the bathroom stalls after lunch. That tracked. She liked a post by someone who had just posted what song they were listening to and nothing else. Evelyn cheated off the girl in 3rd period, and needed to keep the gasoline away from that bridge until finals. Detention on a Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend? Must have been Mason Kirby. His parents may have bankrolled the school, or whatever, but they couldn't have raised more of a fuckup if the asteroid had hit him in his big ass forehead right in the natal ward.
The bell rang, and Evelyn stood up a few seconds after everyone else had, slinging her (designer) bag over her shoulder. There was no rush. "I'll see you this weekend," she said to Interchangeable Kissass 3. Her name is Becky. What a name. "Are you going to Chad's party?" she asked, giving Becky a hug and a smile.
Becky's own smile faltered. She looked for a moment almost punch-drunk. It was a look Evelyn was used to - she had been focused on her schoolwork, because Becky had about as much at work in her boobs as she did her brains, and she was just hit with the aura. Were Evelyn particularly intrigued, she would've noticed Becky's eyes dilate just a touch, her stance shift with a subtle wave of relaxation, the hint of the sort of glow that pregnant women (not VP Withers!) had. Her grip on Evelyn loosened with surprise, at the news or the dizzying rush, but in a more spiritual sense, it could not have been tighter. She looked like a drowning man reaching for the raft. "What party?"
"Oh, you hadn't heard?" Becky had been trying to fuck Chad for a good three months now. Becky had also, Evelyn had gathered, been the one to get Evelyn detention for parking in the senior lot in retaliation for not being invited to her spa weekend a few months back. "I'm sure he'll tell you. See you on Sunday!" Evelyn broke away from the embrace and meandered through the hall, offering no less than sixteen smiles, eight proclamations of "I love you!!", four bold-faced lies regarding the beauty of someone's current outfit, and one double-take at a football player who was honestly just fine as hell.
She emerged into the sunlight through the school doors. The sunshine rushed to her like a dog to the backdoor when his owner comes home. The air turned sweet, the crisp September smell of falling leaves sharpened and spread. The sunlight's glare seemed less harsh on the cars of the parking lot (Which I cannot help but notice, Becky, does not include *my* car), the air around her a pocket of warmth in the beginning of the autumn chill. Though she did not notice, a keen observer may have noted that the bushes outside the doors seemed to bend slightly toward Evelyn as she passed, like compasses pulled to true north, or crack addicts to an exposed copper wiring. The beauty of the analogies used to describe Evelyn Noblezada's effect on the world around her, metahuman or otherwise, varied wildly in their sweetness.
She spared a glance at a car rolling past. Evelyn had no concern for cars beyond which ones were sexy and which ones were not. This constituted the latter. She thought she spotted Willow in the shotgun seat, and Evelyn believed that car to be Helen's. In a town of literal superhuman freaks, those two somehow managed to not even fit in with the people who were literally not human.
Evelyn shook her head (her hair quite literally billowed as she did, and a butterfly settled on her shoulder as she pushed it back behind her ears) and took a moment to breathe, idling down the sidewalk as her phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed and buzzed. They could wait, invitations to dinner, coffee, thirsty boys, the occasional thirsty girl.
Chad Charles' birthday on Sunday, and a three day weekend that was likely going to be filled with pregaming, partying, and other suburban foolery. To most everyone he knew, this was a good thing. The best thing even, short of a break a three day weekend was basically a holiday in and of itself to the school body. An excuse to think and do anything but school, which was always welcome.
Unfortunately that thought felt nothing short of suffocating to Dexter these days. He wasn't sure why. He used to love look weekends and parties, but nowadays they were draining. Too many people, too loud of places, it became exhausting. Within his own mind he made a mental note to talk to his mother about it when he was having a day where he felt a little more motivated to enjoy the things that he used to enjoy again. Today he just wanted to get through school, do his best to ignore the dozen or so texts and Facebook notifications telling him about the same damn birthday party as if he hadn't been personally half-friends with Charles since they were in sixth grade. Dexter got it, he really did. These people cared about him and wanted him to be there, and he appreciated it, but after the whole event that was his freshman and sophomore years he was feeling less and less like they were genuine invites and more like he was being invited because it was the thing to do. Just like how expressing sympathy for his lost family members was seen as the right thing to do when it was fresh and raw. They didn't even know her. He had thought, And most who did never even gave her the chance.
He hated that he empathized with Evelyn's myopic way of life, even if he felt things were less... transactional now. But it was hard to shake the thought. He had a lot of intrusive thoughts these days. One more thing to talk to his mom about about later. Right now he just wanted to run. The bell rang in slow motion. Everything was in slow motion and it was a perpetual fucking nightmare on days like this one. By the time some of the students were reacting to it and Titus was waking up, he had already gathered his stuff and was halfway out of the door. He had been the first one out the door of the school and into the car line pretty much every day since sophomore year. He didn't really talk to anyone, and frankly he was okay with that. On his way, he had half a mind to double back and catch Willow on her way out to give her the Kitty Pryde sticker he got for her when he went to buy the latest edition of the Flash Rebirth series, but thought better of it. He needed to blow off some steam. Dexter threw his book bag into his car and practically jumped into it. As excited to start the weekend as the rest of the school but for entirely different reasons.
Afternoon on the river was beautiful, as always. The spectrum of colors reflecting on the water brought a desperately needed sense of peace, or at least, as much as one could appreciate while moving forty miles an hour. The tranquility and the song of nature as it could only be experienced here was exactly what he was after. Initially running on the trail instead of Ted and Ted's had been to do something new and exciting, but lately Dexter had found it akin to an escape. A way to forget life and find a place that didn't remind him of anything anymore.
That was, until he found himself too caught up in his zen and stopped paying attention, and his foot caught a particularly large rock. When Dexter suffered those horrible two years with his mom, he learned that a select few would be there for them when he fell- the ground being a very familiar acquaintance and as disliked as it had ever been. He tumbled, and scuffing his clothing and cutting the exposed skin on his arms and hands. As he rolled, subjected to the very forced of nature that he himself had generated in an effort to escape his own thoughts, it struck him that this had happened enough times that he should probably invest in some sort of protective equipment before he managed to lobotomize himself. Dexter finally skidded to a stop, and it was nothing short of a miracle that he hadn't taken out a tree or another runner. He was lucky that it had been on a straight away, if he had been on a bend perhaps he'd have ended up in the river. Dexter laughed and then coughed, exhaling a solid amount of dust and sat up on one arm to inspect the damage. He was thankful he was as tough as he was, otherwise the moderate amount of scuffs, scratches, and bruises would probably be a whole lot worse. He'd be feeling it by Sunday, well, the first half of Sunday. He probably would feel numb enough to fight god by Sunday night. Speaking of which...
He procured his phone, which was a Nokia N97. Most of his peers had iphones or Blackberries or whatever, and he probably would too if they were anywhere near as invincible as the old brick in his hands. He tabbed through his contacts, ignoring various messages and texts until he found the only conversation he had in which he had never received much of a reply.
