Page 38 of Misfit Monsters
A louder swell of laughter chases me out the door. My feet fly down the hall, around one bend and then another. I breathe as steadily as I can alongside the rhythm of my steps.
If I can just get to my bedroom… There’s nothing that’ll stir up more emotions in there. Even after I tried to help him on the morphball court yesterday, my roommate is pretending I’m not around unless I force the issue.
To my relief, the dorm’s common area is empty. Everyone else is still at lunch. I should be completely alone.
With a quiver of hope, I shove open the door to my bedroom—and freeze.
The sight and smells smack into me simultaneously. Brownish-red smears slash across the walls. The air stinks like rotting meat. Lumps of something that looks unnervingly gristly lie strewn across the floor.
A few deep gouges rake across the mattresses, ripping through the blankets amid the carnage.
The little bit of lunch I ate lurches up my throat. I clamp my mouth shut against a groan and scramble backward.
My shoulders slam into the door that swung shut in my stupor.
The image blurs, flashes of memory assaulting me. Torn limbs. Spurting blood. The shrieks and the groans, and thepain—oh, the pain, lancing through me again and again with every wound?—
With a force so intense the air ripples, Raze snaps out of the shadows. My body tenses instinctively, but before the question of whether he had anything to do with this has time to fully form in my mind, his bewildered expression knocks it out of me.
His lips draw back from his gleaming teeth. “What’s this supposed to be? Why would you do it?”
His tone is so accusing that I flinch. I open my mouth to protest that I didn’t, but all that comes out is a whimper.
I didn’t dothis, but I did other things. So many other things.
I’m never going to fix them all.
Oh, no.
As the wave of despair sweeps over me, Raze snarls and lunges back into the shadows. I grope toward the bed, but there’s no security in the savaged, stained sheets.
It’s coming back. It’s going to happen again, even though I got away.
I jack-knife over with a cry, and the horror blasts out of me.
Searing darkness. Vicious misery.
Figures crumple and voices squeal, and all I can do is clutch my knees against the sensation of losing all grip on myself. Clutch my knees and count.
One, two, three, four, five, six…
And on.
And on.
So many more hurts added to the tally in my head.
14
Periwinkle
Idon’t resent the cage-like room. If anything, I’m grateful for it.
As long as I’m in here, pinned by the piercing lights that reflect off the shiny walls, I can’t harm anyone.
The academy’s administration already forgave me once, and I screwed up even worse just a couple of days later. Maybe I’m not safe for the human world, no matter what I do.
Maybe I came into existence with powers too erratic to be controlled… or maybe my crimes before I came here broke something that can’t be fixed.
