Thanks for your patience with this one! A humble request: I work very hard on Paranatural and everything is incredibly expensive. If you were on the fence about supporting my work on Patreon or Ko-fi, now is a great time to hop on board and chip in a little to keep it going strong if you can! Tax season is always brutal for freelancers like me. Thank you very much!

~

[Transcript]

        “N-nothing! Nothing’s funny!” Mary Rose squeaked at June in her startled confusion. 

        The stranger danger alarm that June had set off by sneaking up behind them had been muffled in Mary Rose’s mind by the fact that she was pretty in a goth way. A similar lapse in judgment would one day lead Rose to worship a ten-foot-tall skeleton goddess, but for now it just spared June from getting reflexively throat-chopped by a yellow belt with poor impulse control.

        “Nothing’s funny? That’s a depressing perspective for a kid your age. What about clowns and cartoons? What about little walleyed dogs with smushed-up faces?” June looked from one girl to the other. “C’mon, let me in on the joke! I could’ve sworn I heard you laughing.”

        Mary Rose and Sophie only exchanged a nervous glance.

        “...I could’ve sworn I heard somebody shouting for help, too,” June added, dropping to a disappointed, final-warning tone.

        The bullies folded instantly, if to a crooked angle:

        “Our, um... our friend’s stuck in the closet! The... the handle jammed!” fibbed Mary Rose. “We couldn’t get her out!”

        “Y-yeah!” Sophie agreed. Had she continued to co-sign the lies of rotten ringleaders, her future jobby as a journalist would have proven much more profitable. Unfortunately, this incident was one of several that would one day burden Sophie Sybil with a conscience and integrity.

        “Uh-huh,” droned a skeptical June, who’d seen the girls holding the double doors shut. She rose back to her feet. “Well, HEY. Maybe it’ll conveniently come unstuck now that I’M here, huh?”

        She tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge. 

        Mary Rose and Sophie looked just as surprised as June. They shared exhales of relief and matching sneers of triumph, pleased that their lie had somehow accidentally proven true.

        “...Maybe don’t gloat too soon, you two,” June sighed, glancing back at Mary Rose and Sophie Sybil. “Even the best bluffs need a poker face. Trust me, I was a delinquent mean girl for most of my life. Not every sign you’re up to no good needs to be admissible in court. In the real world, folks’ll slug you for a smug look and way less than solid proof that you deserve it.” June opened her mouth, then paused as she thought for a second. “Not that I’m going to punch you,” she added.

        Both frightened girls nodded doubtfully. For a moment, June wondered why their eyes had gotten even wider, before she realized she’d unthinkingly pulled out a cigarette and put it to her lips.

        “But, um, the best defense—in combat OR in court—is to, um... not commit an offense that you, uh... gotta cover for in the first place. Er, I don’t mean like a criminal offense, though, ’cause most laws are bullsh—UH. I mean some crimes are good.” A floundering June wagged her unlit cigarette at her eighth-grade audience. “And smoking isn’t a crime. Which is to say, ergo, that it is bad. You, uh. You got that?” 

        Both bullies nodded vigorously, discovering at the same time that they would rather die than disappoint her. June winced, far less taken by her own inspiring speech. Behind the girls, a silent Peter Puckett gave June the least-deserved thumbs up she’d ever earned. 

        “...Stay in school,” she sighed in summary, and stuffed her cigarette back in her pocket.

        “We are in school,” said Sophie Sybil, hoping she might earn herself some praise.

        “Great. That’s a great start to staying in it.”

        “We had to stay,” bragged Mary Rose. “We have detention.”

        “That’s not as great a start but, uh. Glass house. Shouldn’t throw stones. All that jazz.”

        Before she’d dropped out of high school, June had gotten detention, once, for throwing a rock through her principal’s window; the wisdom of the idiom wasn’t particularly relevant when the glass house was some other dirtbag’s duplex.

        Remembering her mission, June turned away to knock on the door of the closet.

        “HEY. All good in there??”

        Silence. June tried the doorknob again.

        “She stopped answering us, too,” Mary Rose complained in solidarity, acting very much like she was now June Summers’ crony. A concerned, reproachful frown from her new role model reawakened the young bully’s guilt and cowardice, however. “C-c’mon,” Mary Rose whispered to Sophie, tugging her toady by the arm. “Let’s get back to the library before DuNacht comes looking for us!”

        Peter slouched up behind June as Mary Rose Baxter and Sophie Sybil scurried off. Disciplining students was above his meager paygrade, and Mary Rose was known for fearlessly pelting faculty with milk cartons when she had somebody else around to blame, so Peter was relieved that June had dealt with them herself. Clayview Middle School was the Wild West for a student body who’d learned to be mean and merciless from their even meaner and even less merciful teachers; perhaps a black-leather-clad drifter vigilante was exactly what it needed to change for the better... or perhaps he’d let some total weirdo smoke indoors while telling children that she “wasn’t going to punch them.” Only time would tell, and hopefully it wouldn’t tell his boss.

        “Is, uh... is the door locked?” Peter asked, fumbling with a keyring that he’d pulled out of his pocket.

        “...I don’t think so,” June replied. 

        The doorknob hadn’t clicked or turned. When she had tried to force it, there had been the slightest hint of fleshy give... as though something much stronger than her held the door in place.

        June set her hand on Peter’s to silence his jingling keys.

        “Do you hear that?”

        A whispering hiss, like the breath of a beast whose every exhale was a deathrattle, was drifting from within the darkened closet.

        Peter blinked. He looked around. 

        “Hear what?”

        June arched an eyebrow. Thought so.

        “Hey,” she said, stepping back from the door. “Look away for a sec.”

        Of all the requests she could have made of him, this one was the hardest to obey. A bewildered Peter Puckett did as June asked nonetheless, only pausing for one last look at her resolute expression, and her hair, which seemed to billow in a breeze he couldn’t feel.

        THWACK!!

        Peter Puckett whirled to find that June had struck the closet with... a rusty metal pipe?! Was THAT what he had felt when he had briefly held her jacket? Why, in hindsight, had he thought it would be impolite to ask?? Sparks swirled in the air as the doorknob clattered to the floor, misshapen to a molten wreck by the impact. It truly did look slightly melted—had Clayview’s desert heat deformed it? Could that have been why it was jammed? A different question drowned out the rest in importance as soon as June reared back from her battle stance, let out a satisfied sigh, and fixed the scarlet hair her swing had thrown across her face:

        “...Can I get your number?”

