Generation Untouchable Chapter Two Preview

Leon’s eyes swept the classroom. Rows of tables equipped with built-in sinks, gas valves, and Bunsen burners all occupied, barring the two tables in the front. Gathered in the back, Bret Spencer engaged in a relaxed chat with his gang. Leon sat at one of the empty tables up front, casting as much distance between him and Bret as humanly possible.

The lights dissipated along with all side conversations. An overhead screen at the front flickered on with cartoonish depictions of eukaryotic cells frozen in the stages of meiotic division

“Remember: mitosis made my toe, meiosis made me,” the teacher said with enthusiasm wasted on the weary and hungry students awaiting the ring of the lunch bell. “Meiosis gives rise to gametes—egg and sperm, each containing only half the number of chromosomes as a somatic cell. The fertilization stage occurs when the gametes fuse together through…well, you all know how that whole process goes. The zygote divides through mitosis into two cells, the beginning of the cleavage process.”

The utterance of the word “cleavage” elicited a soft snicker from the back of the classroom. The teacher paused briefly and rolled her eyes. She droned on and on about blastocysts and teratogens and such. He sat upright in his chair, fighting off a yawn and the heaviness weighing his eyelids down.

There was a click of the remote, flipping the PowerPoint to the following slide. A silhouette of a pregnant woman drinking a glass of wine with a red cross out sign over it appeared on the projector screen.

The teacher shook an admonishing finger at the class. “That’s why pregnant women shouldn’t drink, smoke, use drugs, or clean out the cat litter box.”

Something tapped the underside of Leon’s desk, rattling him out of the lecture. He glimpsed behind his shoulder. Eyes half-closed, Matt extended his legs and propped them on the wire basket underneath Leon’s chair. The digital clock over the door advanced ominously towards noon like the ticker of a bomb counting in reverse.

Leon brought the pencil in his left hand up to the corner of his mouth and nibbled at the eraser. His foot tapped in a hasty rhythm on the floor. The teacher continued to drone on, hurling dense paragraphs out of a textbook at them for what seemed like hours. Yet, he dreaded the looming call of the bell. Only Sid shared the same lunch time as him. Ellie and Joey wouldn’t break until half past noon.

The lunch bell rang, cutting the teacher’s lecture-turned-rant short. Leon left the classroom, and sought out his group’s favorite lunch spot. The aroma of French fries, grilled chicken, and balsamic vinegar permeated the air, drawing a strained growl from his breakfast-deprived stomach. Swarms of bodies jostled him back and forth, dispersing throughout the cafeteria before hiving into their little cliques. Clawing his way into the clearing, he peered over the rows of tables, settling on the one adjacent to the vending machine. The table was empty, save for a balled napkin and deserted soft drink. His sister’s usual spot on the bench…desolate.

Leon watched a short, scrawny freshman meander the cafeteria with his cellphone raised, probably engrossed in a mobile game. He collided with Bret’s back. Bret whipped around and shoved the kid to the ground, sending the phone in his hand skittering across the floor. One of Bret’s friends picked the phone up.

“Seriously? Still playing Pokémon Go!?” He sneered and tossed the phone into the kid’s lap.

Once Bret and his friends tired of the fresh meat and moved on, Leon hurried over to the kid’s side. He extended a hand, helping him to his feet.

“Haven’t I seen you before?” The boy studied Leon’s face. “Yeah, I think I’ve seen you at—”

“Are you okay?” he interrupted. “Did they crack your phone?”

The kid inspected the phone. “Just the corner. I was in the middle of catching a Doduo, but it got away. I’m not very good at this.”

“Here.” Leon gestured for the phone.

He scanned the cafeteria and located a Clefable near the vending machines. Once it was captured, he handed the phone back to the freshman.

“Thanks!” The kid’s dark, upturned eyes lit up. “You were just at Willowpool, weren’t you?”

“Y-yeah…”  Leon smothered a grimace.

“Well, see ya later.”

