Chapter 51

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Monday 6th September 1999

I have to admit, I expected the summer holiday to be more bizarre than it turned out to be. Y’know… more monsters snapping at our heels or emerging from the gaps between pavement slabs or descending from the sky like Mary Poppins. It wasn’t like we had complete radio-silence – a couple of incidents had popped up – but for the most part, it had been surprisingly quiet. Not that I’m complaining, of course! A low level of monster appearances is probably my personal favourite. But it’s also not really the norm for us.

Before we knew it, the final day was upon us, with only 24 short hours between us and our last year of school. Back to the routine, to dragging myself out of bed at unreasonable hours and taking the journey from my home to school.

One last day of staying over at Dakota’s outside of weekends…

“Morning, Alex…” my half-asleep girlfriend mumbled as I snuggled up to her in bed.

“Let’s freeze time,” I proposed. “I bet Harmony can do it somehow. Let’s just stay like this forever.”

“I need breakfast though…” she whimpered back at me.

“She can make you not hungry…” I added, feeling her lovely warm pyjama-clad body against mine.

“But food…”

“But… you…”

Hey, cut me some slack, that was the best argument I could think of first thing in the morning.

She giggled, at least, and ruffled my bedhead.

“Ten minutes of snuggles,” she purred. “Then a big breakfast. Deal?”

“175%!” I grinned, devoted to making the absolute most of it.

As per usual, Kitty was already up when Dakota and I had sluggishly made our way downstairs. She had her sketchpad out, almost so focused drawing that I was worried she hadn’t heard us come down and would leap out of her skin upon seeing us.

Maybe I was overthinking things, though. Dakota seemed to have no such concerns.

“Morning, Kitty. Have you eaten already?”

And Kitty didn’t even look up from her work, never mind seem surprised.

“I had some toast, thanks.”

“If you want anything else, I’ll probably be cooking more than I can eat,” Dakota noted, “so you can help yourself, okay?”

“Thanks,” was Kitty’s curt response, accompanied by a light nod.

While Dakota glided into the kitchen, I sat down beside Kitty, with just enough distance between us that I couldn’t see her artwork. I figured she wouldn’t want me to without express permission.

“I can’t believe it’s the last day already…” I voiced before stretching my arms.

“It went fast,” she agreed.

“How’re you feeling about… y’know… starting at a new school and everything…?”

Her pencil stopped moving for a second, and then she began rolling it back and forth between finger and thumb.

“Nervous, I guess…”

“Yeah, I can understand that… but hey, if anything goes wrong, you’ve got a bunch of Sixth Formers on-call to set the bastards straight,” I assured her with a smile.

“Thanks… I don’t know if that would stop them, but…” she murmured, pencil-rolling coming to a halt.

“Well, look…” I started without knowing exactly what I was going to say. “This is a new beginning. You’re getting the chance to do things better than the last time- not that you made mistakes! But, y’know… you get a blank slate here. And I’m sure you can make new friends, just… well, okay, I’m not the best person to give advice on that, but…”

She turned to look at me, unimpressed, perhaps a little glum.

“Can I start over?” I checked with her, bringing a slight smile to her face. “You’re a good person. You’re smart and talented and you don’t deserve to be treated badly. You’re gonna meet a lot of new people and you have to give them a chance to get to know you… you have to trust that they’re not all out to get you.”

“Yeah…”

“Really, Kitty. I get that it’s not going to be easy for you… but what would Spider-Man do?”

“Web bullies to the ceiling,” she answered dryly without missing a beat. “And did you really just ask me that…?”

“Well, I meant, like…”

Nope…

“Because he…”

Failing…

“Did I say I’m crap at this…?”

“It’s okay,” the auburn-haired girl spoke, “I get it. I can’t make any promises, but… I’ll try.”

“Good,” I smiled back at her. “I’m sure it’ll all turn out fine.”

“What about you?” Kitty asked. “It’s your last year…”

“Shite!” Dakota suddenly bellowed from the kitchen. “Alex, I need a hand…!”

“Hang on!” I called back, giving Kitty a quick ‘one minute’ gesture before rushing into the kitchen. Probably a fortunate escape for me, really. Somehow, Dakota had set eggs on fire… I’m not entirely sure how, but it was quite the sight to see. She insisted that it was because she was cooking too fast.

