I wrote this short story during my creative writing class at Queens University. It was interesting to go back and do some edits on something I wrote nearly 3 years ago before I started truly pushing to understand this craft. I suggest going back to work from years ago and seeing how far you’ve come but also recongizing the pieces of your writing style you had already managed to pin down without any real effort. It’s a fun experiment…you will cringe at your own mistakes however. You’ve been warned!

Hope you enjoy!

The booming music blasting from the surround-sound speakers pierces my brain as I stand off to the side. I’m a little fly on the wall watching the cool kids get drunk for the last time as high school kids. I was lucky, I guess. I had started at Port Union High School a couple of months ago and this group had quickly taken me in, making me one of them.

            It had been a fun couple of months.

            “It’ll be a shame when it all ends,” Riley Peters says to me. I hadn’t realized she was beside me or that I had spoken out loud.

            “Once this party is over, everything will change,” she says in reply to my questioning look.

            “I wouldn’t say everything will change, not yet anyways. Maybe after graduation.” I shrug. Some of the people here could use some change, help them grow up a bit.

            “Change isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s what people need to stop being pompous assholes.” I look at Riley from the corner of my eye. She and I had talked before, but every other conversation hadn’t been like this.  She always seemed closed off and from what I knew it was only recently that she started hanging out with this group despite having gone to school with all of them since Pre-school. She hadn’t seemed overly interested in being friends with me. I was starting to get the impression she didn’t really want to be friends with any of the others either. Before I can ask her why she was here she cuts in.

            “Do you want a drink? I need to be drunker than I am for this,” she says, turning to me fully. I had never looked her dead on like this and I found myself drawn to her, like her eyes were hypnotising me.

            “Ye-yeah, a drink. I drink. Alcohol is good,” I stamper out. She tries to hide her smile, but I know she thinks I’m a dork.

            “I’ll see what I can find.” I doubt she’ll be back. I would have rather her say that out right but maybe it’s for the best.

            I go back to people watching. Lexi and Benji are absorbed in each other on the couch. They were such an annoying couple, breaking up every other week but man did they seem weirdly perfect for each other. Lexi’s best friend Piper eyeballed them from across the room. I had never gotten confirmation, but she acted…different when Lexi wasn’t around. The superficial friendship the three of them had was something out of a bad teen movie and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

            Reese waves at me from across the room.

            “Weston! My man, how’s our little wall flower?” He yells over the music.            

            “I’m feeling efflorescent. I’m really budding into my position”

            He shakes his head. “You say the weirdest things!” He didn’t get it. Puns weren’t Reese’s strong suite. I hear laughter behind me and turn to see Riley trying to cover it up with a cough without spilling the two red cups she has in her hands.

            “Yo, Riles, where’d you get those?” He pushes past me, zeroing in on what was his strong suite. Beer. She points him in the right direction and offers me a knowing smile as she hands me a cup.

            “Sorry to have subjected you to that, maybe I shouldn’t leave your side so someone will actually get your jokes.”

            “He’s not so bad. He was the first person to talk to me at school.” I sip my beer and avoid eye contact. She was almost too intense. Even when her body language was relaxed, her eyes felt like they were looking into me and through me all at the same time.

            “Sorry, I’m feeling a little off. It’s a big night for me.” She flashes a set of pearly white teeth, her incisors scarily sharp. Before I can ask her what she means Reese comes out of nowhere and grabs my arm.          

            “Beer pong!” Yelled in my ear is the only explanation I get for the sudden groping of my forearm. According to Reese I’m his lucky charm when it comes to the game, so he’s never let me off the hook.

            “Riley got hot,” Reese says as we are setting up. “She used to be so weird but something changed a few months back.” Reese looks over at her where she stands against my spot on the wall watching us. Reese looks confused, possibly even worried. He shakes his head and asks, “You going to tap that or what?” Before I can reply, Landon and Erica yell from across the table to quit the chit chat and start the game. Both had extremely competitive looks on their faces for people who were supposed to be having fun at a party.

But then everything goes black.

            When the lights turn back on it takes me a minute to register what I’m seeing. Reese’s body is the first one I see. His throat is bloody, and the look of fear and shock is mixed on his now still face. I look around the room, expecting someone else to notice, to scream but every face I look at is the same. Stuck, permanent, there last moments being darkness and unknown fear.

