by K X Douglas
“To fit in, mostly.”
“Well, that sucks,” she said as she leaned on his shoulder. “Maybe we can do that another time. Maybe after midterms.”
Peter threw his head back and groaned.
“Shit, I completely forgot about midterms!”
Heidi giggled to herself.
“Well, don’t worry about it now. Like Eric said, we’re here to unwind.”
He looked over at everyone and thought back to the parties he had been to before everything happened. Back then, as strange as it was to refer to a month and a half ago as “back then”, he didn’t have to worry about whether or not the world was going to end. Back then, his greatest concern was hiding his true nature, but in comparison, that didn’t seem like a very big deal at all.
Back then, he would never have fathomed that peoples’ very lives would depend on his actions.
His hand found Heidi’s, and they looked each other in the eyes. Right as he leaned in to kiss her, he felt someone grab his other hand. They both looked over to Serena, who had been sitting next to him the whole time. After a moment he felt Heidi bite into the lobe of his ear.
“I have an idea,” she whispered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“You have an idea?” Peter asked. “What do you mean?”
“Eric was telling me about this one party you all went to right after you moved into the dorms,” Heidi said. “It was at one of the four-person dorms, and Serena and Isabelle were there. He said you and Serena got really stoned and went home together.”
“Oh, right. I forgot that I can get stoned.”
“Hey Serena,” Heidi said. “You still have your hookah?”
“Yeah, it’s at my place. Why? You in the mood for a toke?”
“I was thinking we should move the party to somewhere more private. You okay with us heading to your place?”
“I’m okay with it,” Serena said. “I’ll ask Isabelle.” She turned to face Isabelle, who was seated at the other side of the table. “Hey, Isabelle, are you okay with moving the party to our place?”
“Why our place? You’re not planning on getting stoned, are you?”
Serena let out a sigh.
“Alright, guess we’re not gonna go to our place. You okay with your dorm, Heidi?”
“Sure,” she said. “Hey, Victoria! You okay with moving the party to our place?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” she said. “What are we planning?”
“You’ll see.”
***
After paying their tab, they left the bar and went to Heidi and Victoria’s dorm. Serena fetched her hookah, while Lachlan stopped by his dorm to grab a bottle of vodka. They all gathered around the coffee table in the living room.
Serena prepared the hookah and brought one of the stems to her lips. After watching her, Heidi and Victoria each took one of the stems and inhaled.
Peter toked a few times and then tried his best to sink into the couch. For once, he was glad that he had an opportunity to sit back and think of absolutely nothing.
They all know what I really am now, and they don’t care, so I don’t have to worry about exposing myself here.
Time slowly lost meaning as they all continued to drink and, with the exception of Isabelle, smoke.
Why is it that, even with all of these people willing to help me, I tried to take on Kevin Wilkinson alone? Now that I think about it, they were willing to put themselves in harm’s way to help me…they were willing to lay down their lives.
“Peter? Hey, Peter, you okay?” someone asked. He couldn’t tell who it was.
Peter lifted his head off of the couch cushion. To him it was a downright Sisyphean task.
“Huh? Um, yeah, I’m okay. What’s going on?”
“Dude, we’re going to make a piñata of Kevin Wilkinson and beat the shit out of it! You want in?”
“How do you make a piñata?” he asked.
“We gotta go to the craft store and buy supplies. It’s pretty close to campus; we can walk there.”
“Won’t we get lost?” Peter asked.
“Nah, we’ve got GPS.”
They all left the dorm and followed Serena - was it Serena? Peter couldn’t tell - to the nearest craft store. The city passed by him in a monotonous haze as he looked at the ground the whole way. He felt someone grasp his hand and lead him back to campus; it was like travelling through a tunnel of fog where time and distance held no meaning.
Suddenly, they were back at the dorm, and everyone began laying the supplies out on the kitchen table. Papier-mâché was messy work, and soon they were up to their elbows in it. None of them really knew what they were doing, so the piñata came out looking like something one would find in the clearance section of a dollar store.
“Wait…what are we gonna break it with?” Serena asked. “We don’t have any baseball bats.”
“I guess we could use my broom?” Victoria asked.
“That works,” Serena said.
Victoria grabbed a broom from the coat closet and laid it on the floor next to the complete piñata.
“Aren’t you supposed to hang a piñata?” Eric asked.
“We don’t really have anything to hang it from,” Heidi said. “I don’t want to risk breaking the lights and getting fined a bunch of money.”
“Good point,” Eric replied.
“So, how are we gonna do this?” Peter asked.
“Just like we’d do it at a birthday party!” Serena said. “We line up, then the person in front puts on a blindfold and we spin them around a lot, then we give them the broom and have them try and hit the piñata.”
“We need a blindfold, though,” Isabelle said.
“Uhh…oh, I’ve got an idea!” Heidi said. She ran off to her bedroom and came back holding a scarf. “Everyone line up, then the person who ends up in first has to put the blindfold on.”
Peter watched as they all trundled into a line. He took his place at the end.
