This was a mistake
What have I done
Pseudo-crack I guess?
No plans to continue this but I might
Egg 1.1
If the eyes were a window to the soul, then Taylor Hebert could only conclude that the infernal creature staring back at her didn't have one.
There was nothing there to see. Only an abyss of darkness, a black hole that sucked in all light, was present behind that gaze.
Then the thing opened its mouth, revealing a pit from which nothing could escape before it unleashed its great evil upon the world.
"Honk."
Taylor screamed into her pillow.
In response, the goose raised its head, looking down at the girl occupying the other end of the bed with an imperious gaze.
Taylor paused her screaming to glare back with a fury that could melt a thousand suns. If looks could kill at that moment, then the goose would have died many, many, many times over.
Yet the goose remained.
Taylor let out a world-weary sigh.
"There is no god."
(~)
The change to her life had occurred just a few days ago. Just after Taylor had gotten trapped in her locker by the trio when she was in the hospital trying her best not to die, she had noticed the thing sitting by the windowsill, its head turned to the side, looking her dead in the eyes. She had lapsed back into unconsciousness soon later but when she woke up again, it had still been there, not having moved from its spot.
Taylor hadn't known what to think of it at first. She knew better now of course, but she had initially thought that it must have been some sort of pet that had been left in her room. A strange pet to be sure, but it was the only reasonable conclusion that had come to her mind at that moment.
That had been a mistake, both the assumption of the animal being a pet and the assumption that reason had anything to do with the situation. Hindsight is twenty-twenty after all, and she needed glasses for a reason.
The… goose, if it could even be called that, hadn't taken kindly to being ignored. Much the opposite in fact.
Wings had flapped, honks had bellowed and by the time one of the nurses had slammed the door open, called by Taylor's terrified yelling, most of the room had been trashed beyond recognition.
At first, the nurse had seemed like an angel, sent to save Taylor from the creature, however, Taylor's gratitude had quickly vanished as the nurse's eyes swept across the room, entirely ignoring the demon flapping its wings against the wall to focus on the only human in the room.
Taylor had never felt such horror and disbelief before in her entire life.
The nurse had then proceeded to lay into her, her! as if this was her fault and not the devil in goose's skin that was trying to break down the wall with nothing but its wings.
Taylor had talked, argued and bargained with the nurse, pointing to the demon, and pleading for a guilty verdict. Yet she had soon understood her efforts were for naught, as the nurse had completely ignored the very obvious goose on the way to her bedside.
After that, Taylor had had no words. There had simply been no way that the English language could express the feelings rolling her over at that moment.
And ever since waking up in the hospital, the damn thing had kept following her, invisible, and inaudible to literally everyone except for her.
Worse still, it was constantly honking.
Sleeping with the thing in the room had been difficult. Waking up had been just as hard.
Well, the waking up part itself hadn't been very hard exactly, that had been quite easy actually. Waking up at the proper time, however, had been much less simple.
Turns out the thing didn't operate on the same clock that everything else did.
The sun hadn't even risen before the thing had gone off like a rooster, honking into Taylor's ears while she was deep in sleep.
By the second day, Taylor had started to lose her mind.
By the third, she had started to plot murder.
Now at the fourth, she was finally ready to act.
Taylor watched as the thing hopped off her bed, casually strolling towards the door, clearly underestimating her as a threat.
She would make that thing regret it.
Everything was in place. As the days had gone by, she carefully jotted down notes on how the thing behaved. Though it was invisible and inaudible, it seemed to have an anti-Manton limit. Instead of affecting everything but people, it only affected people. She had seen the damn thing interacting with a crow before, which had hopped away from it as it approached. Additionally, it seemed it could be touched as the demon had bitten her hand when she had tested out her theories.
That had hurt, but if she managed to rid the world of this evil, then Taylor was willing to consider it worth it.
Still, for this to work out, everything had to go perfectly.
So with bated breath, Taylor watched as the goose reached up with its beak to the door handle, only for it to remain unmoving as the thing tried to open it.
Meanwhile, Taylor opened her drawer and put the hockey helmet she had found in the basement. It didn't fit her very well, on account of it being her father's, however, it would work well enough.
As the thing turned back towards her, one eye trained on her head with an impatient gaze, Taylor took the opportunity to jump off of her bed, ignoring the furious honks, before leaping at the thing with her bedsheets in hand.
