Mayna and the Monster

1 Week Earlier…

Lucas Waylon seethed, sweat dripping from his pale and bony, naked torso. The heat lamp in the corner of the room was really only doing half the work of warming him, the other half was pure rage. The reddish-orange light of the heat lamp cast the space in a moody ruin of dank crimson, while the beat up Windows laptop on Lucas’ desk bathed him in a sickish bluish-green pall.

Even in his human form Lucas resembled a monster.

He grunted as he yanked the sharp blade through the loop of electrical wires, halving them. He dropped them onto his crowded work table—he’d dragged in his parent’s dining room table earlier to give him some more space to build in his crowded, sty of a bedroom. He glanced over his jutting shoulder toward his computer—on the screen were images of homemade pipe bombs. Some deep, dark subReddit version of wikiHow for fucked up, angry loners—for people like Lucas.

He skimmed the final steps and turned back to his work, screwing a metal pipe closed here, taping some wires there, inserting a 9-volt into its battery casing and sealing it shut. He went about the final details with great care, because this was risky business. Sure, the others were scary to look at, intimidating, threatening in their very existence, but were just show. Empty pipes. Dud wires. Useless things if only for their ability to ward off would-be heroes from the outside who might come when he got going in the gym in seven days time on the next full moon.

Like a Beware of Dog sign on a backyard gate, Lucas thought, and then he laughed. Threw his head back and cackled. Because the bomb on the table before him was filled with black powder, was wired all too meticulously.

This one was the killer wolf the kitchy sign warned of. The disease-slicked hypodermic needle in the haystack that would prick you when you went digging and got too comfy.

But enough with the metaphors. Lucas was excited to turn. It had horrified him at first, all those weeks ago. Had hurt like all hell. But it was the kind of hurt that was better than whipping himself with his belt. Better than burning the tips of his fingers late at night when he fumed over his yearbooks and raged on and on and on through the night, looking at those stuck up girls he hated so much, wanted so badly. Yeah, now he looked forward to that hurt. The pain of transformation.

He set the magnetic trigger carefully in his desk and as far away from the bomb on the work table as possible, stopped, caught a whiff of something from down the hall and behind a closed door. His parent’s bedroom, where their bodies were lying under their blood soaked sheets. He hadn’t been able to smell them before, not with this kind of clarity. His senses were sharpening. It was almost time.

Beware of Dog, he thought again. But this time he didn’t laugh.

***

30 Minutes Before the Attack…

Mayna and Carmen snuck away and out of the gym just as the rally was getting started. Carmen's hands were cold and dry, a welcome relief to Mayna’s usually warm and clammy palms, which she was extremely self-conscious about. Carmen never seemed to care, and she gripped them tightly now as she whisked Mayna to their usual spot, giggling as they went.

Carmen said, “Y’know, they’ll be makin’ a racket in that gym. Somebody could kamikaze a plane into the quad and nobody would hear over their own squealing.” Then she turned and gave Mayna a playful little wink, “Or yours.”

Mayna’s cheeks flushed and she couldn’t help but skip just a little faster toward their hiding place. The janitor’s closet between Miss Lous’ AP Chem class and Mr. Dreward’s English/Detention room. Mayna always hated that Dreward’s room was used as the weekend detention room. She hated thinking that any number of students would ever associate reading and writing with punishment. But she also personally loved that she associated it with some great one-on-ones with her girlfriend…

Carmen was two years older than Mayna—also held back a year—and she worked part-time as a janitor mostly on weekends and some holidays. So she had keys to the locked away room and corners that other students (and most faculty) didn’t have. The perfect places for some “quiet reflection”.

Anatomy is what Carmen liked to call it.

It was cold out, and the layers were many, but they made quick time of the coats and fleece and underlayers and were able to get the tight space plenty warm in no time at all. And although they didn’t really need to keep each other quiet as much as they usually did—seeing as everybody was in the gym already getting to their hoots and hollers—they played that game anyway. It made it all the more fun.

It was after twelve minutes that they slumped onto their rumps and sat panting beneath the shelves of Drano and Ajax and linked hands between themselves. The towel Carmen had laid down before was warm and dry, they’d done this many times before and had gotten a good routine down.

A bead of sweat tumbled its way down Mayna’s neck and soaked up in her shirt hem.

