Blood Ever After

1

It started on Tuesday.

The girl—Kristin Therrien—from Tyler's memory, stood at the door of his science classroom. She was still not far enough through the doorway for anyone to see—other than Daniel Berube, who sat by himself at the front of the room—that she had pissed herself, but they'd find out soon enough anyway.

In fact, it was the scent that first alerted most.

Mrs Klein still wrote on the board.

The class copied notes, some feeling eyes grow weary, others whispering to each other about the upcoming prom.

Then she entered.

The stench hit the two girls —the Myers sisters—who always sat in the second row from the front.

"My God, what the ...?" Jen Myres said, which was followed by a, "Holy shit, I think she's pissed herself," by Gillian Johnstone.

More and more throughout the classroom, students covered their noses, peering from their workbooks up at the girl.

But she was no longer waiting for Mrs Klein's attention, for she was moving toward the middle of the front area, near the projector.

Drip, drip, drip went that piss from her leg to the floor, and it was colored off-white, too, perhaps closer to the color of egg yoke than the usual whitish yellow.

"That's frickin' disgusting," Gordon Funk said.

Mrs Klein turned, but now Ana was standing in the rays of the classroom projector, and for a moment everyone saw she had no pupils, no irises, no nothing at all within her eyes.

Just a blank, white gaze.

As piss gathered at the front of her black and white chequered dress, she stared over at the onlooking students—who were now mostly quiet—and said, "He inith meith, he inith meith," to which no one understood, but if they had, they would have known she'd said, He is in me, he is in me.

From the back, Hui Endo stood, throwing a paper ball down the front at the girl. "Sit down. Dumb bitch."

It hit her head, and as a result, Hui would be dead in two days.

The girl took a step forward.

"He ill cometh comsuth each possie ye alleth."

And that, I won't need to translate for you, for you are about to find out just what it meant.

***

Everyone was talking about the new girl at St Sebastian's the Tuesday after the first murder.

There were two reasons for this: one, she was pretty, and boys liked to talk about pretty girls, especially when those pretty girls appeared to come from exotic far away place they knew little about.

The second reason was that something strange appeared to radiate from her, whether it be her off-kilter eyes, and how they glowed a certain shade of green no one had even seen, or the way her accent didn't quite fit in with anyone else's from school.

Either way, all but one person (in Year Eleven, that is) whispered and talked about her.

And that one person was Tyler Boyd, a boy who at the time had other issues to be thinking about, and a boy who this tale is about.

"Hey, bro ... look at her. She's really hot, hey, bro? Tyler, you likin' what you seein'?"

Liking what I'm seeing? Tyler thought. He was reading from his mobile—McBeath, in fact—a play he'd been asked to read but was having difficulty doing so. It wasn't so much the length, it was how tired and old the prose was. Why couldn't they make an updated version of this old classic' so that people like him—boys who liked sport and girls and PlayStation and fishing—had a chance of reading them?