Disclaimer: Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! So here's the new chapter! Enjoy!
C/W: Implied character death.
Darkness.
Frigid air.
Nothingness.
Kris floated in empty blackness like a bottomless ocean with no surface. But then he felt the ground beneath his feet. But where was he now? He didn't know.
All he could hear was the buzzing and humming of ceiling lights overhead. And then came the dim glow of fluorescent lights, revealing himself to be standing in….some kind of store.
A small conscience store, no doubt. Yet for some reason, it looked quite bigger from Kris's perspective than it really was.
"Get back!"
"Ok, chill, man. Just chill."
"I said get the fuck back!"
"Just calm down okay?"
Those voices. They sounded familiar. Kris has heard them too many times before whenever he falls asleep. It was always the same. The tall, dark-skinned man trying to keep the other person chill, trying to diffuse the drastic situation before-
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The deafening blasts that ruptured into the calm air, filling the silence with three echoing explosions, the heavy sound of a large body thudding against the hard-tiled floor, the sound of a weapon cocking between each fire.
Kris could only just shield himself and cover his ears to drown out the noise. He couldn't even see what was going on. Everything was a blur. Everything was too fuzzy to see, save for the unmistakable 44. Magnum held tightly in the one man's hand and the lifeless body of the tall, dark-skinned man staring back at Kris with cold, dead glassy eyes laying in a small puddle of his own blood.
He….he was dead.
Stone dead.
Kris could've sworn he felt his heart stop, his bones feel brittle and his mind go haywire. The puddle of blood only got bigger and bigger until it flooded into a pool. Not just a pool, a lake. Not just a lake, but an entire ocean of dark and foreboding crimson.
But then an unnatural breeze hit his face.
Looking around, the blood was gone. But now the sky was on fire and he literally saw red and orange and yellow all around like hellfire. Embers and ashes floating and fluttering around like his face and everywhere else like a flurry of fire snowflakes. Kris meandered further down the landscape, trying to make sense of this new locale. Mountains, a forest of dead trees, then snow.
Thick, white layers of snow. None of this made any sense.
Kris couldn't describe any other way, but now there seemed to be the sound of war cries, the sounds of metal blades striking and clattering and cluttering against each other. Then there was roaring. Inhuman roars and the glimpse of the humongous, beastly figures in the distance as if the earth itself was coming alive. Where the hell was he? What was going on? Why was he here?
Icy chills and tingles ran up Kris's spine as what sounded like three blaring, baritone blows of a loud war horn was heard off, permeating through the air and drowning out all noises within the environment.
After that, nothing. Dead quiet, silence. No more sounds.
But then something else caught his eye. At first, it was a light glow in the forest just a few meters from where he stood. Curious, Kris followed the trail to investigate what it was. It looked to be a hammer. A large, odd-looking, triangular-shaped hammer with strange symbols and runes on it. What's even stranger is that it was producing bolts of electricity.
"Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up."
Said the hushed voices. On and on again, his mind raced. But he inched away from the hammer, looking afraid. From behind him, a silhouette in the mist with a large, rotund boy figure reached their hands on, gripping Kris's shoulders, then forcefully shoving the boy towards the hammer as if commanding him to pick it up. Seeing no other choice, Kris breathed heavily and sweat bullets before he hesitantly reached a shaky hand out as the bolts got more erratic and unstable, Kris's shadow morphing that of the figure.
Finally, after what felt like an hour or so, Kris gripped the handle of that mysterious hammer. Volts and bolts of lightning coursed through his veins as he wailed with agony and anguish, trying to fight back the pain. Storm clouds rolled in the sky overhead, lightning struck the land, thunder roared and bellowed, then a single bolt shot down from the sky, striking Kris holding the weapon.
Everything lit up brightly.
And finally, with a clap of thunder, everything stopped once a final strike of lightning bathed the land in a light that revealed Kris's shadow not in a completely different form as he now held the hammer, then unconsciously raised it up and jerked it high above his head as if presenting a trophy as it was…
The hammer of the gods.
An extremely loud clap of thunder woke Kris right up as there came the sound of a huge thunderstorm brewing outside. The sound of the thunder was so incredibly and intensely loud that it practically made the house quiver and shake a tad. Rain pattered down on the house and Kris removed his CPAP for a moment to get up and see that it rained hard outside and a powerful gust of wind blew like a real tropical storm.