> To: Willow Dendry - Charles' party on Sunday?
Fuck it. Good enough. Dexter dropped his hand in the dirt and was content to sit for another couple minutes. Hopefully by then the adrenaline would wear off and he'd feel if he fucked up his ankle before he attempted to walk on it like last time. Hopefully nobody else would decide to come through the trail and find him doing his best hobo cosplay.
Being big had it's perks.
One one hand, you generally got what you wanted. In Henry's case, Scratch and the Pig stopped harassing him as soon as he returned to school in 9th grade, because now he could quite literally pick them up and make them kiss if he wanted to (not that he's sure one of them wouldn't be opposed to it), but it also meant that people generally got out of your way when you're passing through. Or at least, they tried to. If he were a meaner person, he'd be thoroughly annoyed with the fact that someone would trip on his tail at least once a week without fail... but he wasn't. He liked that people liked him now. These days in high school had been some of the most fun in his life. Sure, it got tiring replying to messages here and there and he definitely felt a little bad when he had to cut some people for the sake of his own mental health but after he got too drunk and started bragging about the catfish that one time, he had been really trying to be better about sorting through the people that were after something and the people that just wanted him around. He was still pretty bad about it, truth be told, but he was a work in progress.
"My man," Henry said, a smile gracing his features as he gently socked his meteor fist into the only person in school who would feel it as the friendly gesture that it was- Titus McArthur. Titus was a mountain of a young man, and probably the only person in school who got Henry in ways that other people in school didn't. He wasn't sure if Titus considered Henry a friend because the boy seemed to be as volatile as he was strong at times, but they had picked lockers next to one another for the past two years now. They were both big and hamfisted. It was hard to maneuver the tiny lockers with their size, and there was a sort of unspoken code between the both of them that whoever was there last would wait their turn. Apparently the more normal sized kids would try to squeeze their hands into their locker and either violate personal space or accidentally get their hands crushed when Titus was pulling books out. The poor kid had received quite a few visits to the admin office for injuring someone in this way.
Henry got that. When he first arrived back at school he was still unused to maneuvering small spaces at his size. He hurt a couple people too, but he was a bit more gracious about it than Titus had been. People regarded him a bit nicer as a result, but Henry got it, and never held it against his massive acquaintance. Henry saw Titus speed up his attempts to extract his books out of politeness to get out of the way, and knowing that bent metal was in the future, he spoke up before Titus caused any property damage. "I've got my stuff, heading to work after school. Just wanted to say hi. Hopefully see you Sunday at Chad's party, dude."
Unfortunately, Henry hadn't been paying attention when he stepped away, and felt the familiar bump of another student's body weight against him. Fortunately though, it was close enough to his arm that he was able to shoot out his forearm and steady that new sophomore girl he had seen around that had just moved to the school. "Sorry, about that." Henry said, trying to his embarrassment. He heard her mutter some thing about it being okay and rushing off into the crowd of people flustered. It happened, he knew it happened, but a part of his mind flashed to all the YA novels and movies he had read where someone bumps someone and then they bond over the spilled books. He knew that would probably never happen, but he had a sort of game plan ready anyways: 1. Ask her about sports. Make fun of yourself for being athletically challenged and never being in the competitions?
2. Accidentally drop walkman while walking with her and see if she picks it up: she looks at it, is seduced by your music taste, and falls in love with you. FOOLPROOF.
3. Tell jokes. Find out if she likes math: if yes, "when you put root beer in a square glass you get beer."
4. She has a dog: reaffirm that you are NOT a cat person (easy)
5. Also keep sisters faaaar away from her
6. Trash-talk Evelyn YEAH
7. Don't embarrass yourself… let her do most of the talking
He's on his way out of the school and ducking his head under the door, considered adding number 8, actually let her do ALL the talking, and overhears Scratch shout something about stars. Willow and his cousin are sorting to head off in Willow's car (He wished he could ride), and knows he best be off to Saturday and be ready to hear an earful about Iron Man 2 and the speculation about the upcoming Thor movie. Who'd have thunk that Chris Hemsworth was in the running? He considers shooting a text to someone to keep him company until he's off, but finds himself falling short of who he'd even message. Lots of party invites, very few 'how are you's'. He tries not to think about it. He makes it to Saturday half an hour early as he always does, clocks in, pops on his headphones, and makes himself busy organizing comics that various people have failed to return to their rightful places.
It was only a few minutes until the bell, but the students of Mr. Franklin’s last U.S. History class of the day were already packing their bags. Elle was among them, but she still listened as he half-heartedly announced that they’d have the weekend to do the worksheet he provided not ten minutes prior. Most of the class hadn’t even given the worksheet a second thought, but Elle was now sticking the already completed assignment into a folder for safe keeping. This class was nothing short of boring to her. Mr. Franklin was the type to cover the entire syllabus, but with as little enthusiasm as possible. The most energy she’d seen come from the man was when he went into tangents about what “really” happened in history instead of the sugar-coated, American loving version of events. At this point Elle showed to the class for the grade and not for the teacher himself.
As the announcement began Elle chose to sit back in her seat and stare out of the window. The three day weekend wasn’t that thrilling after only one week of school, but she was looking forward to the quiet at the house. Pete, her step-dad, and her mother were going on a weekend trip out of town for the holiday. This meant that Elle could come and go from the house as much as she pleased without any judgement or harassment. She was excited to have the house to herself, even if she wasn’t going to spend much time there. She just had to hope that Pete left some money for food on the table and forgot to lock up her mom’s stash of liquor. That’s all she needed from them, really. She wasn’t even going to bother with seeing them before they left today. In fact, she was pretty sure that Pete mentioned he was leaving work early today to get started on their drive. They were most likely out of town by now. Elle felt like a weight had lifted from her shoulders at that thought. A weekend without Pete, and a weekend without her mother’s inebriated behavior.
This thought was already out of her mind as she stepped into the hallway. Elle slipped through the bustling hall without much notice. The perks of being a small fry, she assumed. As she approached her locker she heard some girls talking about Rad-Chad’s birthday party on Sunday night. Elle reached for her skateboard as she listened. It didn’t sound like the company at the party would be worth anything, but all Elle really heard about it was that there would be free food and drinks. Which meant that it would be a perfect way to spend her Sunday night. She knew little about Chad himself, but she did know that there was always something going on at his parties that made them worthwhile. With that decision made, Elle tucked her board under her arm and made her way out of the front doors.
