HE licked his teeth slowly going over each tooth; he loved to taste the foreign liquid. It drenched his teeth like plaque. It wasn’t sweet almost bitter like chocolate with salt. Oh and the taste that ran though my mouth after I swallowed the pool of liquid. With my eyes closed I rolled my head back and screamed, not in fear or anger but pure, sweet ecstasy. I felt the remains of the liquid fall off my face in beads. Sighing I opened my eyes and with a glazed look off satisfaction I looked into the night sky it was beautiful. Suddenly he felt something twitch underneath me, I felt an unrecognizable anger rise within me. I searched beneath me for what interrupted me it would feel my anger. Then I saw the remains of a body still twitching. I recognized the body immediately it was my friend Jason, or what was left of him. I bent down to see his face. It was a disgusting sight; Jason was missing an eye, a recent injury. He had a huge gash running from the half of his nose and down to the top of his lip. Who had done this? Rage, fear, and worry arose in the pit of my stomach. I stood up and watched as a long line of liquid ran from my mouth and onto Jason’s face. I almost fell over realizing what it was. That liquid that made me feel so good, it was…Jason’s blood. I screamed, “no, no this isn’t happening, oh god Jason what did I do to you” I sat down on my knees and sobbed. Something wiggled next to me and I looked up in fear. Suddenly Jason’s corpse jumped me pinning me to the ground and bit my neck. “Ahhhh, get off of me noooo”, I screamed. I opened my eyes and fell off my bed. I sighed laying on the floor it wasn’t the first time he found himself lying there tangled in the thick comforter staring at the ceiling.

 I had been having the same type of dream over and over for the past two weeks. It was becoming increasingly awkward whenever he was in school. I stood up and got dressed for school. What am I thinking was the question I repeated in my head as I tried to get on the ridicules school uniform? I went down to the kitchen and grabbed a breakfast bar. I wanted to get out before my parents woke up, if they found him in the kitchen without a shower and prepared to go to school they would kill him. It wasn’t that I hated showers it was just well they didn’t work. I could take three showers and the comments would always be the same. “Gosh Vas man, don’t you ever shower you smell weird”, or his favorite, “Come-on Vaseline take a shower.” The truth was that he did take showers all the time and when he talked about it to people they told him that it wasn’t a bad smell just weird. So I went without showers most of the time. Vas’s parents were not tolerant people however; if it wasn’t why he couldn’t comb his hair strait it was why he couldn’t make an A instead of a B in school. I couldn’t ever make them proud of me so I stopped trying. “Vas is that you come in here, are you ready for school you haven’t even had a shower”, I heard her call. “Speak of the devil if it isn’t her”, I mumbled to myself and dashed out the door. I ran up to the bus stop witch was a good fifteen minutes away.

Vas went to the University of Future Placement for Boys or the University of F.B.P. He hated it there, it was a huge school that accepted boys from around the world to come learn at the prestigious F.B.P and to graduate was a guaranteed future job. Vas did not mind any of this at all it was the teachers he hated. Each teacher had a certain hatred toward children witch did not soot the teaching profession at all. For instance Vas’s history teacher who had just recently decided it would be a great idea if they learnt the exact date’s of when each president was born and then died. Why they needed to know Mr. Don did not inform them, he simply informed them that it was his job as a teacher to create assignments and there jobs as students to complete them. All of Vas’s teacher’s would do this at some time then leave to the teachers lounge to escape the children. Vas was a consistent trouble for teachers, as they had made apparent by telling his parents in one of the many parent/teacher meetings they had. “Vas is a constant disruption in class”, they informed his parents, but it didn’t stop there “he always speaks out and has no respect for his fellow students.” Soon Vas would tune them out and look out the window, wondering what it would be like to live on his own. Now he was heading back to the school to get sent further up the list of problems for the school. It wasn’t like he purposely got into trouble he just spoke his mind and liked to get the respect that he was supposed to give these so called teachers. The point was that he couldn’t do anything about it, so he just had to live with the school for now.

As Vas ran up to the bus stop it was empty, not that many people went to that stop. Vas, Leon and on the rarest of occasions Matt, were the only ones who ever showed up. Many of the kids that lived in that area drove to school or were driven there. Leon seemed to be missing tough. Vas and Leon chose an old run down house to be the bus stop because even if it rained they would have a place to keep dry. Unfortunately this particular house was always dark and cold. It was in the shadow of an extremely large tree that was obviously dying with no leaves. If you were ever alone like Vas was now you could swear there was the sound of an animal of some kind knowing away at some unrecognizable object. Vas and Leon had both seen this thing one day after school and as soon as it saw us it ran off at an inhuman speed, leaving behind something that was obviously an animals leg bone.

As Vas kept thinking of the mysterious animal or thing he felt a breath on the back of his neck. He spun around and fell over trying to see what was behind him. Looking up from the ground he saw Leon standing up with a huge frown on his face. “Oh, sorry I didn’t mean to scare you are you okay?” Leon whispered in a rasped voice bending down and helping Vas up. Leon was maybe 5’ 9 easily witch was huge compared to me at 5’ feet. We both had black hair, but I had mine cut short while a barber probably never touched Leon’s hair. It usually hanged around his head past his eyes. Leon always had a frown on except for those rare occasions when he was around Matt or me. We seemed to be Leon’s only friends and he seemed content with it that way. 

