Soul's Decay : Chapter Three

Chapter Three

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It was a silent, chilly midnight, the sky an inky black, spectacular, gem-like stars twinkling in the dark sky. Somewhere beneath the moon’s lazy, emotionless gaze, a single window was bright among many others in West Liverpool High. It was a big, old classroom, the faded green paint peeling off the walls, lonely chairs and desks filling the room in an organized fashion.

In the back of the classroom, shadows were stark in the pale moonlight, streaming through the closed windows. The shadows stretched out across the room, as if they were trying to reach for the man sitting behind the teacher’s desk, but they faded slowly as the brightly lit lamp shielded the area from the darkness. The desk was made of aged wood, worn out at the edges and the surface coated with scratches made with pen. It stood there, in front of the whiteboard, rather stubbornly, proving its strong structures by surviving through the ages. The man looked up from his brand-new laptop to nervously scan the darkest corners of the room, his imagination going wild, making him frightened more than he needed to be.

His name was Antonio Macdonald, and he was a fine man who earned a Bachelor’s degree at a very young age and became a teacher, his dream job. He had a nice home, an expensive car, and a once-beautiful wife, who passed away last year in a massive car accident. Antonio took a sad glance at her picture, which was set firmly at the edge of his desk, as if to reassure himself that his wife had actually existed in the world, and hastily returned to his work. He had originally hoped to teach at one of the many colleges in the United States, but his academic histories throughout his life weren’t too good, apparently. He had ended up in West Liverpool High as a Spanish teacher, where his daughter went, and where teenagers seemed extremely hyper and willing to have extremely sexual, physical activities. No, it definitely wasn’t his intention at all.

Antonio sighed as he stared at a particular essay, written by Jackson Mangono, the ‘playboy’ of West Liverpool High. Well, the kid’s actually nice, deep in his core, if you get to know him. Still - Antonio couldn’t deny the fact the he was failing in school. As an evidence, a sentence in his essay was talking about every single breed of animals they had talked about in class, and it hardly made any sense. Antonio raised an eyebrow as he moved onto the next sentence, about a tsunami, a worm and a pile of dung.. doing what? Antonio grimaced, and typed in with a flourish, [D-]. Maybe it was a bit too harsh, but the essay didn’t seem to be about a student’s most favorite holiday and the reason, in vivid details.

The white, square clock on the wall ticked on, and with each tick - tock, Antonio’s eyes drooped more. It had just turned into the next day, technically, and the teacher wished that he had used some time of his long, family reunion dinner yesterday to get some work done. Finally, with his index finger and his thumb on the black keys, [B] and [K], he let his eyes fully close. His head thudded against the desk.

At the same time, the ghostly shadows at the back of the room seemed to shriek with silent laughter, and reached out to the teacher’s desk with renewed strength. Less than a minute later, the small lamp flickered in protest, struggling to fulfill its duty as the only light in the room. Leering, the shadows pushed forward once again, now out of its original, normal shapes and transforming into countless silhouettes of grotesque monsters - razor-sharp claws, tentacles and jaws, rather than chairs, cabinets and desks.

A boy stepped out into the lamp’s blinking light, stark-naked as the day he was born, his golden hair shining with heavenly light. His height was of a big teenager’s, yet his face couldn’t be identified of any age. One look, he would look like an old man, then with another, he would suddenly closely resemble a small boy. Long, nine tails were shielding his back like a peacock’s proud, magnificent tail, except they were a fox’s tails, non-avian. They were like illusions - semi-solid at the pointed ends, getting more transparent until they ended just a dozen centimeters away from where the nine tails were supposed to meet. Each strands of the tails’ golden fur glowed, and they seemed like pure gold. The boy’s molten silver eyes stared emotionlessly at the teacher, asleep, before he grinned. The corners of his lips went up impossibly high, literally a centimeter away from his ears. His teeth were sharp at the edges, gleaming maliciously.

Antonio Macdonald.

He thought, musing the name with no more interest than to embed it into his brain. The teacher snored softly, rolling his head to the side, a hint of drool starting to collect at the edges of his mouth. The child was blissfully unaware of the uncanny situation around him. The boy cocked his head with the man, mirroring his motion, the grin still on his face. A pale hand went up, the fingers long and coated with golden fur, the strands more frequent as it raced closer to the fingertips. The five, long nails were claws - sharp, and curled only slightly at the end. The hand rested on the teacher’s head, but so softly like a feather, the man didn’t even notice. He continued to snore loudly.