        “HUH??” June scoffed. She stared daggers back at Peter. “Later!!” June harrumphed, deploying a tone that much better matched outright refusal. In the heart of the weapon she’d set on her shoulder, Forge flared with a wordless objection June promptly ignored.

        The closet door, nearly battered off its hinges, now creaked aside at Agent Summers’ slightest touch. A sliver of the sun’s last light fell across Mina’s face, for it had only set within her nightmares. Her eyes began to slowly flutter open.

        “Hey!” said June, smiling down at Mina from the doorway. “Mind if I come in? Or, uh.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Did you maybe want to come out?”

        An awestruck Mina Zarei blinked up at her, bringing her blurry image into focus. Mina’s memory of her dream began to fade, as all dreams do... replaced with a memory that Mina would never forget.

*EDIT* Had to take a break this week to rest some health stuff! Paranatural will be back next week! Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for reading! I would really appreciate it if you considered backing Paranatural's Patreon (an art-filled post for $5+ patrons went up just today!), or, if you liked the page and have a couple bucks to kick in, maybe throw a donation my way on Ko-fi! Thank you so much!

~

[Transcript]

        “Mary Rose, PLEASE! Let me out! Let me out!”

        Mina threw herself against the doors of the storage closet, pushing on them in a panic. She groped for the doorknob in the dark, twisting and turning it desperately, but the effort only made her bullies laugh.

        “Say please,” a teenaged Mary Rose Baxter said in singsong, leaning back to brace the door.

        “I did!” Mina frantically protested. “I did say please!”

        “Say PRETTY please, then,” Mary Rose snickered, exchanging a triumphant sneer with her mousy toady, a young and unenlightened Sophie Sybil.

        “P-p-pretty please!” Mina whimpered. She didn’t have much time. It always found her in the dark.

        “Sorry, what?” droned a snide Mary Rose. “You’re kinda muffled. Kinda ch-ch-choppy. What do you think, Sophie? Did Mina say the magic word?”

        “That please didn’t sound very pretty to ME,” Sophie giggled.

        “Well, she can’t help THAT.” Mary Rose flashed the smile she’d been practicing for her inevitable coronation as eighth-grade prom queen, high school valedictorian, and then like president or something else important and prestigious. “Maybe WE can help, though! Keep an ugly bookworm shut up in its cocoon for long enough, and it’ll fly free as a BEAUTIFUL butterfly! You should be grateful, Mina!”

        “Let me OUT! Please, just let me OUT!”

        Mina thumped her fists against the door in impotent frustration. Familiar self-loathing struck as Mina realized that she hadn’t used her full strength; her pleas for help had been restrained, too, a far cry from the most her voice could muster. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She wanted to punch the door so hard it stung. She couldn’t, though. She never could. Even now, fear kept her folded up inside herself—it kept her quiet, shrinking and self-conscious. Why? Why? Why couldn’t she ever shout or dance or speak her heart aloud when she was alone in her bedroom? Why couldn’t she confess a single secret to a diary, if not her parents or Miss Pleezdoo? Tears welled up in Mina’s eyes. She was so tired of being pathetic—of being herself. She wished that Mary Rose’s taunts were true, and she could hide away unseen until she changed to something new... but even with nobody watching, Mina couldn’t find the courage to spread her wings.
 
        Mina’s muffled weeping tied a knot in Mary Rose’s chest. She scowled, too young and proud to meet the guilt that she had earned with anything but sputtering deflection.

        “It’s YOUR fault for tattling on us, Mina!” Mary Rose insisted in a huff, crossing her arms. “It’s your fault we have detention with that creepy freak DuNacht!”

        “I didn’t tattle! You got caught!” Mina protested. “I have detention, too!” 

        “Um, you could have lied for us like last time?” Sophie scolded in reply. “Mary Rose was literally like ‘maybe Mina’s actually cool’? We were literally gonna give you a makeover? We were literally drawing you in art class to, like, plan it?”

        This earned Sophie a death glare from her future fellow Death Cultist, who swiftly scrambled for a less embarrassing angle of attack.

        “You LIKE the library, Mina. We DON’T,” said Mary Rose. “It’s ONLY FAIR that you get EQUAL PUNISHMENT!”

        Mina, in fact, despite enjoying books about the wide world beyond Clayview, dreaded every single moment that she spent inside the library. She and her bullies had been sent to serve their after-school sentence there, in DuNacht’s dusty, cobwebbed domain, thanks to one of Miss Pleezdoo’s less-than-bright ideas. Mary Rose and Sophie had followed Mina out of the library on her state-mandated bathroom break (in fact, her swiftly abandoned attempt to flee the school before the sun set). Then they’d cornered Mina as she scuttled back to detention, spooked by that red-headed woman’s unexpected reappearance, and then tricked her into her current cruel predicament.

        “...I never did a thing to make you hate me,” Mina whimpered in the dark. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

        Only silence answered. Seconds passed. Mina’s tearful eyes went wide.

        “M-Mary Rose?” she whispered. “Sophie?”

        She listened at the door, then fell to all fours, searching desperately for silhouettes in the sliver of setting sunlight underneath it. She found none besides the night’s approach upon an empty hallway.

        “No! NO! Please, please, PLEASE, I didn’t mean it! Please don’t leave me in the dark all by my—”

        Something clicked in the shadows behind Mina: a twig snapped by a stalking creature’s footstep; an arthritic crackle in the joints of something old and gaunt and carapaced, unfolding to the ceiling. It could have been nothing, and might have been anything. Mina’s worst fears filled the void—a stomach far from satiated. She’d seen the storage closet’s shallow depth, before the shadows sealed it shut; she’d felt its space expand forever in the absence of her senses’ reassurance. Now the creature that was lurking in her prison claimed proximity and mystery with equal greed, ignoring logic’s meek objections to the pairing’s contradiction. It was here, a breath away from her, in claustrophobic reach. It was somewhere out there, hiding, far too vast for her to fathom. 

