AN:
Spoiler
So I'm mostly posting for the sheer thrill seeing as I haven't posted in a while. It's very rough. What I'm most looking to improve is a) introducing Luke's whole situation and b) trying to stop Finn coming off as a Sue, which I'm afraid that she might. Anything else, I'm always open to whatever advice you can give!
I. Luke
On the way to Maths class, I saw another body.
It was a girl this time, or maybe a young woman. It was hard to tell. Her body was crumpled up like nothing imaginable, face down, peroxide blonde hair trailing on the ground. I think her top had been white to start off with, but was so covered with blood and God-only-knew what else that it looked like some macabre version of tie-dye. I couldn’t even make out her legs, so mangled with so many parts missing, perhaps she was only left with one. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she was dead and I was going to be sick.
I shut my eyes hard because I didn’t believe what I was seeing. When I opened them, the vision or whatever the hell it was was gone. The gravel by the science block was empty and clean and pale in the winter light. But she was still there in my mind and I began to gag.
I never made it to Maths. I ran back to my room, pushed the stiff bolt on the bathroom door across and retched into the toilet, then just sat with my back against the wall trying in vain to get the image of her out of my mind.
That made four. Four bodies in ten days- the ten days that had passed since my roommate Barry went home with what was apparently glandular fever. The morning after he left, I saw the first one. An old man, homeless by the look of him, so viciously ripped apart it looked like he had been killed by a particularly ferocious bear.
Then, just like the others that followed, I blinked and he was gone.
At first I thought Barry had given me his illness and went up to the matron’s office. But she felt my glands and took my temperature and frowned and asked if I was really sick. She knew I wasn’t one to fake illness to get out of class. I shook my head, said I just wanted to make sure and went on my way. I figured I was imagining things.
It was only later, in the common room that lunchtime, that I began to get worried. The news reported that a homeless man had been killed in more-than-mysterious circumstances in Carrickdove, the village where our school was based. I tried to tell myself I must have already heard of the murder, that my subconscious was playing tricks on me.
Until it happened again.
And again.
And now I was sitting on mine and Barry’s bathroom floor thinking that no imagination could conjure up that girl.
But if I wasn’t imagining things, then what the hell was happening to me?
I figured I might get away with missing Maths, but even with my track record I was pretty sure I’d be in trouble if I skipped Irish as well. Ignoring the smell of vomit, I picked myself up, winced as I thought of the girl again and splashed my face with cold water. I put my glasses back on and told myself that it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I knew I was lying.
Irish was a chore. It always was. Poetry heavy, and the poetry was depression heavy, and somehow Finn Moloney and her gaggle of followers were there. I could hear a few of them giggling and Mary Shea shrieking as I pushed the blue swing door open. God, I hated that girl. She was so ordinary from her name to her hair to her talents, and that would have been fine if she simply accepted it like the rest of us had. But of course she couldn’t, she had to make noise and try and grab the attention of the room. All she was really doing was making my already pretty atrocious headache worse. She had only just been moved to our class- the Honours class. I may have hated Irish almost as much as I hated Mary Shea, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t good at it. All the time I spent studying paid off.
I moved in and took my usual seat, neither at the front or the back but quite comfortably in the middle. No one bothered you if you were in the middle and you kept your head down. I began rearranging my textbooks and waiting for Mr. O’Hara to come in when the girl’s body as I had seen it lying outside on the gravel came to me again. I flinched and held back the urge to throw up.
“Luke? Are you okay?”
Out of all the people to notice me, it was Finn Moloney. Dear Lord.
In every way that Mary Shea was dull, Finn was pretty extraordinary. She didn’t try to catch attention, she didn’t need to when she effortlessly drew every eye and ear in the room. She annoyed me with the way she knew she was gorgeous, she knew she was smart and sexy and funny. Girls like Mary Shea fawned over her, boys like me (but not me- that much) drooled over her.
I looked up, met her perfectly mascara-framed blue eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”
Finn turned her bright blonde head as Mr. O’Hara walked in and told everyone to suí síos. All her long, bleached hair suddenly reminded me of the girl lying face down on the gravel. I lurched in my seat but thankfully didn't throw up. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Finn glance toward me. The whole way through class that blonde head- still alive, at least- kept turning my way. I just stayed in my seat and tried not to think of anything to do with the bodies or what I would see on the news later or why Finn Moloney cared. I didn’t know what she would, didn’t know who the girl was or how she had died.
All I knew was that something was extremely wrong with me and I didn’t have a clue what it was.
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edited 22/2/11