As she stepped outside Elle took a moment to observe the chaos in the parking lot. She took a deep breath of the crisp autumn air and had a moment of peace within the gentle breeze of the day. Her shoulders went slack and she closed her eyes briefly. She could feel the warmth of the sun against her cheeks. Something about the day just seemed… oddly too perfect. Elle opened her eyes again and turned towards the source of the breeze. She then glimpsed none other than Evelyn Noblezada walking past. Of course. Elle thought with a small smirk. While Evelyn’s aura made her feel like a new person, giddy and excited to be alive, Elle knew better than to act on those impulses with Evelyn around. She wasn’t as susceptible to Evelyn’s charm as the rest of the student body, despite the girl’s alluring power. Evelyn was a charming snake and Elle knew to take her seriously. Before she could be consumed by Evelyn’s energy, Elle turned and left the zone of surrealness to head towards home. She knew she was out of Evelyn’s range as soon as sobriety hit her like a breath of fresh September air.
Elle took advantage of the lingering energy from Evelyn’s passing and decided to take the long way home on her skateboard. Not before sticking her headphones in her ears and hitting shuffle on her shitty little black iPod nano. The music began to play, and Elle took to her board down the streets of Leesburgh.
Helen jumped as Willow's ghostly-pale face appeared through the car door. All these years of friendship and that still freaked her out sometimes. Helen laughed it off and put on her seat belt as Willow got situated. It took a minute to get Doug going, but after several key turns and the sound of a smoker coughing into a megaphone, the car sprung to life. WLEE, the local radio station, was playing Superbass Nicki Minaj. Helen turned the song up and wound down the windows. Slowly, she waited her turn in the line of cars that mobbed their way out of the parking lot: a Honda, two Toyotas, Chad Charles’ obnoxiously yellow BMW. Eventually, Doug groaned its way out of the parking space and into line.
“How are you doing love?” Helen asked Willow as they sat in the traffic. B.O.B’s musical stylings still floated through the air from the back of a Jeep Wrangler that no less than seven members of the soccer team had packed into.
As Helen drove out of the parking lot, she felt a warm breeze flow in through the window, despite the autumn chill. She saw the source up ahead: standing by the side of the road was Evelyn Noblezada. ’That bitch, Helen thought, afraid that if she said it out loud Evelyn would hear. Nobody needed a primer on reasons to dislike Evelyn- she had made Helen cry a minimum of three times just in the sixth grade, and this was actually a little below average for tween girls at Moore Middle School. Poor Kelly ended up spending lunch in the bathroom every day out of fear of running into Evelyn at the lunch table.
The worst part about Evelyn Noblezada, though, was that Helen couldn’t stop looking at her. She was just so...hot: stupid perfect makeup, stupid smooth caramel skin, stupid pretty eyes, stupid toned soccer legs that Helen would love nothing more than to...
There was a shout. Helen instinctually slammed on the brakes. Her eyes shot up to see that she had come within inches of hitting Letitia Green. Doug’s bumper was hanging over the edge of the sidewalk and a conga line of traffic was piling up behind it. Helen’s eyes opened wide as dinner plates.
“Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod I’m so sorry Tish!” she yelled through the open window.
“Dude, fucking look where you’re going!” the surprisingly tall and muscular Letitia said. Her face was more shock and fear than anger. Her green skin was covered in a sheen of cold sweat and her chest heaved with adrenaline. As Letitia grabbed her backpack (which she’d dropped in the panic), she kicked out at Doug, striking the bumper and leaving a Size 13 dent. Then she stomped past and off into the parking lot. Helen blinked hard. She slowly reversed the car and then drove off down the bus loop and onto Gaiman Street, her skin even paler than normal and her eyes wide open and glued to the road.
“It’s okay,” Willow replies calmly to Helen. She went unfazed towards the near-collision - like she does towards everything.
She passes a glance at Evelyn Noblezada a ways from the car. The two of them had never formally met. Willow has a drawing of her in her journal, done sometime last year. It’s her, surrounded by little birds and flowers, the tagline ‘The world seems brighter with her around’ at the bottom.
Evelyn has never seen this drawing, and chances are, she never will. Willow’s not her people.
She sits in silence as Helen carries on the journey. The thought crosses her mind to check her messages while she’s along for the ride, on her small, years-old keypad phone, the make and model of which completely escapes her. It’s just a phone to her - not really her phone, just one that’s always readily available. It’s a way of thinking no one shares with her.
Two new messages. The first is from her father, Lloyd.
> It finally happened.
She smiles at the words. And then she looks at the second message, from Dexter Quinto.
> Charles’ party on Sunday?
Before Dexter’s sister Tara had died, Willow had drawn a picture of her on a whim. Sometime after she had gone, Willow walked up to a lone Dexter and wordlessly handed him the picture, with a smile on her face. Since then, the two have kept up contact - they weren’t very close, but Dexter never completely forgot about her. And she liked that.
She smiles, and thumbs five buttons into a response.
"So glad everyone is okay!!" was on Facebook along with a picture of the traffic jam and car indentation within two minutes of the incident occurring.
Evelyn tucked away her iPhone without waiting to see the replies in much the same way Lebron can turn and jog away after letting go of a three point shot. She looked around the scene briefly, ignoring the nightingale that fluttered down and landed on her shoulder, chirping softly. Evelyn's dad had drilled into her what to do if there was ever a collision she was present at, even though in this case she couldn't really stand to gain or lose anything with an insurance claim afterwards. It looked to be Helen and Willow's car. Evelyn's eyes narrowed for a moment as she tried to remember - hadn't they named it? Dale? Doug. Fitting, as it was probably the only guy those two would ever get a ride on.
They had nearly hit Letitia, which wasn't a prospect that particularly upset Evelyn. Evelyn knew objectively that someone like that was an athlete on a caliber she couldn't really begin to compete with, but it was nonetheless annoying. At least everything I have, I work for, she thought, adjusting the strap of her designer bag as she moseyed away. A group was gathering, including a smattering of soccer boys, three of whom were checking her out. She wasn't particularly interested in any of them, but if they wanted to drive her social capital up, she also wasn't going to stop them. She really only suffered in situations like that if the absolute weirdos of the group were drawn to her, which Evelyn went to great efforts to avoid happening.
Someone - one of the baseball players, whose skin and personality could both be best compared to milk jogged up to her. "Hey, what - " he paused for a moment, blinking. The nightingale fluttered over his head and off and away, and Evelyn noticed that the grass by the sidewalk was inching up toward his cleats and her shoes. But why cleats, it's not baseball season. Ah. Soccer. He was too short, he'd never make it. But worth noting. "Hey - what - I heard someone scream?"
"Oh yeah," Evelyn said, turning back to where the jolly Green Giant, who was as much of a vegetable as her uncle after that train accident, was storming off. The wallflowers were still wilting in their car and a barrage of honking and cursing was coming from behind them, with the back of the line unsure at all about the cause of the hold-up, just knowing that there was a hold-up on a Friday afternoon. "Those two weren't paying attention and almost hit a few of us," Evelyn said. This wording was really only accurate under the most generous interpretation of "us" that exists, but Evelyn seemed to recall this baseball player - Cedric - being close with the baseball team's captain, who was one of the few suitable candidates for prom date, or if he was just a throwaway, maybe just the winter formal. "Thank you so much for asking, it's so sweet," Evelyn said, putting a hand on his arm for a brief moment. She thought the boy's acne cleared slightly as she did, although she had no intention of sticking around long enough to be his dermatologist. Or his anything.