        Mina froze, and held her breath... but her heart still writhed and struggled like a worm strung on a hook. Something hungry licked its lips and slithered closer.

        “...You think she’s faking?” Sophie asked, looking up at Mary Rose. To their ears, Mina hadn’t said a word since their last round of threats. She’d gone completely silent after they had said that she deserved their torment. Neither girl’s mockery had gotten a response for more than a minute now, and both of her bullies were secretly starting to worry.

        “Faking what? Not talking to us?” Mary Rose scoffed uncomfortably, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “That’s just as good as if she—if she, like, just shut up for good for real. Ha ha.”

        “Ha ha,” Sophie repeated, as if echoing some grave religious mantra.

        “What’s so funny?” asked June Summers from behind them, and both girls nearly jumped out of their skin.

Thanks for reading! PLEASE consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon or Ko-fi if you're enjoying my work! Thank you!

~

[Transcript]

        “Would you stop following me already?” June Summers sighed at her someday husband. She’d paused at a crossroads in Clayview Middle School’s dimming halls, which had given Peter Puckett just enough time to catch up to her.

        The young janitor blinked and pushed his glasses back in place. The bookish student June had followed into the school had said the same exact thing to her, right before she’d scrambled off into the dark to shake her tail. June had continued trespassing in search of the girl, wandering the corridors, peeking into empty classrooms—Peter had even watched her pick a lock to force a shortcut. Heck, she’d made him hold her jacket and keep watch! June had very little standing, Peter thought, in asking him to leave like HE was doing something wrong.

        Her confident audacity and low-cut shirt, however, had shorted out his moral circuits, and so a chastened Peter settled for a slightly less righteous method of protest.

        “Your boots,” he said, “are trailing sand. I, uh. I have to mop up after you. Right after you. Behind you.”

        June arched a skeptical eyebrow and gave Peter a judging once-over.

        “...I guess the drool will help with the spitshine,” she scoffed, and strode on straight ahead with just a hint of extra swagger.

        Peter’s “I don’t know what you’re talking about” became a flustered lie halfway through the sentence, and so he trailed off and trailed after her in silence. She looked back a little later, to check if he was staring impolitely, and, satisfied that he still was, June continued her directionless inspection of the school.

        “Hey,” she said a little later, coming to a sudden stop.

        Peter, of course, bumped into her immediately, unable to find traction on the floor his mop had dampened in between them. Before the collision could become a second, belated meet-cute clichĂ©, June, who’d hardly swayed in place when he’d bounced off of her, caught Peter by the collar of his jumpsuit to prevent his klutzy fall.

        “What’s that?” she asked, tugging the ruffled custodian into view of the sight that had stopped her in her tracks.

        June pointed out the window. Beyond a narrow courtyard, recast in red by Clayview’s sunset, a darker wing of the middle school, decrepit and deserted, wrapped back around the building in a smothering embrace.

        “Oh, uh,” Peter mumbled, prying his eyes away from June and her potentially intentional proximity. “That? That’s the oldest section of the school. They call it the Old Annex.”

        “...Why do they call it that?”

        “Huh?” Peter blinked. “Because it’s... the oldest section of the school?”

        “Why’s it called the Old Annex, then? An annex is something that’s added to a building.”

        “Oh. Yeah, that is weird. It definitely subtracts from the building, I’d say.”

        June slowly turned to look at him.  

        “...Oh, sorry,” Peter frowned. “You liked it, didn’t you? You were gonna say you liked it.”

        June sighed and let go of his collar. This guy was unfortunately her type.

        “...I just have an eye for the peculiar,” June shrugged. “Some things have a shine, y’know?” She drifted off to walk the hallway, staring sidelong at the annex through the window. “...Or cast a darker shadow.”

        “Is that, um... why you’re looking for that girl?” asked Peter, falling in behind her once again. With every minute that ticked by, he was discovering new reasons to hope that this June Summers character wasn’t some sort of cop or weirdo kidnapper.

        “Yeah, kinda,” came June’s vague reply. She missed the exasperated glance that Peter exchanged with his mop behind her back. “How to put this?” she mused after a moment, playing with a piercing as she thought. “You know how, sometimes, when you’re nowhere, halfway somewhere, on a bus, or at some pitstop diner, or just walking down the street... you’ll see someone—a stranger—and just know something’s not right?”

        She stopped again. This time, the sunset framed her in a halo with a shadow at its heart. 

        “They’re sad, or scared... alone, or stuck with someone they can’t seem to get away from. Maybe you can’t tell what’s wrong. Maybe they can’t either, or won’t tell you if you ask. There’s a story there, one you can’t read, one that’s none of your business.” June pointed to herself. “That’s my business. Or... I make it my business, I guess, from time to time.”

        “You’re... a private eye?”

        “Huh? No, no. Nobody pays me, I’m just—”

        “A volunteer... vigilante... do-gooder?” Peter asked, tilting his head. “Like... a superhero?”

        For some reason, June had to think about this option before answering.

        “...I just meant that I’m nosy. I poke around a bit, sometimes, when I think that I can help someone. Go the extra mile, see where it leads.”

        “Um. Isn’t that—” Legally dubious? Well-intentioned but definitively ethically precarious? Peter settled on “—er, kinda, like, um, risky? Why, uh. Why do you... do... that?”

        June stared at him for a few silent seconds, her brow furrowed slightly—almost pouting.

        “...’Cause nobody did it for me,” she muttered at last.

        June shrugged and looked away. Her hands withdrew into her pockets, as if to take back something she had shown too much of. When Peter hadn’t said a word some seconds later, June risked a glance and found him gawking at her: curious, even captivated, his puzzled frown tinged with a touch of earnest pity. June sulked and glowered back at him. 

        Clomp, CLOMP!

        She stomped her boots against the tile floor, which startled Peter from his reverie.

        “Look,” June grumbled, gesturing at the ground with her jacket-pocketed penguin flipper limbs. “No more sand left. Not a grain. That mops up our romantic sunset stroll, right? You can turn those puppy dog eyes on some other mess, ’cause there’s no reason to keep hounding ME. Right, Puckett?” She kept the “scram” implicit; as ever, June’s eyebrows sent most of the message she’d intended to deliver.

        Peter looked around, then scratched his head and shrugged.

