Chapter Text
It was, as it turned out, not ‘just a dance.’
Once they left the locker rooms, hand in hand, Hermie was hopeful they’d be able to salvage the night; Normal already seemed to be in higher spirits despite the glimpses of uncertainty crossing his face every once in a while.
They walked out together, Hermie’s head turned to the side to watch Normal’s face, trying to decipher his expressions.
There was a smile for sure, but it seemed like he might’ve been holding something in. The strength with which Normal clung to his hand was just on the wrong side of painful.
As if he could hear his thoughts, Normal stopped and squeezed Hermie’s hand. Whether it was intentional or not he had no idea, but it stopped him in his path and forced his eyes forward, circling the room for whatever had startled Normal into silence.
And once again, it was the dance floor.
Lining the walls were the students who had previously stood awkwardly in groups near the floor, pressed up against the foam padding of the gym as if they were trying to sink into it, their faces sunken with grimaces of fear. He looked up just above the dance floor, to the auditorium stage where the computer lab teacher had been DJing but was now scrambling on the floor several yards away.
His eyes finally caught what was taking center stage.
There was a large dome, at least as large as himself length-wise, translucent beige and filled with some kind of yellowing fog. It wisped around from within, seeming to almost liquefy and pulsate with its movements.
Deep within the fog, something writhed, a black mass honing in on the surface, waiting for the right opportunity to strike as it swirled at the lower part of the dome where the bottom met the stage floor. On the floor were hundreds of smaller ones, small, red, inflamed bumps decorating the laminate stage.
The dome pulsated once, then twice, and a sliver of the black mass that had been wriggling within the dome poked the inside of the curved top, seeking an exit.
“Normal–?” Hermie turned to Normal for answers and called his name waveringly, leaning forward to catch his gaze. Normal didn’t seem to notice.
His hand was being held fiercely, Normal staring forward with determination and anger, no longer marred by the uncertainty he’d seen earlier.
Just as he was about to grab his arm and try again, one of the black snakes swirling at the bottom of the dome finally squeezed its head through the pointed top and began pushing itself out, moving towards them with an almost liquid viscosity.
The arm jolted forward towards the pair and seemed to stir Normal from his stupor in doing so, the boy letting out a gasped yelp and yanking Hermie to the side, his grip feeling strong enough to pull Hermie’s shoulder half out of its socket.
They landed in a heap on the floor as Hermie scrambled to a sitting position, turning his head to see the greasy black arm which had whipped past them with such intent and now moved thickly by his eye line in a wet glossy ribbon of inky black flesh. Normal’s push had saved him by a bare centimeter, an inch or two at best.
He realized the arm’s target a second too late.
“Tony–!”
The arm met its victim and swiftly wrapped itself around the neck of their Vice Principal, the man’s blathering immediately cut off as the air was siphoned from his windpipe. The tentacle, finished unfurling from the dome on the stage, coiled around and around the man's neck like a snake before reaching up to the man’s face and dissolving into the skin around his mouth.
Hands grabbed Hermie’s shoulders and dragged his eyes away from the scene. Behind Normal, Link, Scary, and Taylor had already begun charging their Vice Principal – Had they been with them the whole time? How had he not noticed? – as Taylor turned to yell at Normal to follow.
“Hermie, I– I should’ve told you. I’ll explain it all, just–” Hermie pointedly widened his eyes and shook him slightly to focus his attention. “Stay safe. Hide, Hermie. Don’t look, and I’ll come find you when it’s over. I’m sorry, now, just–, just go!”
Normal glanced at where his hand rested on Hermie’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze, then stood to run after his friends.
What… was that? Where the hell did that thing come from? How did they all know something was going to happen?
What’s going to happen to Normal?
Hermie shifted backward until he hit the back wall of the room, pointedly averting his eyes from the action at center and begging his brain to distract him, to keep him away from the things that shortened his breath and pinched at his innards.