But this wasn't something to worry about. He needed to get to sleep. So he returned to bed, putting his sleep mask back on and dozed off.
It was just another average morning in the Bengtsson household.
"Kris? It's time to get up!" His mother shouted up the stairs. But no answer came. "Kris? Hello?"
When there still came no response, Elsa huffed and marched upstairs.
"That boy better not still be in bed. Kris! Get up! Don't make me come in there!" Elsa strongly ordered, now getting annoyed. She wrapped at the door once.
Twice.
Still nothing.
At this point, she was getting really impatient.
"Kris, you're gonna be late for school if you don't you're butt up right now! I mean it!" Now reaching her breaking point, she flung open the door, ready to give him an earful before she stopped in her tracks and her eyes widened.
Looking all around the bedroom, symbols were written all over the walls. Not just any symbols. Nordic runes on every wall, even on the ceiling. And there was Kris, sitting cross-legged on the floor, still in his pajamas, motionless as if he was in a deep trance.
With a marker clutched in his hand. And he was muttering some sort of old Nordic language under his breath.
"Kris?" She spoke, but he still just sat there quietly. Elsa got closer and closer to him, trying to get his attention. "Kris? KRIS!"
Once she yelled his name the third time, Kris finally snapped out of it. He gasped and shook, panting like he just ran a mile and tried to settle his breathing. Then he looked all around his room and was in awe and surprise at what he saw, the same as Elsa was when she came in. Then he saw the marker in his hand before tossing it away.
"Did you do all of this?" His mother asked him.
"Hey, is he up yet? Because I would really like to get-Oh my god." Stig's voice drifted through as he came upstairs and entered the room before he halted his rant to see the runes decorating his brother's bedroom walls.
"What….what happened here? Was is all this?"
"I don't know." Kris stammered with a blank stare.
Elsa decided to drive both boys to school. After getting over what they saw that morning, they had to brush it off for now and try to move on; not let it ruin their day. However, Elsa took a mental note to set Kris up for an appointment with his psychiatrist or perhaps a head shrink for that matter. Once Morten took a look at the runes on the walls, he was quite possibly quite possibly bewildered. He even stated that it was amazing that Kris was able to perform such a feat, much to Elsa's ire.
The silence in the car felt awkward, so much that she had to say something or else she would lose it.
"So did the storm last night scare either of you?" She suddenly asked.
"I love storms. They relax me." Kris answered.
"It takes a lot to frighten me." Stig admitted. "There are only a few tiny things that I'm scared of, not that I'll admit what they are."
"That's fine with me."
As they pulled up to the front of the school. Stig got out of the car with his bookbag and Kris was about to get out, too, and join his brother when Elsa grabbed his arm, giving him a look of concern.
"Kris, if there's something going on with you, I really want to know." She said, pleading with him. "Please. I want to help."
"Mom, I…" Kris hesitated, then sighed. "I just don't know what to do."
"You know you can always talk to me, right?"
"I will, mom. But it's not easy, okay?"
"Look at me." Kris reluctantly met his mothers blue eyes, filled with a serious flare. "If it's because of Mrs. Lee, then I assure you, she's only helping you in the long run. But if it gets to a point where you feel like you can't work there anymore, let me know. No one is forcing you to keep working for her. We can always find other side jobs for you."
"I'm good. Really. The job's not even that hard." Her son tried to reason with her.
"It's not about how well you do at it, it's about how you feel about doing it." His mother insisted firmly. "Kris, you need to tell me these things. I'm your mother, understand?"
"I try to, okay? I really try, but it's just so hard." He said somberly. "I'm sorry, but I have to go."
And with that, Kris sadly took the backpack and hopped out of the car, leaving his mother in puzzlement as he walked toward the building. Communication between them on certain sensitive subjects has been difficult at best. Kris could barely bring himself to even bring that fateful day. The day that he's been dreaming about ever since. That's been haunting him day and night. Just thinking about it made him feel sick inside. Every time he tried to talk about it, no words ever came out. Where would he even begin?
Did he not want to worry her? Yes. Did he want to keep making her think he was doing okay? Maybe. But how can he keep it to himself? She's doing her very best for him. But every night, he could never unsee the dead look in his eyes, the sight of his blood on the floor, the sound of the gun firing at him three times until his body fell to the ground. But what about the dream he had the night before? The one where he found that mysterious hammer in a forest? What could that mean? That was unlike any other dream he's had in the past.
For some reason, it felt so real. Like he was actually there.