I didn’t think we had anything in particular planned for the day, so as Dakota and I finally settled down to eat, our focus was mainly on the school year awaiting us. And, naturally, once Bao, Kendal, Zahid and Harriet turned up, the foolish belief that this was going to be a quiet day was utterly upturned, because Kendal had suddenly remembered that I’d wound up not bowling with them on Christmas Eve and apparently that had to be rectified.

We took a bus through town to the bowling centre, and then had to figure out how we were going to handle having seven people in our group when the maximum number of people per lane was six. Bao whisked up a convoluted system where four people would play at a time with a continually-shifting assignment of “Player 1” through “Player 4”, and… well, that fell through after about forty minutes and we just felt our way through who’d play when. Kitty had never been bowling, and her learning curve was honestly pretty cute. By the end, she’d scored her very first strike, and even for the lack of a big grin or joyous jumping, she clearly seemed pleased with herself.

Once we finished, we had some lunch and did a little window-shopping before making our way back to Dakota’s.

“Only three days left until the Dreamcast comes out!” Bao reminded us all as we settled down in the living room. “It’s gonna be so cool!”

“Bao, do you have to mention the Dreamcast every single day?” Zahid sighed, slumped in one of the armchairs as usual. “And didn’t you say it was the American release? You’ve got to wait another month?”

“I know, I’m just excited about it, man! I’ve literally had dreams about the Dreamcast!”

“They’ve been quite remarkable,” Harriet added, tongue lightly in cheek. “I’ve heard all about them.”

“There was one where I was playing on a cinema-sized screen and the graphics were so realistic…”

“You’re sure you weren’t just dreaming of being at the cinema?” Dakota asked with a smile.

“I was thinking that!” Kendal chimed in while flicking through TV channels.

“Nah, I was controlling Mr Bean on the screen! Alright, now I’m genuinely not sure…”

“Well down, you broke Bao’s brain…” I playfully admonished the girls.

“No, you… I’m just… see, now I’m thinking that…” Bao stopped and started like a traffic jam crawl.

“You’re really proving him wrong, Bao,” Harriet told him softly.

“There’s nothing oooon…” Kendal whined. “I’m gonna leave it on the news. Maybe there’ll be something interesting.”

“A politician said a thing and a country did something,” Kitty predicted, curled up at one end of the sofa.

“Probably, but we’ll find out!”

The current news story was political, so Kitty wasn’t far off there.

“Phil wants to get into journalism,” Zahid spoke after a few moments.

“He’ll ace it,” Kendal replied confidently. “He did our Year 11 yearbook and that was amazing.”

My blood almost ran cold at the mention of that. Every photo of me in that book (thankfully very few) was terrible. She wasn’t wrong, at least; it was very well-made. But I couldn’t give it ten out of ten.

“I wanna see it sometime!” Dakota bubbled at that.

“He did little interviews with everyone in the year, it’s so much fun to read,” Harriet enthused.

“I forgot about that…”

Bao said that with genuine surprise.

“I wonder what I said in mine…?”

“I think you said something about wanting to be a vet or a zoologist…?” Kendal offered up.

“Huh. Must’ve been when I was super into animals…”

“Well shit, I thought that was your Victorian antiques phase,” Zahid remarked with a slight shake of the head.

“I’m thinking about game design or something now…” Bao continued. “Working with computers, anyway, since that’s the future.”

“Maybe you’d make a new game in some series one day…” Kitty suggested, earning a warm smile from him.

“That’d be the dream…”

The TV screen suddenly cut to black, the sound of the news reporter’s voice being replaced by a peculiar hum. A moment later, a white image filled the darkness. It took less time than that for me to recognise it: Melody’s emblem.

“Guys…” I started, with no chance to finish as the picture on the screen changed.

“Hello, world.”

Melody Hill, in full costume, complete with skull-like mask.

“Sorry for interrupting, but I have a message that you really need to hear. It’s something you’ve been plugging your ears to for a very long time now, and I’m here to help you finally confront it. The truth is, there are monsters in our world. Living, breathing monsters. Monsters with masks.”

She laughed, ever-so-softly.

“You wouldn’t know it if you passed me in the street, but I’m a monster. Wearing a second mask to hide my first. Aren’t we so strange? We’re not so different, really. Us monsters, and you normal humans. We don’t mean to be the way we are. But we are powerful, and beautiful, and sublime. We are perfectly imperfect. And you will never comprehend us.”