Suddenly, a blaring alarm sounded and raucous lights began to flash all around the auditorium. Hermie turned to see Taylor standing by the fire alarm while Scary stood on the stage, clearly confused by the broken sprinklers. The fire alarms stopped working years ago, but no matter. The message was clear: they needed to get people out of there.
Hermie rushed to the door to prop it open. He knew he had no skin in whatever game the rest of them were playing, but he could try to at least help get some people out of there.
He couldn’t deny he was horrified – he was certain it was smeared across his face. Even though he’d always been quite good at remaining nonchalant and preserving his emotions for when he really needed them, he’d never been in this kind of scenario. His life had been gratefully devoid of danger or, really, any kind of discomfort, for the most part.
He’d only managed to get a handful of smaller groups ushered out, mostly just people who had been desperately looking for a reason to leave anyways. Most people stuck to the backs of the room like he had been, many hiding under tables or facing the walls, not noticing their opportunities to escape. Many stood closer, holding their phones up to their faces, seemingly thinking this was a perfect time for a vlog. Dumbasses.
He turned back from the door once he’d helped as much as he could and saw three more people racing towards him, this time students he knew and recognized, Jeffery, Kris, and Sean. He leaned back to get the door for them as they attempted to rush past him.
He noticed the reason for their haste a moment too late.
One of the Tony tentacles tore through the air just behind them, chasing them with expert skill before it wrapped around the three of them just as they were about to reach the door. Jeffrey reached out an arm to Hermie as he was pulled away, who didn’t hesitate to reach out and grab on, pulling with all of his strength.
The tentacle fought and wriggled against their grasp, pulling and clenching with everything it had until an errant bubble on the tentacle’s side popped with exertion, splashing a foreign red liquid onto Hermie’s arm that held onto the three.
He yelped as he saw the spot where the liquid had splashed him begin to smoke, and, in his panic, lost his grip on the three boys, turning his attention to his arm.
Hermie shrieked and patted his arm as hard as he could with his other sleeve, ignoring the pain he was dealing himself with the movement and instead focusing on getting rid of the red gunk bubbling up and down his arm. The soft acrylic of his flannel burned through on impact and the red liquid seared down to his skin, the boy screaming as the invasion dug deep through the layers and left a charred mess of flesh and viscera.
His head spun as his vision went nearly white, the boy clenching his eyes shut and beckoning himself not to look back down, not to ever look back down. He couldn’t hear, his lungs feeling bloated in chalky as his body refused to allow him the breaths he so desperately needed.
It felt as though his arm had been turned inside out.
Losing his footing, he fell to the floor and kicked himself away from where he’d been standing, still in reach of the tentacle, pushing himself against the nearest wall as his head continued to spin and his vision was threatened with spots of black.
Leant against the wall he let out a breath and forced himself to relax. He had been clenching his arm so hard that the muscles had cramped, the movement beneath what remained of his skin searing pain through the damaged nerves. Under his skin, he could almost see the muscles through the burnt remains of his jacket, where his arm was scorched red, blistered, and smelling of meat.
He’d never felt more physically useless. Just picking up his arm from the ground to observe it made him dizzy and the pain from the open air hitting his wound was excruciating.
He looked around, spotting the frantic lights and errant shouts erupting from the center of the room. He’d been so preoccupied he had almost forgotten about the fight happening just twenty feet away.
Without thinking, he pulled himself up to help, intent on destroying that monster anyway he could, just as a flurried beam of light backfired off of the mass which once was Tony Pepperoni and found its target right over Hermie’s head, leaving scorch marks on the wall behind him as sparks glittered down onto him.
“Hey, watch– oh, shit! Hermie! Get down!” He couldn’t tell who the voice belonged to, but it was right; there was no place for him on the battlefield. At least they all had magic or some kind of weapons or trick up their sleeve. What did Hermie have? A corroding arm and dress shoes?
They were right; he needed more coverage.
He ducked back down to move against the wall, his left arm holding tight onto his right, and scurried as quickly as his body allowed to fit underneath a white plastic table with photo booth props scattered across it.
