Rare warning: This chapter gives a brief but realistic description of a school shooting, as written by someone who knows way too much about the subject. Take that for what you will.

I played a lot of KMFDM, Gravity Kills, and Drowning Pool while writing this chapter. You could throw on Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People and/or Youth of the Nation by P.O.D. too. It's all good.

1994 - April

"Ta-dah!" Tate fanfared as he entered Adelaide's room.

He strode across the room,clear to the far wall and back to stand in front of her. He struck a significant pose with his chin nobly raised. Then he smiled, dimples showing. "What do you think?"

Addie thoughtfully patted her chin with the fingers of one hand. "I think you look great!"

His smile got even bigger. "Yeah? I guess those modeling classes mama made me take were good for something." He looked down at himself. "I don't know... I think maybe the gloves're too much. Even without the fingers... I don't know. I think I'm gonna ditch them. It's too hot for them anyway."

Addie made a face. "I like them."

"Me too," he agreed. "But it really is too hot. Especially with the coat. This is real wool, you know."

He straightened the lapels of the long coat he wore. It was something he found in the attic, something Constance had held onto from her acting days, perhaps. It was a museum-quality Union soldier's frock coat. There was just something about it that Tate liked, even though he didn't feel all that strongly about the Yankee side of the Civil War.

Beneath the coat he had on a t-shirt, his favorite black hoodie and the black cargo pants he'd picked up last weekend at the sporting goods store. And, of course, his Doc Martens - the symbol of Euro-trash punk rebellion worldwide. His were the real ones, the ones made in England. Not those piece of shit wanna-be cheap Chinese knock-offs.

He did another little turn, coat tails flaring, and pretended to pull out a gun. He pumped the imaginary barrel and acted like he was aiming. "Boom!"

Adelaide giggled at his play-acting. "You look like a movie star."

"No flash photography or autographs, please," he said with plenty of false drama. He smiled and tugged off the gloves. He shoved them in a pocket. His hands felt better. For one thing his snake ring wasn't poking him in the knuckle anymore. "Yeah," he decided. "I'm ditching the gloves."

"Why're you getting all dressed up anyway?" Addie asked, nose crinkling with curiosity.

He shrugged off the coat and draped it over the back of her study chair. "I'm practicing."

"For what?"

"For World War T. The Noble War," he said. Then he eyed his t-shirt. "I think I'm going to wear a black one instead of white."

Addie nodded. "Yeah. White's too... white. You look better in black."

"You think?"

She nodded again. "Definitely."

"Black it is then," he grinned.

...

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,
You are to die-let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you-there is no escape for you.

To One Shortly to Die - Walt Whitman

...

Everywhere Tate looked, people were running. The hall was crowded like any other school day but the other students were scrambling in every direction - every direction away from him. They'd seen his uniform and it had worked: They were afraid.

The weapon he carried was cold, heavy. The smell of gun oil and spent powder filled his nose; under that was the tangy, coppery scent of blood. The black t-shirt he wore hid the mess of gore and blowback residue much better than the white shirt would have.

There were so many people running from him that he couldn't pick a target. He didn't need to. All he had to do was walk and they fled. His Doc Martens were clunky and slowed him down. He tried to chase after a small group of fleeing girls but the stiff leather boots weren't meant for athletic activity. It was like trying to run with boxes on his feet. So he had to stalk instead of chase.

The halls cleared out quickly. There were backpacks and shoes scattered all over the place where people had fled without stopping to pick up their dropped items. It was weird seeing so many shoes laying around, abandoned. When he imagined this moment, he hadn't thought about things like shoes beyond what he would wear with his outfit.

He rounded the corner of the main hall and came face to face with a teacher who was running his way. The man had come from the cafeteria where he'd been racing to evacuate students, spreading the word that there was a shooter in the school. He stopped immediately when he saw Tate.