“Isabelle, go to the back of the line!” Serena said. “You aren’t as fucked up as the rest of us since you didn’t smoke any weed, so you’re basically cheating!”
“Fine,” she grumbled as she walked up behind Peter.
Lachlan was first. He tied the scarf over his eyes and grabbed the broom. After spinning around three times, he looked as if he would collapse at any moment, but he somehow stayed standing. He wandered off until he ran into the couch, at which point he stopped and turned towards the piñata. Eventually, after several clumsy swings, he managed to strike it.
“Okay, I’m next,” Heidi said.
Lachlan untied the scarf and gave both it and the broom over to her.
She managed to strike the piñata across the head, putting a tiny dent in it.
This continued until it was Peter’s turn. He put on the blindfold and spun around, not entirely understanding why people did that. Apparently it made them dizzy. It would have been fairly simple for him to find the piñata even while blindfolded…if he were sober.
He was not sober, and thus it was quite hard for him.
It took a few rounds for the piñata to be destroyed; even though it was of quite shoddy construction, they weren’t hitting it very hard.
“Now I’m hungry,” Serena said. “Does anyone have any candy? It’s kind of disappointing to have a piñata but no candy.”
“Remember, we just wanted to make a piñata of…what’s his name…Kevin…so we could beat the shit out of it?” Victoria asked.
“Oh, yeah! I remember now,” Serena said.
They promptly scoured the kitchen for whatever food they could find that didn’t have to be cooked. Peter simply watched, as he didn’t have to eat to survive.
Suddenly, Serena sat next to him.
“This really reminds me of the party we went to at the beginning of the year,” she said.
“That wasn’t all that long ago, come to think of it,” Peter said. “But it feels like it is because of everything that’s happened since.”
<
br /> “It’s pretty wild, isn’t it?
“Hey, Peter?” Victoria asked. She was suddenly right beside him.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“I want to see you turn into that thing again. I wanna see what you can do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I bet you can do all sorts of weird shit!”
Peter sighed, transformed into his shoggoth form and slithered out of his clothes. He formed several mouths across his mass to speak.
“So how did you come across your identity as Peter?” Silas asked.
“I made it up,” Peter said. “From whole cloth.”
“So that was you looking like Professor Carter back then?” Silas asked. “You did that to disguise yourself?”
“Yeah,” Peter replied. “I can turn into other people, but it’s not automatic. I have to know what they look like because I micromanage every detail.”
“Does that mean you can turn into a copy of me?” Heidi asked.
“That’s easy,” Peter said as he shifted into a perfect doppelgänger of her.
“Whoa, what the fuck?” she said.
“Must be weird,” Peter said in a carbon copy of Heidi’s voice. “To see someone turn into you.”
“Ahhh, this is too trippy!” she said.
“It’s weirder looking at both of you, trust me,” Victoria said. “It’s like you had a long-lost twin or something.”
Heidi caressed Peter’s face with one hand while touching her own face with the other.
“You even feel the same. Holy shit.”
“What other stuff can you do?” Lachlan asked.
“What other stuff can you do?” Peter said in a perfect imitation. He turned back into his shoggoth form again.
“I can store things inside me. That’s how I managed to bring a gun into the conference room without anyone getting wise.”
“This is hilarious,” Heidi said. “I wanted an open relationship, but I’m dating someone who can turn into other people on a whim! Turn back into me for a second.”
“Um, okay,” Peter said.
He transformed back into a replica of Heidi.
“Oh, um, I should’ve put my clothes back on first,” he said. “Now everyone knows what you look like naked. Sorry.”
“They were going to anyways, babe,” she said before kissing him on the lips. “Why do you think I got us all together?”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh…”
Heidi put on a mischievous smile.
“Eric wanted us to get together to help you blow off some steam. And what’s the best way to do that?”
Peter blushed and sighed.
“Wait, I thought you wanted to go home with somebody else tonight?”
“I changed my mind. I want everyone to come home with me tonight. Wait, shit, that doesn’t work when we’re already at my place.”
She pounced on Peter and kissed him again, straddling him and pressing his head back into the cushions of the couch. After a few seconds, she broke off the kiss.
“Oh, and I want to see what you can really do. Use all those hands and mouths you’ve got.”
***
Peter was buried in naked people. He climbed out of the pile of flesh and pulled the mixture of dried papier-mâché and semen out of his bangs. Looking back, he saw that they were all still sleeping. Looking down at his body, he saw errant mouths protruding at random places from protoplasmic skin. After returning to his default human form, he excavated his clothes from the giant pile on the floor of Heidi’s bedroom and dressed himself.
Well, that certainly helped with the stress.
He looked back at the tangled mass of naked bodies, all locked in contented slumber. The appeal of sexual intercourse was still a complete mystery to him, but humans seemed to love it. Walking back to the bed that everyone was piled on, he poked Heidi’s face a couple of times until she began to stir.
“Wha…? Oh, hey. I forgot you don’t really need too much sleep. Or was that a lie, and you don’t need to sleep at all?”
