Frankie used to say to me “I wish you could see yourself”. Today he screamed it at the whole class, a few minutes before he started climbing the walls, like a spider. He still had the regular number of arms and legs though. Just looked like they got much longer. And bonier. Joints in places where there shouldn’t be any. It looked like it hurt him to move.
That’s the last thing I saw before I bolted out of Miss Campbell’s class. Ran like hell, soon as he jumped at her. Now that I’ve got a chance to catch my breath, I need to do something. Call someone, or find a weapon. Should be doing that right now, probably, but it’s hard to think. To do anything ‘cept sit here, listen to the sounds from outside, try to figure out what’s biting at my brain. Missing something important. Like if I knew what it was, I could stop all of this.
Spiderfuck. That was it. Tim came up with it, barked it out in the middle of biology class, when Frank kept poking at the tarantula we were supposed to dissect. “Why are ya finger blastin’ that spider, ya Spiderfuck?” he’d yelled. Dumb as hell, now I think about it, but hilarious at the time.
The name stuck and Frankie turned inward, retreated into himself. That was what he always did.
Until today, when he turned outward. Inside out, face first, like a sock.
It started with the teeth, or actually, the gums. They peeled back and wrapped around his face, before all the rest did the same. Saw it happen. How the teeth didn’t change at all. That’s what made it so horrible. That little Frankie’s mouth is chewing on people right now. Five-foot-four Frankie, braces and all, noshing away. Eating his way through the student body. Shaking his head so as to tear better.
I wonder what the reports will say, the police write-ups. Will they describe how we were caught in the sports hall? Will they find the footprints and know that I only got out, got to this locker, because Tim decided to stay behind? I hope they will. I hope they’ll tell his parents that before anything else.
The sounds are still out there, but not too close, just echoing down the passages. Crashing. Desks shifted and doors broken down. Shoes slapping the tiles. I should just leave. Throw open the locker and run like hell. Hope he doesn’t hear me and hope to God they haven’t bolted the doors yet. But he might, and they probably have, and I’m just sitting here, trying to figure out what Frankie meant back then. As if it’s the answer to this mess.
Like maybe it can explain how he’s still moving. Leaving wet, Frank-shaped imprints everywhere. Mostly red, but streaked with the colours of stuff that should still be inside him.
I remember that one time, when we had to get up and tell the class what we most wanted to be.
“An exercise in total honesty”, Miss Campbell had called it, but most of us had just fucked around. Stammered for five minutes before giving up, or cracked a bad joke and sauntered back
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to our seats. Tim had just said that he wanted to be famous, didn’t care how or for what, just that his name got known. That seems pretty funny now, actually.
But Frankie hadn’t done any of that. Just got up there and stood for a long time, head down and thinking before he said “Not what I’ve always been”. The teacher had prompted him, asked him again what he really wanted to be.
Poor Miss Campbell, she didn’t deserve it. Really tried to help Frankie, get him to speak up.
Would single him out in class when she told us about our potential. She felt she got him, I think.
Knew what he needed. But I don’t think even she understood when he said, “More like everyone else”. That part seems really important, though I still don’t know what the hell he meant. Did Frankie imagine himself this way? Did he want this?
He never really spoke before. Just a few words before he’d shove down the rest and wrap around them, curl into himself. Only now, he doesn’t speak at all. Just howls. Screams. Makes noises a bit like he’s trying to form words, but can’t. I wonder if those sounds are what he buried before.
What he’s letting out now.
I’m still not sure why I’m thinking all this. Trying to figure Frankie’s life story instead of just making a break for the exit. I think maybe it’s because I’m looking for a way out. Like maybe if I know how someone can become something like that, it will help.
An awful thought occurs. That maybe he’s eating us to try and become more like us. But that doesn’t make any sense, and the thought is quickly replaced by another. A question. Why would a boy will himself into a monster? And then another. What apology can I scrape together when he finds me?
What I should do about all those times that Frankie told me he wished I could see myself. When he would ball his fists at his sides and say those few words so seriously, then just start shaking all over, like he might explode.
He only used to do that when we really pushed him, didn’t let him crawl off and curl into
himself. Like he really wanted to hit me, but knew he couldn’t, so he just shook instead. I used to think it was hilarious, started looking forward to it. One time he even pissed himself, when we had him cornered. Of course, that meant we had to do it even more.
This locker smells like piss, I’ve just realized, though I’m not sure why. I’m not sure of a lot of things right now. It’s hard to concentrate with all the noise coming from outside.
I should be trying to make a plan, I know. The sounds are getting closer and I’m trying to remember what parents and teachers told me I was supposed to do in an emergency. But somehow, all of that is gone, replaced by the breath I’ve just realized I’m holding in, so hard it hurts. Replaced by the shape that I can now see through the locker slats, slithering down the passage.
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It’s paused right outside my hiding place. Turned its head to where I’m wedged. I think to close my eyes, as if just looking at it will somehow give me away. But I can’t. The lids are pinned open, the truth of Frankie’s transformation burning itself into the soft, dark space at the back of my brain.
Without skin, it looks vulnerable. Without a voice, its mouth is used only to hurt. It’s crawling slower now, dragging itself across the tiles. Doesn’t stay long, just creeps away to find whoever else is left, but it feels like a long time before I remember to breathe out. To let go of the air I sucked in at the moment of understanding.
The locker door is open now, pushed wide when I sank to my knees. Cheeks already wet before I pressed my face into my hands. I do not know if Frankie is coming back. Do not know what I’d say or do if he did, but I know that it doesn’t matter. He would certainly find me. Certainly hurt me, but I feel about that the same way that Frankie must have felt, backed into a corner.
A resignation. Because that’s just how it is. That’s just how it is and what you feel in a moment like that is something less like fear and more like pity.
And so I won’t try to leave, because I get it now. I know what Frankie made himself, and why.
What he wanted to show us. Show me. I can see it now. I really can.
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I went to the bar to try to escape the damn things, but I found a thought floating in my beer, like something left in a toilet bowl.
That night I woke up with them on my face, heavy against my lips, my eyelids, my nostrils. I gasped and swatted them away, but one got past and lodged itself in my throat. I spent an hour hunched and retching over the toilet. The thought washed out on a flood of alcohol and fast food.
I tried to go back to bed, but when I turned on the light, I saw the ceiling was thick with them, poised to splatter on my face. So I stayed up drinking coffee almost till morning, washing the taste from my throat.
I slept on the couch after that, the blankets pulled tight over my head
to keep the thoughts from getting in. But still I felt them thumping
against the bedding and rolling across my body.
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