Chapter 3: A Society of Chaos
His life was one of naïve foolishness, mistakes and stress, all wrapped into a packed 24 hour period and then repeated for several months in the torturous time of his life called high school. To cope, sometimes when he felt depressed, he imagined himself as a hardy adventurer, setting off on an arduous trek filled with dangers and pitfalls each time he stepped out of his sister's car when she dropped him off at the threshold of Casper High School.
His only comrades were a girl named Sam Manson, not very attractive by the gauge of the other girls at the school but sympathetic and outspoken, and Tucker Foley, an intelligent although sometimes thick headed but always witty black teenager that was the closest of friends since the faintest of his memories.
Every day they did battle, in the classrooms, passing notes to fight off the boredom of lectures from one bald and rather incompetent Vice Principle named Mr. Lancer, in the hallways, fleeing from the bullying of Dash Baxter the arrogant junior that was the quarterback and ultimate jackass of the school, and struggling against the reams of papers, tests and homework that left Tucker with A's, Sam with B's, and Danny with C's.
It was an average life, actually. One that had lasted his entire freshmen year; an experience that Danny was more willing to forget.
"Wake up brat!"
Danny jolted awake as something hit his head, hard. Bleary eyed, he noticed Wulf, who stood impassively, flanked by two guards, one of them menacingly wielding a baton.
"Recess, let's move"
"You're late" Wulf growled in Esperanto. "Another 5 minutes and I would have let them take you to solitary confinement"
"Late…late for what?" Danny asked, swinging out of his bunk.
"Recess, now let's go" one guard said harshly, before shoving Danny out into the corridor, followed by Wulf and his guard, who locked the bars behind him.
Danny walked forward, his too-long pants dragging on the floor as he walked forward without intent. That dream he had just had…it had been so intense, so clear…yet vague in its image and strange in its sequence. What was depressing was that it was just a dream, from a different, fictitious existence that was as intangible as everything about him was real.
This was his world now, fear at the horrific faces that he saw staring, or screaming at him in unearthly tones from the endless prison cells on each side of the long corridor. His world was one of flickering fluorescent lights, concrete floors, coldhearted guards, and echoes from a world of misery about him, one that he would know…for one thousand years.
A Thousand Years!
It was a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, a fact that he had not yet accepted as true.
It was hard to imagine himself surviving the 4 years of highschool ahead, a rather daunting fact that his parents and teachers dismissed with a wave of their hand saying 'it goes so fast', 'you'll be out of here before you know it'
But it was a hard thing to accept in the morning as he struggled out of his sheets and into his school clothes, made his way down stairs, through his morning routine and into his sister's car, coming into sight of that ugly building off aged brick and smudged windows called school
Nor was he ready to accept the sight of the inner courtyard of the prison as they rounded a corner, passed through some heavy guarded gates, and came into the dull light of the ghost zone to behold 'Recess'. Indeed, he thought his eyes were lying to him as he looked on in dazed alarm
It was several acres across, crisscrossed by high mesh wire fences, surrounded by severe looking buildings with thin windows looking like so many eyes watching condemningly upon the crowds of thousands of prisoners.
"Stop gaping and git a move on pal, move it!" the guard roughly shoved forward and down Wulf and he went, prodded by the guards, down some narrow steps to the solid ground below.
"Alright" the four of them halted "Since you are new trash, I will tell you the rules. First…"the guard paused, letting Danny raise a anxious eyebrow . The guard smiled dangerously "Have fun, because this is the only time you are going to be out of your cell all day. Two, any trouble and we're going to serve you up like a shish kabob for the Warden to deal with, and he don't like being bothered, and three, don't come whining for help, because you aren't getting any"
The guards then nodded, before unlocking the final gate and shoving them in.
Wulf leaned down to whisper in Danny's ear. "Bona Sorto. Welcome to Recess. There is a hierarchy here, one that you should learn quickly."
"Why?" Danny asked.
"Because, everybody here is fair game" Wulf spoke with a partially insane sort of glee, before he stepped in front of Danny, hunched down onto his haunches and glared across the pavement, staring down another ghost.
The ghost stared back with 6 sickly yellow eyes above a great open maw lined with sharp teeth that was constantly agape. 3 pairs of bent legs held up the heavy upper body and two enormous arms that had no hands, just enormous pincers.
Wulf gave a low growl as Danny stepped back. Is he protecting me?
A moment later, Wulf pounced. 500 pounds of muscle, fur, claws and bared teeth whipped forward, nothing more than a blur as the other ghost gave a shrill whistle.
Danny didn't see the resulting battle as he stepped away, only hearing the sounds of canine whimpers and savage grunts. He was more transfixed with his fellow inmates, and horrified. They were…fighting, or watching fights. It seemed as though it were a mere gigantic fight arena, dozens of ghosts duking it out across the courtyard surrounded by watchers.
