There is No "I" in "Story" (Part 1)

She took refuge beneath the school. Beneath the gym, to be exact, where the thunderous footsteps of students festered and echoed through the underground catacombs. She would lay soundlessly, golden eyes a spear through the stone above. They were her most valued trophy; they could watch the humans even as they ran above her, above her secret tunnels. She would stare daggers at one of them, one that stuck near the others and could not bear to be alone, and that one would be targeted for further process. She would come up after the last scream of the bell, and she would stalk the targeted one when eventually the student would be found alone, and she would Mark the student. The Marked one would never have seen her; the students knew her to be a myth. They called her Drama.

The Mark would not be notable to the Marked one, but the peers of the Marked would know. They would know that the Marked was not pleasant to be around, that the Marked was no more an ally, no more one that they loved. And they would come to know that the Marked would laugh when all was sober, and that the Marked would weep when all was joyous. The Marked would backstab them when they were benevolent and would embrace them when they were malevolent. And they would leave the Marked to rot alone, huddled atop a skyscraper of tears, surrounded by laughter. The Marked would be alone.

Forever.


“Oh. My. God.” These were the words of another student, one such as the Hero. Drama dubbed her the Hero, though also the Destroyer. The Rescued. Death Herald. The Hero glanced over at the student who was bent over the table, eyes round as she spoke, mouth parted only barely. “Jacob dumped Lynda! She posted on Snapchat, see! O.M.G. And Rye asked Aspen to the dance!” There was an extravagant murmur from around the table, a mesh of doubt, apathy, and pretense enthrallment.

The Hero’s features darkened, and she returned her gaze to the table she was at. The other student, named Joy, had been the cause of many exasperated faces for the last week or so. The Hero had watched as many of her peers fled from her exaggerated hand movements, depressed words, and temperamental moods. One moment passed where Joy was as cheerful and garrulous as ever, and the next she was sallow and despondent. The Hero could sense that the sudden change of character, though subtle to start, was not natural, and though there was the palpable sense of perverse power haloed around Joy’s head, the Hero could not dream of the reason why.

The Hero started at the sound of her name, and she turned as Stanley settled upon the seat to her left. “What’re you up to?” he asked, elbows cocked on the tabletop. Drama had named Stanley the Seconder, for he agreed always to what the Hero declared.
The Hero’s gut spasmed for the annoyance that exploded through her. “Homework,” she muttered, and her hand moved to gesture to the laptop and notebook before her. Could Stanley not leave her alone? Couldn’t he just go away and bother someone else for once? Three years had passed after they had met, and yet he was here, calculable and unchanged. The Hero knew that he wanted to be elsewhere anyways, not next to her. He wanted to return to Joy’s group. He wanted to escape her. And the Hero wanted to escape the Seconder.

There was an elongated pause, but the Hero refused to care. Soon, the Seconder gave a shrug of apathy, and he then rose and casually patted her on the shoulder. “Well, have fun,” he grunted, then turned to wander off toward the table that Joy and her group enveloped. He was welcomed warmly, shouted taunts flung toward the Seconder. The “warmly” of the school was not equal to the “warmly” of the rest of the world.

From far below, Drama’s amber eyes glowed and shattered the shadow around them.

She watched the Seconder.


The students were not alone. The Marked had gathered amongst others of the Mark, and they roamed the school, owned the school through waves of wayward screams and morose moans. Drama watched the packs of students, those that had been Marked, as the others shunned them and scattered whenever they neared, though always they would return after they were Marked to assume the roles of mere Seconders. There were many Seconders for the school’s leaders. They laughed when the alphas of the packs laughed, and they sobbed when they sobbed. There were hundreds of them.
Drama saw all, and she knew the Marked were more numerous than the others by now. The targeted were feeble, for the strength shot through the numbers of un-Marked had melted to the flame of the packs. Drama was unconcerned. She knew that her duty was to Mark them, not to ensure that they were separated from the rest. And, day by day, the Marked swarmed through the school, exploded though the school, larger and larger every day. Drama’s job was elementary, but she watched. She always watched.


The Hero was on her way to escape the throng of students that was a flood between the hallway’s walls. They were the knotted muscles of a snake, the waves of a tempestuous ocean. The Hero trudged onward doggedly, jostled from every angle, head down to better shut out the chaos around her. The screams of the Marked sounded around her, echoed by the Seconders’ calls. They shut her out as well; who was she to break the unwarranted shouts and sobs of the alphas? And so the Hero was rendered alone, though perhaps there was a part of her who preferred to be alone as opposed to strangled—by the snake wrapped around her.
Stanley appeared to her left, strangled by the snake. He glanced at her over the shoulders of the Marked, between the snake’s scales, and told her between students, “Hey, so the track team’s gathered by the… well, by the track, and Marco asked me to go there… for a few hours after school, after the buses leave, so-”

“Okay,” the Hero snapped, vexed both by the elongated class they had just suffered through and the utter monotony of Stanley’s speech. “You won’t be on the bus. Cool.”