The cavernous room shook and rumbled with the action of the fight. He looked back to the center and saw the three boys who he’d tried to help just moments ago still tight in Tony’s grasp, seemingly glued together by some sort of sap and flailing wildly in Tony’s grip.
He placed his right hand onto his lap and grabbed onto a leg of the table with his left. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do? Although, there really wasn’t much precedence for his situation.
It didn’t matter. He closed his eyes before taking a deep breath and, slowly, manually unclenched his body. He went through his old theater warm-ups – mentally scanning his body, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head – making sure each part was relaxed to his best ability. Once he got to his arm, it took several minutes to halt the cramp but he did it and was chagrined to find a scrap of feeling returned to it, immediately supplying a sharp, unforgiving pain. His head fell forward as he fought against unconsciousness. After far too long, he was able to lift his head back up and blink groggily, head spinning.
He experimentally tried to wiggle his fingers and winced at the feeling. It stung, sensation shooting up his arm and all the way up to his shoulder. He bit his cheek against crying out, hard, although his voice probably would’ve been too hoarse to find the noise anyways. Aching and weak, he shrunk further into the space under the table and finally let himself look back out towards the auditorium floor at what had become of their dance.
He had no way of knowing how long it had been going on, but the fight had gone on, entirely without his notice. And from the gasps and grunts of exertion, he could tell the teens were struggling.
The air felt thick and the feeling only grew as the minutes ticked by. The heaviness in the air, the heady life that filled the auditorium, although not familiar, Hermie knew from some kind of base instinct that it had been soured. Turning his head to look around felt like cutting through mud, he thought, like tar.
He finally caught what he’d been looking for in the room – proof, glorious proof that everyone was okay – something he desperately needed as he kicked himself for being so useless in combat.
His eyes caught on Normal, who dodged a floor attack by Tony and, from across the auditorium, began muttering something under his breath. Suddenly, the boy's eyes turned a beaming white as his feet left the floor and he began to float upwards. His eyes glowed and his eyebrows pinched in concentration. He watched as Tony finished recovering from his last attack and began to rear his arms back for a second attempt at Normal as the other boy simply remained, now floating several feet off the ground to be nearing eye-level with the monster.
As Hermie felt his body start to move towards the fight without permission, the boy’s voice appeared in his head, beckoning a single word without his mouth even opening.
“Drop!”
The command vibrated through his skull, shaking him awake as he saw Tony come to a complete halt mid-strike and drop the three boys, a mass of flailing limbs and gunk, onto the gym floor.
His gaze, however, never left Normal. Hermie watched as he reached the ground again, his nearly-black irises returning and his hair falling back into place, albeit messily. Without missing a beat, the boy started looking around for his friends, scanning the room and giving a slight nod each time he landed on one and was assured himself of their (relative) safety, Hermie watching him all the while.
Once Normal’s gaze landed on Taylor, he jerked his head once more, in Hermie’s direction this time, his eyes scanning before settling on… oh.
Brow furrowed in concentration, Normal’s eyes met the now-empty space under the plastic white table. Normal could’ve been looking back throughout the fight to make sure he was safe, Hermie thought, and he didn’t notice, what with the state of his arm.
He looked around the table, eyes widened, before finally catching what he’d been looking for.
Hermie felt Normal’s eyes grab him as if he’d been physically pushed. He looked away, moving to stare at his feet and realized he’d actually put a good amount of distance between himself and the wall when he moved up for a closer look during the boy’s spell. He thought he’d only moved out enough to stand, but he stood several yards out, fully within range of the monster, and could scarcely find it in himself to care as he looked back, and found Normal still staring at him.
Hermie swallowed uncomfortably, his throat sore from the stress. A deep shame crossed Normal’s features before the other boy shook his head at Hermie and tilted his head towards the table, looking more mournful than indignant. Hermie did what he’d been directed, shuffling blindly backward towards the back wall as Normal’s face softened slightly, giving a quick nod and directing his attention back to the battle.
