Matt's Story [COMPLETED]

Chapter 4 - Midnight Changes

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The bell went and he was first out of his seat. Kristen jumped at his sudden reaction and her face fell. He didn’t care though. He had to go, now. He pushed his chair under the table and flung his bag onto his back, shrugging on his jacket and iPod.

“Well, see you tomorrow.” Kristen murmured as he flipped up his hood and stalked out of the door without even a goodbye. He exited the building before any other student and quickly turned on his music to a low volume. He loved the outside with no one about. There were cars, sure, but they wouldn’t believe what they saw.

          His bounced on the balls of his feet and let his strength soar. Holding it back all day was very tiring and made his muscles ache with tension. Now he relaxed as much as he could ever do in a human form and let the animal inside him attack his muscles like a fire. He dug his toes into the ground and made his bag comfortable.

He wasn’t going to take long to get home. He loved running freely but he couldn’t run far unless he was seen by accident and it was more suitable for him to go to a local college than to go somewhere far away where he'd look silly walking home from. He hated public transport and he didn't see the point in driving when he could get somewhere quicker through a casual jog.

He wished he could move further away but if he did he wouldn’t be able to go to his college anymore and he didn’t want to bother with meeting even more new people. Anyway, he still felt kind of - not really - normal when he was at the college, as if all the madness hadn’t happened to him and his little sister was still excited to join him after the day had ended.

          He stopped dawdling and closed his eyes before pushing off on the ground and speeding away faster than a car. His feet blurred and probably so did he, though he couldn’t exactly see himself running. He turned three times and already he was at home. He sighed and glanced at the clock on his wall as he came in, switching off the alarm. One minute, a new record he thought.

          He closed his eyes and dumped his bag on the side. It was getting dark already and he kind of liked that fact in a way. He hated what he was but he couldn’t help but love the freedom when he changed, able to run anywhere he liked and have fresh food to eat.

He took off his jacket; he wasn’t cold anyway. He was never cold nowadays, not since he became what he was. It was a good thing but also a bad thing. Everything else seemed cold and dead to him, even people. He didn't purposely touch others but when someone bumped into him and their skin pressed against him he always felt a shiver from the lack of body heat they possessed. It was another reason why he hated physical contact.

His iPod was switched off and his TV on as he moved about the living room. There was nothing on that he was interested to watch, after he checked most of his usual channels. He left it blurring away anyway and went up his stairs that he hadn’t improved since his parents had died, his feet thumping against each stair as it took on his weight.

He moved towards his bedroom and then stopped, turning automatically to look at Aimee’s bedroom. It was a response he always had when he passed the room after he’d just come back from college. Every night he’d go in there and see Aimee lying on her bed playing with her barbies. He’d sit down and tell her about his day and then listen to her talk about her day, never forgetting the one boy she’d loved since she turned five but he’d never realised.

          He never would now, Matt sighed as he took the doorknob in his hands. He twisted it and slowly pushed the door open. The usual pink had faded because Matt had left the window open for the past year, the curtains wide open too. The fun had disappeared and it felt like a dead room for a dead girl, which it was. He had never moved any of her stuff since she had gone. Her barbies were still sprawled all over the bed, her teddies around her bedside table, her clothes still brewing out of the cupboard.