The two went down in a tangle of limbs and sheets, as wings and arms flew against each other, separated only by cotton and polyester.
Taylor panicked.
The thing's beak nipped at her hands through the sheets, jabbed at her body and hit her helmet repeatedly. The tide of battle turned as Taylor's initial ambush failed to down the thing, and as she didn't have much to defend herself with, eventually she flopped down onto the carpet, defeated and spent, the sheets half draped over her body, littered with several tears across its area.
The demon, meanwhile, waddled onto her back before sitting down on it.
Taylor could almost feel the smugness radiating off of it. Clenching her hands, she reaffirmed her mission in her heart. By month's end, the thing would be gone. No matter what it took. Retribution would come. She would taste the sweet nectar of vengeance soon. The goose would not escape her wrath.
It took thirty minutes for the animal to get off her back.
(~)
"Taylor."
"Oh… hey Dad."
Taylor froze on her way down the stairs as she turned toward her father, who was standing in front of the wall opposite the bottom of the stairs. She didn't know how to react. To be honest, she had forgotten about her dad a bit in the wake of the thing intruding into her life unasked, but now that she was standing face to face with him, everything came back.
It seemed that her father didn't know how to respond either, as he just stood there, clearly wanting to say something yet failing to actually say it. Silence dragged on as neither father nor daughter knew what to say before Danny finally opened his mouth.
"Look Taylo-"
"HONK"
Taylor didn't quite know what happened next. One second she was waiting nervously for what her father was about to say, then the next something slammed into her back, sending her careening down the stairs toward the floor below.
With a mighty thud, she hit the ground, sprawled out awkwardly on her face in front of her dad, her incipient scream suddenly cut off by the fact that she was now kissing the carpet.
"TAYLOR!"
Taylor groaned in response as she heard her dad kneel down beside her.
"Taylor, are you alright?"
Taylor shakingly pushed herself off of the floor, accepting her dad's help as she blinked, suddenly realising that her glasses had fallen off. Her sight was blurry and her forehead hurt, though when she raised her hand to her head, she couldn't feel any blood, which reassured her if only a little.
"Yeah, I think I'm fine. Still hurts though."
She turned to her dad, who froze in response.
Silence washed over the room once again as Taylor realised something.
When was the last time I actually spoke with Dad?
Shame rose up as she failed to find an answer. That was a bit of exaggeration, sure, as they had talked every so often when they passed each other, however, they were almost always short greetings and goodbyes at best. She had been so focused on the go-
Taylor spun, causing her dad to flinch in surprise as she narrowed her sight onto the white blur standing halfway up the stairs. Raising her hand, she pointed at it, fury and anger coursing through her veins.
"YOU."
"Honk."
"...Taylor? Are you sure you're okay?"
Taylor paused just as she was about to continue her rant, shutting her mouth as she saw how her father must have seen the situation. His daughter, yelling at something that wasn't there after falling from the stairs. It wouldn't be too far of a reach to conclude that she was at least a bit off in the head.
"I'm fine. I just remembered something."
Taylor's father looked unconvinced.
Gee, I wonder why.
"...alright Taylor. Do you need anything?"
"Um, no I don't think so."
Danny Hebert looked concerned. Taylor tensed, ready to bear the full weight of her father's questioning but instead her father simply nodded and walked away after a moment of tension, looking defeated.
Taylor cringed internally. She didn't know whether to feel grateful or bad about her father's condition, as it had allowed her to avoid further questions she really wanted to avoid, but on the other hand, her dad did seem less and less present by the day.
Then again…
"Honk."
She had bigger things to worry about.
"Mark my words, you will pay for this."
"Honk."
"You think I'm joking? You'll see…"
"Honk."
Taylor opened her mouth again before realising she didn't have a response to that. Still, she wasn't about to let the goose have the last word so she narrowed her eyes before responding.
"You're good, but don't think I won't get you eventually."
With that Taylor turned and speed walked to the kitchen so that the goose didn't have a chance to respond further. Just behind her, she could hear the faint sound of waddling, following her just as it had for the past few days.
"Honk."
It took a lot of effort not to turn around and respond. Yet, even so, she restrained herself.
It's time would come soon. Very soon…
And when it did? She would throw the largest celebration in her life. She could even imagine it now…
"Honk."
Of course, that would come afterwards. For now, she would keep her eyes on the target.
"Honk."