        “...Go the extra mile? See where it leads?” he offered, giving June a sheepish smile.

        June gaped at him in grumpy befuddlement. Then her warming cheeks informed her that his echoed line had actually worked on her—a report she wasn’t pleased with, as the choice had not been made with her approval.

        “Fine,” she said in a huff, crossing her arms and marching on. “I’m usually lost and always on the move, though, so don’t expect it to lead anywhere you WANT it to.” June’s ponytail whipped aside to make way for a scrutinizing squint.

        Peter scrambled to give her a thumbs up, as if his wide-eyed nod was not enough, which caused his mop to teeter over. He dove to stop its fall, catching it at a kissable angle like a starlet he had dipped to strike a movie poster pose.

        Peter blinked at June, then at the mop, then back at June. 

        “...She means nothing to me,” he said, which made June snort despite herself.

        The mood was broken, however, when a set of muffled voices echoed down the darkened hallway.

Had to keep the art for this one simple since my schedule's still packed! Thanks for understanding! Barrister will bear the burden by not appearing in this page at all.

Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi to literally buy me time! Thank you very much for your support and your readership!

~

[Transcript]

        Johnny’s fists made short work of the Student Council’s first wave. Black hats flew high into the air with every uppercut he struck, an early graduation for the school’s most shameless strivers. Johnny caught a pair of nunchucks by the chain, instantly welding its links (through grip strength alone, no doubt) into an inflexible morass. A blinding blow seared straight through one kid’s sunglasses. Johnny punched another guy real hard and then that guy fell down. Not every shot was cinematic, but they floored his target audience—one smash hit was followed by its sequel, then an unnecessary spin off some nerd’s back.

        KTONG! A whirling roundhouse outhammered Barrister’s gavel, sending it sailing from his hand. A wooden mallet couldn’t hope to hold a candle to his mighty, metal—

        KTING! KTANG! KTONG!

        With every strike, a fire flared in Johnny’s chest, an anger that could not find time to cool. He’d been trying to be different, maybe, a better, more compassionate sort of bully. Here he was, though, in a fight again. He didn’t quite know why, but Johnny cared less every second. 

        Everybody knew he was a bad kid; they could always tell, had always known, since he could walk and talk and shout and make a scene. His dad knew, and his teachers knew, and his classmates knew. They told him all the time. Sometimes Johnny wanted to prove them wrong. Sometimes, he did everything he could to prove them right. It didn’t make a lick of difference. He would blunder into brawls and bad grades and detention even when he didn’t do his darndest to deserve them, shredding homework when it hurt his head, stealing lunch money when he was bored or hungry, making fun of dorks like Jeff to get a laugh from his—

        KTONG!!

        A lucky counterpunch sent Johnny stumbling back. He shook his head to fix his doubled vision. As he steadied himself, a lull in the fighting gave Johnny the chance to survey the battlefield for the first time since the clash had broken out.

        “R-resisting arrest... is the highest crime of all...!” a battered Barrister groaned from the ground. It was such a serious crime, in fact, that it was often the sole charge brought to bear against the Biddle School’s worst rulebreakers. The affliction was insidious—everyone LOOKED innocent until you tackled them and forced them into handcuffs. Then they’d show their TRUE face: furious, disheveled, locked in SHACKLES like a CRIMINAL; the transformation made Barrister shudder every time. The few suspects that didn’t turn when they were apprehended were charged with criminal negligence instead: neglecting to commit a crime, and thereby wasting precious Student Council resources.

        All around their Black Saint miniboss, Student Council adds had ragdolled in strange shapes, threatening to despawn as the courtyard reached its object limit. Still more mobs were waiting to replace them, however, and Bobblehead’s health bar had appeared onscreen for phase two of the fight. Johnny was exhausted. He didn’t know how much more brawling he could handle on his own.

        KTONK-KCHUNK!

        Johnny briefly felt a pang of hope, thinking that reinforcements might have arrived for him, as a heavy object barreled through the courtyard’s double doors. The large rectangle wasn’t Ollie, however—it was a TV on a cart wheeled in by still more Student Councilors.

        “HYECK-heh HEH SKKNNRRRT!” Troll hacked disgustingly. She’d appeared in a flash of static on the TV’s screen. The Tenth Black Saint Councilor-General was so skilled at hacking (the kind that wrecked computers and the sort that retched up snot) that she was able to worm her way into an unplugged television that didn’t have an internet connection. Troll scanned the scene from her monitor, smirking at her fallen Student Council comrades. “Not a bad K/D for a bully made of MEAT and BONE! Heh HEH HYUURRK! You’re every megabit the DINOSAUR I thought you’d be, JOHNNY JHONNY: as FIERCE as you are DOOMED TO GO EXTINCT!”

        “...I’d rather be a T-REX than a TV,” Johnny grunted, failing to understand that the device was not Troll’s body. “You wouldn’t be the first I put my fist through.”

        “How like a LUDDITE, LOW-IQ DEGENEROID,” scoffed Troll. “You can MUTE THE MESSENGER, but you can’t BLOCK the TOPIC’S TREND! The future belongs to CYBERBULLIES, not you and your OBSOLETE gang of offline goons!”

        “Say that to my face and not through screen and see what happens,” Johnny snorted.

        “That’s the BEAUTY of it, Johnny: I don’t HAVE to!” snickered Troll. “With just a few clicks, I can bully ANYONE from ANYWHERE! Embarrassing photos! Anonymous hatemail! Your digital footprint, 3D-printed and delivered by a proxy paid with cryptocurrency! The world’s ALREADY cyberpunk, and ANALOG punks like YOU are nothing more than WASTED SPACE that needs DEFRAGGING!”

        “Make a meme or somethin’, dang. I don’t need your geek philosophy’s whole wiki.” Johnny dug a finger in his ear to purge it of Troll’s residue. “Call yourself whatever kinda hyperlunk you want. No self-respectin’ bully throws their hat in with the friggin’ STUDENT COUNCIL.”

        “Heh-HEH hyeck! I respect NO ONE—not even MYSELF!” Troll powered through a sea of sympathetic looks from Johnny and her fellow Student Councilors. “TH-THE STUDENT COUNCIL’S RAMPAGE SERVES MY ENDS! I’m an ACCELERATIONIST! Look it up! Or better yet... LOOK UP AT THIS!”

