He was going to die in 23 minutes.
Gene had fallen to the ground and closed his eyes laughing, and then the vertigo had hit him. The same feeling as when you gasp awake because you think you're falling out of your bed, only this time he was on the rooftop of good old Saint Nicholas High School.
As a public institution, was it okay for the school to be named after the controversial figure known as Santa Claus? But it was fine, yep, because Santa Claus was a myth. Right?
He'd been pretty sure that demons weren't real, either, until his girlfriend's pupils went thin like a snake's and started glowing red. Surely it was just a bad fever.
Then the tentacles had burst out of her spine.
Looking around, there was no one to be seen. Was it the same as before, where he'd blinked and he was at the cash register? Where it seemed he had almost… teleported? It couldn't be, right? But it wouldn't have surprised Gene to learn he was going insane. In fact, it would have been preferable. He finally had a slew of excuses to kill himself now, included but not limited to, getting his left wrist slashed open by his satanic ex-girlfriend.
The pain flared up again, and he brought himself to one knee, took a deep breath, then pulled himself onto two shaky feet, a gust of wind almost knocking him over the roof. He hadn't noticed how close he'd been to the edge. In fact, as his head pounded in his eardrums, the world around him morphed constantly. The buildings around the school, the football field, the rooftop greenhouse, all of them drew closer, then became dots, then drew close again, as if his eyes were a camera lens being controlled by an impatient photographer who couldn't decide on the field of view.
"Enjoy the view?"
Something jolted through his heart, and he could've sworn it had stopped as he gazed over his shoulder, teeth chattering.
Maybe if I don't look, it won't be real, he thought.
Gene liked to think he had a very vivid personality, and as a kid he'd thought that if he'd decided something didn't exist, then it didn't. That his thoughts dictated the way the universe would work. He stopped after reading in a decomposing magazine at a hospital when he was ten that believing yourself to be the center of the universe was a classic sign of psychopathy.
"You were the center of my universe, Gene." Her glasses drooped down her nose, an odd trait that he'd thought was amazingly hot at first but now only made him wonder if her face had just been morphing under her skin the entire time. Maybe her body was just a bag of worms. What if he was a bag of worms?
"Why, Mia? What did I-" He'd instinctively taken a step back, and felt his feet leave the ground as he tumbled into the wide open sky. Opening his mouth to scream, he instead choked as a fist slammed into his throat and stopped him dead in the air, arms splayed out like he was putting on a show for invisible spectators below. Flailing his legs for a foothold, he paused, and his eyes widened as he looked up to see Mia gripping the neck of his coat so tight that giant, black veins bulged out of her unusually muscular arms.
"Don't go dying in such a lame way, Gene." She licked her lips, and only then did he notice that the lines of pale glowing skin under her mouth were streams of saliva, drool dripping down her face and onto his coat, the most expensive coat he owned. The only coat he owned, actually-
She tossed him with such force back onto the roof that he slammed into the knee-high brick wall on the other end, gravel pelting his limp body.
Come home safe, Gene.
Why was he hearing his mom's voice now?
He gripped the wall with all of his strength and hauled himself to his knees. Summoning the last of his spite, he said, "If you wanna break up, now would be the time to say it…"
She quickly closed the gap between them, though he hadn't seen her take a single step. "Fufufu… you have a way with words, Gene."
"Don't call me Gene, you STUPID DEMON!" He swiped a handful of gravel straight into her pathetic, drooling face and rolled out of the way as the tentacles came out from wherever and struck like lightning where he'd been seconds before. He took off for the side of the roof that he knew would drop down onto the science department building a yard or two below. But right as he gripped the sides to jump over, something slithered under his foot and yanked him backwards, and he slammed into the ground, his jaw cracking shut. He saw the damage before he felt it, blood spurting out of his mouth as he was lifted up, up, up and the tentacles twisted around his head to force his face inches away from Mia. She licked the side of his mouth where blood was trickling out, and let a single thread of drool fall onto his cheek.
"Oh," she said, covering her mouth. "How embarrassing."
Yet she made no move to wipe her face off of her spit nor his blood as she stared into his eyes, waiting for something. Silence followed that was only disturbed by both of their heavy breathing.
That was when she bent down and picked up his tongue.
"Eh-?" Gene's eyes bulged out of their sockets as the pressure from being held upside down built. He reached, slowly, into his mouth, searching for…
Mia glanced at him, back at the tongue, then proceeded to wipe the wet gravel off.
The pain came all at once, like a dam bursting as a fresh pool of blood spurted out of his mouth, like his body had just realized it was supposed to be bleeding. The closest thing he could compare it to was the feeling of scraping your flesh across pavement, that burning sensation doused in alcohol and multiplied by thousands, no, tens of thousands…
Mia flipped his tongue like a coin and swallowed it whole.
He screamed and choked on his own blood. "Hep! He! Hepp!"
At any moment he was sure his eyes would come clean out and Mia would have those too, then his fingers, then each part until he died of blood loss-
Body writhing, he howled as tears rained from his eyes, and those burned too, but fighting against those tentacles was like swimming in cement, he couldn't do a thing, he was going to die here-
A sickening squelch, and Gene's head slammed into the ground. Stars dinked back and forth across his vision like a hundred games of Pong overlaid on his retinas. He lifted his arm to shield his face and a thick piece of tentacle slid off and plocked onto the ground, oozing black goo from the severed end.
Mia looked at her stump curiously, thick-rimmed glasses sliding further off her face. She turned around.
Standing with legs spread in a half-split, eyes narrowed, and holding a massive greatsword the size of his torso with one hand, was the douche who'd slapped Gene in front of Mia last week.
