Soul Beasts

Ty slowly opened his eyes. He looked over at his clock and saw that he had woken up just shy of fifty minutes early. “Might as well see how I’m doing,” he thought to himself. He slowly sat up in bed. Then he turned and placed both legs on the side of the bed. “So far, so good,” he thought. He placed weight on his legs and surprisingly, didn’t feel much pain. He took a couple wobbly steps towards the bathroom and was a little surprised when he made it. “I guess I’m a little better than the doctors thought,” he said to himself with a smile. He opened the door, flipped on the light switch and went in. He looked himself over in the mirror and smiled. There was a bandage over his right eye and one on his nose, but to Ty, they made him look a little better. He slowly made his way back into the room and grabbed his clothes from the top of the dresser and began to get dressed for school. After he finished, he grabbed his books and walked down the hall to the orphanage owners room. He knocked on her door and heard light snoring coming from the other side, so Ty quietly crept down the hallway to the door.
Ty went and stood at the bus stop. As he stood there, he had a strange sensation. He didn’t feel like taking the bus to school. He felt like walking. It was as if fate itself was telling him to walk to school that day. He walked about two blocks without seeing anything interesting. He went around the corner and a strange kind of van just sitting on the edge of the street. It was all black, windows included. Ty looked at the side to see if they had any words on it, but there were absolutely none. “What are they doing in there?” Ty wondered to himself. He walked by it slowly and nearly yelled when he saw the top of the van open and a satellite came out of it. It pointed towards the sky for a couple seconds and then retreated back into the top of the van. Ty hurried past them and continued to school. “What the hells going on here?” Ty asked himself. He walked two more blocks thinking about the van before he realized that he had walked right past his school. He turned and headed back.
He went into school and started walking down the hall. He looked at his watch and saw that he was still thirty minutes early. He was walking to the cafeteria when he saw someone standing in the principal’s office. Ty was about to walk by them, but he felt that some interesting things were being said, so he stood just outside the door and propped it open just a little, so that the voices could reach him. “That’s a strange reason to transfer to our school,” Ty heard the principal say. “Are you even sure that the meteor’s going to land here?” he asked the person in his office. “We are positive that it is going to land here and when it does, we will determine the damage and it’s effect to the student’s around it.” the person said. “What will happen to our students if the damage is great,” the principal asked in a slightly scared voice. “They will not be in any immediate danger,” the person said. “We’ll just monitor them for a while and if they become dangerous in any way, they will be quarantined,” the person said in an emotionless tone.

“Do you have any personal goals here yourself?” Ty heard the principal ask. There was a moment of silence. “No,” the person responded. Ty could hear the principal leaning back in his leather chair. “What is that thing on your shoulder anyway?” he asked the person. “I’m not authorized to discuss that matter,” the person responded. “Well then,” the principal began. “Are you going to eat breakfast at least?” Once again, there was a moment of silence. “Yes, I am rather hungry,” he heard the person say. “I’ll show you the way,” the principal said. Ty heard the squeaking of his chair and ran down to the cafeteria as fast he could go. When he got there, Ty went up to the cafeteria lady to get something to eat so that he didn’t look conspicuous. He was busy looking back and was startled when the cafeteria lady yelled at him. “Get something or sit down!” she yelled. “I’m sorry,” Ty said and looked at the breakfast selection. His eyes fell on something and it was like everything else in the world didn’t matter anymore. “How much are those mangos?” Ty asked.
Ty bargained with the lady and after a minute or two, he was going to his seat with seven mangos. “YES!” Ty thought to himself after he sat down. He was peeling his first one, when he heard someone sit down behind him. Ty wondered for a second if he should turn around a get a look at this new person, then disregarded the thought immediately. “Mangos take priority over everything,” he thought to himself. He finished peeling the mango and began to eat it. Ty thought that he was going to faint from the rush of sweetness that invaded his mouth. He was so obsessed with the mango’s taste that he almost didn’t hear the person take out a phone behind him. Ty managed to suppress all thoughts of the mangos and listened intently. “Yes sir,” the person was saying. “The meteor hasn’t landed yet, so everything here is still normal.” There was a moment of silence while the person at the other end said something. “I will be ready for anything of that magnitude,” the person said and hung up the phone. Ty thought about what he had just heard and calmly finished eating his first mango. He opened his backpack and put the remaining six mangos in it. He then got up and went to his swimming class.
Ty wasn’t surprised to find that he was the first one there. His director saw him and his eyes widened in surprise. He walked over to him and shook his hand. “I heard what happened to you yesterday,” he began. “I’m a little surprised that your already up and about.” Ty smiled. “I’m not sure how I’m up and walking already either.” The director smiled. “You won’t have to swim today Ty,” he said. “Consider it time for you to continue healing.” Ty nodded and went to sit down. Almost as soon as he did, he heard the door open and knew immediately that it was the person from the cafeteria. Ty heard the footsteps go into the locker room. A moment later, he heard the person jump into the pool. Ty was drifting off to sleep, when a familiar scent reached his nose. It was a strange scent. It was one of flowers, but at the same time, it smelled of mangos. His favorite food. The person had started to wear it right after they had found out that Ty had loved mangos. To Ty, it was the best smell, he had ever smelled. Until the day that that person had betrayed him.