"I - yeah," Cedric sputtered, blinking his eyes a bit. Evelyn assumed the glare behind her was harsher than she realized. If you're not prepared for the glare, you shouldn't come near the spotlight. She gave him a brief smile and shook her hair loose (a warm breeze accompanied it, and the paint alongside the gymnasium was a shade brighter for the blink of an eye), mulling over her options. She had a hike to the back parking lot, thanks to the Judas Iscariot that was Becky, and it gave her time to consider her options. There was always a movie later, which was a fairly safe social outing, and she'd made out with one of the ushers at the theater so she could be on her phone if the movie sucked. Well, not for that reason exclusively, but it was a factor. But the weather was lovely, and the weekend and night alike were young.
There was always coffee on Main Street, where a cute little espresso bar was opening up. Evelyn's mom went there for brunch sometimes, and by sometimes, I mean twice. Evelyn's mom was not an a.m. person. Drinking coffee in the afternoon made you look really European.
This was as solid a plan as any since Hannibal had crafted, and Evelyn hummed to herself as she walked, the birds mimicking as she went.
It was the end of the school day and Chris, pleasantly, had a blank canvas for a weekend. As he worked his way through the halls and out the doors, he kept hearing about how cool Dexter's party was going to be and how great the weekend was. Rumor had it that Mateo had enough beer in his closet to keep the entire student body buzzed for days. Just thinking of everybody mingling over at Chad's place put more fire in his belly. The weekend was going to be great.
His family had made plans to head out of town for Labor Day weekend, excluding him of course. The minister said that, even though he were their son, his parent's should speak to him only as much as necessary, lest they be leavened by the wildfire of his sin. So he was left to his own devices.
York county of Pennsylvania had roughly forty towns and cities to call its own. He could personally list about twenty of them. He knew every officer by name and had shaken hands with most of them.
His father, being the head of the policeman's union, had made arrangements for most of the Leesburg PD to make their way to Sesame Place over the weekend, leaving Satuday night, playing around the place on Sunday, and making the drive back on Monday. With only a skeleton crew of four officers, of the towns total fourteen, holding down the fort, odds were that he could get up to virtually anything he wanted to as long as he had a decent distraction and the wits not to get the Sheriff's Department involved.
Fortunately, dear old Chad would be the perfect distraction for his Sunday shenanigans. With as many kids going to the party as there were, there was practically no way that any less than all four officers on duty would be anywhere else ten minutes after he'd place his tip with the 911 call-taker.
Piercing the school's double doors by the parking lot, he sqinted through the sunlight and made out, past the low battery notification on his phone, that The RING had finished construction and he should "apply now!" for a competitively paying position as a security officer.
The sweat dribbling out of the pores in his fist began to ignite but, dropping his phone, he quenched the kindling flames in his coat pocket before tripping over a bench along beside the sidewalk and crashing into another student. Pulling himself to his feet instantly, he began to babble.
"I'm terribly sorry. I didn't see you there. I got distracted by something I'd seen on Facebook." Lending a hand, he pulled the other student to her feet before reaching down to help her gather her spilt books.
"Ohhh," she wilted, drooping. "I hoped that it wouldn't go so viral. That damned Evelyn always has her nose in everyone's business," the girl said.
"I'm sorry. What are you talking about?" Chris asked.
"The Facebook post?" She asked, cocking her head. "With me kicking the car?"
"Oh. I haven't seen it but I'm sorry to hear that it's bothering you so much," he said, offering her her books.
Taking the stack into her arms, she slid her hand over his on accident before dropping them a second time and shouting. "Aggh! God, you're so hot," and licking the back of her hand, having been burned, before self-consciously correcting "I mean, your hand is.. your skin.. you're temperature is high?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I should've been more careful. That's entirely my bad. Sometimes I overheat when I get frustrated. I dropped my phone a second ago," he said reaching down to pick it up.
Tipping the black screen towards her, he harrassed the power button before discovering that the juice had all spilled out sometime when it was on the concrete.
"I guess the battery died. Just my like. They actually built a prison specifically to hold me. The RING. I don't know if you've heard of it or not."
"No, I haven't," she said. "Why don't you text me a link to it when you recharge your phone, though", she smiled innocently.
"Um, alright. I'd add your contact but the battery's dead."
"That's fine," she said, magicing a pen into her hand and carefully sketching her phone number onto the back of his palm.
"Oh, alright then. When I get home I will absolutely do that. Say, what's your name?"
"Letitia. Letitia Green," she said.
"Cool, I'm Chris--"
"Yeah, Chris Crossfire!" she finished for him.
"Christian. But yeah, I guess you do know who I am."
"Everybody does. You're kinda famous."
Chris wilted.
"Are you going to Chad's party Sunday night?"
"I.. wasn't planning on it, no."
"Oh. I got invited but didn't have anyone to go with. Would you mind going with me?" she asked.
"No--I mean, yeah I would. I'd love to go with you," he said, sabotaging his own plans for the evening.
"Cool. Pick me up at seven. I'll text you the deets later," she said.
And at that, Chris set course for home with a little more pep in his step and more mixed emotions about his three day weekend than he knew what to do with.
From the school lot, Helen turned onto 14th Street and drove down a few blocks to merge onto Summers Boulevard. From there, it was a few blocks, past Summer Park and the skate ramp, and the well-manicured lawns of suburbia gave way to the bustling crowds and bumper-to-bumper traffic of Main Street. Main Street was the spot where most of the town's businesses congregated, six blocks of restaurants, bookshops, and kitschy boutiques. At the head of the street, where it collided into Summers Boulevard, sat AMC Leesburgh, its neon marquee reminiscent of an old-timey jukebox. Playing this weekend: The Town, Resident Evil: Afterlife, Easy A, The Last Exorcist.
"Great, another exorcist movie," Helen mumbled to Willow. "Because I guess that old cow still had some milk in it." Nonetheless, Helen knew she'd probably end up seeing it and inevitably dragging Willow along. Or maybe she'd text Elle- they hadn't hung out in a while, though Elle sometimes came on a little strong for Helen's liking (though being friends with Willow made everyone seem like they came on strong). Beyond the two of them, Helen didn't have many friends in Leesburgh... or beyond. There were the people from the Spore forum, but...eh. Maybe she should just stick with ghost girl.
After a while in traffic, Helen came to her destination: Mooncash Coffee. It sat on the corner of Main Street and Gaiman Way. It was a modern-looking place, with wide-open windows and a tasteful metal and concrete façade. The symbol of the company, a golden Chinese coin half-sunk into a stereotypical coffee cup, was inscribed above the door with a glowing golden silhouette. Inside and out, people bustled, from businessmen on coffee breaks to kids off school lining up for their daily shot of caffeinated iced sugar. Helen didn't mind working at Mooncash- the hours were flexible and the staff was fun to work with, but gods could she do without the existence of the Frappuccino. She pulled Doug around the side of the store where there was some employee-only parking. Doug ground to a halt (Helen wondered if this would be the time the brakes would fail and send her putting a new hole in the break room) and Helen got out. Before she hit the door, she had her golden Mooncash apron on, and she elbowed her way through the crowd, Willow close behind.