“I don’t need to sleep at all. I’m gonna head out; I wanted to wake you so you can lock the door behind me.”
“Alright, just gimme a sec,” she said as she squirmed her way off of the bed.
After standing up, she stretched her arms above her head.
“Last night was incredible, by the way,” she said.
“It really was,” Peter replied.
“I need to run a train on you more often.”
“What?”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Oh, okay. Anyways, I’ve got class soon, so I’ve gotta go.”
“See you later.”
Peter stopped by his dorm to grab his books before entering the main campus building.
I still don’t really understand humans and sex. Sure, orgasms feel good, but people can pleasure themselves. Does it mean that much to have sex with a particular person? It’s not that I don’t like Heidi, or Lachlan, or the rest of them, but…
As he walked through the hallways on the way to his first class, Peter saw something out of the corner of his eye. Turning around, he saw a mi-go flying after a group of students, about to corner them.
Shit! I don’t have my gun on me. Even if I had it, I wouldn’t want to use it on campus, and I doubt bullets would do much to a mi-go anyways.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Immediately, he ran after the creature and pounced on it. It still managed to fly with his weight holding it down, if barely. He started punching what he believed to be its head, hoping that he would somehow be able to injure the creature without revealing his true form in public. Once he saw that it wasn’t working, he looked up to where the students had been standing.
They had already fled.
The mi-go made its strange buzzing noise as it tried to shake Peter off of its back.
“Oh, what’s this?” the beast asked. “I don’t remember that human summoning any shoggoths here.”
The creature finally threw Peter off, and he landed on his back a couple of feet away. It advanced towards him, pincers clacking, as it prepared to strike.
Suddenly, the creature burst into flame and shrivelled to death.
Peter turned around to see everyone gathered behind him. Moreover, they were all armed.
“Oh, you’re all up,” he said.
“Dude, how could we not be when the academy is basically under lockdown?” Eric asked.
“Right.”
“This has got to be Kevin’s doing,” Isabelle said. “If you can track him down through a private investigator, there’s no reason he can’t do the same to us. This has got to be retribution for our trying to kill him.”
Eric pulled out his phone. He looked as if he were about to dial 9-1-1 when Peter reached out and stopped him.
“There’s no need to call the authorities. I can handle this by myself.”
“No you fucking can’t, Peter!” Heidi shouted. “There’s a bunch of them this time. If you try to do this alone, people are going to die! You have to be able to trust us, Peter. There’s no future in a relationship without trust.”
Peter was at a loss for words. After a few moments, he collected himself.
“Alright. Do you have a plan?” he asked.
“Not really,” Silas said. “We’re just going to wing it,” he said as he tossed Peter’s gun over to him. “Lachlan, Eric, and I gave everyone else a crash course in a couple of spells. We should be able to take these things out.”
They spent several minutes combing their way through the trade wing, where they had entered the building. Much of it had seemingly already been evacuated, as there were no signs of life but plenty of recent muddy shoeprints on the hallway floors.
“We’re gonna want to stow our guns, everyone,” Silas said. “Cops’ll no doubt be here soon, and all of these guns are unregistered. We’ll be in deep shit if we get caught with them.”
They moved on past the building’s central lobby to
the forum when they heard a human scream coming from the nearby theatre. This time, Silas was the first to charge in. Everyone followed after him, and they saw a pair of mi-go advancing towards a group of students in the back corner.
Silas descended down the steps to the “stage” and drew his gun. He held out his hand and cast a spell, and one of the mi-go caught fire.
Immediately, the rest of them began casting as well. Both of the mi-go weren’t even able to scream in pain before turning to dust.
So they taught that spell to everyone. I’m surprised they aren’t completely exhausted.
Isabelle dashed over to the students who were huddled in the back of the room.
“Is everyone okay? Are any of you injured?”
The three of them shook their heads.
“Okay, come with us and we’ll help you get out of the building. Do you live on campus?”
Again, they shook their heads. Everyone climbed the stairs and left the theatre. Eric led them around the corner into a short hallway which ended with an exit. Walking outside, they saw that a crowd had gathered in the nearby parking lot. Some were getting into their vehicles and leaving campus, whereas others were walking towards the nearest bus stop.
“Should we go back in and try to find more people…or more of the mi-go?” Serena asked.
“I say we should,” Isabelle asked. “The evacuation seems to be finished or close to it.”
“What if we run into emergency services?” Victoria asked. “They’re going to want to get us out of there, too.”
“You can leave that to me,” Peter said. “If we run into the police, I can take care of them.”
“You aren’t going to kill them, are you?” Eric asked.
“Don’t need to,” Peter replied.
Isabelle led the group back into the building. It was disturbingly silent now, with only the sounds of shoes on tile and the occasional wheeze. They explored all of the hallways connected to the forum, but found nobody else who needed rescuing.
“It seems like everybody’s out,” Peter said. “Should we just head back to the dorms and wait ‘till this all blows over?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Lachlan said.
They walked through the lobby towards the other end of the building rather than going outside and walking around. As they did, someone walked through the front doors.