He watched the kid raise his phone and wander off, then turned his sights back to his favored table. Still empty.

Sid was likely still holed up in band. Homecoming was on the horizon and the marching band was in the midst of prepping for the parade. That eccentric band conductor always held his students hostage until they perfected their rehearsal to his unattainable expectations. At least the orchestra conductor had some smidgen of sanity left in that balding head of his.

Leon took a detour to the bathroom while awaiting Sid’s dismissal from class. He scanned the empty stalls and urinals, then expelled the breath he had been holding.

No Bret here.

He finished up quickly and washed his hands in the sink. The door burst open. Leon backpedaled on instinct, narrowly dodging a swinging door to the face. His back came flush against the wall. Three boys in varsity green jackets blustered in, howling with laughter and roughhousing with one another. Their eyes shot straight to him, laughter subsiding somewhat.

A pit settled within Leon’s stomach.

Bret’s face twisted into a scowl. “Who let the psycho out of his straight jacket?”

Leon murmured, “Please, just let me—”

The guffawed laughter of Bret’s cronies drowned out Leon’s plea. His eyes darted right and left, searching for any escape. Bret and his friends hampered the doorway, quashing any hope of fleeing the confrontation and emerging unscathed of body or mind.

Faint whispers inside his head evolved to clear commands, volume cranked to maximum.

Kill the pain. Kill the ridicule.

“I think I heard Nurse Ratched calling you to back to Willowpool.” The corner of Bret’s mouth tugged into a nasty curl. “Did you remember to take your pills today?”

“Probably just cheeked them,” one of Bret’s friends chimed in. “Gotta shove them up other places just to be sure.”

Leon sealed his lips shut, refusing to indulge them with a response. Anything he said would—at best—be in vain. At worst, it could prove detrimental. Sweat gathered at his hairline, anxious hands trembled at his sides. He thrust them into the pockets of his jeans, quieting them.

“Are you going to call that teeny little sister of yours to come over to the boy’s bathroom for you? Bet even her nutsack is bigger than yours.” Bret cackled.

Silence the laughter.

The anger Leon kept at bay ignited inside him and suffused his entire body. His hands slipped from his pockets and rolled into fists, defying any command to stay hidden away.

Leon’s clenched fists were read as an invitation for a fight, bringing one of the boys to round on him from the side. His hand clamped down on Leon’s arm like a vice, shooting pain up to the cuff of his shoulder. Bret’s friend cast him forward with brute force. Leon stumbled, a mere inch shy of colliding with Bret’s chest. He rebounded off of Bret’s outstretched hands, pin-balling between the second jock and the jock who’d him shoved first. The back of his skull crashed into the wall, his vision momentarily replaced by a blinding flash.

“Pussy,” Bret scoffed, brushing off his hands as though he had touched something filthy.

Right here, right now.

The heat roared again in Leon’s belly. Flames licked up his spine; each muscle in his back writhed and twisted. Everything blurred, reducing the world to whirls of hues and shadows. The bathroom lights flickered as if the bulbs encroached on an imminent demise.

His body exploded at Bret, driving him into the opposite wall. Fissures branched out from beneath Bret’s body like veins in the wall. Bret let out a howl of pain. Leon drew the pen in his front pocket in one swift motion and pressed the tip against his throat. The corner of his mouth tugged into a smirk.

Rapid, staccato breaths rasped out Bret’s gaping mouth. Red beaded around the tip of the pen and trickled down his neck into the concavity above his collar bone. He tested Leon’s strength just a fraction, his muscular physique helpless against Leon’s chicken-boned frame pinning him up against the wall.

“Holy shit, he’s bleeding!” one of Bret’s friends shouted. “Let him go, you psycho!”

His fingers slackened and the pen plummeted to the bathroom floor. The lights ceased to flicker. Leon’s eyes fluttered, the smirk dissolved from his face. He backed away from Bret with staggering steps and seized the sides of his head. A dull throbbing gripped his skull and soon blossomed into a full-blown migraine.

