Fake Eyes: Love and Monsters

Chapter 1 - NLOG

Ace whipped his head back, watching for any movement behind him. He thought he might have actually gotten away. He clomped out from the alleyway and onto the main sidewalk. The alley was bordered by a Chinese restaurant, the hot neon blinking out, bathing the sidewalk. The other side of the mouth of the alley was framed by a loan place. Ace looked back into the alley. It was dark and still. In the distance, he could hear a police siren, and general road noise from Monument Street just a few blocks away.

Turning, he clomped along the sidewalk, pulling his leg along as best he was able. He fell while running and fell right on his leg. Feeling was returning to it, but it still hurt.

Limping past the Chinese restaurant, he heard a crumpling and shuffling behind him. It sounded like wings and insectile chirping. Was that the person who had been following him? What on earth were they doing?

Ace didn't even want to think about what he'd seen them do. He'd been out with friends hanging out downtown, when he was attacked. They were incredibly strong, and before he knew it he was flying across the back alley and slamming into a dumpster.

He'd run after getting up, coming through the narrow alley that divided the strip mall. He had no idea where his friends had gone to, likely they'd bolted as soon as he got attacked. They were all pretty smashed, and so decided their chances were better off getting out of there than hanging around.

He backed up, bathed in the red neon of the restaurant. There were no cars in the parking lot, the restaurant looked to be closed. Other than the lights under the overhang, the strip mall was dark, the sidewalk stretching away to forever in either direction.

Something began coming around the side of the building. Preceded by long, searching legs like a spider's. He felt his legs give way as the thing came around the corner. The red light revealed a nightmare he had not known could exist. Ace cried. The world around him melted away and he was lost.

—-

Michael watched Andie, hopeful that she wouldn't feel the occasional sweep of his gaze. He was not staring, nor creeping, but merely trying to take her in. This beautiful, curious, and somehow unsettling girl had asked him out the day before, and it terrified him.

It terrified him not only because he'd only dated two other girls in his entire sordid high-school career, but because there was something wrong with Andie. Something different.

He remembered going with his mom to work one time. His mom worked at a physical therapy and rehab center that specialized in providing care to those with developmental disabilities. He got the same guilty and hotly uncomfortable feeling from being close to Andie as he got from being around those people.

Their difference, how they unsettled him and made him uncomfortable in a way that made him feel shame and guilt. It was like Andie, but different too. Different in that the feeling excited him. Something about her, some part of her essence, was exotic and alien.

No one else in the school saw it. In fact, it was the opposite. Andie was all but ignored by everyone. Because of this, she kept to herself and as far as Michael knew; He was the only boy she had ever shown an interest in during her four years at the school.

Andie turned her attention from the front of the class to look at him. Her short cropped hair shaded her dark brown eyes. Despite this, he still got that little electric jolt when her eyes met his. It wasn't bad electricity, and that was what unsettled him. He thought he might like Andie, even if something about her was very different.

--

"So do you want to?" She asked him after class.

She was wearing her usual outfit: her red and white track jacket, a graphic tee, and dark jeans. The back of the jacket had the school mascot (a snow tiger) and 'ARSENAL METROPOLITAN HIGH SCHOOL VARSITY TRACK'.