Inside, the store was dark wood and grey brick. A line had made its way back to the front door, and Helen had to practically wrestle her way through the crowd. She considered drawing an eye on an old Italian man's briefcase, just to give her something to do during work, but then decided against it. Helen made it over the bar dropped her bag off in the back. The store's manager, a middle-aged gay man with blue hair named Billy Morehouse, waved to her from the computer, where he was intently watching a mandatory video conference on coffee bean sourcing from Central America. Helen waved back and shoved her things into her locker in the back, one of several rammed up against the back wall behind the pastry racks.
The moment Helen came out from the back, she was directed onto the espresso machine closest to the crowd and confronted a mountain of empty cups. She had been working at Mooncash for about 4 months, and by now she had mastered the codes the cashiers wrote on the sides of the cups in Sharpie. She steamed a mocha and blended a frappuccino simultaneously, served four extra hot chai lattes to a school of businesspeople at the same time, tossed a whipped cream canister through the air like a baton and nearly knocked Billy's teeth out (though he caught it without looking and handed it to the barista it was intended to). This would be Helen's life for the next four hours: slinging coffee, beating back the horde of elementary schoolers desperate for trendy milkshakes with the lightest bit of coffee in it, joking with similarly-overworked employees about their surprisingly intricate sex lives and who was sleeping with whom on the staff now. It was a chaotic frenzy, and she loved it.
People all around. Drinks in hand. Chitter-chatter everywhere.
Willow sits with her back to the wall, in the front left corner of Mooncash where the windows end. It’s her first choice of spots when it hasn’t been seized by anyone else. And it’s busy today - she’s lucky this time.
Without the burden of schoolwork present, Willow’s free to draw with no interruptions. She flips through her sketchbook, stopping briefly at an old piece she’d done of Helen. It’s her, in her work apron, holding a cup of coffee with her right hand hovering above it, weaving the steam into a hex. The sketch lines are still somewhat visible in the steam, roughly erased to try and give it the right look. Two floating eyes hover to Helen’s left and right sides, and one lies on the surface of the cup. Below the drawing is the title ‘Witch’s Brew’.
Once, years ago, Helen had the idea to manifest an eye upon Willow’s sketchbook, which she held out as she flew as a ghost above Leesburgh. Helen could see everything from a bird’s eye view. A pleasant experience. A fond memory.
Sometimes, Willow wishes she could take her - and others - with her, into the ether, with a touch of a hand. Just so they could feel the weightlessness.
The freedom.
She has a few hours to kill. She hasn’t ordered anything yet. She usually just lets Helen surprise her with something, and then pays for it. Willow isn’t really a ‘coffee person’ - she doesn’t like the bitterness. Sweet is better.
She starts drawing little people made out of wire and clockworks.
Elle’s visit home had been brief and uneventful. Pete and her mother had long gone. The silence at home without them was welcoming. The cash left on the table for her was just enough to cover simple groceries for the weekend and a small pizza delivery order. It would be enough until they returned Monday. Elle stuffed the cash into the back pocket of her 90’s straight jeans and pulled on a white hoodie to wear under her denim jacket. She emptied her backpack of all things school related leaving only a well used phone charger and a borrowed copy of the latest John Green novel. It wasn’t cold enough outside for it yet, but Elle pulled on a black beanie in case she would be out after dark.
Elle was now coasting along an empty suburban street leading out of her neighborhood. Her headphones tucked into each ear to prevent anyone from stopping her to chat. The houses in her neighborhood had a lower-middle class aesthetic. Most were simple one story homes like Pete’s with a few of those 70’s split-level homes stuck between. The ones that gave two options upon entry, down into the lower level or up into the main level. In Elle’s opinion, those houses were just disguising the basement as a livable area. If she imagined living in one, Elle assumed her room would be in the basement, tucked away from Pete and her mom’s sight. She’d like it that way.
The pace she kept was even and casual. She had nowhere to be in a hurry, so she was enjoying the ride and the chilly breeze against her cheeks. Where she ended up going didn’t matter much. Her current plan was to ride until she found a spot she liked, and then she would sit and enjoy the last of the sun before winter came to swallow it up at 6 in the evening.
Time felt as if it was going in slow motion. Elle held her hands out beside her and let the wind catch the tips of her fingers. She bent low and let momentum take her, just drifting along. Up ahead she spotted a pothole and she grinned. She lowered her foot to the ground and kicked off to go faster. The pothole was coming up now, but Elle wasn’t planning to crash. A second before her board would have nosedived into it, Elle kicked her feet out in separate directions. Her board jumped into the air with her and for a moment both bodies were suspended. Elle was weightless. She floated over the pothole and readjusted her feet to land on the board as it found its way back to the pavement. Gravity returned and Elle bent her knees to absorb the impact. Once she felt balanced, Elle stood straight and let her board return to its casual speed before gently kicking off again. There’s no way anyone could tell her skateboarding was boring.
A new artist, Mac Miller, was playing through Elle’s headphones as she made her way onto Main Street. Elle’s head swayed with the melody as she looked down the road. At the end was Summer Park, but in between there were plenty of things Elle could do. Nothing she was particularly interested in, really, but she had options. Henry would be at Saturday’s carefully putting comics on their shelves, Helen would be busy making frappuccinos or espresso for those kid’s parents, and Willow would certainly be at her favorite window table. Elle wasn’t planning to stop in to chat at either location, but she planned to at least wave as she went by. Just in case they’d see her.
First stop was Saturday, so Elle slowed her board as she rolled past to look inside. Henry wasn’t hard to spot, and it made her grin. It looked like he was distracted, his headphones in to block out the nerdy rambling of the Leesburgh High D&D Club in the backroom no doubt. Elle raised her hand to wave just in case he noticed, and then turned to continue down the sidewalk. There were a group of students up ahead. Upperclassmen she didn’t really know, so she quickly swerved around them to keep her pace. It took one easy alley to hop the curb and cross onto the other side of the street when there was a broad gap in traffic.
Once she was on the other side, she only had a few groups of walkers to pass before she made it to Mooncash. Sure enough, Willow could be seen sitting in her favorite spot. Elle slowed to a stop in front of the window and used her foot to prop the skateboard up on its rear end. Elle gently tapped on the window and smiled. “Hey, Willow.” Elle said, even though to Willow it was most likely just mouthing words. Elle glanced down at the other girl's sketches and gave her a thumbs up. The wire figures were pretty cool.