He slid back under the table, ducking and pulling his knees in with his good arm, making sure his angle was such that he could still look out, and still feel like he was doing something to help, even if Normal had told him not to look. Maybe, if he never took his eyes off of him, nothing bad could happen.
In the end, it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before he saw Teeny the Teen making his way quickly to Hermie’s table and kneeling down. His heart skipped a beat before he realized the figure looked far too tall, the costume stretched thin around his torso and revealing a soccer jersey underneath, and that Normal had changed out of the costume earlier, anyway.
Link, breathing hard from being in the suit, bent down and offered a felted hand to Hermie, towering over him even in his lowered stance down on one knee.
“Hermie, hey, it’s all safe now, you can get up.” Link looked over his shoulder at where Normal and Scary were arguing as they climbed onto the stage, towards the flesh-colored dome. “If you could do something for us, if you could let the kids you let outside and– and that’re still over in the corner, and against the wall, that it’s safe now, that’d be good.” He let out a defeated breath. “There’s … there’s something they might want to see, to end the dance. Over there.” He pointed over his shoulder at the other end of the auditorium, near the entrance.
Hermie nodded and stumbled to his feet, cradling his disfigured arm which still ached and begged for sedation, a loud, fast heartbeat coursing through his wound. He sped to the corner, his pace dangerously quick for the slippery gym floor, and reached the frightened groups against the walls and those loitering outside, quickly filling them in with his hurried, obligatory, ‘Yes, it seems to be over now,’ and ‘No, I’m not sure what it was,’ and ‘Yes, hopefully, they will give us school off on Monday,’ and so on.
He led them back inside, scarcely ten feet through the doors when they broke into frenzied giggles and tore past him to join a circle of students who stood in the corner Link had pointed to, shouting and cheering.
They raced to gather near their peers, far from the dance floor, where Normal’s ‘dads’ had berated them, far from the stage, where the flesh-colored dome still glowed. From the gym’s locker rooms, from the emergency exit door, from the white table, and everywhere else he had formed the most cogent memories of the night, but near the entrance, the section of ground which Hermie had only cut through when he and Normal entered. Where they had loitered too long in the doorway and had to be pushed inside, what, an hour ago? Two?
He looked over cautiously and followed behind them. As he got closer, he heard the cheering was actually the words to some kind of instructional dance song – a vulgar instructional dance song – and stood on his tiptoes from outside the circle to see what was going on.
He blinked, then blinked again.
Link – ‘Teeny’ – was… dancing, if you could deign to call it that. Hermie wasn’t quite sure who would, though. Nevertheless, he seemed to be doing a pretty good job, if the other kids’ encouraging, exhilarated cheers had anything to say about it. The students gathered around him and screamed the lyrics, forming a circle and dancing alongside Link, jumping and shouting in all their delirium.
And for the first time ever, it seemed, everyone loved Teeny.
He frowned, suddenly distracted, and turned to look for Normal, who stood on the auditorium stage with Scary, the two arguing still as they both tugged on something shiny held between them. He hastily began making his way towards the stage, overhearing the ends of the two’s conversation.
“Just let me do it–”
“Okay, Normal, c’mon, just–”
“Let me do it!”
“Okay. All right, it’s– here you go.”
Normal wrestled it away from her, Hermie only then realizing the object to be a knife. Not a kitchen knife, but a mid-sized, medieval-looking leaf blade. Hermie stopped, about to reach the lip of the stage. Normal put a hand on Scary’s shoulder and leaned in to say something to her, low, before pointing behind him to Link’s growing circle. She grimaced but nodded, and rushed down the stage stairs to meet Taylor at the bottom. The two jogged over to the dance circle, signaling towards the door over their classmates’ shoulders, trying to get Link’s attention. The circle began to move, decreasing in volume as it got further away and the three herded the group out of the doors of the auditorium. Normal’s eyes followed them all the way out.
Normal looked down at Scary’s knife, splayed out between his two hands, and let out a heavy sigh, his shoulders sinking. He gripped it tightly and looked up, Hermie ducking down and scooting his back against the wooden lining of the stage, down on the gym floor.