“Yeah,” the Seconder added, apparently unable to catch the venomous tone of the Hero’s words through the snarls of the beasts around them. He shoved past a student who was short enough to be swept away by the crowd, paused to get around the Hero, then dashed off down a second hallway that was not as crowded. He glanced back and called, “Bye!” The Hero turned away.
However, just before she got to the gallery hallway, a flash of black from Stanley’s backpack caught her eye as he turned to leave. The past years had rooted deep throughout her a coherent sense of motherly tendency to care for Stanley whenever he moved too fast to do so alone. And so the Hero swung out of the fray of the Marked, took a few steps, then bent down and gently took the folder from the floor. Reason told her that the Seconder would not hear her even when she called as he shot down the hallway, backpack open, but another part of her grumbled that to have run after Stanley would have been to waste treasured seconds. Yet the Hero knew that her morals always won out over her reason, and so, after a moment, she darted off after Stanley.

The fray was molasses throughout the gallery hallway, where the Seconder turned to depart the school at the end of the passage. The Hero followed, curses that would have speared her morals trapped on her tongue. The Marked flashed by her, and pushes showered down upon her from everywhere as shouts rang throughout the hallway. She caught only subtle photos taken between the shoulders of the students around her, the Seconder’s neck, the Seconder’s head, the Seconder’s back. He dodged through the students, accustomed to the swarm, and though the Hero was as well, she could not seem to make the length between herself and Stanley weaken.

When they eventually reached the matted concrete that bordered the school, out the smudged glass doors, the Hero was able to make her way toward the Seconder through the newborn fractures woven throughout the student body. Stanley’s footsteps matched those of the crowd, and thus he went on, clueless but slower than the Hero. She had almost come close enough that she would have dared to shout and wave the folder above her head, but at that moment the Seconder chose to deter from the path and move out of the crowd around the corner of the wall that protruded from the school. That wall blocked off a grand maze of bolts and metal yarn that helped to regulate the school’s system. An exasperated groan was all that escaped the Hero before she made her way after Stanley.

The Seconder was now alone, and the Hero swooped to the corner of the wall to stay unseen. Wonders repeatedly swung around her head: What was Stanley up to? And who had he just encountered? Who was she, and why was she-

The Hero’s thoughts suddenly all fled to the grave. The student and Stanley were close enough as to cause the deep, dreadful awareness that they were attached to one another. The Hero could not draw her thoughts any further than that, but the scene made them transparent: the two hugged, and then the other student leaned dependently upon Stanley’s shoulder. Her warmth for the Seconder was grossly exaggerated, and the Hero found a snarl curled upon her face. So Stanley really was part of the others now.

The Hero could not tear her eyes away, merely posed at the edge of the wall as she stared, appalled, at the Seconder. Even as the buses, her brother on board number 166, rumbled off. Even as the numbers of Marked slowly warped to a congested halt, then faded altogether. Even as the Hero’s feet became sore and the stone corner clawed at her hand. They were unaware of her presence, but the Hero was unsure as to why she cared to stay. Stanley was gone; she could never look at the Seconder the same as she had. Yet she stayed.

Because the other two were apparently deaf to the rest of the world, the Hero was the only one to feel when the ground shook. Gently. So gently that she could not be sure that she heard correctly, and stood, alert, for several more seconds. And then there the quakes were once more. The wall shook as well now. The Hero felt a tremor run across her nerves, and goosebumps crawled down her arms. All of the books that she had read that had portrayed great monsters of old cut through her head, and a doubtful, foolhardy hope crossed her thoughts.

The Seconder and the student who Drama named the Dependent suddenly started as the ground once more shook, though the Hero knew by Stanley’s confused words that he had not felt the rumble. He watched the Dependent, who the Hero had come to know as Jess, as she turned to stare at the metal fence that separated the pumps and nozzles from the clutches of the students. The Hero was barely able to duck back around the corner, and the cement shuddered once more.

Though she was unable to see past the rough face of the stone, the Hero’s backbone crawled at the sound of an abhorrent groan released by the metal fence that guarded the school’s rusted treasure. Someone—the Hero thought the Dependent—screamed, and the huff of a gargantuan beast snarled through the gentle hum of the metal structures. However, the Seconder, though alarmed, sounded more confused than fearful. He shouted at Jess, though the Dependent merely responded barbarously, the sound of a trapped and weakened beast her own.

The Hero’s heart raced, and she found that her arms and legs were cemented to the wall, unmovable, even though the monster on the other end was undoubtedly after Stanley and Jess. She mentally berated herself for the hope that she had housed moments before, but other than that, what could she do? To attempt a foolhardy act of gallantry was surely death, but to stay there, back pressed to the wall, was to offer the Seconder and Dependent up to the monster’s maw. And yet she could not just stand there, savvy on the prey’s screams and alarmed shouts through the turbulence of the monster’s snarls and howls. There was no one else around. They had only her to save them. She could not, however, and the Hero knew so.

Even so, after a modest breath, the Hero swung outward to reveal herself to both the humans and monster.