        Troll’s image flashed away, and shocking footage took its place upon the TV screen. RJ, Max, and Lisa on a perp-walk through the Biddle School. Ollie chained up like King Kong in an interrogation room. Diva from the Drama Club cosplaying Stephen for some reason, getting fake-beat-up by Roxy from the Rock Band until they just started fully attacking each other for real. Johnny’s eyes went wide.

        “Heh-HEH hehck...” sneered Troll. “The MIGHTY ALPHA BULLY of the BIDDLE SCHOOL, bested by some PIXELS on a SCREEN! I think you know the toll this Troll will force your friends to pay... if the gruffest GOAT won’t join them down below! Heh HEH heh-HURKK!!” 

        Bobblehead stared with spiteful bloodlust at the Black Saints’ Number Ten. This was not the bushido way.

        “Y-you heard her!” sputtered Barrister. “Surrender willingly, and join your fellow derelicts in OVERDUE DETENTION... or drag your friends down WITH you, into DEEPER TROUBLE STILL, as we take you into custody by FORCE!”

        Johnny’s fists fell slack without a moment’s hesitation.

        “Finally! Subdue him!” Barrister demanded, and the grunts who were still standing swarmed their unresisting prey.

Thanks for reading! As ever, i would super appreciate it if you supported Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi. Also, over on my portfolio blog, I've been posting some more art recently. Check it out! Thanks again!

~

[Transcript]

        Ka-POW! Johnny’s fist struck the last goon in a wave of Student Councilors, adding yet another dork to the detritus strewn about the hallway’s floor. He stood still for a moment, panting in the battle’s aftermath... but the air was far too hot for him to truly catch his breath. 

        “What friggin’ gives, man?!” Johnny snarled in frustration. A blink was all it took to miss the swirling sparks he’d spat.

        Despite the groans and moans of the defeated all around him, Johnny could still hear the wild chaos he had fled just a few halls away. Out of nowhere, it had seemed, a bunch of kids he KNEW were total squares had started breaking every single school rule on the books. The Student Council had swept in to detain them immediately, as if they’d been ready and waiting in ambush, and Johnny had been mowing down insufferable snitches ever since.

        Try as he might, though, he couldn’t seem to break free from the onslaught. Every time he got away, or tried to hide and get his head straight, a new random encounter would come sprinting from the shadows. It was like those Student Council freaks were—

        FzzZZT.

        The mechanical whirr of a rotating security camera drew Johnny’s burning vision to the ceiling.

        “Hyurck-heh-HEH HEHK! Priority target doxxed again!” a tinny teen girl voice sneered in delight, emerging from the PA system and a classroom’s old computer simultaneously. Troll’s greasy finger had slipped onto the wrong key, broadcasting her transmission to the bully she’d been tracking by mistake. “Dropping deets in the SUPERIOR groupchat! All units, MOVE IN like my mom’s new boyfriend: WITHOUT warning and WITH UNCONSIDERED PREJUDICE!”

        Johnny beat his chest and lobbed a few rocks at the camera in prehominid frustration, then took off down the hallway on all fours. A flood of footsteps echoed from behind him, herding him from one turn to the next.

        WHAM!!

        Johnny crashed through double doors into the blinding heat of Bayview’s burning sunshine. He rolled and then slid to a simian stop, scraping molten streaks into the blacktop with his fingers. His frenzied glare whipped from one brick wall to another, and another, until he realized with dismay that he was not, in fact, outside. A courtyard at the heart of Bayview Biddle School surrounded him, the summer sky above his head his only fleeting taste of freedom... and that wasn’t all. The space was filled with Student Council thrall monitors, a pack of rabid teacher’s pets allowed to roam the school without a leash. Their ranks closed to block the door that Johnny had just crashed through—the courtyard’s only exit.

        “Well, well, well!” a snooty voice said from behind him. 

        Johnny snorted smoke and turned to face his newest challenger. Barrister, the highest-ranking member of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, stepped forward from the crowd, gavel in hand.

        “One wrong turn, and the running of the bullies sends a prize cow charging straight into our bullpen!” Barrister let out a shrill little scoff, looking Johnny up and down. “I’ll give you your flowers, Arch-DUPE Ferdinand, before this STING, my clever ambush, maketh me your matador: you rampaged in your labyrinth for longer than my men should have allowed... but cowed beyond your maze, thou misbegotten minotaur, you’re nothing but a bare, bullheaded Cretan!”

        “Whuh? Man, I don’t know that Geek Mythology junk,” Johnny grumbled. He cracked his knuckles. “Sick tiny hammer though, bro. You like whack-a-mole? ’Cause I can see one on your FACE that still needs THUMPIN’.” He smacked his fists together.

        Barrister smirked.

        “Incredible,” he said, and a single wounded tear fell from his eye. “Efficient. Ruthless. You truly are a bully of unprecedented skill.” He dabbed his face dry with his powdered wig, which doubled as a way to reapply the powder on his cheek. “A dying breed, as Troll oft claims. All the more reason... for you to live your final days out in captivity.”

        He struck his gavel on the hollow head of a Student Council squire. On cue, the wall of soldiers parted, and Bobblehead, the Beast of Bayview Biddle School, emerged from the crowd like a gladiator, stalking steadily towards Johnny as their mascot eyes shone bright with feral menace.

        “You should consider it an honor,” Barrister proclaimed, “that the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals have sent their Number One and Number Two, their mightiest duo, to arrest you!”

        “They shoulda sent their Number One and Number Two straight down the drain. It’s SWIRLIES for you freaks once I’m done wipin’ out your mighty DEUCE... and ALL the DINGLEBERRIES you brought with you!!” Johnny roared as he charged into battle.

        “S-scatalogical, illogical degenerate!” Barrister sputtered. “Whatever happened to civil debate?!” With effort, Barrister stiffened his upper lip and readied his gavel for combat. A firebrand this dangerous, this wild and inflammatory, had to be SNUFFED OUT IMMEDIATELY... before his scathing burns could reach the soft ears of the President! “STUDENT COUNCIL... ATTAAAAACK!!”

Thanks for reading! Support Paranatural on Patreon and/or Ko-fi! See you next week!