"Hey, chump, check it out. Someone's stealing your girl." Stig interrupted Kris's thoughts with a snarky tone as he showed his brother a drawn poster he found on the school wall. Kris saw that it depicted Mei and some guy named Devon kissing, saying something like 'Mei + Devon'.
"What the fuck?" He cursed.
Indeed so. In fact, looking around, there were more of those embarrassing multi-colored posters littered across the school walls. Why would Mei suddenly be interested in some guy she's never even met? And why would there suddenly be posters of her making out with this guy everywhere? Kris had a strong feeling that this was the work of Tyler. That weedy little prick must've found out that Mei had some kind of puppy crush on this dude and took the opportunity to make fun of her about it and that made Kris mad.
"Tyler." He hissed, snatching the poster out of Stig's hand.
"Woah, easy there, magilla."
Then Roar and Rudolf showed up, looking equally confused about what the heck was going on.
"Hey, guys. This is weird, right?" stated Roar worriedly.
"I'll say." Rudolf agreed, observing one of the posters next to the water fountains. "Someone's really committed to their art. A real Picasso, if I do say so myself."
This earned him a smack upside the head by none other than Stig.
"Quiet!" Stig growled before tearing the poster off the wall, ripping it up into pieces and tossing it in the trash. "There's nothing artistic about this!"
"Guys! Guys!" They both looked up to see Miriam, Abby and Priya running up to them.
"I see you've noticed Tyler's little campaign ad." snarled Miriam, glaring at the posters.
"Oh, yeah, Propaganda 101 right here." Stig retorted. "How the hell did that little shit even have enough time to make all of these in one freaking night?"
"I have no idea." Priya replied, standing next to the goth boy, resting her elbow on his shoulder. Stig hid a blush when she got this close to him. "That jerkwad is just always ready to make us look like idiots."
"Anyone heard of a copy machine?" asked Roar matter-of-factly.
"Right…"
"You ladies want some crushed testies to go with that broiled Tyler. I'll get the seasoning if you want." joked Stig sardonically and almost sadistically.
"Yum-yum. Sounds delicious." said the Indian girl with a smirk as she and him locked eyes and they both grinned at each other. Roar, Rudolf, Miram and Abby both eyed the two goths with a combination of admiration and unease.
"Do you guys have to flirt so creepily?" Abby cringed.
"Yeah, you scare me sometimes." Rudolf added in agreement to the Korean girl's words.
"Who's Devon anyway?" asked Kris, wanting to get to the bottom of that mystery.
"Devon is this cashier working at the Daisy Mart. We were kinda checking him out yesterday." Miriam explained.
"And dare I say, he's sweating with hotness!" Abby beamed with a devastatingly thirsty look on her otherwise adorable face. "Did I mention he has soft hair?"
"Not now, Abby." Miriam told her strictly as this was not the time to be fawning over him now, especially since Mei was being publicly humiliated at school for crushing on him. Rudolf even eyed the plump, purple girl with a noticeable amount of jealousy. Abby's always been a little boy-crazy and kinda hurts to see her flirt with and obsess over other cute boys.
"Awww."
"I could never compete with him." The cowardly Inuit boy muttered grumpily, crossing his arms.
"Aw, come on, hon. Don't be that way." Abby gave him a reassuring kiss on the cheek and he smiled stupidly. "A growing woman has urges, you know."
"Does Mei even like this guy?" snapped Stig, looking at another poster. "Look at him. He looks like a hobo."
"Pfft. Mei said the same thing about him yesterday." Priya replied.
Kris then turned and looked to see Mei stepping in through the entrance, albeit not looking very much like her usual cheery self. She was now wearing a red toque on her head, covering all her hair. Which was weird. Since when does she even wear a toque? And why would she suddenly be wearing it now?
And there you have it.
Kris is haunted by a traumatize event that he's been reliving in his nightmares for a long time now. Something regarding the death of a loved one. But only now has Kris started to realize something new happening to him. Something unnatural and something that he can't quite explained thoroughly. And what's worse is that he's unable to bring it up to his mother.
Next Chapter: Another day at school proceeds as normal with Kris and his friends encountering the Monroe siblings again. Apart from Kris discovering odd new changes within himself like superhuman strength and being able to speak Old Norse (despite never learning it), an even bigger surprise beholds him and the others as they discover the Mei has the power to transform into a giant Red Panda when feeling strong emotions.
Next Update: February 17, 2023