The boy’s smile stayed the same, if not even wider. It definitely got bigger when the boy’s clawed hand abandoned being un-harmful, and started to press against the man’s head with force. His claws dug into the man’s skin buried beneath the hair, and he could feel blood flow out of the scratches he made. Antonio awoke with a gasp and an immense pain in his head. He tried to look up from the surface of his desk, but it was of no use, for the boy was at a high physical advantage. The hand started to press down harder, as if the boy wanted the head to explode. Antonio let out a strangled scream, his entire face now flat on the wooden surface of the desk. A crack came from his nose.

A predatory growl escaped through the boy’s fangs, although not of frustration, but of anticipation. His hand needed no more force than what his victim would require to swat a fly out of the air. Antonio started to thrash wildly, and his own hands flew to the far side and knocked his wife’s picture off the desk. It flew away a good few meters, and shattered on impact with the floor.

“No! I’ll call the police! I’ll call the-“

The boy got tired of it, mostly the pathetic struggle of the teacher. It made him want to throw up in disgust, for how could something be so weak, powerless and puny? Vile would be rising in the boy’s throat, if it could actually happen. With a final snarl of contempt, he tightened his grasp, using only the tiniest piece of his power, and the man’s head burst. The boy curled his hand into a fist, just to make sure that everything would be in small pieces, nothing whole and unbroken. Blood, bits of broken skull and brain rained everywhere, and the man’s scream ceased abruptly. The boy unclenched his hand, looking amusedly at the pieces of crushed brain and a pond of blood in his palm. He slowly tilted his hand until it emptied onto the floor. His hand was still coated with blood - his furs, nails and all. It seemed like it was originally red - pure, beautiful crimson. As he slowly licked off the blood with his long, snakelike tongue, he raised his other hand to wipe the bits of brain and skull off of his body.

Looking down, the boy noticed that only the back of the teacher’s head was crushed, and the face was still intact. It seemed like a gruesome Halloween mask, one only an insane man would make as a twisted, sick joke. He stopped licking the blood off of his hand, and reached down swiftly to grasp the ruined corpse’s remaining eyeball. The other had a fair-sized piece of shattered skull lodged in it, and was oozing jelly-like liquid. He plucked the eyeball out with a pop, and stared at the bloody, white ball.

Cocking his head again, he gazed at the eyeball intently, and felt himself change. His bones became longer, and his hair shorter. With a slight feeling of dismay, he felt light wrinkles appear on his face. After all, there was a reason for him appearing as young as he possibly could, without looking too young to be not as seductive. His claws disappeared along with the nine tails, and the glow around his body faded. The grin on his face slowly shrunk with his fangs, and he instantly wiped it off of his face, carefully replacing it with a practiced, business-like smile of an adult.

Slowly, he flipped the teacher’s face over so he could stare at the flat, bloody mask that was missing an eye, still frozen in a desperate scream. He reached at it with his other hand, parted Antonio’s lips - at least, what was left of it - and put the eyeball in it, between his teeth. Any mortal would call it cruel. Sick. Mental, etc. The boy never got it. It was so fun. Didn’t humans crave fun?

He left the face on there, the wooden desk, now completely covered with gore. His polite smile didn’t falter, and he moved onto studying the former teacher’s clothes. He closed his eyes, now hazel, and concentrated. His dark eyebrows furrowed. After a second, he looked down at himself and found out, with satisfaction, that he was wearing a nice, light-green shirt, a tie with countless blue stripes, and a pair of dress pants. He clicked his black, nice and shining business shoes on the classroom’s floor, the corner of his eyes crinkling in a smile.

The next few minutes, he used to vaporize the gore, scanning the room to see if any other pieces of brain or skull were splattered around the room.

When he was absolutely sure that the room was clean and nothing was going to blow his cover, he turned to the corpse. Hmm. Maybe, he could just leave it there, but two people at the same place, one dead and one perfectly fine and peachy, would cause suspicion. The said two men being the same people would just add to the mystery. The boy glared at the body, his eyes flashing silver for a second. The reason that he hated changing into other people who actually existed just proved itself logical, again.

He glanced at the clock, and shifted his gaze to the night sky that was still dark. There was no time to waste. He prepared himself for a terrible taste that would remain in his mouth for a long time, took out his fangs, and parted his jaws widely, enough to swallow a grown man.

As he started to consume the corpse, with his face hosting a mild frown of disgust, the shadows started to push against the lantern’s light again, as if sensing the boy’s distress. They snapped their jaws angrily, and started to solidify right off the floor and the walls. The darkness thickened.

With a soft click, the lantern gave up its futile fight, and the room spiraled down into a dark void as the shadows’ red eyes filled with blood lust.

