Next Stop

Chapter I: The Depravity of Humor

Shayde

The band strikes up a thundering rendition of the school song beginning as the cheerleaders start up their cheer, pompoms flashing as they perform. The crowd roars, stomping and applauding in encouragement. I take a deep breath, and only one thing crosses my mind...

I want them all to die..

My hands go to my temples; I have a pounding headache and am ready to scream already. I hate pep rallies so much. The idiots around me define themselves from the faceless crowd by being on their feet, enthusiastic yelling for the bigger idiots standing around on the gym floor. The cheering section of the rally. Whee. Aren’t I a lucky boy?

I stare through the gap of the people standing on the bleachers around me, down at the floor where the football coach has begun to make a speech about how proud his is of his team for making it to the semi-finals and how great the student body’s support has been and blah, blah, blah...the same shit they always say. I’m amazed that people don’t get sick of hearing all of this crap, or that the coaches don’t get sick of saying it, at the very least.

Something suddenly catches my eye, and I turn to see a small creature seemingly made of shadow sitting by my knee. It was rather humanoid, shaped more like a small gargoyle than an actual human and it stood no more than two feet tall. Its face is featureless with the exception of its eyes. They were almond shaped, almost like cat’s eyes, and a deep, solid, pupil-less blue. The being’s hand, its shadowy fingers tapering into claws, rested on his knee. Its head was tilted to the side, as if it was curious, and its blue eyes were glowing softly.

I smile at it. This shadow creature, this darkness spirit, is familiar one to me. Though there are many that look identical to it, its presence is unique and known to me. There is rarely a day I don’t see this blue eyed shadow, so I’m not surprised to see her now. I refer to it as a ‘her’ because I have always gotten a feminine impression from this particular spirit. She’s the least malevolent of any of the creatures like her I have ever met.

She tilts her head to the other side and the blue eyes glow. My eyes move of their own accord and lock onto the captain of the football team, a picture perfect paper-doll jock boy whose name I can’t be bothered to remember. Ah, so she wants to show me something about him. Her kind can’t speak anything but their own language; to communicate with other species they sort of telepathically show images. It’s still a weird feeling, even to me, to have a picture or a movie of something that has, is, or will happen suddenly inserted into your mind. If you didn’t know where these messages were coming from, I guess it would be rather maddening to suddenly see thoughts that weren’t your own pop into your mind. My own thoughts are interrupted by hers. The image was vivid, as they always were, and I see it as clearly as if it was happening in front of me.

Six teenage boys in letterman’s jackets sit in a circle in what appears to be a dimly lit basement. Jocks, football players in particular. All of them are laughing, joking, and slurring their words as they speak. They are drunk, quite obviously, and bottles litter the floor. Every one of the six has a darkness spirit clinging to them. The creatures’ eyes, of yellow, orange and green, are glowing softly. They giggle a little and watch the teenagers attentively. One of them, a blond with a beer bottle still in his hand, holds up an somewhat old fashioned looking revolver and laughs, which makes all of his intoxicated friends sitting around him laugh uproariously as they nod in agreement. The blond loads one bullet into the chamber, spinning the register, and takes a long drink from his bottle. He puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. There is a click, and nothing happens. An empty chamber. Everyone laughs, and the boy takes another drink, laughing as well. He then hands the gun to his neighbor.

The second boy spins the register and takes a deep breath, staring at the weapon he has been handed. The other jocks jeer as him, throwing all sorts of insults through their drunken haze. The second boy’s hand shakes as he puts the barrel in his own mouth and squeezes the trigger. There is another hollow click, followed by relieved laughter. The revolver is then handed to a third boy, to the jock poster-boy who is the football team’s captain. He drains his beer bottle, throwing it over his shoulder, and putting the barrel in his mouth, pulling the trigger. There is no click, but the telltale sound of a gunshot, a wet splatter of blood, and the thud of a body. The other five jocks just stare at the body of their friend, and the slowly spreading crimson pool around him. The darkness spirits burst into a chorus of manic, high pitched giggles, and the drunken jocks follow suit, laughing and laughing at their teammate, completely oblivious to the fact that their friend has just killed himself.

The darkness spirit formally clinging to the football captain takes the gun from the corpse’s hand, sitting now on the dead boy’s stomach. It looks up, giggling and yellow eyes glowing more strongly now. It hands the revolver to the teenager next to it, who seems to be not be aware he is sitting next to a body at this point nor aware that the weapon was just handed to him out of seemingly thin air. This fourth teen takes it and spins the now empty register, oblivious to the fact that he has no chance of dying now. The laughter of the football players has died down, but the high pitched, crazed giggles of the little shadow demons show no signs of stopping as the now harmless game continues.

I blink and the image suddenly stops. Feeling a small weight on my shoulder as my surroundings come back into focus, I look up. I see another spirit perched there. This one is slightly smaller, but I’ve also seen it before. This one has yellow eyes and a masculine air to it. This creatures seems to be one of those involved in the vision I had just been shown. His hand touches my cheek, as if to get my attention. His touch is cool, clammy, and oddly solid, like that of all of his kind. He points down at the gym floor, directly at the football captain and starts to giggle, the same, high pitched, insane sort of noise I heard in the during the Russian Roulette game I was shown. The blue eyed demon joins in and they both just laugh.