Bound up along his waste, practically dripping with pent up energy and begging for a release, Chris got tired of shuffling his flaccid headphones around when he knew that he could enjoy his walk home every bit as much if he just made one quick stop to the dollar store. Right around the corner from Mooncash on Gaiman Way, Chris made the briefest of stops into the joint, finding a path from door to checkout in under two hundred paces, if his count was right. Resentfully eyeballing the cobweb covered cameras, he'd picked up a cheapo usb plug off the shelf and held them in a manner entirely visible to whatever bored worker might be on the other side.
Purchase complete and just dying for the indulgences of his collection of offline Youtube videos that he'd been conveniently able to download thanks to third party front ends on the Apple App Store, he semi-reluctantly stepped into line at the Mooncash next to him. Waiting in line, time was both infinite and meaningless. Every other second, he seemed to find himself in a stare off against the second hand on the wall. All he needed was an excuse to sit in on a stool and plug his phone in. He only needed ten percent of his battery to make it home. That's all he wanted. And he'd need to spend an exorbitant sum for ten ounces of caramel macchiato to make life worth living again.
With the drink in hand, he read the sigils etched in permanent marker along the side of his cup, huffed anticipatorily, took a shallow sip and sat himself at the only visible electrical oasis he could make out.
Work was busy as usual, and Helen trucked through the mounds of orders with practiced discipline. Coffee splashed. Whipped cream dripped onto her shoes. A grown woman cried because her espresso wasn't hot enough. Truly dangerous volumes of sugar substitutes were poured into frothing milk. Out of the corner of her eye, Helen caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd: a fellow student from Kirby- one with a reputation for violence, at least according to the news. Of course, Helen didn't trust the news, and Chris had always interested her, not in a romantic or sexual way, but just with curiosity. Helen had occasionally seen snippets of the conservative newspaper in town, the Leesburgh Patriot, and they talked about Chris Christian like he was the spawn of Satan. Of course, Helen knew they were full of shit (this was the same magazine that said homosexuals were sent by China to destabilize the US breeding population), but still she couldn't help but think about what he was really like.
Helen handed Chris his coffee without a word. She smiled a little, but then had to run back into the fray as six orders for strawberry Frappuccinos came in. She glimpsed Elle out of the window. Helen liked Elle a lot, but they had few classes together and barely talked anymore. Helen missed her, but now wasn't the time for catching up. Now was the time for coffee-based warfare on the mob of entitled rich. She made a mental note to text Elle later.
6:30 PM
By 6:30, Main Street was bustling with activity. Crowds chittered in restaurants, packs of teens moved along the streets. It was Labor Day Weekend, and people were celebrating the arrival of a long break from school and work. Music poured from car windows. The smells of fried food and barbecue wafted through the air. Everyone was happy, or at least doing their best to look it.
Outside of Saturday Comics, though, something strange was happening. Beneath the rumble of the street came a dull grumbling noise, like rock being turned to gravel. Most folks didn't notice it over the hum of the street, but it was there and it slowly grew louder, as if it were moving closer. Outside of the comic shop, there was a snap. A frightened teenager leapt from where he was walking and bumped into a telephone pole. He looked down to see a crack in the sidewalk, a single split breaking it clean in two.
"What the hell?!" the guy said.
"Damn bro!" his friend replied. "Guess you're so fat that you broke the fucking sidewalk."
"Hey not cool bro!" the guy replied. "You know I'm sensitive about my weight!" They squabbled as they walked past down the road, forgetting the crack in favor of an argument. Under it all, the sound grew louder, though not enough for the average person to suspect anything beyond road noise. Perhaps if you had very good hearing, though, you would notice that something isn't right...
Henry hummed along with the music as he worked. Well, working was putting it pretty generously, he was mostly sorting comics and attending the store so Wrinkly, his boss, wouldn't have an aneurysm at the idea of an unattended store. Really though, it was easy money. These days it was more an excuse to listen to music and avoid doing his homework without being badgered by his parents or sisters and be paid to do it. It was labor day, so it was time and a half pay, probably so Wrinkly could be home and drinking beer, which was why he was here and not doing the same thing to be honest. He busied himself as best he could, bouncing between dusting the currently spotless figurine shelves and organizing the Venom comics for the umpteenth time, but there was something bothering him that he just couldn't quite shake. It was an odd feeling, which was worrying because this was new and the last time something particularly new and unshakable happened to him he turned into a lizard.
This all said, Henry was used to contending with low simmering self loathing and maybe a dash of depression thrown in, but this felt a little different. Anxiety maybe? It was hard to properly place. He signed, and decided that perhaps that the AC system's dust filter might be clogged and if it was it was definitely making him get into his own head. He needed some fresh air. Henry stepped out from behind the clerk counter and briefly considered clocking out for a break- but thought better of it. There was nobody here, and Wrinkly wasn't going to be reviewing security tapes looking to nickle and dime him for the five minutes he took to step outside when nobody was in the store. He flipped the 'Open' sign on the door over and gently pushed it open, ducking under the door frame as he did so as to not bang his head (again).
But then he saw it, a clean break in the pavement just outside the door. Henry looked to the left and right, and his tongue flicked through the air briefly- there were some other fairly big CoL's in town, but none large enough to split concrete without some reasonable effort. That had not been there before. He began taking off his headphones with an eloquent "What the f-"
And then he felt it. A dull rumble, like rock grinding against other rock. Low and deep within the sub-bass section of perceivable sound. Too low to hear for normal people, but judging by the scales and the 85 inch waistline of his pants he was not normal. He could feel it almost. His mind raced trying to make sense of it, but his instincts were going crazy. Something felt wrong. Earthquakes weren't common in Pennsylvania. The largest earthquake in PA was twenty seven years ago and was only a 4.6 on the Richter scale. Then again, eighteen years ago superhumans started being born.
"Earthquake." Henry said, his brain clicking into action after landing on the only explanation he could think of. "I think there's an earthquake coming, stay out of the buildings!" he roared into the street as he himself backed away from the shop's door.
The walk to main street was a quick one. The wind fell at Evelyn's back, the spots of shade from lurching branches gave way to warm sunlight as she passed through, and a small family of chipmunks peeked out from their burrow to briefly revere her as a messianic figure before she turned the corner.
Main Street of Leesburgh was fine. Functional. The Becky of civic architecture. There wasn't nearly enough shopping for Evelyn's liking, and what was there wasn't nice enough to constitute proper shopping. There was a movie theater, her dad's practice a considerable walk down the way, and a surge of people. Most were recognizable. There would be another hour or two where the high schoolers held supremacy over the few blocks that made for Leesburgh nightlife until people got off work and started going to bars. Idly, Evelyn wondered if her dad had already clocked out, and if so, what neck of town he was holed up in.
Evelyn stepped into Mooncash in characteristic fashion. As her foot crossed the threshold, the caffeine in everyone's coffee jittered with first-date nerves. The smell of roasted beans grew sharper, as if they'd been picked that morning off a Cuban mountainside and carried by fairies and woodland friends into the establishment. The glass of the windows fogged as the temperature inside grew warmer, pleasantly so, like a puppy on your lap or a mug of hot cocoa in your hands.