He heard a sigh from above him and a light shifting of fabric as Normal readied his knife. Hermie turned in his place on the ground and lifted his bespectacled eyes to rise just above the lip of the stage, seeing Normal, empty and unamused but concentrated, as he plunged the knife down into the center of the zit-like mass on the stage.
Hermie was hit hard in the face and stunned back by an onslaught of thick fluid, fleshy yellow and viscous that coated what of his face had been peeking over the stage, his glasses mercifully sparing his eyes from the ooze. The blast struck his head backward, the boy’s body following as he jolted back and he lost his balance, left sprawling onto the floor.
He sat up, only to find that the knock-back had pushed him right back into the pus’ splash zone. He made a move to scurry closer to the ground as the biotic fluid sept into his clothes with an almost sticky hang that made him want to shower for a year.
The liquid had splashed onto his arm, he noticed, but the adrenaline from the blast rendered his senses too overwhelmed to truly focus on any one specific sensation. He made a mental note to himself to clean it later – really clean it, or have his moms look at it – and went on.
As the liquid’s pressure died down, he reached up beneath his glasses with his fingertips and wiped away what had dripped into his eyes. They opened to gooey, spotted vision – although his eyesight was already poor – and he grabbed his glasses to wipe on the hem of his jeans and tried to blink away the mucus that pulled his eyelids inwards.
Once he affixed his glasses back onto his face, he pushed himself up from the floor to survey his surroundings. It was rather silent except for the room tone and occasional drip of mucus.
Spare for the swelled, mutilated swath of flesh that slumped center stage like a popped balloon, the stage was bare.
He moved in a circle to scan the room and finally caught Normal, still as a statue against a far wall, and slumped over with his knees to his chest. He was covered with the substance head to toe; since he was right near the blast when the zit burst, he must’ve been smacked all the way back against the wall. And he wasn’t moving.
Hermie’s legs moved before he could tell them to, carrying him across the room while the worst cycled through his mind. If Normal had somehow gotten a concussion or broken any bones, anything , getting there sooner rather than later was the best way he could help. If something worse had happened to him, however… he tried not to think about what that would mean.
He made his way over, shuffling through the gooey membrane that coated the laminate floors. He dove to a knee when he was close enough, still a few meters away but figuring he could forego walking at that point, nearly slide-tackling the boy as he skidded across the floor to meet him.
The other boy's eyes were open, wide , his forehead touching his knees as he stared at the space between his feet. His eyebrows were clenched together in fear and a vein on his forehead looked like it was about to burst. He could hear Normal’s shaky breathing from their proximity, so close he couldn’t fathom how Normal hadn’t noticed him yet, but pressed two fingers to his neck to check for his pulse, just to be thorough.
It drummed against his fingers frighteningly fast, but it was beating, nonetheless.
At the touch, Normal flinched and stirred, his neck snapping up. His hand moved, quickly, to grab ahold of Hermie’s wrist, but stopped just before he reached it when his eyes met the boy’s in front of him. The beginnings of Hermie’s name shaped in his mouth as Normal recognized his assailant with obvious confusion.
He brought his fingers off of his neck and grabbed the boy by his shoulder to get them both standing. He tried to pull the boy off of the wall, confused at the resistance, and saw that the pus not only solidified but hardened , the residue turned into a bonding agent that left Normal adhered to the wall, like a fly left to suffocate beneath wallpaper.
He fought for his grip, using the hardening shell to stick himself to the other boy and pull with the full weight of his body, rearing himself back and attempting to let gravity do the rest. After a few tries, the boy peeled from the wall and stumbled up, catching himself on Hermie as he tripped over his stuck feet and left a cartoonish silhouette on the gym wall.
Wordlessly, Normal wrapped an arm around Hermie’s middle for leverage as he tried to wrench his feet free of the ground, Hermie doing his best to act like a balance. He still hadn’t said anything to Hermie, and he wondered if the other boy was angry at him for not leaving the auditorium, but decided to push the thought away for now.