“You know, you could throw your Economics final this year,” Mayna suggested, a deep and almost hidden current of seriousness beneath the surface playfulness. “If you felt like it. I wouldn’t be too mad about it.”

Carmen didn’t say anything. Lifted Mayna’s hand to her lips, kissed the back of it. Observed her knuckles between her own. Mayna leaned into her. “Or Spanish. You’ve always been bad at Spanish.”

“Much to the embarrassment of my entire family.” Carmen scoffed.

“Your mom should’ve taught you then. It’s not your fault. Well…” she looked right into Carmen’s big brown eyes, like how close she would’ve looked into a telescope to see the stars. “Not all your fault.”

Carmen giggled a little. “But I’m already cheating off Luke. He said he’d give me all his homework and notes and shit. Try to help me pass it this time.” she wiped a bead of sweat just before it fell into Mayna’s eye. “Third time’s the charm, right? Then I can finally graduate and get the hell outta this hole.”

Mayna did shit at hiding how disappointed that made her feel and of course Carmen saw because she wasn’t blind or stupid. “Hey, that doesn’t mean I’ll disappear.”

“I just hate that you’re right.”

“Shouldn’t that make you happy?” Carmen asked.

“No, not that. About this place. It is a hole.” Mayna said .She adjusted her legs. Her left butt cheek was starting to go numb. “It’s not a growing place, not a landing place. It's a falling place. A fell place.”

“Then come with me.”

Mayna cracked a tiny smile in the corner of her lips. “I want to, but…”

“But what?”

Mayna scrunched her nose like she smelled something nasty, “Does that mean I have to get help from Luke too?”

Carmen laughed. “Yeah. He’s weird. But he’s doing okay in Spanish 2 and he’s willing to help me cheat and that’s alright in my book.”

They laughed again. Then it died down. Then Carmen added, “And I think he’s into me or something. I don’t know. I kinda got that vibe from him last time we talked.”

“Really? Luke Waylon? What did you say?” Mayna asked with five exclamation points at the end of her voice.

Carmen shrugged. “Didn’t have to say much. Just kinda laughed and said all I needed was the homework, thanks, have a nice day, see you on Monday in class.”

Mayna looked at her with an Ooooh, girlie’s got a cis-emo-boy stalker! face and Carmen palmed her right in it and pushed it away playfully. Then Mayna leaned in for a big wet kiss that melted Carmen.

“Too bad. He’ll never even know what he’s missin’.”

Carmen licked her lips, booped Mayna on to the tip of her perfect nose. “Ain’t it nothin’ but facts.” She held Mayna and felt a wave of something similar to nostalgia wash over her very suddenly, and she squeezed Mayna harder, held her closer, whispered, “I love you.”

***

Much like their closet-specific schedule and Carmen’s towel routine, they had an exiting system down pat. A simple stagger. One of them would go first, followed shortly by the other, especially if they shared a following class. Nobody at school, not even their individual families, had any idea they were an item. Nobody knew for certain either of them was gay. Sure, some people had their suspicions, but Mayna and Carmen worked hard to keep their relationship a secret from the start. This was Linmar Alaska they were talking about. News like that could get them socially exiled at best.

They didn’t want to entertain the worst case scenarios, even in thought.

But because the halls were empty, they decided to exit the janitor’s closet together, but re-enter the gym one at a time with some seconds in between.

They walked on opposite sides of the hallway in perfect tandem. Left-foot, left-foot, right-foot, right… and they tried tripping each other up with fancy footwork, but they were too in sync, too familiar, and they danced their way all the way to the gym double doors, where the rockus had already reached a fever pitch.

They looked at one another playfully, and Carmen stepped forward, reached for the push bar, and stopped. She got a screwy, cock-eyed look on her face and Mayna couldn’t help but giggle. Even with that stupid look on her face she looked pretty.

Then she followed Carmen’s gaze, down to the push bar, down to the chain looped around them and the heavy-duty padlock. And something in Mayna’s heart hiccupped, sent a little blade of ice shooting jetting through her veins until it got to her heart and froze it right there in her chest.

“What the fuck is this?” Carmen asked. Pulling her hands away from it like it might be white hot and ready to sear the flesh off her palms.