After that, she paused for just a moment, perhaps to let that sink in.

“This is a declaration of war. Today marks the beginning of an uprising. We will change the rules. And the day will come when we will be the norm. ‘Crazy’ and ‘insane’ will be compliments. The lunatics will run the asylum. It’ll be extraordinary, in every sense of the word. But, of course, there are monsters watching this too. Some who know they’re monsters, and some who don’t yet. You can step forward now. You can forge your place in the new world order, right by my side. Or stay bound by fear and live in the shadows of normalcy; it’s your choice. Just know that our time is almost here. Oh, and one more thing…”

Her gaze seemed to shift slightly, somehow, even with her eyes obscured by those thick black lenses.

“Painters. Decide where you stand. You can try to stop me if you want, but I know as well as you do where you really belong.”

If the yearbook mention had made my blood chill, then that seemed to freeze my body from the inside out. She was publicly calling us out.

“Thank you for listening. You’ll hear from me again soon. Until then, remember… our masks are coming off.”

With that, the screen flickered back to her white emblem, and then to the newscaster in the studio, looking very confused.

“Was that Melody…?” Kitty asked. I realised only then that she hadn’t met Melody yet, so she was reaching that conclusion from what we’d told her.

“Yeah,” Dakota confirmed, eyes still on the screen as though something else could happen at any moment.

“‘War’…” Harriet almost choked. “She said she was declaring war…”

“Alex, you’re her favourite,” Zahid turned to me. “Any clue what she’s talking about?”

“I have a hunch…” Bao muttered.

“I really want to argue that I’m not ‘her favourite’ but I get what you mean…” I sighed. “She thinks of… mental people… as monsters. Like there’s some kind of huge divide between them-”

I caught my choice of words there, and forced a correction.

“- between us and normal people. And… well, like she said, apparently she wants to stage an uprising. She’s got whatever weird Lokon powers now, so… I think we need to treat this as something serious.”

“Hang on, though,” Kendal spoke up. “We’re supposed to fight monsters- I mean, actual proper not-human monsters that come from our heads. It’s not our business to fight her…”

“She just made it our business,” Zahid countered.

“Besides, she was involved in us becoming the Painters,” Dakota added. “She’s tied to us, and to Harmony.”

“So… we’re going to rush into battle against her?” Kendal asked us, honestly confused. “Six vs. one, take her down, end it?”

“If it’s just her…” I pointed out. “Who knows what she’s been up to all summer?”

“Could be why we haven’t had as many monsters to fight, too,” Bao reasoned thoughtfully. “Melody’s going behind Harmony’s back, so maybe they’ve spent all this time fighting?”

“Great, so she’s got a whole army of actual flesh-and-blood people for us to fight? I didn’t sign up for this. I don’t think I can attack real people…”

Kendal seemed unusually uneasy, eyes cast downwards.

“We don’t know anything yet,” Dakota reiterated. “All we can do right now is be prepared.”

“And what, let her make the first move?” Zahid quizzed her. “What if that means marching into the middle of town and attacking people? If we can stop her from doing that before she does it-”

“We don’t know that she will do that,” our leader maintained. “I’m the last person who wants to see attacks happening. I’ve been hearing about the IRA for almost as long as I can remember, so I get what it’s like. But we can’t start making assumptions. Let’s talk with her first, get an understanding of what’s going on, and then we’ll do whatever we have to do.”

“Hey…”

Kitty stood up from the sofa, looking around the rest of us.

“What if she isn’t doing anything wrong?”

“Kitty, she said war…” Harriet scowled up at the younger girl.

“Maybe she didn’t mean it literally? Maybe she’s acting scary just to make a point? If all this turns out to be about making a better place for people like us to live, then… it’d be a good thing, right?”

Nobody spoke. Second after second of ruminating silence seemed to pass.

“She said that the lunatics will run the asylum. That doesn’t sound like a good thing for normal people,” Harriet argued. “She doesn’t want everyone living together happily. She wants to flip the tables.”

“Harriet,” Dakota began, “we don’t know-”

“I heard what she said!” the blonde-haired girl snapped back. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was panicked. “It’s an uprising! She just threatened the entire world! I don’t care how, I don’t care what you decide to do as the Painters, she declared war on every normal human being on the planet! That is not a good thing!”