“Let’s get outta here,” Bret’s friend said, slinging Bret’s arm over his shoulder.

“Psycho!”

Without another word, the three slipped out of the bathroom door and out of sight. Leon slumped against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor. He tucked his knees to his chest and drew in a steady breath. Hot drops of sweat trickled down the bridge of his nose, dotting his shirt.

“I don’t need you…I don’t need you…”

Yes, you do. You do and you know it.

Though the lunch bell resounded, he remained seated on the floor, too drained to heed its call. He made the wrong choice. He should’ve stayed home today, where he would’ve been safe from Bret—and Bret safe from him.

“Hey, you okay?” a deep voice came through the cracked open door.

A vaguely familiar upperclassmen entered the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Leon had crossed paths with him a few times at the Willowpool clinic, yet he couldn’t recall his name. Something—Malinov? Brawny, towering build; a beast of a guy with a fiery temper. Had he showed up just a few moments earlier, Bret and his gang would’ve scurried away like mice and none of this would’ve happened.

“Need to go to the nurse?”

“No, it’s just a headache. I’ll be fine.” Leon rose to his feet and shook his head.

Malinov looked to the cracked wall. “—the hell happened here?”

Leon wavered on his feet. Despite insisting that he was alright, bile burned up his throat. The very feeling of his body acting of its own accord sickened him to the point of overwhelming nausea. He dry heaved, gasping for air in between spasms.

“Uh, you sure about that?” He took a step back, standing clear of any oncoming vomit. “You really should go home.”

Leon swiped the sweat on his brow with his hand. “It’s okay. I’m starting to feel better already.”

Once school ended, Leon found Ellie standing under the shade of the flagpole at the entrance of the campus. She pounced him with a mighty hug.

“Ow,” he piped out, her twigs of arms just about crushing his bones.

“Huh? Sorry.” She backed off.

They set off on their journey home.

“How did your day go?” she asked, stretching her arms out behind her.

“Pretty good.” He feigned a smile. “We played a Disney medley today in orchestra. Did some derivatives, more derivatives, even more derivatives. Learned how babies are made.”

“Eh? Sex ed again? I thought we already had—”

“Embryogenesis.” Leon forced a chuckle.

She shot him a sideways look. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me Bret started shit again.”

“He was picking on a kid in the cafeteria.” He fibbed whatever came off the top of his head. “I just felt bad. If I were stronger, I—”

He paused and continued no further.

A furrow formed on her brow, her bullshit detector clearly sounding off. He switched the subject fast.

“Anyways, how was your day?”

“Okay. Topped my high score in gym.”

“What did you play?”

“Candy Crush. Getting really boring though. I swear I should just bring my laptop to gym from now on.” A rosy hue painted her cheeks. “Also saw someone who was totally checking me out. Junior or senior I think. Tall, blonde, sweet abs. Big b—” Her lips pulled into an awkward grin as she hugged an arm against her chest.

Her awkward grin warmed his heart like nothing else in the world could. She was the sun to his dark world, always shining brightly and full of positive energy. However, that warmth ebbed away fast as Bret’s terrified face resurfaced in his mind.

He gulped down the returning nausea, hoping she didn’t notice the pallor seeping into his complexion. At this point, he relied on Bret’s inflated ego to stay mum about the incident in the bathroom. If word of his violent outburst reached Ellie or his mother, all hope would be lost in his recovery and he would be sent away again—perhaps for months at a time. A mosaic of fragmented memories from his latest mental breakdown came unbidden to him.

“Kid, don’t make this difficult.” The police officer had barged into his bedroom that night one week ago.

There to tear him away from his family and haul him back to Willowpool. The officer had tried to handcuff him, though he somehow miraculously managed to overcome his strength and shove him backward to the ground. He remembered his fingers curling into a fist, squeezing as if crushing something in his hand. Despite standing across the room from the officer, he gagged as if Leon’s anger was capable of physically strangling him. No matter how much he implored his body to stop, his fingers would not release.