The teacher put his hands up. "I have a family," he said. It was a lie but he remembered Silence of the Lambs and how killers would find it harder to hurt their intended victim if said victim made themselves more human; easier to relate to.

Unfortunately for him, he picked the wrong subject.

Tate shot him in the chest. The man got a surprised look on his face and crumpled to the floor. Blood spread out under him. Tate moved a little closer and nudged him with the toe of his boot. When the man groaned Tate shot him again, this time in the head. Then he moved on. He was heading toward the library without conscious intent. It was a familiar place in a school that felt so unfamiliar at the moment. It was just like a dream.

He passed a bank of phones; one of the receivers was off the hook and swaying but he paid it no mind. The girl hiding in the bathroom right beside it prayed that her mother, who she'd been hysterically trying to tell what was happening, wouldn't speak loudly enough through it to alert the passing killer. Her prayers were answered, by luck if not God.

Ahead Tate saw movement. He shot at the darting forms and one of them collapsed. The other got away. Tate kept going. When he rounded the next corner a whole group of people ran screaming in the other direction. They'd heard gunfire but had been disoriented by the echoes and had gone the wrong way. He fired into the panicking flock several times but only one of them dropped.

Tate thought it would be fun, watching them run. He loved to scare people - it always gave him such a giddy rush. But he was too amped up to feel a rush now. The drugs in his system were fizzing too much in his head and veins for him to feel anything more than that. The world kept popping in and out of darkness. He'd be in one place then he'd blink and he'd find himself in another area of the school entirely. It was like sleep walking. Each person he shot should have been another victory but he didn't feel anything. Nothing at all. No satisfaction, no remorse. He felt nothing but a growing sense of disappointment and the electrocuted buzz of the drugs.

He forced his way into the library. He could hear them in there, whispering in fear from their lurking places. They were scared. He felt nothing, though he wanted to. He tried whistling. You had to feel something if you were whistling. He picked a song he associated with vengeful bloodshed. But the tune did nothing for him. Nothing.

He wanted very badly to feel something. Anything. That was the whole point: To feel. He wanted to feel satisfied. Vindicated. Righteous. He wanted them to feel how he had felt every day he'd attended school at Westfield. He wanted them to feel punished for not accepting him. For making him hate who he was. He wanted them to see what they'd turned him into. But he could tell they weren't getting it. The fear they felt was nothing without understanding the anger and the suffering and feeling like your head was going to rip apart from being so full of black stuff. They would never understand.

"Why?!"

The girl's scream penetrated the wall that the snorted powder had put between him and humanity. That one question assured him that they didn't understand. He thought about giving her an answer but it would take too long and no matter what he said, she wouldn't get it. He could tell by her tears that she was too much of the world to ever accept the why. She was too locked in her own blind existence. Even if he told her why, she just wouldn't get it. She was too hysterical, too flesh and blood to comprehend.

So he shot her too, freeing her from her meat cage. She wouldn't have to feel anything now. No fear, no pain, no judgment or pressure or guilt or hate or isolation or anything. She was as free as he was now.

He blinked and some kid under the copier was talking to him. He blinked again and the school was behind him. He was heading for the alley behind the school where all the smokers used to go. No one was there now. He was all alone. He blinked and he was in his room. The SWAT team was filling it up while his mother screamed somewhere behind them. And then he saw Nora. And, for the first time all day - for the first time in months - he felt peace.

...

2018 - October 31, around noon

Ben shoved his hands in his pockets as he crossed the deserted parking lot. Even though he knew no living person could see him and there were none around anyway, he still felt weird heading into a school on a weekend when no one was there.

The school was dark inside but when he tried the door it opened freely. He had a feeling it wouldn't have opened so readily for a living person. He went inside. The hall past the second set of glass doors was even darker than it had looked from the parking lot. But he smelled the unmistakable scent of food. Cafeteria food. It smelled as about as unappetizing as it had when he'd been a teen.