            I feel something wet and sticky on my hands and look down to find blood drenching them.

            “I didn’t do this,” I whisper to myself.

            “No, you didn’t Wes,” I hear Riley say from behind me. She’s wiping her mouth clean with her shirt which I now realize is the exact shade of dried blood.

            “Why is there blood on my hands?”

            “Reese grabbed you after bleeding out a fair amount.” She shrugs, like we aren’t surrounded by nearly our entire graduating class who were all eerily still.

            Fear starts to creep into me. My veins run cold with the feeling of flight or fight. Riley simply smiles.

            “I can outrun you, just so you know. I can beat you in a fight too if you thought that was an option,” She says around her finger in her mouth, picking bits from her teeth.

            “Neck muscle is so gross. It gets stuck like pork chops.”

            “Wh—why? What did you-why did you do this?” I manage to get out.

            “Don’t get hysterical on me Wes. If I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead. Obviously,” she says, gesturing around the room.

            “Why?” I repeat.

            “They tortured me. For years they bullied me. They called me names, they hit me, they played cruel pranks on me. It’s been going on since we were kids. For whatever reason they, all of them, singled me out as the one to pick on. I finally had enough.” She shrugs heartlessly.

            “But how, I mean you—“ I can’t finish my thought. The idea of verbalizing what I was seeing, what my brain was refusing to comprehend. “I don’t understand”

            “Come on Weston, you’re supposed to be the only other smart one here! I think it’s pretty obvious what I am. What I did to myself to make all of this.” She sweeps her arms grandly around herself as she spins. “Possible.” She arrogantly smiles at me.

            “You know, when they were all busy getting drunk and hooking up in each other’s bedrooms I was at home completely absorbed by some of the reading material you can find if you know where to look. There’s a lot you can learn when you read, especially if you start looking online and find yourself on the dark web. I found a way to make myself this.” She gestures to herself as she starts to walk around, circling me like prey. “I’m powerful now, capable. That’s why they started hanging out with me, including me in everything. They could tell something had changed, that I was more now.” She pauses, her features suddenly changing.

            “Do you want to know how I chose who to take out first? I came up with a game. You do that when you have no friends and you’re lonely.” She proceeds to walk around the room, pointing at each dead body saying “bully, bully, bully,” like a twisted version of duck, duck, goose. She stops, pointing at Lexi sprawled over Benji and says, “Boyfriend Eater!” She starts giggling. “The change happens so quickly. I turned Lexi so she could do the dirty work for me. It was a sight. I have to admit it was kind of erotic.” She says looking down at them.

            She was crazy, completely and utterly crazy. Her back is turned to me, so I try and step back a little further, slowly inching my way to the front door.

            “I can hear you just so you know. The plans you’re making in your head. Turns out some of those movies were right. I’m not crazy either Weston. I’m just hurt, and this was the only way to stop the hurting.” I almost feel sorry for her.

            “Why am I alive?” I dare to ask, hoping it doesn’t get me a one-way ticket to no blood land.

            “I may be a murderer but I’m not a bad person. You didn’t do the heinous things they did. You were kind to me…even before the change.” Her features soften for a moment, her eyes cast downward as she becomes lost in thought. Too small of a moment passes before her eyes shoot back up to mine and pin me in place. “Besides, I thought maybe you’d like the opportunity to join me.” She walks forward and touches my chest. Her long fingernails pierce the fabric of my shirt drawing blood. Her nostrils flare as she breaths in the scent of me.

For the second time that night, everything goes black.

            When everything becomes clear again, I feel alive and capable. Stronger than I ever have. But also like all other feelings are removed and shut down.

            “It was the only way for you to see I was right,” She says. I finally look at her, and I find myself even more mesmerized by those eyes. The only thing that pulls me from her is the smell. I look around the room, taking in all the red.

            “I’m hungry” I hear myself say, my voice sounding foreign to me.

            “There should be some left,” She replies, guiding me to Reese.

            “I told you everything would change,” Whispers through my mind just before I bury my face in Reese’s neck.