The first time his body defied him.

The whispers evolved into a commanding force he could no longer tune out through sheer will. It was though he was a passenger in his own body, only capable of watching everything unfold before his eyes, unable to control his movements. His body instead heeded the will of something else entirely.

All he wanted in that moment was the police officer dead—and it happened.

Ellie entered his bedroom and screamed at the top of her lungs. Her screams rippled through him, jolting him back to his senses. Anger morphed into guilt and anguish. Then, his back shuddered and an excruciating pain wracked him unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. As if something crammed inside him was struggling to break free to the open.

Nausea rose up again, and he stopped the reel of vivid images playing out in his head at once. Shaking off the disturbing memories, he turned his focus instead to his sister’s recap of her day. He tugged the sleeves of his jacket down, blocking the breeze that nipped at the raw flesh on his wrists. His wrists throbbed with renewed pain as intense as the day of his recent admission to Willowpool, courtesy of the four-point restraints that once bound them.

“Dangerous. Violent. Unpredictable,” the doctors and nurses said. They kept him shackled to the bed rails for what were supposedly alternating two hour intervals at a time. During this stay, the care team prohibited him from wandering the milieu and socializing with the other patients. Their caution was not unfounded. He couldn’t fault them for the extreme measures they took to ensure the safety of others. Even he didn’t trust himself.

A diagnosis of schizophrenia at his age was an anomaly of its own. His head was essentially a dartboard of just about every pediatric mental illness ever named: anxiety disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit disorder. Nonetheless, there was no bullseye in sight.

After countless years of trial and error, the doctors hurled every psychiatric drug at him until exhausting their arsenal. His psychiatrist, Dr. Kanner, prescribed a new medication. He claimed it was “experimental, but highly effective.” So far, Leon had only received two doses, yet any hope in its efficacy dwindled. In fact, his symptoms were worse than ever before.

The doctors resorted to extreme measures such as electroconvulsive therapy. The agonizing supposedly-antiquated type, not the peaceful, anesthetized procedure used for resistant depression and bipolar disorder that he had researched online. In between his rounds of screaming, all he heard was the smoky, South Asian accent voice of the doctor overseeing the procedure—“Again.” Yet, their efforts to shock the psychosis out of him proved futile in the long term.

None. None of the treatments worked. There was no magic pill or procedure out there capable of curing the true ailment that afflicted him for all these years.

The disjointed and unsettling rantings of the blind transient on Steele Ave echoed in his ears. Perhaps the delusions of the so-called mentally ill were truths incomprehensible to the “normal” human mind.

Leon had always been a skeptic of the paranormal. If it couldn’t be explained by science or concrete evidence, it was pure fiction. Yet, the evidence couldn’t have been more concrete than this. This was no hoax. There truly was some supernatural force at play. A demon resided in him. No, not in the figurative sense. An actual demon from Hell.

Somehow, he managed to suppress the demon’s rage in time to stop it from gouging Bret’s throat. He had no confidence in his ability to suppress the demon’s mounting bloodlust. There was no predicting its spike in activity. For whatever reason, this demon remained reliably silent during lectures, either conquered by concentration on schoolwork or, perhaps, it was simply humoring him.

His dilemma was grimmer than ever before. He wasn’t assured in the slightest he could avoid another relapse of control. What if the demon successfully killed Bret the next time he encountered him? His next destination? A cell in solitary confinement at the juvenile detention center with the keys thrown away. He turned his head away from Ellie’s view, feigning interest in the view of naked trees they strolled past on the sidewalk. Heat and moisture welled within his eyes. There was no stomaching the eventuality of indefinite time away from Ellie and his mother.

Never again. He was never going to be separated from his family ever again.

He drew his phone from his front pocket and pulled up the search engine. This time, he would take matters into his own hands. One way or another, he was going to purge the demon from his being. He was going to prove his sanity and take back control of his life.