I didn’t know this was possible with today’s technology, which is why I’m posting. If this guy can do what I’m about to describe, then anyone with some money and brains can and we all need to be on the lookout.
A new kid joined my class in January. Physically and mentally mediocre, he would have been totally beneath my notice if he hadn’t insisted from day one on being my friend, and mine alone. He talked exclusively to me, in every class, even getting us sent to the principal a few times. When he pushed my girlfriend off her seat to sit by me at lunch, I had to draw the line. I stood up and shoved him so hard that he flopped flat on his back and whacked his head with a hideous crack.
“You turd! What’s your problem?” I yelled. Popping up his head, he struck me with a lunatic grin, every tooth bared and white all around his irises. “I grew in a lab!” he shrieked. Then he laughed, but not with the howls you’d expect from his expression. I couldn’t place it, but I knew this laugh as though it were the laugh of a long lost friend. My girlfriend screamed, and finally a teacher stepped in to break up the scene.
I got suspended for that, and when I came back I was still seeing red. For three hours of morning classes I seethed, feeling his eyes bore into me from where he now sat in the far corner of the class, thankfully too far to whisper to me. I didn’t need to look for him at lunch; he muscled his way past my friends and girlfriend to sit by me, grinning like the damn Joker. I whirled on him and stared him down, ready to tell him to scram or else, but choked on my words. His eyes, which had been sky blue, were now the same shade of brown as mine.
“What the hell…” I said. The unsettling familiarity of his face had me transfixed. At once, I was aware of his hands on me, ripping the hair off my head, and then I swung my fist with all my strength. He sprawled across the hardwood worse than before and coughed up a few of my hairs, all the while emitting gibbering howls- I heard something in there about “dad’s lab” and “my new parents”- until the school nurse rushed out to bandage the gushing wound over his eye.
I got a much longer suspension after that while my parents quibbled with the school over my fate. I wasn’t too worried there because I had smart, caring parents in an affluent district that didn’t want to see itself as a source of disaffection in the youth, but I was ready to kill that fucking kid. I couldn’t stop seeing my own eyes staring over his rictus grin.
A month after my second suspension began, my parents got everything smoothed over and I was looking at going back. By now, my anger had given way to such a deep well of dread that I couldn’t eat a morsel the last day of my suspension. To ease the anxiety, I caught a bus to the mall after my weekly gymnastics class to buy a new shirt to wear on my first day back.
While I was rifling through the clearance rack, a kid I sorta knew from class moseyed over to chat. “Hey, man, we haven’t talked in a while. How’ve you been since that big fight? You hear what happened to that kid?”
“Big fight! I’ve had bigger fights with my baby sister” I scoffed. “I’m good. I’m actually going back to class on Monday, so I’ll be seeing you all again soon.” He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I just mean my suspension is over” I said.
“Well, yeah,” he replied. “Obviously, since you’ve been back all week.”
I stared him in the face. Was he messing with me? “Fuck you, dog, that’s not funny” I snapped. He stepped back with his hands up. “Hey, man, I’m sorry. I thought I’d been seeing you in class, that’s all. Maybe I’m remembering wrong.”
The sunlight wavered through heavy, stormy air on the day of my return to class, and the school bus arrived late. Jeff, the normally jovial driver, ignored me as I boarded. When I turned to walk down the aisle, I saw the whole bus was empty. That wasn’t right. I turned to leave but the door slammed and the bus lurched forward, knocking me into the front row seat. “Hey, stop! I, uh, forgot something. My mom can just drive me” I shouted. “Jeff! Why aren’t you answering?”
Horror squeezed my chest as the bus turned away from my school and onto the state highway into the countryside. My cellphone wasn’t getting bars for some reason, so I stood up, realizing I’d have to take drastic measures. “I’m sorry to do this, Jeff” I said as I gripped my metal water bottle, poised to strike. Before I could, though, powerful hands grasped my shoulders from behind and forced me back to the seat, where I writhed around to see this new assailant.
It was me, or rather, Not-me. The new kid had copied my eyes and now he’d copied the rest of me, too. “What’s this all about?” I demanded hoarsely. The bus ground to a halt on a lonely county road and Jeff rose to face me. His face looked blurred. I don’t think it really was Jeff.
“You’re the bastard spawn of that filth who stole my beloved” he muttered. “Your mongrel father stole that woman from me, and now I’ll steal his precious son and replace him with my own flesh and blood!”
Not-Jeff pulled a syringe from his pocket. “Hold him there, son!” he screamed exultantly, his life’s work evidently nearing completion. Not-me was going for a full nelson. Mustering all the strength of a gymnast, I rocked forward onto my feet, barrelling Not-me over my head and squarely into his father’s chest, the three of us landing in a heap. Following through onto my feet, I lunged upward and grasped the oversized rearview mirror, yanked it off the mount, turned, and shattered it over Not-my head.
“Get the fuck off me, you worthless fetus!” roared not-Jeff, who rolled his creation right onto a shard of broken glass while he fumbled for the murderous syringe. Not-my screams turned to gurgles when I slashed his throat with the other side of the mirror. Not-Jeff’s skin turned ashen before I could even get to him. He must have landed on the syringe.
I got out of the bus through the emergency window and the bars reappeared on my cellphone. I called my parents and then sat, waiting next to the school bus for the people who love me most in the world.