God this place is like church for virgins, Evelyn thought idly, scrolling through her phone as she approached the counter and told her order to some amorphous cloud of service worker that had dressed itself as an unremarkable female. She handed her metal card to the cashier, a small whirlwind of acne and stuttering, and sipped her strawberry frap for her phone's camera as she stepped outside. As the doors shut, the dinge of the counters murked back, and the air felt more stale, and the coffee cold. Save for the iced drinks, which were lukewarm, satisfying as saltwater.
Evelyn meandered down main street a short ways. The vibes in the cafe had been far too much like when she volunteered to coach middle school soccer. Little bitches. She found the patio of a restaurant a stone's throw away, where the smell of coffee could still reach her (oddly, the wind had been blowing down main street all afternoon, but as Evelyn sat to hold court a half block north, the breeze changed course). She had an excellent perch for people-watching. A few of the volleyball players moved past, hunched to whisper to each other like coyotes going past a fresh kill. A lone boy with long dark hair who Evelyn always smiled at so she wouldn't get shot to shit one of these days. A group of those anti-mutant activists that Evelyn took a pamphlet from and used as a bookmark for Looking for Alaska. She tucked it around page 200, the fresh paper smell of unopened text hitting her as she closed it back down and put it on the table, turned so the title was readable to passers-by. She watched. A waiter from inside the espresso bar brought her water and coffee periodically. Evelyn took some pictures there and tucked them away in case she needed something to post later. Evelyn Noblezada did not have to ask. Slowly, the sun inched down, although were an astronomer present they may have found its unusually slow progression to the horizon something of note. Across the street, at one of those virgin emporiums, the lizard kid walked out. Evelyn eyed him for a moment. She thought Green Giant was one unlucky bitch, but this guy may have taken the cake. She'd remembered seeing him at his dad's dinner parties when she was younger, and at actually fun parties once he started doing his gecko shit. Her meticulous eyebrows furrowed. He had siblings? Yeah. Younger or older, she couldn't remember, but the fact she couldn't remember told her all she needed to know about them. At least no one makes fun of him for being Asian anymore, Evelyn supposed. She was ever the optimist. It was remarkable he got to as many parties as he did given the fact he worked where he did. Sooner or later, Evelyn supposed, he would realize the reptiles in the tank get people to gawk, but they freeze fast when the lamp goes off. People would come and watch how many beers the ten feet lizard could drink at a party. And then they would walk away and go talk to their boyfriends.
Evelyn sipped at the espresso another faceless coffee lackey had brought her, feeling the rush startle down her fingers and toes. Some things were better than sunshine. A little robin hopped over to her and started pecking at her shoe.
"Go away," Evelyn said. She was watching a group of boys not far off, who were pretending not to be watching. One of them, she thought, was the cousin or something of a lawyer at her dad's firms. The other one she recognized as a boy who had been convinced he had to prove he was straight by eating a pair of Mandy Ellison's underwear in the sixth grade. By the looks of his waistline, he'd kept eating underwear.
The bird pecked at her ankle again, prompting Evelyn to stop drinking her coffee and look down. It chirped and shrieked and flew away.
Evelyn paused. Animals, much like people, had too much sense to fuck with her.
The bird came back, pecked at her, and started flying up the street. Evelyn slung her bag over her shoulder and started to follow, leaving The Hunger Games or whatever it had been on the table. The bird circled and landed next to the street, where it shrieked again and pecked at the ground. There was a fissure in the pavement. She glanced over at the lizard, who was not doing burpees or jumping up and down or anything similar to have caused this. Neither was that Letitia chick around. Odd.
She turned to the waiter, who was helping another waiter. "Who owns this building?" Evelyn asked. "Your walkway is not up to co-"
The Geeko started screaming about an earthquake, rudely interrupting her. A few other robins had joined the friend and started fluttering in a circle in front of her, nudging her ahead. "Literally no one was going into that store anyway," Evelyn muttered under her breath, before following the birds at a restrained pace. Evelyn had seldom been in life or death situations, which this one had a creeping feeling that it may be. A part of her wanted very desperately to start running, but the lizard boy had made everyone in earshot scream and start running, and she was not going to get her ass trampled to death because the city didn't have the money to put new asphalt down. For all she knew, another meteor hit one town over and they were going to get even more college essays writing themselves after this.
There was a park a block up, and she could sit somewhere where there weren't trees or whatever and just wait whatever dumb shit this was out. The fresh air snaked down the street to her, as if it were nudging her along with the birds. She went.
Several passersby turned as Henry began to shout. A cloud of confusion formed, people stopping and looking at Henry and at the crack in the sidewalk. Mumbles floated around:
“earthquake? Not here certainly;”
“Eh, probably just the ground shifting;”
“Shit construction. That’s what’s wrong with America- we have no standards. Back in my day…”
In short, few folks heeded the words of a giant teenaged lizard, especially when they didn’t feel any tremors themselves. A few people stood in a crowd, though, watching and listening. One man knelt down and pressed his hands onto the ground to feel for anything. He squatted for a long time, people’s gazes darting between him and Henry. A weird look appeared on the man’s face, like he could feel something very faint. He cocked his head and, hesitantly, pressed an ear to the ground.
“Hold up,” he said. “Actually, I think I do hear…”
The ground rumbled. The crowd leapt back in panic. Several screams sounded from the street, but then things went quiet again, like a shadow had fallen over it. That faint crunching sound Henry had heard before vanished, and then transformed into something else, a squelching, bubbling noise, like the concrete was boiling. The cracked sidewalk block suddenly turned very dark, as if it had reverted to wet cement, and from it bubbles trickled. People began to stagger backwards. Several folks took off running. From below the ground, there was a twisting, groaning noise, like metal bending.
And then the ground exploded.
People freaked out. The crowd was sent flying backwards. A car parked on the side of the road was ejected into traffic, colliding with the side of a Prius and shoving it into the wrong lane of traffic, causing a pileup. Henry was sent soaring backwards, crashing through the front door of Saturday Comics as the glass in the windows shattered, sending down razor-sharp shards The rumbling could be heard by everyone now, but it was different; it sounded less like rocks were breaking and more like two stones grinding against each other, or maybe...something slithering?
As the dust from the explosion cleared, a humanoid figure could be made out in the middle of it. They were gargantuan, nearly twenty feet tall and broad-shouldered. They towered over the whole rest of the street, dwarfing people and cars and even the light posts. As the dust settled, the silhouette turned to being, and the creature’s skin came into focus. It was a light grey, with the color and porousness of concrete, but seemed to move with the flexibility of flesh. It had no features besides this: no clothing, no face, no hair. Where it should’ve had legs, its body instead melded together into a serpent-like tail thick as a man’s torso that stuck into the ground from the spot where the sidewalk panel had been . As the crowd began to panic and people ran for their lives, the creature bent down wordlessly and grabbed a light post by the base. It ripped the post out of the ground with the ease of a blade of grass and, holding it two-handed like a baseball bat, smashed it into the front windows of the boutique next to Saturday Comics, smashing them and denting the metal doorframe.