Still, her initial plan had failed so she would need to come up with a new one. Something better, something that would put an end to the constant unceasing-
"Honk."
…that.
She would need resources, weapons, anything she could get her hands on.
(~)
Taylor approached the entrance to Winslow with trepidation. Returning to school was a strange experience. If her life had returned to normal after the locker incident, she would likely have lived in fear of this day, but going back to school had completely slipped her mind due to the thing that was waddling forward behind her.
And now she had to thank the goose for something…
Motherfu-
"Taylor?"
Taylor froze. She turned, uneasiness rising in her stomach. Red hair framing an all too familiar face greeted her.
Emma smiled.
Taylor knew that smile. It stretched wide, lighting up Emma's face, giving it a veneer of affability. Yet if you looked just a little bit further up, the light died and her eyes were an abyss of an unfeeling void. It was a smile that was meant to look good, to show the world that she was happy. Or at least, show that she wanted others to believe that she was happy. There was no doubt about there being delight in that smile, but that delight wasn't born out of joy. No, something else, something more sinister now hid behind that smile. It was the delight of a predator finding its prey.
Taylor hated it. It was a caricature of Emma's old smile. The one that she had shared when she was genuinely happy. The one that laughed uncaringly. The one that now seemed like a distant memory.
"Emma."
Emma stepped forward and Taylor couldn't help instinctively taking a step back.
"I didn't know you were out of the hospital already. Why didn't you text me, I would have visited."
Her tone grated. The false sympathy was sickening. Almost literally. Taylor could feel the bile rising in her throat.
Emma lifted one finger to her mouth slowly, mimicking a thinking motion as she tapped her chin with her finger. Taylor knew it was a facade though. If Emma had more mental bandwidth than a goldfish, she would be surprised. There was a reason she had only been able to attend Winslow after all.
"Oh, but you don't have a phone, do you? A shame."
Emma tutted. Taylor meanwhile struggled to not blow a gasket. That comment hit just off the mark but close enough that Taylor knew Emma could have said something much worse. Could have but didn't.
Taylor doubted it was mercy. In fact, she knew it wasn't. More likely, Emma was building up to something and causing another incident so soon would ruin it.
"What do you want, Emma."
"Getting a bit ahead of yourself don't you think, Taylor? Who says I want anything?"
Your tone, your smile, you being here talking to me.
"Look, Emma, class is starting in a few minutes. It was terrible seeing you around, bye."
Taylor continued her way into the school, watching Emma out of the corner of her eye.
The opposing girl simply smiled even wider, before giving Taylor a little wave as she passed.
Taylor ignored her and walked to her first class of the day. For the first time since the incident, the soft paddles of the goose following her seemed almost reassuring.
That wouldn't save it from her wrath of course, but she would enjoy it at the moment.
(~)
First block passed without any incident. This wasn't particularly surprising as it didn't have a member of the trio in it, but at this point, Taylor was half expecting one of them, Sophia probably, to kick open the door in the middle of class just to kick her ass. It wasn't as if any of the teachers would care after all. Taylor knew they saw everything, and they knew that she knew and they both knew that they wouldn't do anything about it.
After all, Emma's father was a lawyer. And to think that she ever believed that Alan Barnes was someone she could trust.
Regardless, even without the Trio, class wasn't something that she enjoyed. There was no point doing any homework, the Trio would just steal it before she could turn it in, and while grades were important to her, they had become noticeably less important after the bullying had started.
The goose sitting on her desk, honking in her face and blocking her view of the board wasn't helping much either regarding her sanity.
Halfway through the class, Taylor gave up and stopped paying attention entirely. If the teacher called on her, she would throw the duck at him.
Thankfully the rest of the block passed without the need to do that, but as Taylor stood up, a familiar sight greeted her as she entered the hallway.
As the rest of her classmates either hurried away or meandered over to their respective gangs, because Winslow, Taylor held tight to her khaki green bag as Sophia smiled viciously at her from down the hall.
A/N:
I had this idea a long, long time ago and this chapter has been sitting in my docs for months ever since I was inspired by Administrative Mishaps by OxfordOctopus (if you haven't already, check it out, it's one of the best crossover fics I've ever read). I never thought I would post it as I wasn't sure if it was good or not but as I don't plan on writing more, I've decided to post it because why not. AP exams are coming up I probably won't be updating any of my other fics as well. We'll see though. Feedback is appreciated in the reviews.