I met Leon at school one day when several bullies who I had had experience with were commenting on his raggedy appearance and weird smell. Hearing them tell this off to Leon who looked like he was going to cry even though I was sure he could take on all of the boys. I decided to stop these pestering bugs once and for all. I went over and stood by Leon and called the bullies several names that left them with their mouths open. I turned around and asked Leon if he was okay and he only nodded and smiled. Then things got out of hand, one of the bullies by the name of Buck had decided he didn’t like being talked to. He took that chance to punch me in the back of the head and knock me to the ground. Then all the other bullies took this as a sign to join in. As their hits came down I couldn’t help but think how stupid it was of me to take on three bullies all by myself. “No”, I heard Leon whisper. Then I didn’t see what happened but I felt the punches and kicks stop, and someone scream. I looked up and Leon was holding out his hand to help me up. I looked around and all the bullies lied around me with their faces in the mud not moving. Leon was staring right at me with worried eyes that showed what kind of person he was. I told him my name was Vas and he smiled again “I’m Leon.” Things just continued from there we looked out for each other and that made the school almost tolerable.

“Naw I’m cool, hey is Matt here?” I asked him as regained my sense. Leon frown seemed to drop further, “Not yet.” With that being all Leon seemed to say I let it go. “So how’s your day going so far” Leon looked at me and with a blank face mumbled, “the same way it always does need to get away…soon.” This wasn’t the first time Leon had mention “getting away”. Leon lived with his abusive father. His mother had died at his birth and his father seemed to find it all Leon’s fault. When I went to Leon’s house his father wasn’t home and Leon was almost upbeat about it. Leon’s house was not big or fancy; actually considering that he lived in an extremely wealthy area his house was a dump. It was a two-room house one bathroom and a kitchen/dinning room. He had one TV that was in terrible condition and his living room was trashed with beer bottles, cigar smoke, and dust. The only reason that Leon went to F.B.P was that his mother left him a large fund for the school to allow Leon to graduate there. When his father came barging in I thought that Leon was being robed, but I thought differently when I saw Leon’s reaction. He had gone pale and the frown grew back on his face. “You need to leave” Leon whispered in a barley audible voice. I needed no further invitation “I’ll see you soon”, I tried to whisper but Leon just stood there. I ran out the back door but stopped before leaving his yard. I wanted to know if Leon was going to be okay. “Hey killer” I heard the man that had rushed in growled. Leon got chills when he heard that, because when he heard killer it wasn’t the fatherly killer it was like an acquisition filled with fury. “I see you’ve been wasting that god forsaken life of yours,” The man continued. I thought about running in there and there and hitting him with one of the fallen branches scattered along the yard. Then I heard Leon speak, “sorry dad.” What that horrible man was not Leon’s father. I decided to leave before I crossed some boundaries. The next day I told Leon that I had heard what happened at his house. I expected him to be mad that I stayed, but instead he smiled. I gave him a quizzical look, “Ok not the expression I was looking for but okay.” Leon kept smiling, “what did you expect me to do?” “I don’t know angry or surprised, anything but happy. Why are you happy anyways?” He looked up at me and he smiled enough to show teeth witch really surprised me, and said, “Well it’s just that you know you stayed.” I looked at him curiously, but before I could ask more the bus pulled up and he got on. So I followed him on to the six-rowed buss taking our usual spot at the back so not to disturb the preps with our “weird” smell. We sat at the very back of the bus across each other with two whole rows separating us from the rest of the buss. I looked at him again and he was still smiling, that’s when it hit me. Leon didn’t have anyone that cared for him. So when I stayed behind it showed that I cared what happened to him. It wasn’t till that day that I realized what a delicate state Leon was in.

I smiled at Leon trying to shake off all these flash backs and daydreams I was having, and get back to our conversation. “Mine too” I said. The buss pulled up and our driver Mrs. Havoc, (Yeah I know our buss drivers name is havoc) she was never in a good mood and didn’t care for the kids on the buss, and sometimes I wondered if she would ever go suicidal and kill us and four trucks in the process. She doesn’t like trucks, why she never said but made it clear to every one with the sign “Trucks move out of my way”, must be some buss driver thing. The buss drive was little more than a fifteen minute drive to F.B.P witch gave plenty of time for someone to cram for a test or for say, Leon reminding me that we had our finales in history class today. “What” I managed to croak out as I realized that I hadn’t studied at all. Leon frowned, “she told us yesterday, and you didn’t study did you.” “No”, I groaned. “Did you take notes?” I asked him with flushed hope? “No not really”, he replied. “Oh yeah, I forgot you have the memory of a record player.” Leon just smiled, and tried to offer some hope by saying that Mr. Don’s test were not that hard. It was essay for Leon to say that. Leon really did have the memory of a record player, he can’t just recite what he has been told but when the moment comes for the question on the test or someone asks him he can recite what he was told to the last syllable. I set my head on the edge of the seat in front of me and sighed. This is going to end badly I kept telling myself wishing for Leon’s memory to lapse just so he could feel what he was going though.