People poured down Main Street in a panic. From the windows of Mooncash Coffee, the explosion and figure could be seen half a block down. Confusion swept the crowded room. Some people instinctively dove beneath tables and counters for cover, while others ran for the door, running out into the night. Still others took out cameras or early iPhones and began to take pictures. Helen stood stock still behind the counter, face flushed white and eyes locked on the figure. She seemed stunned, like a deer in headlights. The golem turned towards Mooncash, light post in hand. Its head tilted, and then it lifted the post and hurled it towards Mooncash like a javelin.
“GET DOWN!” somebody in the room yelled. People at the windows dove to the floor, covering their heads to prepare for a deluge of glass.
Willow turns from staring out the window at the serpent-golem in bewilderment, towards a stunned Helen, some twenty feet away, behind the counter.
She has no time to wonder about the creature.
Instinct kicks in.
She ghosts. She shoots from her seat - leaving her sketchbook on the table - soars across the cafe floor, phasing right through all the furniture and scrambling patrons. She makes a fast bend around the counter, recorporealizes mid-movement next to Helen, and uses her momentum to tackle her to the floor, right before-
BOOM. CRASH. SHATTER.
An explosion of noise.
Glass flies everywhere. The lights flicker. People are screaming.
Willow holds onto Helen tightly for a moment after the impact. They’re both on the floor. Her heart is on the verge of jumping out of her chest from the rate of its beating. She finally raises her head and turns around, looking at the streetlamp that they have so narrowly avoided, penetrating the wall behind the counter.
Willow can’t see anyone else from where she is. All she knows for sure is that Helen is safe.
Or at least - safe as can be, with the golem still outside.
The ground shook, and anyone who saw Evelyn stumble and fall was clearly addled by subterranean gases released from the fissure in the earth. Evelyn smacked onto her annoyingly-toned ass and bounced back up just as fast. She turned and saw what was almost the biggest load of bullshit she'd had to deal with that day crawling up out of the earth and ripping a lightpole out of the ground.
For a moment, the springtime ran from Evelyn's vein. It was just cold. She blinked again, her feet wobbling beneath her, a handful of scrapes and scratches from flying shards of rock screaming on her arms. This was not right. Things like this didn't happen. That thing was bigger than anything. It was really big. The sound the earth made when it split open was loud, like one giant rumbling shriek. She blinked. This -
One of the songbirds pecked at her collarbone hard enough to draw blood, and she started. "No," she told it briskly, turning back to the golem. The shock started its metamorphosis. That thing just bitchslapped the Moonbucks into a million pieces. She had just been there. Like, just been there. It could just as well have hit her. The audacity. The nerve of this motherfucker. There was a mom who had not lost the pregnancy weight yet carrying a baby in one hand and tugging along a girl in the other. She looked almost old enough to be on the team Evelyn coached.
Evelyn was halfway back to the site before she realized she was walking. The ground was broken and split apart, hills formed either of debris or where the earth was transmuted before their eyes. Where Evelyn stepped, poison ivy trickled out, before withering as she stepped away. The lizard was still standing there, looking up. Now he looked like a six year old next to that thing. What a bummer, this thing stole his whole shtick. Birds swirled around Evelyn's head like a feathery halo, chirping and singing wildly. She supposed they were trying to get her to run away. For a certainty, the nursery of racoons at her feet were tugging at her with their little paws was begging her to flee. "Literally stop it," Evelyn muttered, looking up at this thing. The sour smell of a broken sewer line had already flooded the street, and the waste bubbled up at the base of the golem. A gust of fresh air carried pollen and the sweet of rose petals and everything else along with it, diminishing the reek as she got closer. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Evelyn noticed the air was warmer, and each time she gulped back the urge to piss herself or sprint for the Pennsylvania border, the glare on the windows seemed to spark a bit brighter.
Evelyn blinked, looking over at the glare. She glanced back to the lizard. Was he cold-blooded, or whatever? Didn't - this thing looked like a snake. Or something. Its top was really big but it had, like, no abs. Where was that mouthbreather MacArthur when they needed him? He could've just hit it really hard at the bottom and cut it in half. What was the point of making out with him? It was still stuck in the ground. So it lived underground? Did it -
One of the birds pecked Evelyn back to reality again. She was standing in the open like a dumbass. Somewhere in her chest, her heart was hammering its way down into her stomach and twisting every organ it could find in there, but Evelyn was not about to throw up. Or get hit by this thing. Did you know you shit yourself when you die? She was not doing that. She scrambled courageously around the corner of an as-yet-untouched building, peering out at the thing. There were like a million people running and screaming, and it was still beating the shit out of that coffeeshop (Thank God it's not the espresso bar) so she felt relatively safe for the moment. If it turned her way she was just going to haul ass down the alley.
She had to squint - the glare off all the broken metal and glass was sharper, as if the September skies above had been replaced with noontime at July without her noticing. The ivy on the wall beside her twisted and squirmed as it grew a millimeter thicker, then two. She already felt a bit winded, which was weird, because she'd barely done anything yet. Her skin felt warm, as if she'd been out tanning all day. For a brief moment, the golem had knocked an awning out of place, and the sunlight hit what was left of the windows at a brutal angle. It smarted Evelyn's eyes and watered them before her power adjusted for it, and the sun-sharp glare was just as annoying as a fluorescent light.
She glanced up at the thing. She couldn't see its eyes, but weren't they, like, blind, or something? Or night vision? Like it lived underground. Did it even have eyes? Didn't they echolocate or something?
"Hey!" Evelyn whispered to the nerd with the scales as loud as she dared. It was drowned out by the screams. Oh, fuck it. She could outrun this thing if it heard her - as she wasn't junior varsity soccer captain for nothing. I mean, it was really big, but it was like that time in fourth grade they'd thrown a dodgeball at the kid in the wheelchair. Fuck was he going to do? Lord knows she fucking smoked Angela Whittingsworth at the last fitness exams, and this rock bitch didn't even have legs. So Evelyn upped it to a stage whisper, with force. "Henry! Get me like a big-ass piece of metal! Something shiny! Haul ass!" As she turned to him, the breeze came inexplicably from the alley she stood in, flooding warm crisp air at him. Every odor on the breeze sharpened, save the reek of the sewers and the iron tint of blood on the air that likely only he could pick up. Those melted away. It was just sunshine that jittered down his arms and warmed his muscles as if he'd been stretching for half an hour before this. She turned to the raccoons, which had not stopped clawing at her legs in an attempt to persuade her into finding shelter in the dumpster behind them. "Oh my God, you too. Go get me like a rearview mirror or some shit. I will tell my dad's janitor to stop leaving the garbage open at night, fucking go.."
They scampered. Evelyn ducked behind a trash can, which was positively nasty, I tell you - and started rummaging in her handbag. There was for sure at least one hand mirror in there.