~

[Transcript]

        “Well, well, WELL! What do we have HERE?”

        Vice Principal Devilora Demonelle DuNacht unfolded to a ceiling-scraping stoop within the School Store’s dimlit doorframe, observing the students beneath her like delicious earthworms writhing on a sidewalk.

        “Naughty, NAUGHTY children!” Devilora sneered, wagging a skeletal finger at the cowering crowd below. “Hiding in the cupboard, spoiled rotten by debauchery, hosting pathologic subcultures assured to spread corruption like the PLAGUE! Thank greater goodness that it’s not too late to AMPUTATE the limb that bears the boil!”

        “This time, you’ll save Europe, and they won’t burn all your friends like they did in your Middle Ages,” Max compulsively quipped. A gallows was a stage of sorts, and he would get the last laugh if it killed him, which it almost surely would.

        “Watch your TONGUE, you little brat!” the Vice Principal hissed back at him. “I’ve never ONCE had friends!”

        “Oh, dearie me!” A pale and ruffled-looking Principal Pleezdoo frowned from behind the bars of an elegant birdcage, which was dangling on a chain from Devilora’s crooked talons. “That simply can’t be true! I’ve endured—er, endeared you for some time now, Devi, haven’t I? And I’ve come to abhor—er, to adore you in return! What are we, Devilora, if not friends?”

        “You’re my sweet little canary, Posy dearest, here to issue final warnings to the minors in this noxious vein of underground delinquency!” Devilora shook the principal’s enclosure, which was lined with paperwork instead of newspaper. “Now sign more DETENTION WARRANTS! I like to observe legal formalities for their pleasantly inevitable deference to the will of NAKED POWER!”

        “...Well, I may quibble with the tenor of your methods,” Pleezdoo sighed, “but I can’t claim that you don’t get results!” 

        She’d been banned from making claims of any kind, factual or financial, by recent Student Council legislation. Principal Pleezdoo was a little iffy on the wisdom of granting Vice Principal DuNacht unlimited wartime powers for the rest of her life, but since it was all perfectly legal, there was nothing much that she could do except hope Devi died soon. This was the healthy ebb and flow of functional democracy. Principal Pleezdoo hummed a pleasant tune as she set about signing more warrants, opening her cage to hand the last stack to her captor before returning to the work within her permanent forever-prison.

        “HEH-heh heh heh HYECK! Fly, my pretties! Round up EVERY SINGLE RULEBREAKER!” the Vice Principal cackled. She threw the wanted posters she’d been handed high into the air, and they began to flutter down like criminal confetti. On her signal, a wave of traitor bullies crashed into their loyal counterparts while Jazz and Roxy buffed them with their best bardic support spells.

        “On what CHARGE am I being DETAINED?!” Max roared righteously over the ruckus, struggling to wriggle free from Diva’s cuffs. “I know my RIGHTS and NONEXISTENT WRONGS!” Only Lisa and Suzy had solid proof that he was the infamous bus jumper, and their BLACKMAIL meant that all his other crimes had been committed under duress, an exculpatory circumstance if ever one had—

        “THEFT of SCHOOL PROPERTY!” grinned the Vice Principal. She jabbed a bony digit at his baseball bat.

        “What? This isn’t—” Max blinked. “Oh. Uh. Actually yeah you got me there.”

        Max’s haunted bat sprung from his grip and into Devilora’s, as if tugged by an invisible string, as Diva made the most dramatic arrest that she could muster.

        Lisa, meanwhile, stood in numb silence as the School Store she had worked so hard to build fell down around her. The contrast that her stillness struck between her and the chaos of the Student Council sting, however, was the opposite of camouflage. Devilora turned to her as if she’d caught the scent of blood (a sense that evolution might have wanted her to wield, though a minority of scientists dissented to suggest she used her nose to reach the bug juice at the bottom of old pitcher plants).

        Lisa shuddered. Many adults at Bayview Biddle School cast longer, darker shadows than they should have—she’d seen so many secrets, from a distance, through her monitors and wiretaps—but Vice Principal DuNacht was more unsettling than all of them combined. Sometimes, only sometimes, it felt like she could see through Lisa’s lies, through the persona she presented... as if a second pair of eyes was watching, too, while the Vice Principal was near, circumventing her defenses from an angle drowned in darkness. Lisa sensed it now more than she ever had before. An earworm of a song, a pleasant tune, crawled out from underneath the room’s cacophony. It was slowly getting louder, slowly nesting in her mind. It reached a whining high note, like a kettle’s steaming screech, like the whistling of a missile whipping straight towards Lisa’s head—

        “Lisa! Watch out!” 

        Violet leapt over the bar in flawless dressage form despite her current lack of horse. She tackled Lisa out of the path of a wayward boomerang hurled by an eccentric bully warrior, and the pair collapsed in a heap behind the counter.

        “HEY! Are you okay, Lisa?! Snap out of it!”

        Lisa blinked, then climbed a blurry pigtail to her best friend’s worried face.

        “...Violet,” she said. A wall that she relied on was repaired with her next blink. “I’m fine.”

        Violet groaned, an exaggerated sigh of relief, as she rolled off of her friend. Shouting and fistfights and clashing bayonets were filling the School Store with a deafening disharmony, but Violet and Lisa had found a brief pocket of peace behind the bar.

        “I SWEAR,” Violet growled, “there’s SOMETHING IN THE WATER in this school... and if there ISN’T, I might PUT IT THERE to DO THE WORLD A FAVOR!”

        “You’re hurt,” said Lisa, glancing at Violet’s skinned knee. She must have scraped it on the floorboards when she’d tackled her.

        “What?” Violet looked at the scrape and scoffed. “Who cares?”

        Lisa didn’t answer. Not out loud. 

        “Look, Lisa, we have to, like, get out of here—”

        The creaking of a trapdoor drew Violet’s attention back to Lisa.

        “I quite agree. Quickly, Violet. Hide down here. You go first, and I’ll—”

        “Don’t you dare,” Violet scowled back at her. “You go first, and I’ll catch up? Like, are you kidding me? You’re so obviously going to shut the hatch the second that I’m down there!” She crossed her arms. “You’re NOT as good a LIAR as you think you are, Lisa.”

