Page 12 of Phoenix Academy: Mayhem

"You're a piece of shit, David." He whips his belt up in the air and hits me in the back so hard my teeth knock together. "Let's make your outside look like your inside."

I don't fight it.

Why bother?

I'll always deserve the punishment he mets out.

* * *

Reggie

One minute I'm with my brother, my brother's best friend, and the girl we're all lusting over.

The next minute I'm walking through an endless fog past a dark lake.

"Well, fuck." Whistling, I look around me and sigh. "Seems like I should've seen this coming."

Even I've watched a few sci-fi shows and read a geeky book or two. Mostly without telling my twin, who would force me to geek out with him if he knew.

There's always a trap in the abandoned creepy-ass school.

Some kind of fake out. Mind games. Probably a psychologist and a clown are going to show up in the fog any second now.

That or thousands of demons.

I'd prefer the demons, honestly.

Clowns freak me the fuck out.

"Alright, out with it." Stalking through the fog, I wave my arms around in the dense air, scowling at how little I can see. "Show me your boogie woogie so I can prove I'm not scared and make this all go away."

At least, I assume that once I go I'm not afraid of you at the demonic whatever-it-is waiting for me in this fog, I'll get to go back to normal Hell. But this is Hell. Maybe this is normal. Maybe I'm stuck here now.

A fist of panic claws up my throat at the thought that I could be stuck where while the rest of the group moves on to somewhere else, leaving me behind forever.

"Hello! Fuck." I kick at the soft grass beneath me and whirl around, scowling. "I swear to fuck, if you assholes leave me in here—"

Then I see it: a figure in the distant. One distinctly human-shaped, at least from here. Hopefully not a demon thing with fangs that'll pop out of its mouth when it turns to look at me.

Because I'm curious and possibly dumb, and also because it's the only option, I walk towards the figure. As I do I study my new mysterious friend in the fog: a few inches shorter than me, feminine, wearing a dress that skims her knees, with her back to me and hair that's like a short cloud around her head. Some new emotion rises inside my chest as I move closer to her, sharp and familiar like grief or loneliness.

When I'm about five or six feet away from her, the figure starts to walk forward. Away from me through the fog. Frustrated, I pick up the pace—and so does she.

The more I run towards her, the faster she runs away.

Fear claws through me. I don't want to be alone in the fog. I don't know who I am when I'm alone.

I've never been good at sitting in silence with my own thoughts. When we were little, I used to follow Xavier around, demanding his attention with jokes and pranks, yanking books out of his hands to make him look at me. He always assumed it was because I was the extrovert, the goofball, and that I was making fun of him when I hid his puzzles or stole his video games. Really I was just afraid of being alone.

Of sitting by myself in the silence and realizing just how little I have to offer the world.

"Hey!" I shout at the retreating figure, shifting my pace into a full-out run. "C'mon, turn around. Let me see your face."

But the faster I run, the further away from me she gets, without even going faster than a stroll. Frustrated, I give up and pause, leaning over to put my palms on my knees and catch my breath.

She stops too.

And for a brief moment, twitches a little, nearly looking over her shoulder towards me.

---