On hiatus.

Thanks to the small few who read this! It’s a goal of mine to finish this – or at least ‘get on with it’ – but other pressing commitments take priority right now. Stay scared, see you soon  ~ M

The ladder.

Ray was amongst a growing number of lowborns who understood that becoming a monster was about more than evolution. It was about perseverance, deviousness, and a willingness to stomp the desperate wretches on the ladder below you so they fell screaming into hell. In brighter times, this was the order of things and the way the humans had survived. But the game was changing, and the only ones playing by the old rules were going to be ground up and swallowed by the growing Darkness. The old rules were no longer enough.

Ray was young, but his desire to survive and flourish in the new reality was fierce. He knew that in the era ahead, only monsters would thrive, and so he would need become one. He understood the old ways enough to see that he first needed to gain a foothold in their society in order to steadily climb the ladder. He had always had his own ideas of what it would take to do so, and had done many horrible things in daydreams to prepare himself, but it was on this night that he truly began to appreciate what he would have to become to survive.

That night.

On a night three years before, Ray was in the midst of kicking a bank machine into oblivion, drunk on the rage of having his card swallowed for the third time in a week. The lineup of people waiting to use the card shouted and bustled. Several checked their watches. One or two tsk-tsk’ed. Ray let out a deep moan as the machine’s screen flashed “please insert your card,” taunting the sallow fourteen year old, disgruntled beyond his years.

“Stupid robot, always stealing my card!” Ray toppled the machine with much effort, breathing heavily for a few moments afterwards. All of a sudden he was very aware of the silence around him.  The Dark Days were just beginning at this time, but it was already known that a sudden silence was something to fear. For Ray, this kind of silence was also something to be celebrated . It was an opportunity which, at that time, was not frequent.

Ray turned his head slowly, expecting the lineup of people, which had been at least twelve deep behind him minutes before, to be gone. He was mostly correct, save for a few gristly remnants of fingers, teeth, and unidentifiable fragments of flesh. Ray suddenly realized how Dark it had become, and his skin bristled with fear and ancitipation. The monsters were here, and he was ready.

Evolution.

Dinner with Margarette was never a sit-down affair. It was more of a starved and desperate crouch over whatever unfortunate meal had crawled, walked, skipped, or tripped-and-fell in front of her. And yet she did so with grace and poise. That was the frustrating thing about her, and all of her kind. The monsters had woven themselves into the very fabric of society, cut the seams, and were restitching it in such a fine way that it was hard to deny their improvements. They were the next clear step for a race that had survived by eating and destroying all that lay before them. When the advantages of the race had been leveled across the globe, a new set of advantages were bound to materialize.

For now, there was precarious co-existence between monsters and lowborns. However, as the darkness continued to swell and the daylight continued to retreat, the future increasingly seemed to belong to the monsters. There were few options left for lowborns to escape what would surely come, one of which was assimilation.

The invitation to join a hunt was an honour Ray would once have unquestioningly partaken in. But after one particular night, his certainty was left somewhat shaken.

Invitation.

Ray emerged limb by limb from behind the corner like a shy marionette.

With the forced joviality of of an overbearing aunt, Margarette grabbed Ray’s arm in a little-bit-too-friendly pinch and pulled him close.

“Come for dinner Ray” she cooed. Her voice tickled his ear like a screwdriver. Ray pushed away and met her eyes.

“The only food in your fridge is Vodka, Tylenol, and soy sauce,” Ray replied.

Margarette’s hand swung out like a python and slapped Ray under his chin, slamming his jaw shut.

“Then we’ll hunt,” she said, eyes still focused on Ray.

Ray slapped her hand from his jaw and returned her gaze. “Look , these are expensive teeth. I know I owe you, but you can’t go around hitting me in the jaw. These teeth are investments in my future. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and when you do the math, each tooth is worth probably $250 on the market. I need a bargaining chip in case the Dentist comes after me again.”

“If you want him to stay out of your face then you’ll come to dinner. After dark. Bring something sharp.” With that, Margarette smiled, turned, and fluttered down the hall.

“Great, great, great” sighed Ray.

Ray knew he would get no sympathy. He had done much to deserve his subordination to Margarette. He paused briefly to consider his options for the evening.

Careful.

Ray locked eyes with the professor. Though he had been practicing diligently to make heads explode by staring at them, he had not yet perfected it, and so he pushed himself up from the desk and ventured into the hallway towards the din of titters and talking.

Ray knew that for all of Zavags’ daytime blustering, if they were to meet at the wrong time of night in the wrong corner of the city, the professor could tear him limb from limb. Ray was, after all, a lower entity in the current time of darkness. The darkness was coming earlier and earlier with every passing day, and new blood was being shed by the minute. Ray made a mental note to remain alert on the walk home, and silently thanked his mother for insisting he sharpen his pickaxe before bedtime. An unwelcome voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Ray?” cooed Margarette, from an undeterminable distance. Her voice had a way of fluttering out and eroding the very air it passed through. A lark with a poison song.

Ray turned abruptly in the opposite direction and flung himself behind a corner. Margarette was a person to be avoided. The kind of person who drew lines in the sand to illustrate a point, stepped over them to prove it, then swept them away to show that things could change. That she could change things. That she could get things changed. The benefits of sleeping with the vice-principal are certainly numerous. Educators shape pupils and in turn, pupils shape educators, so the saying goes. But throw in some closed doors and a few favours and suddenly give and take isn’t what it used to be.

“Oh Ray!” Margarette crooned, having already seen him. “Why are you hiding?”

Getting mad.

Mr.Zavags’s face turned from a pale veiny purple to a deep maroon normally reserved for senior citizens attempting to lift fridges sans aid. Ray seldom pined for umbrellas, but as Zavags began to shout, the amount of foam and saliva he spewed was enough to stir a desire within Ray for a rain poncho, at the very least.

As difficult as it was to understand Zavags in the best of moods, a furious Zavags became as incoherent as he likely was after a bottle of his favourite bathtub blood whisky. Unable to focus, Ray’s mind wandered, and he pictured what Jesus’ shower would look like during a second coming in modern age. He imagined three knobs: hot water, cold water, and holy water. The idea tickled him immensely. A sudden silence brought Ray back to reality.

Secrets.

Zavags waited for the class to answer. The particular way he held his hands on his hips left him looking sassier than any old man should. Ray sketched the outline of a smiley face on his palm with steady force before adding two fangs to the image. He hesitated only slightly before raising his hand in the air. Knowing what Ray knew was dangerous, and yet he couldn’t help but flaunt it before the monster at the front of the room.

Nightlife.

Mr. Zavags took a dramatically deep breath that threatened to pop the buttons on his filth-spotted shirt. It was a crisp white Oxford, the pre-packaged value kind you buy to look presentable a day at a time; this is somewhat necessary when all one owns otherwise is sweaty sweatpants and t shirts that come with the finest case of promotional beer. To Ray, Zavags was attempting, with moderate success, to walk the daylight hours while hiding the stains of his nightlife. If he had not overheard Zavag’s confession to another teacher about the origins of his shirt stains, Ray would have assumed that his professor was simply a sloppy eater of tangerines.

Distractions.

“Oll I esk, iss you look ander de soorfass,” Mr. Zavags said flatly, as he stared expectantly at the closed book in Ray’s hand. Ray met the insincerely imploring eyes. He had mastered the art of simultaneously making eye contact with someone while looking through them, and he let his eyes search the field through the window behind the professor’s head, where he swore a businessman with an axe stuffed into his shoulder-blade was running laps. These were the dark days after all, and many things Ray once hoped for were coming true.