Then the ceiling started to move, like the surface of a pond after a rock had been thrown in. The rotating fan looked like a spinning octopus, and Chuck forced himself to his feet, climbed up onto Kip’s bed, and reached for it.
“Okay… okay that’s enough.”
Chuck thought he heard Toad say that, but couldn’t be sure. There was a whispery sensation in his ear, like a thousand ghosts telling him secrets at the same time. All Chuck could do in response was chuckle, bounce on the bed and reach for those tentacles.
He lost his footing, slammed the side of his face on the floor. A tooth rattled loose, slid across the floor on a slip-n-slide of blood. A crack splintered the enamel… no not a crack. A mouth. Then two more cracks—eyes. The tiny eyes were as bright as Maglites, and the mouth just kept saying the same phrase again and again.
“The Toad is yours. The Toad is yours.”
“Mine,” Chuck said as he peeled his face off the ground and rose to his feet. “The Toad is mine!”
The room swam. The air felt as thick as Jell-O. Chuck had to take each breath slow and easy, made more difficult by his constant giggles.
“Enough, you guys. Okay… please. It’s starting to hurt… please!”
Toad? Is that Toad… in trouble?
Chuck looked down at himself. When did I take my clothes off?
But that didn’t matter. Toad needed him. The other kids refused to stop feeding, and now Toad was screaming, throwing his arms and legs around like one of those inflatable wavy guys outside of the car dealership.
Chuck was going to help him. He wanted to help him.
“The Toad is mine…”
Once he got enough of the other kids out of the way, using his knuckles and elbows and head and teeth, he caught sight of Toad’s bare chest. Deep craters where zits used to be, now only scooped out potholes of flesh and blood. And there was so much blood. It bubbled out, ran down Toad’s body.
And Chuck pressed his tongue to Toad’s skin and licked. Lapped up as much as he could. The others were already pawing at him from behind, clawing and scraping, doing everything they could to get their share.
Toad’s body started to shake then. His eyes went white.
Chuck didn’t think that was good, but he couldn’t do anything but laugh. Some of the other kids sat on the ground and laughed too, and Chuck wondered if they had been drinking Toad’s blood like he had been. A boy and a girl fucked on Toad’s bed now, looked to Chuck like conjoined twins connected at the groin. When the boy reached up and squeezed the girls breasts, it looked like his hands plunged into her chest, his fingers starting to poke out through her back.
“Stop! What the fuck!”
Chuck turned to find Zak standing by the stairs, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.
“Zak!” Chuck said and cackled. “The Toad is mine!”
They love me. I am their entire universe.
The students could hardly wait to get their fix, and once Toad got them into his house, up into his room—his treehouse—he took a seat in his computer chair, pulled his shirt off, and held out both arms as if to hug them all at once.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Take all you need.”
Jade, of course, was head of the line. She straddled him first, swirled her tongue in his mouth and dry-humped him, moaning into his throat. Then she dismounted, circled around to his rear. She ran her nails down his back, slicing the zits open, then pressed her face there, simultaneously slurping and snorting. Kip wanted to watch her, but could only hear the wet, sloppy sounds of her smorgasbord.
The others attacked him then, punching and biting and kicking at each other to get the good spots. Kip tried to keep count of who got what, but after a couple of minutes, he couldn’t differentiate one person from the other. He saw Jezebel and Sasha, Cash and Jerrod, other cheerleaders and jocks and cool kids. All from the party. All known as the popular crowd. The same kids who have been making Kip’s life awful since the day he hit puberty and sprouted his acne. The same kids who would call him names and laugh at him and throw things at him. The same girls who would only look in his direction to wrinkle their nose or laugh or make jokes with their friends. They were all over him now, and he loved every second of it.
And then of course, there was Chuck.
Nothing filled Kip with more joy than seeing Chuck gorging himself on pus and blood. Crying for more. Begging for it. Kip contemplated refusing Chuck, shunning him. But he couldn’t do that. Chuck was his now, and though the kid was Kip’s worst enemy for years and years, it was different. He felt close to Chuck, to all of them. Like they were his children.
That’s right. I’m the popular one now. You’ll all die without me.
Kip closed his eyes and tilted his head back, enjoyed the infinite abyss of pleasure that he was now engulfed in. Every set of lips, every pinch of thumbnails or teeth, each one was like its own orgasm, and Kip shuddered as they all fed.
He didn’t know how long they had been at it… but then something happened. Something changed.
The pleasure sprouted needles.
Suddenly, every time one of them sucked, bit, squeezed, his flesh reacted with pain. Hot, agonizing pain that started at the point of impact and buried deep into his meat, digging and digging deeper until it found his marrow.
“Okay… okay, that’s enough.”
But they wouldn’t stop. He heard Chuck cackling like a mad man, bouncing on Kip’s bed, his face and hands painted with blood. Others fucked or fought, but most were still attached to Kip’s skin like ticks, never satisfied, never full.
Oh god… they’re killing me. It hurts… it fucking hurts!
“More, baby. I want more… please.”
That was Jade’s voice, coming from behind him. He tried to turn his head to get a look at her, but couldn’t manage it with all the bodies piled on top and around him.
“The Toad is mine!” Chuck screamed through a mouthful of laughter. He lay face-first on the floor, a splatter of blood painting the floor just beside his face like a crimson comic book text balloon.
Jade scraped her teeth across the back of Kip’s neck, but the pimples there had already been used up, and she got a mouthful of blood, but seemed just as happy to have it.
My blood works too? Am I just some kind of drug factory or something?
Then Chuck rushed forward, slamming his giant fists into the heads and faces of the others, boy or girl. He grabbed one girl by the hair as he smashed a boy’s nose sideways with his elbow. But the pain didn’t seem to bother them. It was being pulled away from Kip that drove them crazy, and as soon as they unlatched, they would scream, growl, fight to get their place back.
Chuck slapped his tongue to Kip’s chest, swirled it around and drank up the blood that poured down.
Jade had her mouth suctioned to the back of Kip’s neck now, groaning as she drank and drank, making loud gulping sounds.
And then Kip was somewhere else. He could still feel the pain, could still feel the mouths and hands all over him. But he couldn’t see the others anymore. Couldn’t even see his own body. Everything was blackness, abyssal nothingness.
It felt like he was rolling in a bed of broken glass and soaked in sulfuric acid. He tried to scream but could only gurgle and cough and everything tasted like blood and bile and shit and all he wanted to do was be left alone and make everyone get off of him but they wouldn’t because they needed him so bad and he wanted them to need him, wanted to give them all he could but it just hurt too bad like he didn’t have anything left to give, as if they had drained his flesh dry.