Collected Kill: Volume 2 Read Free Page A

against his gums and an entire fingernail stuck in a gap between two pointed teeth.
    In the back of my mind, the screams of my classmates echoed as well as their taunts and name-calling, their cold shoulders, and nasty glares.
    And I understood him.  And he, in turn, saw this in my eyes and stopped.
    A tear streamed down his face in a pink line, separating two congruent segments of his own blood-caked cheek.
    “But they were never mean to you just because you were different and they were normal,” he whispered sadly, his eyebrows arched, searching to understand.  “They accepted you.”
    I shook my head and looked away in frustration.  “You never let them know you.  You never gave them a chance to accept—”
    “No!” he shouted.  “They would’ve always seen me as the different one.”
    “It is true you have something strange,” I mumbled, feeling the anger bubbling within my mouth, my cheeks expanding with every passing minute.  “You have something that they don’t, but if you would’ve let yourself get to know them better you would’ve learned that Susie has a third nipple and Billy has a glass eye.  Megan has no genitals and Liz’s really a guy.  Jake’s heart is on the outside of his chest and Jimmy thinks he’s a tree.  Brandon talks to demons and Ms. Adams is part turkey.  And I can’t forget Sarah, poor Sarah, possessed by the ghost of Hitler, nor Jenny having sold her soul for cash.  Jackie is a seven-year-old stripper and Bobby is living with a deadly rash.  Tony collects chicken heads and Denny lives in a hole.  Candy has sex with aliens and Marvin is really a troll.”
    “Ms. Adams...part turkey?”
    “Fears Thanksgiving and gobbles from time to time.”
    “But I didn’t know..I’m so sorry.”
    My heart spasmed wildly within my chest, sweat trickled down my forehead.  My jaw cracked.  “Didn’t your parents explain why they put you in this class?  And that it was a special class...”
    “B-but what about you?  You’re normal!”
    I gagged, feeling the anger escape me.  My tongue lashed at him.  His eyes fluttered in horror as he watched my tongue uncoil and branch into two flickering points which quickly wrapped around his neck and squeezed.

TWINS
    It was the first time Nathan had really looked at his girlfriend’s vagina.  It seemed like such a foreign terrain now, like some kind of stretched and mutated alien landscape.  Even the smell seemed odd, like she had been bathing in fish oil or douching with salmon cakes.  
    The whole moment of revelation almost eclipsed the excitement of labor.  But Nathan quickly snapped out of it as Jenny screamed, “God, get it out of me!”
    “Okay, now push!” the doctor said calmly.
    Nathan stared into the dark tunnel as blood trickled out the side.  Mucus and water soon trailed as he could almost see her dilating by the minute.
    “Okay, I see the head!” the doctor informed them.
    Nathan just knelt there, glaring into the dark void that was now eclipsed by a tiny ball of flesh with hair.  He dreaded the coming moments, knowing that Jenny was too unstable to become a mom so soon.
    *      *      *
    The pregnancy was a mistake.  Nathan had been seeing Jenny for only six months when they found out the news.  Nathan went into a depression after the shock and Jenny was full of excitement and anticipation.  Nathan couldn’t understand why.
    Then came the talk about twins.  Jenny was suddenly obsessed with having twins.  She told him that she had always dreamed about having twins.
    Next came the matching outfits and double strollers.  Twin cribs and changing tables.
    But the first ultrasound only showed one.
    And Nathan thought the madness would end.  
    It didn’t.
    Next came a new apartment for the “twins” to grow up in.  Jenny wanted something with more space, so that both kids could have their own room.  Nathan argued with her, stressed the point of the ultrasound, but it was no use.
    “So, it was