I can feel the eyes of the people around me on me now, but I don’t look up. After all, it’s not me they are looking for; it’s the source of the crazed laughter their eyes are searching for. Not that they will find it. I learned a long time ago that not very many people can see the darkness spirits, but that everyone can hear them laugh. Their laughter, their maniacal giggle, also seems to induce insanity in people who listen to it for more than a few minutes. I often wonder why I’m not crazy yet from hearing them laugh all my life. I suppose that means I was insane before, but that is irrelevant. I chuckle inwardly a little as I think about this. After all, aren’t I always told that a crazy person is blissfully unaware that they are what they are?

I look away from the living shadows, and back to the gym floor, where the poor bastard who is going to blow his brains out has gotten up to make a speech.

“Say goodbye to your captain.” I mumble under my breath with a smirk. As the jock starts to speak, the yellow eyed spirit climbs off of my shoulder and onto the bleachers by my feet, still laughing. He stands up, stretching up to his full (almost two feet) height, and holds up one of his hands. The shadow-flesh of the creatures hand twists into a likeness of a gun, which it holds up to its head and makes a loud noise, imitating a bang, mocking the teenager now speaking.

Another laugh echoes off to my right. I look, to see a green eyed spirit clinging to the shoulder of an oblivious blond girl who was dressed, quite simply, in enough sequins that you could mistake her for someone who should be selling herself on the street. This presence wasn’t familiar to me and I feel no gender impression from it. The green eyed shadow seems to realize I can see it and giggles again. The third creature suddenly leaps from its victim’s shoulder and tackles the yellow eyed spirit sitting near me. Both of them instantaneously become a ball of indiscernible shadow before disentangling themselves and wrestling playfully. Moving away from the other two the blue eyed spirit who showed me the roulette scene climbs up and sits next to me. I’ve noticed she prefers to be alone more than the rest of her kind. She tilts her head at me, and suddenly a thought is inserted into my mind. Not a picture, just a word...just my name

Shayde...

I stare at the blue eyed darkness spirit and she stares back. They don’t normally send words, so I find this odd. In fact, I am stunned enough that it takes me a few minutes to realize the band has restarted and the people around me are leaving. I shake my head and get up, walking up the bleachers and into the hallway that leads out of the gym, just like the rest of the masses. I look behind me only once, and see that all three of the little demons were following me. The blue eyed one was walking with me, clinging to my dark jeans with one shadowy hand, while the other two giggled and slipped in and out of my own natural shadow, blending in except for their eyes.

Through the flood of high school students around me, I suddenly see a friendly face. Or rather, the short spiky red hair the belongs to a friendly face. I smile, and push through the crowd, walking up to a boy my age, dressed all in black. I grab him by the shoulder. As I do, I feel the hand clinging to my jeans relax as the blue eyed shadow climbs up to my shoulder. I’m so used to this happening that I barely even notice.

“There you are, Kallum!” He turns to look at me, the startled look quickly fading from his blue eyes.

“Shayde. It’s just you.”

“Who else would it be?” I shrug and notice he is staring a little over my shoulder, at the spirit perched there. Kallum is the only other person I know who can see the darkness spirits. They don’t seem to cling to him like they do to me, but he is aware of their existence. He’s also one of those rare few people who don’t think I’m completely insane.

Kallum reaches at the living shadow on my shoulder, and she makes a noise much like a hiss at him. I shakes my head and try to shoo her away, but she simply crawls down my back a little, her glowing eyes still peeking over my shoulder, growling softly at him. Kallum simply shakes his head and I start walking again, lest we both get trampled.

“So,” I ask with a smirk. “Where’d you get stuck during the assembly from hell?” he gives me a look of severe irritation.

“I got stuck sitting with the freshman.”

“I got shuffled into the junior cheering section.” Kallum winces and looks sympathetic.

“That really sucks,” he agrees. I nod as we walk out of the gym, heading toward our lockers. Kallum looks at me again, and at the little demon climbing down my back, onto the floor. She blends into my shadow, like the other two, so now there are three pairs of eyes staring out of my natural shadow at me.

“Shayde?”

“Hm?”

“Why in hell is your shirt inside-out?” he asks, a bewildered tone in his voice. I laugh, pulling off my shirt, turning it right side-out again and putting it back on. On the front of my t-shirt, there is a yellow pentagon street sign with two figures on it, one of which was a kid, and had a gun. The words ‘School Shootings Tour’ was above the sign. The back of my shirt gave a list of all the school shootings in the United States, since 1998, that have had fatalities. But, the real reason I got in trouble was the fact that I had written in the name of my school, with ‘date pending’ written in where the date should be. Kallum smiles as I show him this, and I laugh.

“They’re just not willing to accept that we are the next stop on the tour.” I say, still smiling. Kallum laughs too.

“But guns are so uncreative.” he jokes. I suddenly remember something and simply grin.

“Speaking of guns, Kallum. Did you know the captain of the football team is gonna blow his brains out playing Russian Roulette?!”

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Author's note: Hahaha! I heart Shayde! Apparently, because he's me...or so I'm told. Anyhow, thanks to Venustas iaceo for my title.