He peered into one fight ring.
What looked like an Operating Room surgeon was wielding a scalpel, defending himself as another ghost; a gigantic millipede with multiple tendrils extending from a malformed head, snapping about like whips, slashing and trying to grab the more quick footed surgeon.
The surgeon tore right, trying to get behind the millipede, only to find his way blocked by several tendrils that snaked towards him. He slashed, shouting a fierce battle cry, slicing off several of the offending appendages, before jumping to avoid another set that tried attaching to his feet.
The two opponents circled each other.
"Niiiice isn't it" a lazed drawl of a voice spoke next to Danny.
"Excuse me?" he asked, turning to come face to face with a delinquent with bleached hair worn long and scraggly, sunken teal eyes , and a crooked smile that revealed rotten teeth.
"Said' that it's cool ain't it. Two dudes duking it out to the death…Joshua is going to win"
"Who?" the delinquent motioned towards the surgeon. Danny looked at the surgeon, and then back at the millipede. "You sure about that?"
"Brain over Brawn, works every time"
The millipede moved faster than a blink, surging forwards, tendrils enveloping the surgeon. For a moment, it seemed a lost cause for the surgeon, before out of thin air, several operating tools appeared and sliced outwards, slashing the tentacles to shreds before slicing them off in their entirety at the source; the head.
The millipede squealed as it wobbled backwards, fluids splashing from its neck, dribbling onto the floor as the surgeon, ever so casually, worked forth and pulled out of thin air, a long and sharp probe. The millipede thrashed as the surgeon made his way around the blind creature, seeming to carefully choose his place of attack.
Danny closed his eyes, looking at his shoes as the surgeon plunged the probe into the millipede, the blade turning black as it entered the flesh. The millipede let out a final, tortured screech, before freezing and then collapsing. The torso began to bubble, boiling away into a thick, viscous liquid that stank.
The surgeon was wearing a medical mask, hiding his mouth from view. It was when he stepped forward, using a gloved hand to slowly take off the small sheet of fabric from his face that Danny felt his stomach church and his legs feel week.
A black hole was all that was left of the surgeon's mouth, which began to…much to Danny's repulsion, explosively suck up the millipede's remains.
"Niiiiiice" the delinquent said with a sly smile, while Danny turned away, covering his mouth and coughing violently. It was almost too much to bear, much less see or smell, a odor of decay and acrid burning.
A ghost stepped forward from the surrounding ring, a rather mousy looking man that looked normal save several bullet holes that punctured his chest. "and the winner is Joshua the dissector!" he cried out in a surprisingly deep voice. The crowd roared in approval, and in response the surgeon bowed, before covering his face with mask again, wiping a bit of dribble from his chin.
Danny stumbled, rolled into a ball before hugging his legs and closing his eyes.
"This can't be real…this can't be real…this can't"
A harsh laugh filled the hallway as Dash pushed him into the confines of his locker, painfully, before locking the door. Closterphobia was one thing that Danny didn't fear, but it wasn't fun realizing that there was no way out, no way to move or barely even breath.
'Stay in there Fentino, till you learn how to respect your superiors and peers, come on guys, let's ditch this loser' Dash's voice was oddly high pitched, but he was somehow the leader of Casper High School's most notorious bully gang. They laughed agreeably with Dash before Danny head their shoes pace away.
'Anyone…help' he said softly, but the bell had rung and the hallways were deserted. He was just going to have to wait for a teacher, and the embarrassment of being the school 'loser' for the day.
A arm grasped his and yanked. "My my…we have a freshy here" the delinquent looked delighted as he examined Danny, pulling him to his feet despite his squirming. "Looks like you've seen horror in your death."
"Uhh…" Danny shakily breathed. "Lo-ok I…I don't even know you"
"Oh, you don't? What a shame. Not many ghosts don't know Johnny 13, and those that don't are sometimes…unlucky"
"Sure, nice to meet you" Danny said, more scared than sincere. Johnny just grinned till the smile seemed to divide his face from ear to ear
"Got a name…freshy?"
"D-Danny"
"Well Danny, since you don't seem to know…here in prison, the prison of Walker, it's a dog eat dog world, and don't expect this joint to be more mean or kind to one person as the next, it's just the way things spin, right?"
"Sure"
"And, I just happen to be a rather respected guy around these parts, yeah fellas?" a chorus of voices from the crowd murmured an agreement. "and respect, around here, is everything. Ya want to know why?"