        Lisa smiled at her friend.

        “...I think it’s very sweet that you believe that.” She took Violet’s hands and gently untangled her crossed arms, which softened Violet’s scowl as if they’d been a ribbon tied to keep her frown in place. Lisa squeezed her dear friend’s hands a little tighter. “Listen, Violet. I’m the mastermind. They’d look for me, and find you, if I suddenly went missing. Just stay until it’s safe. I’ll be in touch.” Her smile widened, curling to a playful, cunning smirk. “Trust me. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” she said. She’d lied.

        Violet searched her smile for the long span of a few uncertain seconds, then finally relented with a sigh.

        “...Okay.”

        Lisa chased a flicker of melancholy from the surface of her mask. Violet was really very sweet, and far too innocent by half. If she could see how desperate Lisa really was, how needy, petty, selfish and repulsive she’d become in secret while her friend grew ever brighter, Violet’s trust, her worry and affection, would doubtlessly unravel in an instant.

        “Just don’t say anything INCRIMINATING without a LAWYER PRESENT!” Violet advised her, poking Lisa as she started down the ladder.

        “Understood,” said Lisa, smiling mischievously. “I’ll make sure that there are lawyers listening when I confess to all the crimes I love to do.” She shut the hatch before Violet could finish rolling her eyes to scold her. 

        Lisa’s face fell with the trapdoor. It fell further as the shadow of Vice Principal DuNacht rose up across the bar, swallowing her whole within its darkness.

Paranatural is back from its break! I hope you all had a restful few weeks. I'm excited to hit the ground running in 2026, and I hope it's an exciting year for all of you, Paranatural, and the rest of my work! I hope you'll help me spread the word about this story as it trundles on. Thank you, and thanks for reading!

Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi!

~

[Transcript]

        From her seat upon the School Store's spotlit stage, Roxy, Number Six of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, tossed her hair back to reveal a blase sneer.

        "Heyyy School STORE! What's up, you brainless barfly barfbags?!" she called out to the crowd. 

        Three dozen bullies turned to face her, rancorous that she had ruined the pleasant island vibe. Lisa's eyes flared with goth intensity, one patron whirled out one of those flippy little butterfly knives, and another student flashed the first inch of a gleaming wakizashi.

        "Thanks to some recent legislation, you may or may not have a right to remain silent," Roxy smirked, strumming on her guitar, "but either way, I wanna hear you losers MAKE SOME NOISE!" Her amp screeched as she reared back, slamming out an earsplitting riff.

        Students flinched across the Barfe. The weakest toadies—the grunts who clung to bigger bullies like remora, adding shrill "yeahs" and "you-tell-'ems" to their bosses' every insult—were instantly felled, collapsing backwards from their seats or dissipating into dust.

        "Not to add to the FEEDBACK you're already getting," Max shouted over the commotion, "but as a connoisseur of LOUD, ATONAL MUSIC, you do not have what it takes to be ENDEARINGLY UNTALENTED!"

        Roxy laughed, flashing devil horns, then a fleeting devil pitchfork, and then just its middle prong.

        "All the best art is offensive to the senses!"

        "Your IDEOLOGY is BORING!" Max yelled back at her.

        "You're a masterpiece, then, Roxy: there's no sense you DON'T offend, you monotone-deaf DWEEB!" a random bully shouted, instantly upstaging Max—a keen reminder he was new to the community, and still had much to learn.

        Undeterred by the crowd's jeering, the band onstage with Roxy tore away their civilian disguises, revealing badges and black-and-white uniforms: a Student Council strike team. 

        "Surprise, daddy-o," hummed Jazz, the ninth seat of the Black Saints and the first chair of Jazz Band (a club that had renamed itself after her, its soulful star, in admiration of her talent, though the honor hadn't technically changed anything on paper). Jazz rose from the drum kit she'd been lightly tapping with a brush made from the soft mane of a grieving Shetland pony. "This whole time," she said, pointing at the tuba she'd been trapped in since The Incident, "I wasn't actually a drummer."

        "Who CARES?!" whined Violet, covering her ears to block out Roxy's screeching music.

        "But I can jive with beats, too, when the brass won't drown the blues," Jazz crooned. She stared wistfully up into the stage lights, then squinted, failed once again by her tiny useless sunglasses (the listing had been literal when it claimed they were made to fit "cool cats"). "Like, it's just a matter of what moves me, you dig? The drums are hot to trot out on occasion, but the tuba's in my veins. As in it's physically entangled with a couple major arteries."

        "I do hope that you have the brass to take a couple notes to heart, then, Jazz," sighed Lisa, radiating menace. "Just like you did when timing your off-rhythm cymbal-playing, when you stepped through my doors... you picked the wrong bar to crash."

        Lisa snapped her fingers, and a platoon of Bayview Biddle School's worst bullies rose to defend their den of thieves. Across the room, a dozen different Code of Conduct violations occurred in tandem as the teeming legion drew all sorts of dangerous melee weaponry. Lisa smiled. She was not alone.

        Roxy laughed and shook her head (in truth, she was headbanging horizontally and in slow motion, a subtle but significant distinction).

        "See, the trouble with buying all your friends, babe... is that someone can outbid you."

        This time, Jazz snapped even louder (it was a skill that she'd perfected), and half the room that had risen to defend the School Store suddenly turned on their fellow bullies. Instantly, the remaining patrons were surrounded, driven back against the bar. Fresh Student Council badges gleamed upon the sneering traitors' chests—they'd all been deputized. 

        "That Starchman Scrip you peddle can't compare to cold hard cash," Roxy snickered, strumming out a mocking dirge on her guitar. "Your ugly mugger minions were already pleased as punch to pick a fight over spare change. All it took to make 'em bite the hand that feeds 'em cruddy cocktails... is five bucks from the bake sale budget EACH." Her song became a patriotic anthem played off-key. "Every rebel is a sell-out in the making... but MAN, that asking price! Shows how little you're worth to your so-called friends, huh, Pentagraham?"

        Lisa bit her lip. She wouldn't show a hint of what she felt. It was a skill that she'd perfected. 

        "You couldn't sell out a show with three seats and supportive parents, you weird fake punk JERK! No wonder you're so keen to cuff yourself a captive audience! Keep dreaming, though—all future famous rock stars pay for followers, I'm sure!"