Gene's mouth hung open. Nick?
Nick Broggart dropped onto the gravel, hiking boots grinding the pebbles to dust as he trudged forward. He wedged the blade in the ground so deep the roof trembled, and Gene flinched.
He thought, I'm being rescued, right?
But he didn't feel like scrambling over to Nick quite yet. This was the same guy who casually shoved him out of the way every morning at the front entrance so consistently that Gene had started using the side doors. The same guy who'd slapped him to the floor in front of Mia. For one insane moment Gene completely blamed what Mia was doing to him on that slap.
He thought, Mia knows I'm weak. She's seen me cry now, too. I'm never getting back with her.
And another voice in his head said, Of course you're not! She's a demon!
Yeah, said the first voice. The demon who held hands with me!
Nick narrowed his eyes even more. "Who're you? John… Jens?"
Gene clenched a fist as he slid away from both of the psychopaths. His tongue burned even more as he tried to answer Nick. But the only thing that came out was a pool of blood that had been gathering in his mouth, and more tears that weren't being squeezed or cried out but were just running freely, like a faucet being left half-open.
The worst was that he knew the worst was yet to come. Due to the adrenaline coursing through him, the pain faded in and out with his heartbeats. But once it wore off…
Nick stared at the blood all over Gene's mouth, eyes narrowing even further. That's right. Nick wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. In fact, he was an idiot, an idiot with a greatsword. A… a demon hunter?
Gene's eyes flicked between Nick and Mia. One was his girlfriend, tongue swirling in her mouth, snake eyes glowing red with bloodlust, still wearing her cute cardigan that they'd gotten on a date for Valentine's Day. She was wearing her pink piggy socks! And the other was wearing a bomber jacket and those stupid thick boots with the laces undone, fixing his explosive hair with one hand as he picked up the blade and wobbled it back and forth like a cheap knife trick with the other.
Both, equally terrifying.
Gene was about to flop over and pass out when Mia finally spoke, lips twisting in a grin. "Aren't you supposed to say, 'Put him down, monster', before you cut the tentacle off?"
Nick frowned. "Idiot. That'd blow my cover."
Mia readied her tentacles, sighing. "Everyone's always so boring."
With a speed that couldn't be followed, Mia blooped in and out of existence as she closed the distance to Nick in an instant, and a flurry of sword and tentacle slashes followed that gleamed in the moonlight. It was like a machine had been turned on as the cacophony grew, Mia's tentacles and Nick's arms both moving so fast they blurred. They paused for a moment, panting. A tentacle flopped to the ground... and Nick's arm followed.
Nick smiled, unflinching, as a cut opened under his eye a second after the swinging had stopped, as if even his own body couldn't keep up with his movements. "One for one?"
Mia tilted her head. "Sounds good to me."
"Looks like I'll have to turn that ratio up. I've only got one more left."
Was it a game to both of them?!
The slashing resumed, wind blowing Gene's hair back. He finally snapped out of it and clambered to the edge of the roof, hauling himself over. Speaking of the body not keeping up - he slammed into the lower roof with a thud, having intended to tuck and roll but instead just tucking. A fresh welt was already growing on his shoulder as he scrambled over to the maintenance ladder and clambered into the school courtyard, banging a knee on one of the picnic tables as he ran for the gym doors.
Crap! Padlocked!
Gene's fingers reached for the chains before he recoiled - I'm too weak, and besides, it'd be a crime! The nerve, he thought, to be worrying about something so petty when he was bleeding to death.
This didn't make any sense, any of it. Up until an hour ago, Mia had been a perfectly normal girl, and as far as Gene knew nobody had ever tried to kill him before, much less grown tentacles from their spine to do it.
Gene ran around the border of the courtyard in a panic, trying every single first-floor window, and not a single one budged.
And Nick! Of course the bully would be strong, but to carry a sword the same height as yourself, and to wield it like a paperweight with one hand…
Did Nick bleed?
Thinking back, not a drop of blood had been spilt after Mia had hacked off his arm, nor when the small cut appeared on his face. There was no Hollywood blood squirt and screaming and flailing…
What were Nick Broggart and Mia Trouille?
Who were they?
The last window jiggled furiously and the handle snapped off.
He thought, I'm going to jail!
"Gene-?"
"Aah!"
He rounded and shielded himself as if a giant spotlight had just been opened on him, knees buckling, waiting for the death blow. Five seconds later, and he hadn't been spliced up like fresh firewood. He opened an eye and looked between his fingers-
Lisa? he thought.
One knee hanging out of the window that had been unsealed like an ancient tomb, dust crumbling off the sides, was the student council vice president and captain of the girl's soccer team, Lisa Muroe. Today her shoulder-length hair was pulled taut by a green headband, which was atypical for her on Mondays.
But after all, today wasn't a typical Monday.
"Nghhhh!" He refused to open his mouth so as not to scare Lisa.
Lisa threw back her head to laugh, grasping her stomach and hanging so precariously on the windowsill that Gene took a tentative step forward to catch her. Lisa, watch it!
Instead Gene found himself stumbling forward as his vision dimmed, like when someone walks into your room in the middle of the night and the lights snap on and you get caught in the nuclear blast.
"Woah!" Lisa dropped from the window to catch him, slowly letting him down to rest against the moss-infested wall. "Hey, Gene! What happened? Hey, talk to me."
Gene's head lulled side to side, and the warmth of her hand as she clasped his cheek was so nice, his eyes drifted shut.
Mia's hands were so cold today, he thought. Not like before, last weekend…
"Gene! Don't play with me! Is this a joke? Gene! Open your eyes!"
Monday's, right?