Silently, Kitty returned to her seat, chewing on whatever other words she may’ve wanted to say. Bao hugged Harriet, consoling her in whispers.

“If she’s in school tomorrow,” Dakota spoke calmly, “we’ll approach her and talk to her about it. If not, we’ll visit her house after school.”

“And if she isn’t there either…?” I asked her gently, trying to ease the question in so as to not raise tensions any further.

“I don’t know…” she huffed. “I need time to think.”

“So much for the last day of the Summer of Fun…” Kendal mourned aloud.

…

Evening rolled in as the ever-earlier sunset darkened the day. First Kendal, then Bao and Harriet, and finally Zahid left; I held off for as long as I could, but it was time for me to head back to my home too. With my essentials stashed in a bag, I hugged and kissed Dakota goodbye, and hugged Kitty too, wishing her good luck for tomorrow. As I walked home, the world felt no different than it had the day before. Nothing had changed yet in the wake of Melody’s broadcast. The atmosphere was the same as ever, like nothing had happened. But I could feel it in my bones. A new era, of some kind, had just begun.

Mum opened the front door to me, and immediately grabbed me into a big hug. At first, I thought it was to comfort me.

“It feels like forever since I last saw you…” she told me after a few seconds.

“Mum, I stopped by, like, two days ago…” I chuckled lightly.

“I know… Lucy still hasn’t come home, either,” she added while breaking from the hug. “Apparently the camp has gotten in touch with the school and sorted it all out… your dad and I have been so lonely without either of you around.”

“I’ll remember that if you ever make a joke about looking forward to us moving out…”

Okay, something was definitely up with Lucy. No normal summer camp would run into the academic year, right?

Mum headed back indoors, and I followed, taking my shoes off and dumping my belongings in the hallway for the time being. I popped my head around the living room door to find Dad sat on the sofa, watching TV. He must’ve noticed in his peripheral vision, as he turned to look at me.

“Hello stranger,” he greeted me chipperly.

“Hey Dad,” I waved back while Mum squeezed through behind me.

“Did you see the weird message during the evening news?” he asked. I figured it was at the top of his mind.

“Yeah, actually,” I replied, heading in and sitting myself on the arm of the armchair.

“Do you know anything about it?”

Ah, of course…

“Uhm-”

“And don’t play coy,” Mum added, sitting next to Dad, both of them looking at me expectantly.

“If I tell you, you have to keep it to yourselves,” I countered just as keenly. “If you interfere, you could wind up in trouble or something…”

“Alright,” Dad nodded. “But you have to tell us everything.”

“The girl with the mask is Melody Hill, from school.”

It didn’t surprise me in the least to see Mum react more to that than Dad. She was more familiar with the names and faces of at least some of my classmates than him.

“Her sister Harmony is actually the power in our weapons – the real Harmony died as a kid and the power took her place – and they worked together to make us the Painters. Except now Melody’s striking out on her own. The ‘monsters’ she mentioned are people with mental health issues.”

I neglected to mention me and my friends being “monsters” too. I’m sure you can understand why.

Neither of my parents seemed to know what to say to all of that.

“We don’t know what to do yet, but we’ll handle it-”

“This is something the police should be dealing with, or the secret services, not a group of teenagers,” Dad interrupted me.

“You saw the emblem at the start of the broadcast, right? She has powers too. She’s got this scythe just like our weapons. We’re probably the only ones who can fight her.”

“I knew you were going to say that…” Mum grumbled in dismay.

“Okay, look… I’ll keep you up-to-date on everything, and when you think it’s gone too far for us to handle on our own, I’ll suggest to everyone else that we go to the police. But you need to trust me. We can do this.”

The two of them looked at each other briefly, then back at me.

“We have ourselves a deal,” my father concluded. “We’ll trust you, and you trust us.”

“Awesome,” I smiled in relief.

“But,” my mother added, “you have school tomorrow. You can worry about Melody Hill after you’ve worried about that. That’s part of the deal too.”

“Hey, school’s more likely to kill me than Melody,” I joked.

My parents faces dropped just a little at that.

“No, I- I’m kidding, we can’t die as the Painters, we’ll be fine…”

And if neither my final year of school nor Melody Hill and her uprising would be the end of me, my parents would probably kill me in return for scaring them half to death…