☪

West Liverpool High was a noisy place in the morning, but it was as lively as it could get. Brightly colored walls had paints and doodles on them, along with a few cuss words. A few gums were stuck on the walls, old, nobody bothering to clean them up. The hallways were full of students, pushing and shoving against each other and sharing crude jokes. The football team of the school walked around the halls together, at least one or two players sticking right next to the quarterback wherever he went. A dozen flyers were on the walls - [ELECT WILL WHITLOCK FOR PRESIDENT!] and [GO GREEN, RECYCLE TRASH!], some torn and tattered, funny faces or insults drawn by permanent markers on most. Clangs and clicks of the red, iron lockers opening and closing echoed around in the halls, a natural mix with the gossiping student body.

Antonio Macdonald walked through the hallway confidently, his yellow [Spanish For Dummies] book in his hand. He was wearing the clothes he had been wearing the day before ; a light green shirt that didn’t quite match with his blue striped tie, but did with his dark gray dress pants. He had a big plan for the class today, which included a fun activity to do. Humming to an ancient song he had picked up from befriending Fu Xi - oh yes, he was a very nice man - he listened to the satisfying clicks that his business shoes made when contacting with the floor. Schools always turned out to be a good place. Especially schools with dumb, idiotic humans who just wanted a good lay. They were always the easiest to get.

Abruptly, a tall teenage girl ran up to him. She had a brown, knitted hat on her head, pulled down to her eyebrows and the base of her neck, completely covering her ears and hair. Her eyes were amber, several shades darker than normal gold, closely resembling the eyes of a person Antonio once saw. It wasn’t in a real-life version, he was sure. Looks Russian, he muttered inside his mind, bemused, for when he took a first look at the mirror closely, he had realized that he, himself, resembled an average Russian male. She was carrying a big pile of blue Social Studies text book, and it visibly strained her. The girl’s arms, full of freckles and deathly pale, were shaking slightly.

“Dad!”

She beamed, and Antonio stared. The girl, after awkwardly meeting her father’s gaze for a moment, seemed to realize something. Comprehension bloomed on her face, and she smiled sheepishly.

“Oh, right, you told me not to call you that in school. Mr. Macdonald! Why didn’t you come home yesterday?”

Antonio stiffened, his eyes flashing with hostility, and the girl’s eyes filled with sudden sadness. She started to chew on her bottom lip. Antonio smiled tightly.

“Oh, just some…”

He, then, remembered ‘his’ laptop, and what the screen had been presenting last night. The girl waited.

“…Assessment. Some spanish essays. I’m sorry.”

“Awesome! Then we’re going out for an apology dinner tonight, right, Mr. Macdonald?”

The girl smiled brightly, all the nervousness from her eyes now gone. She actually bounced on the balls of her feet before turning and walking away, not waiting for the answer, looking back over her shoulder to grin for the last time. Antonio stood there, trying to comprehend the situation. He grabbed a short, blond teenage boy who was standing right next to him, and turned him around forcefully. The boy looked confused.

“Mr. Macdonald? ‘Sup?”

“Do you know her?”

Looking into the boy’s wide, cerulean eyes, Antonio asked in a hushed tone, pointing at the girls back, who was almost around the left corner of the hallway. The boy nodded, his confusion growing.

“Y- yeah? She’s Gia Macdonald. Your daughter?”

“And why does she have a hat on her head?”

Antonio growled again, loosening his grip on the boy’s shoulders, realizing that it was too tight for human standards. The boy gulped nervously, and eyed the adult as if he was a dynamite waiting to explode on him.

“You sure you’re alright, Mr. Macdonald? She had, um, lung cancer or something, so she’s now bald.”

“Go.”

The boy turned around and practically ran away with his metaphorical tail between his legs. Antonio grimaced, and resisted the urge to run after him, grab his neck and snap it like a twig. He took a deep breath, trying to control his anger, and rushed off to find the Spanish classroom before he was late.

Beverly collapsed onto the floor with her hands tightly clamped over her mouth, shaking like a leaf. Students gave her weird looks as they walked by, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t see them. He’s here, the sentence rang through her mind, painfully clear. He’s here to kill me. What should I do.. what can I do?

Shakily, she took a quick look around the corner, and nearly fainted when she saw Mr. Macdonald dashing to her general direction. She quickly scrambled back, suppressing a sob, and pushed herself onto the wall as closely as she could without breaking something. Her heart was beating a million times in a second. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthu-

Beverly gave a million Thankyouthankyouthankyou-s to God when the Spanish teacher walked past without giving her a second glance. When he was well out of sight, Beverly slid down slowly, the wall not doing anything to keep her sitting up. Tears of horror welled up in her eyes, and one rolled down her cheek. What am I supposed to do now, Annabelle? I think he saw me. He saw me, Annabelle! Did he kill you? Is that why you’re not here? Annabelle, I need you.