Ben didn't know the layout of the school very well so he tried to orient on Chloe. It wasn't like being at the house though. This place was vast, like a network of caves. He could sense others somewhere nearby but he couldn't tell exactly where or who or how many. They were all higher up, on the second floor somewhere. So Ben took the nearest staircase up.

He found himself in another long, dark hall. This one stretched past several banks of lockers as well as a compliment of doors he assumed led to classrooms. Ben started down the hall and suddenly there she was. She looked exactly like she had the last time two times he saw her, right down to her short skirt and bouncy ponytail. It occurred to him that her wound wasn't the only thing that was frozen in the moment.

She met him midway between a group of double-stacked lockers. "Hi," she smiled shyly.

"Hey, Chloe," he said. "I am so sorry about earlier. Hayden... She's trapped in the house too. A lot of us are. She's kind of a hot-head. I hope she didn't scare you."

"I'm all right," the girl said. She didn't want to admit how badly rattled she'd been. "Did... Did Tate kill both of you too?"

Ben shook his head quickly. "Oh, no. Some maniacs who broke into my house killed me. He didn't kill Hayden either." He decided not to burden her with the complicated details of whose fault Hayden's death was.

"Is... Is she mad at us?" Chloe asked.

Ben smiled reassuringly and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Don't worry about her. She and I had a real long talk. She won't bother you."

... ...

In the very back of the basement there was a small, windowless crypt of a room. It was originally intended as a panic room in case of home invasion but Charles had hollowed it out to store the souls of the women he'd destroyed for Hayden. Brilliant surgeon that he was, Dr. Montgomery found use for the tortured souls by stitching them together and binding them to a corporeal form as one grotesquely functioning unit. The melding process was excruciatingly painful for the ghosts and if their deaths hadn't driven them mad, sharing control over a malformed semi-physical body surely did.

It was into this mass that Charles inserted Hayden. It was his hope that her drive and anger would give the beast purpose. So he made her the dominant portion of the centipede-like monstrosity. Then he sealed her and her body-sisters in the chamber until he had need of them.

... ...

Chloe smiled up at Ben, timid and sweet. Ben couldn't resist. He had to kiss her. She let him and, like before, she returned the gesture with enthusiasm. In short order her back was against the lockers and his hand was up her skirt again and then down in her panties, making her gasp and moan so deliciously. It didn't take long to get her off. Ben's cock was straining hard against his pants. He freed it with a quick tug at his fly. He didn't bother trying to take her panties off this time. He just tugged them to the side, grabbed one of her thighs and shoved himself in.

She moaned, a sound that made him only want her more. The locker door behind her rattled as he fucked her. He wasn't so gentlemanly this time but she didn't want a gentleman and he knew it. She scratched at his back with her manicured nails and she nipped at his neck and lips. It was fiery-hot sex, a taboo that he never could have gotten away with if he was alive.

They were so wrapped up in the moment that neither of them noticed Kyle down at the end of the hall and he was too stunned to do anything but stare for several moments. Then he turned and ran. He didn't stop running till he was all the way down in the courtyard. There he collapsed on one of the stone benches, put his hands over his face and cried. It didn't last long and when the fit passed he sat there glaring into the courtyard, cracking his knuckles.

...

Author's Note:

The name of this chapter is a tribute to the first horror movie I ever saw in a theater: Return to Horror High. Dr. Montgomery's latest monster is a blatant nod to The Human Centipede. The sequel sucked but the original was the freakiest thing I've seen in a while. Even freakier were the Etsy things I saw later that were inspired by the movie. But that's another weird story entirely.

More apologies for Ben and his creepiness. He just won't let up. "..a taboo he never could have gotten away with if he was alive." He thinks he can get away with it dead? Sheesh.

He doesn't get to be in the next chapter. I'm turning that over to Tate's family, old and new, as they all find out about his plans for going to Westfield. Chad, Patrick and Constance all get a chance to have their say about the whole matter. Will it make a difference? You'll have to come back in a few days to find out.