"Okay"
"Because respect is a kind of love, and bro, when you've been doing time for years on end, you begin to wonder if there is even love out there, but in the end, it's all shit" Johnny waved a hand. "Just crap, all the garbage of the Ghost Zone that collects here and beats the snot out of each other, just people being jerks and jackasses, and it becomes so easy to forget that we're souls too, and we need something to live for, to have value for, a sort of love, and that's why everyone here needs respect…even me, a stud like me needs respect, and how do I get it?"
He stared intentionally cruelly at Danny and clutched him till it was painful. "by fighting. Just like everyone else here"
Danny's eyebrows furrowed together and eyes went wide as he realized that this wasn't illicit, but in fact, daily living for prisoners. He saw that there was nothing but fighting going on in the court yard, and that recess was just a thinly veiled synonym for fighting.
This was why…why Walker's prison was hell.
Johnny's fist clocked him hard, followed by a throat punch, sending Danny to the ground. He had a mere second to roll out of the way as Johnny whipped out a crude knife and buried it with exceptional strength.
It was all defensive from here. Danny might have been able to best Wulf a few hours back, but Johnny was quicker, less cumbersome than the heavier fighter, and Danny found himself yipping as he dodged several swipes of Johnny's knife.
The surrounding crowd approved with claps as Danny leapt into the air and did a flip, trying to evade Johnny, but it was too miscalculated, since Johnny slammed a kick into him half way through the jump.
"Tired Danny? I'm just getting warmed up" Johnny cracked his fists as he took a step forth. Danny groaned and staggered to his feet. "This…this isn't fair"
"Nothing is dude, but this is natural selection, you know? The weak shall die off, leaving the strong to survive"
With that, Johnny began to levitate, a soft breeze becoming a whirl wind around him. Out of the ground, Danny watched in unmasked terror as darkness seemed to seep from every crack and form a strange shadow, with sharp teeth growing from a wide mouth and evil, green eyes that focused in on him.
"Shadow" Johnny said as a statement. "Meet Shadow, my trump card and good friend. Now Danny, what happens in Walker's prison is that every ghost, at Recess, will fight at least one fight, and every fight is a fight to the death, or at least near death. Dude…without these fights, I can't tell ya' how many more ghosts would be locked up with us here. Call it…population control. Some ghosts, those guys, are lucky. They fight easy ghosts and gain enough experience enough to survive a bit longer, but just for you pal, I happen to be a high level fighter around here, and you just got unlucky enough to be my fix for today, if you get my drift bro, just no hard feelings right?"
Danny didn't say anything, just a grimace. He fell into a fighting stance, trying to quickly think up something to combat this grave threat.
"Ha, this shouldn't last long, Shadow, Go!" Johnny shouted.
Shadow was like a cloud, moving forward with a steady but inexorable glide that was unavoidable.
Come on, think Danny, how did you deal with Wulf? That shout? Oh not good! The shadow swamped him, enclosing like a tremendous swirl.
"Oh shoot! What th…" his words were drowned as he felt himself gripped fiercely and held up, tremendous pressure growing on his lungs and gagging his mouth, the shadow putting him in a great vice.
"Now now there, let's just be calm, I'll make this quick" Johnny, ever so casually, holding his knife like a pencil, sidling up to the restrained Danny like a artist would to a canvass.
"Nice meeting you" the words were spoken carefully, the knife seeming to gleam, it's ragged edge seeming to sharpen and grow in size. "But it's the end of the line kid" he stepped forward, slowly, haughtily. "Another one bites the dust…" he hummed the tune with an off-tone melody.
Danny could only make some gagging noises, struggling uselessly against the impossible strength of shadow, watching with frightened gaze as the knife came close.
No No no no nonononono…
'NO!' Danny shouted as he looked at his test, eyeing the large F written on the top. 'No this isn't right! I…worked hard for a B, I can't fail this, my parents are going to freak!'
The classroom disregarded the despairing student, picking up their things and filing out of the classroom, Mr. Lancer seeming not to care that he had just sentenced Danny to an unhappy Christmas vacation. It was the end of the semester and with that final grade, there was just no way that Danny would satisfy his parents. His Grade Point Average was already a 2.8 and rapidly eroding.
'Aww Dammit, damn. Mr. Lancer, come on! Please! This isn't right…aw Jeez look at this thing, it's a disaster!' Danny lapsed into a frustrated series of curses and then a prolonged gripe.
Mr. Lancer, the overweight and conservatively dressed English teacher, looked at Danny funnily a few times, but simply kept writing in his grade book, not seeming to have any sort of empathy. Danny glared back, despising the man and his bald head, his reading bifocals and his calloused hand, down to the dull gold marriage ring on his index finger, ever so indifferently entering such damming grades, sealing his fate.
All worked up, he set his head on the desk, out of breath and dispirited.
The bell rang. At least he didn't have class till the end of lunch period. At least the sun shone, gleaming through the windows and casting the classroom in shades of bright yellow and a warm glow of a crisp but cold winter day outside. It only served to isolate him.