Normal’s whole body shook with the effort of moving his legs off the ground, his bones and muscles clearly aching from his impact with the wall. He got his left one out and placed it back on top of the now-hardened floor, holding onto Hermie even tighter as he tried to wrench the second one out.
He was clearly getting frustrated at his immobility, his movements growing pained and erratic until he lost his foot-hold and tripped, losing his balance. Hermie’s other arm – his right arm – instinctually reached out to catch him. The adrenaline from earlier had begun to wear off, a loud heartbeat once again coursing all the way up to his shoulder as bit against gasping at the pain the sudden movement and pressure against Normal’s side caused him.
Normal righted himself, pulled back up with Hermie’s assistance, and simply nodded his thanks silently, embarrassed at his outburst, before going back to removing his right foot.
The door to the gym swung open with a resounding boom, Scary rushing in and looking around before noticing the three-legged disaster that was Hermie and Normal, the two finishing their job un-adhering Normal’s right foot from the floor and stumbling forwards, arm in arm.
Scary slowed as they came further into view and stopped in front of them, her eyes darting between them and her expression unreadable. Hermie turned to look at Normal in profile, to try and read on Normal’s face what Scary and him were silently communicating.
The three broke their silent, awkward, inexplicable gazes as they were again interrupted by shuffling from the front as Link raced in, tailed by Taylor.
It took about two seconds for the taller boy to fall into the sludge, not even three meters back inside the auditorium, sliding on his front into the phlegmy mucus and sending a sprinkler of pus into the air, splashing Scary who had been yet untouched by the substance. Taylor walked in slowly behind Lincoln, careful not to damage or lose his cane as he made his way to Link and slowly helped him up.
Scary’s eyes lightened at seeing them and she turned back to Hermie and Normal, creasing her eyebrows. “I’m gonna go make sure they don’t kill themselves.”
She looked back just as Taylor tripped over something hidden in the ankle-deep sludge, bringing Link down with him and covering the both of them entirely with the liquid. “And, uh– I’ll try and find us all something to wear out of here. For you guys, too, but, uh– I’ll give you a second.”
She turned on her heel and moved as fast as the floor would allow her toward Link and Taylor, helping them up very carefully to keep her dress from getting any of the mess on it. She helped Taylor up first, then Link, Taylor shuffling in front of them towards the locker room.
Scary stayed back and helped to direct Link towards the locker room with his limited vision, her arm holding onto his elbow in guidance. He took off the mascot head as they entered the locker rooms, her voice echoing all the way into the silent auditorium as they entered, her loud warning about telling anyone she let two boys into the girl’s bathroom met with Link’s fond gaze.
And for the nth time that night, the boys were steeped in silence.
Hermie shifted his eyes to catch a glimpse of Normal in his periphery, lest he move too quickly and scare him off. He didn’t want to do that. The other boy just stared after the locker room, no doubt remembering how different their lives had felt just a few hours ago. With all the ruckus, Hermie hadn’t stopped to think what Normal must’ve been going through – first with his dads, then Teeny, now this?
He wished he could tell Normal what he needed to hear at the moment. That he’d saved their lives by doing what he did, that he wasn’t weird , and so what if he was? He saved their entire grade, their entire school. Their weird Vice Principal, even despite the two’s weird feud thing. Hermie, and the rest of their now-friends. But he opened his mouth, and in the end, there was little he could say.
But the silence was numbing, and Normal’s eyes darted to where the dance floor had been, which sent his gaze immediately downwards, his head drooping in defeat. He knew he only had a few seconds before Normal pulled away and walked from him without a word.
“Well, Normal.” Hermie’s voice cracked even at his low volume. Normal tensed under his fingertips. “You popped a zit. You got humiliated, and you didn’t have fun at your first dance.”
Normal turned to face Hermie head-on and look into his eyes, confusion and defeat overwhelming his features, his gaze nearly pleading .
“That sounds pretty normal to me.”