“That scent brings back those memories,” Ty thought to himself. He saw the day when he was seven years old, sitting at his favorite place by the river on the border of town playing with the toy trucks the orphanage had given him. He was making one of the trucks run over another truck when he heard someone sit down beside him. He had looked up. When Ty’s eyes fell upon her, he had been convinced that an angel had appeared in human form. She had light brown eyes, black hair with green and red in it, and the prettiest smile that he’d ever seen in his entire seven year life. “Can I play with you?” she had asked. Ty had been unable to say anything. He just blushed and handed her a toy truck. She had been really nice to him and played with him for hours. Ty was unable to get over his shyness in that time and was disappointed when the girl had gotten up to go home. She had smiled at him and then turned to go home. Ty had wanted desperately to ask her name, but just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He remembered playing at the same spot again the next day and again, the girl had went over to him and asked to play. This time, Ty found that he was able to talk to her. They had a lot of fun playing. They played tag and hide and seek once. Ty had been it and he was looking for her. He couldn’t find her and he had shouted out that she had won and that she could come out. When she didn’t, he got worried and searched for her. For an hour, he looked for her and couldn’t find her. He was walking back to his usual place for playing when he heard someone crying nearby. He had followed the sound to a deep hole that had been dug by someone. Inside he saw the girl crying, holding her leg. Ty sigh in relief. He called down to the girl. She had looked up and smiled through her tears.
“I thought you had left me,” she said to him. “I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that,” he said to her. “I was looking for a place to hide, when I tripped and fell down in this hole,” she said to him. “Every time I try and move, my leg hurts and I have to sit back down. “Hold out your hands and I’ll pull you back up,” Ty sigh. The girl had nodded and held up her arms. Ty then had pulled her up slowly out of the hole. He finally pulled her completely out of the hole and sat down breathing heavily. The girl crawled over beside him and sat down. “I can get back home by myself,” she began to say. Ty laughed a little. “No you can’t and you know it.” He turned and kneeled. “Get on my back and I’ll carry you to your house,” he had said. The girl had looked at him and then smiled at him. She got onto his back and he had walked six and a half blocks with her on his back. Finally, they arrived at her house. “You can just set me down on the doorstep,” she had said to him. Ty had just shaken his head and went up to the door and knocked on it.
The door had opened fast and hard. Ty saw the meanest looking women that he had ever seen. She took one look at them and pulled both of them inside. She slammed the door shut behind them and pulled the girl from Ty’s back. She slammed the girl on the couch. “You know what I’ve said about being out late,” she said in a dangerous tone. The girl’s eyes widened in fear. Ty didn’t really know what was going on, but something had told him that if the woman thought that it was the girl’s fault that something really bad would happen to her. “It’s not her fault,” Ty said. The woman looked at him dangerously. “What did you do to her?” she asked. “She was trying to come home, but I accidentally knocked her into a hole and we’ve been trying to get her out ever since.” The woman said nothing and turned her back. She turned and threw something at him.
It was too fast for Ty to see, but later on in the future, he was confident that it had been a picture frame. It had missed his face and hit him in the neck. It went right through his skin. Ty screamed in pain and had fled from that house holding his neck. Blood seeping through his fingers. He had ran all the way to the orphanage, where the woman had taken him to the hospital right after looking at him. As the doctors had got to work cleaning and stitching up his wound, Ty had felt strange. He didn’t feel any anger towards the woman or towards the girl. He was happy. Happy that whatever the woman was going to do to the girl wouldn’t be as bad as it would have been if Ty hadn’t said anything, When he got home that night, he went to his room and looked at himself in the mirror. He pulled down his collar and lifted up his bandage. It was a wide wound, but it wasn’t that bad.
The next day, he went to his spot and sat there staring at his toys. The girl hadn’t shown up today and it was getting late. He had started to walk home, but stopped near the bridge. He saw the girl and had ran towards her. He failed to see the other boys and girls surrounding her. Almost as soon as they saw him, they had him held down. He yelled and struggled with them, but he couldn’t move at all. “I just want to see her!” he had yelled. That’s when they had stood him up and dragged him towards the edge of the river. They were about to push him into the river, but then a voice rang out. “Wait!” it screamed. The people parted and the girl had walked up to him and stood in front of him. That was when Ty had smelled the perfume that he had loved so much for the first time in his life. The girl had stared at him for a second. She reached forward and pushed him hard. Ty went stumbling back and fell off the edge and went plummeting towards the river. As he fell, Ty saw no remorse in those light brown eyes.
Ty hit the water and was swept away with the current. He desperately tried to fight the current and swim to shore, but it was much too strong for him. Ty had lost track of all time and thought that he was going to die for sure. He had been saved by a low hanging branch and he pulled himself to shore. The smell of the girl would haunt him for the rest of his life. The next day, he found out that she had moved and he felt odd. Like there was a huge hole in his chest. It was painful and Ty knew that no matter what he did, it would stay there, forever unfilled. “Hey, punk,” Ty heard. His eyes snapped open and Ty saw that the boy who had beat him yesterday was standing in front of him with his posse. “You bounce back fast,” he said, smiling. “You better watch yourself or history might just decide to repeat itself.”
“You’re a pathetic joke,” Ty said, unsmiling. “What was that?!” the boy said and grabbed Ty by the shirt. Ty smiled and turned to look at his posse. “How many of you have beat someone up?” he asked. Each one of them raised their hands. Ty sigh impatiently. “I mean by yourselves.” One hand went down and Ty smiled again. “How many of you have seen this boy beat someone up?” All the hands went down and Ty laughed. “Then why do you waste your time following someone who can’t beat up anyone by himself?” The posse exchanged glances and the boy’s look was venom. “I’ll show them by beating you up.” He pulled back a fist and it was caught by the director. “I think you should go and relax in the office,” he said, smiling at Ty. Just then, the bell rung and Ty walked out of the room to his math class.