I was born of their memory and my vengeance against them.

I remembered who I was.

And the creatures showed themselves to me, wandering toward me from all directions of the darkness, like my rebirth called to them. Amphibious gray monsters whose legs bent like spiders’.

I followed them into the world, and it appeared to me as it did them, in the places of worst destruction. The highway dividers where cars careened off the road and people died. Hospital beds, where there were tears to lick off the faces of grieving mothers. Always pulling the thick air that trails off humans like gun smoke into my lungs, using it as food.

I learned from them. To find the most miserable, tortured creatures, the ones looking to escape from their realities, and I attach to their pain, their weeping, their doubtful silence.

And my fingers find light switches and turn them off, just to see the fear curl off their necks. Bikers pedal down busy streets and are launched before a moving car by way of my violent wind. From their injury and the chaos of pedestrians and police, I absorb the hot red panic, which fills the street like a smoke bomb.

It hits my head like a rush of oxygen, fills my lungs with vitality, makes my hands shake and turn opaquer, adds complexion to my skin. The pain, the rage, the suffering brings me back.

Jake, when he’s hurt, burns like both the darkest and brightest point of light in the universe. A walking wash of indigo blue like a potion that transcends every universe.

I will have him for myself.

Jake

I have eight missed calls from Mom. The school must be calling her. She must know what happened and that her son is violent, which means I can’t go home.

So I walk in circles around my neighborhood, hands in my pockets. A ghoul tracks me down every avenue, passing through parked cars and fences, speeding up as I do, refusing to let me go.

I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I should be hungry, but I’m sick.

How could I ever show my face in that school again?

I’m ashamed.

On the patch of wet grass between two roads, I turn around and face the monster.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” My voice is a mad roar.

A storm starts in the echo of my scream. Rain dots the asphalt, the spots getting bigger and bigger, beating down the blades of grass and tickling my fingers.

The ghoul smiles wide. Drool leaks thick and viscous from its jaw. It knows what I’ve said, and it refuses. It just likes to taunt me and see me suffer.

As the storm starts, I pull down my hood, raise my face to the sky, and greet the full force of the thrashing water. A vein of lightning rips above me, making a CRACK as it strikes something. A tree or a pole.