The noise in the gym had come up again—a riotous roar of voices—but this time, having seen the chains and padlock, it sounded a lot less like fun. Because that’s how context clues worked, right? No, it didn’t sound like cheering at all, not anymore. It sounded a whole lot like screams of terror to them.

Carmen and Mayna back away from the gym doors. Left-foot, left-foot, right-foot, right… A hand slapped against the foggy square portal of the left gym door, then another. Then three of them on the right door. Then there were hands banging the hell out of both doors. Then something dark splashed across the little glass squares, and the hands made messy smears of it, casting red light into the school hallway, bathing the girls in eerie crimson. And the thick chains held them back. There was no way anybody was getting through those chains, through that padlock. Blood began to pool beneath the gap in the doors, flow out into the hall. So much blood.

“Fuck,” Carmen croaked, not quite spoke, because her throat was locking up. “What… what the fuck? What the FUCK?”

Mayna could not speak. There was no chance. She could barely move. She was pressed up against the hard wall that would not give her another inch, another half inch, another millimeter. She could only stare. Carmen bolted forward.

“Push!” she cried out to the people on the other side. She yanked at the push bars, put her back into it. Leaned hard, chords in her neck going taught and red. “PUSH!” she commanded the helpless inside the gym, but they could barely hear her over their own screams.

“What’s happening?” Mayna whispered.

“Come on, PUSH!” Carmen continued, and they did, but not because they could hear her. Because they were being killed. “Harder! Push har—”

And then that noise. That deep, low, guttural sound that sounded like thunder and like throat ripping and like every horror movie Mayna had ever watched except so, SO much worse because this was real. The screaming was real. The blood was real. So real she could smell it, and she wanted to gag.

Instead, she turned and ran away.

***

Back in the classroom, the girl Lorena had just dropped some heavy hypotheses right at Mayna, who couldn’t quite believe what she had just heard come out of the small girl’s mouth. Justin and Trippy waited for Mayna’s reaction.

Mayna whirled, arms stiff at her side, stared bug-eyed at Lorena Choe.

“A… a w-what?” she stammered, not really grasping it all quite yet.

Coach Sarah Trippy nodded again, “A bomb, Mayna.” she repeated.

“You can’t just say that,” Mayna said (You cang jush shay dat, it sounded like with her tongue still throbbing) still looking at Lorena, who was twisting her hoodie sleeves into knots. “You can’t just say that the window is wired up to a bomb and not be super fuckin’ positive about it!” Mayna was hissing now, reaching the tippy top of her whispering volume, which Justin Willis and his damn claw hammer didn’t seem to care for. His head was cocked up toward the ceiling for some reason, then he held out his arm.

“Keep your voice down,” he said, pointing the handle of the hammer at Mayna, the claw part in his hand like gripping brass knuckles.

“How sure are you?” Mayna asked Lorena. How shew aryoo?

“We already went over this before we found you,” Coach Trippy said, but Mayna wanted her answers from Choe.

“Dammit, Lorena, scale of one to ten.”

“I’m… I’m pretty sure.” Lorena stated.

“Like a nine? Like a five? What does pretty sure mean? This is kind of a life or death situation, Lorena, I expect a ten or a fuckin’ zero!”

“I said shut your trap!” Justin said again, firmer now, holding his finger to his lips. Everyone shut their traps and listened. There was a distant smat somewhere from outside the door, and then a wet snarl, and then the sound of his heavy footsteps.

Heavy claw-steps.

They all instinctively ducked down to the floor, crouched their heads, held their breaths.

The heavy claw steps continued for a moment, then stopped… then started up again, then stopped again. Mayna, Lorena, Justin, and Coach Sarah Trippy all looked at one another. They all knew that if one of them so much as whistled through their nose, they were as good as dead. In what order they would die, God only knew. Maybe whoever was closest to the door would go first… but none of them risked moving. Not just then.

The heavy claw-steps moved slowly away, getting quieter and quieter, and a slow but steady blanket of relief began to wash over the group of survivors…

…until a tap at the window yanked their breaths from their lungs.

They all whirled, horrified, and saw a dark shape standing on the other side of the glass, a long and menacing object slung over its shoulder.

After another half second of lightspeed deduction, Mayna knew what it was, the object—an assault rifle.