Mr. Lancer continued. After all, he had been a teacher for well over 10 years and was used to this sort of drama, but even he was not so jaded enough to neglect such despair.
After 5 minutes, he sighed and stood, slowly making his way over to Danny, placing a hand on his back and his other hand on his arm, slowly raising the boy to look up as he knelt so that he could see him at eyelevel.
Danny's eyes were a little red and his forehead scrunched into lines of worry, hair mussed in his stress, but just seeing Mr. Lancer's dry, unsympathetic stare was somehow calming.
"Daniel Fenton" his teacher began. 'let's be reasonable here, you're only making a fool of yourself by pouting this way, you remind me of a 6th grader'
'but this…'
'no buts, you are the one who worked for this grade, you earned it or deserved a poor one if you studied at a minimum level. Now…if you had been listening there is a retake on this exam.'
Danny's face lit up.
'and it counts for next quarter, not this one.'
Silence. Danny was speechless as his worry seemed to drain from his face, replaced by a palpable amount of relief.
'A word of advice Daniel, when you're trouble, stay calm, and just think. Things are not always as bad as they appear…'
Danny's eyes opened up and narrowed as the knife came within a foot's distance, a calm sort of pressure building within him, something powerful.
The crowd looked on in interest when in a flash, the tables were turned. Simultaneously, Danny's eyes glowed a blinding degree of green and blasted twin bolts of energy at the knife, dissolving it and blasting Johnny back, while a blast of light tore away at Shadow, disbanding him with a dying shriek that set hair on end.
Danny shot forward, literally flying to deliver his own punch, his fist glowing green, hitting Johnny in his chest just above his waist.
It was all that was needed, Johnny went sprawling. Danny followed the first punch by hitting Johnny on both sides of his head, and a final slice blow to his neck.
He stood, breathing hard, before standing up, looking about at the surrounding ghosts with feeling of victory, and aggressive defiance of their shocked gaze.
"come and get me" he spoke in a unusually deep voice, eyes glowing with a predatory-hunger for violence, hair whipping too and fro with energy.
But the crowd was more confused than shocked, their look turning to the sprawled Johnny 13. One man, a butcher by appearance, save his neck that was almost nearly severed clean through, seemed impatient. "Come come now governor" he spoke in a thick British accent. "Git on with it, finish em'!"
Danny turned and looked at Johnny, who was thoroughly disoriented. He looked back at the crowd, uncertain. I'm supposed to do what?
The butcher tapped his foot. "Kill him, go on!" the crowd murmured in agreement.
Danny knelt down next to Johnny, strangely eager to do something although he wasn't sure what. He lifted his hand, palm inwards, lowering it just above Johnny's neck, watching in partial fascination as he felt something cold well up through his fingers.
A jade, misty sort of energy encased his hand, licking the air like a flame of sorts.
"This…sucks" Johnny coughed and opened his eyes, looking at the hand. "Didn't even get to say goodbye to Kitty"
"I don't…I don't really want to do this" Danny whispered. "but I feel that I should"
"That's groovy dude, but means nothing" Johnny chuckled a bit. "You sure seem slow, I would have killed me if I was you a long time ago."
"Why?" Danny asked, his hand wavering, his fingers feeling numb.
Johnny was about to say something, but clamped his mouth shut and looked up into Danny's eyes.
The crowd grew restless.
"This is STUPID, just kill the bastard!"
"Le ta takuar krijues e tij!"
"Co za strata czasu!"
"I'll do it if you don't!"
Danny listened as the dull roar of the crowd grew to a feverous wail, screams and curses being shouted in a multitude of languages and voices.
He felt suddenly fearful. He couldn't kill another ghost…it just wasn't right, in some way, he felt. There had to be a way out.
Johnny 13 abruptly clasped Danny by the laurels of his prison uniform and clutched him. "Do it!"
"I…I can't"
"Why not!" he hissed.
"Listen…uh…if I spare you, can we be like…friends or something?"
Johnny 13 just about laughed but stifled it, just looking up incredulously. "Are you serious!?"
Danny gave a silent nod, lifting his hand and extinguishing the open flame, but Johnny's eyes were drawn elsewhere, to the Butcher, who was red faced, had strode over and was now standing, lifting a huge meat knife, poised to strike.
Danny let out a surprised gasp as the blade went through his upper shoulder, a copious amount of green and red blood splattering out, taking a single look at the knife, before the pain overwhelmed him.
He felt himself being thrust aside and the butcher wrenching the knife out of him, before darkness took him.
Thank you to the prior 4 reviewers and the readers who Favorited or put this on story alert.
astro-.-luvr10
Bluesky21543
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ShadowedFang