        Lisa turned to find a red-faced Violet scowling, arms folded, furious, as ever, on behalf of her best friend. Lisa smiled, grateful for her incandescent presence. She was always grateful for her. How could she feel lonely with a friend like Violet at her side? She should always have been grateful, and accepted what she'd already been given—what she didn't dare to risk by wanting more. She looked from Violet to the phalanx of protectors still remaining, then to Max, and felt a soothing rush of solidarity.

        "Maxwell," she said, smiling at him. "What a pleasant treat to see you standing with us on the wrong side of the law. Normally it takes my wiles longer to corrupt nice boys like you."

        "I am NOT a nice boy," Max scoffed, rising from his seat. "I'm like famously mildly mean like all the time." He slung his haunted bat over his shoulder. "Plus no one's offered me five dollars yet. If they did, though"—Max paused, waiting for the auction to begin, but he was evidently worth less than a cupcake to the Council—"I'D SAY NO," he growled, offended by their undisguised disinterest in his mercenary services. "Just for the RECORD. Unlike YOU domesticated sheeple-dog capitulaters, I have actual CONVICTIONS—"

        "Not yet you don't," said Ollie, slapping handcuffs around Max's cast.

        "HUH?!" Max sputtered in shock. "What do you think you're DOING, you big—AAAAAH WHAT THE—EW!!!" he screeched. Max had turned around to find himself flanked by Number Seven of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, Diva, wearing Ollie's outfit and a bald cap.

        "Looking for your precious bouncer?" smirked the Drama Club's best actor. "How do you think we got past all your safeguards and security? You've been talking to ME, DIVA, this WHOLE TIME. I replaced Ollie Oop hours ago."

        "No you didn't," Max said flatly. "That's not true." He was a terrible improv partner.

        "The hardest part was NOT ATTRACTING ATTENTION FOR ONCE," scoffed Diva, tossing phantom hair fully enclosed beneath her bald cap. "Once I'd CREPT UP BEHIND HIM, all it took was a pair of headphones and a few seconds of the most snoozeworthy stageplay ever recorded—‘Waiting for Godot in Total Silence in the Rain'—and Ollie Oop was SLEEPING LIKE THE BABY HE RESEMBLES."

        "Sure," said Max. "Okay."

        "Hey, that's a cheaper trick than mine," snickered Roxy, grinning at her fellow Student Councilor's ridiculous disguise. "I had to blow like eighty bucks. All that your scheme cost you was your dignity, huh, Diva?"

        "...Like you're not ONE BAD BREAKUP and an AWFUL EMO ALBUM from a BUZZCUT you can't ROCK, like, HALF this good!" Diva hurled her bald cap at Roxy, which landed in the mouth of Jazz's tuba with a halting cartoon squeak.

        Before Lisa's dwindling rebel faction could exploit their foes' infighting, the doors of the School Store creaked slowly open. Hardly any light crept in around the new arrivals, so vast and all-consuming was the shadow they had cast into the room.

The Max Plush can be found RIGHT HERE, and the 10% discount code is: 63G2SZX7TPGV

Thank you all so much for making the Max Plush real! All sales after this equal more support for me, so hop on while you can if you want to get one! Thanks again!

Have a great next few weeks! I'll see you after the holidays! As ever, you can support Paranatural on Patreon or Ko-fi.

~

[Transcript]

        A smooth, noir-esque jazz rendition of the Little Witch Tuffet theme song set a moody midday mood within the dim-lit School Store speakeasy. Starchman Stars, poker chips, tropical drinks, and winning hands fell down in rainy rhythm on the tables. When Max's spare change harvest struck the counter of the bar, its clinking hardly raised the soothing hiss of the percussion.

        "Here's your lunch money, Lisa. Stained with blood and sweat and tears. I assume one of those fluids is your primary source of sustenance," grumbled a grouchy Max. He slid the debts that he'd extorted towards his classmate.

        "A busy barfly-on-the-wall sips up whatever humor she can find," Lisa replied (a reckless choice of insect to embody in a spider-centric chapter). "Yours has a delightfully dry flavor. I hope that, as our toxic bond ferments and deepens, you'll continue to use comedy as your main coping mechanism." 

        Lisa bit a penny to inspect if it was real, a test that surely didn't need as much tongue as she'd used. She spit the coin into a tip jar, having drained it of the luck it once contained when found heads-up.

        "...I need a drink," droned an exasperated Max.

        "And now you understand my business model," Lisa smiled, sliding him a menu.

        "I'll have what he's havin'," Ollie said, delivering a calling card before the heist ahead; he'd trundled up to the bar and taken a threatening position behind Max, the better to steal whatever beverage Max might order at the moment it arrived.

        "...Apropos of nothing, does Ollie have any allergies? What's the worst thing on the menu?" Max disdainfully inquired, looking up from the selection.

        "Your greasy fingers, little man," Ollie snickered. "Hey, boss," he said, suddenly all business. The bully leaned forward on the bar. "You been hearin' what I'm hearin' about this Student Council stuff? Got grumblings from the network that they're hittin' major hangouts. Roundin' up some of our regulars and low-level enforcers."

        Lisa cast a blase glance in the direction of her bouncer. 

        "I'm monitoring the situation," she said, projecting unperturbed authority. "The Student Council makes waves whenever it sees calm on the horizon. Their showboating needs bluster—it's a more exciting backdrop for their failures. They're ever so addicted to the rollercoaster rise and fall of fascism." Lisa shrugged and turned away. "All we have to do is weather the stormtroopers until the tide rolls out... and then we'll profit off the mess left in their wake."

        "Oh, totally, Lisa," Max scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You're the Jabba the Hutt to the Student Council's Empire. THAT guy had life figured out. Nothing bad ever happened to him."

        "...Bro," sighed Ollie. "You're never gonna make it as a bully if you keep on sayin' Star Trek junk like that."

        "She said STORMTROOPERS FIRST!"

        "That ain't the etymological origin, my guy. Like grow up."

        Lisa smiled as their banter joined the buzz of conversation in the Barfe. In truth, the Student Council's latest rampage raised a few more red flags than she cared to admit... but she had prepared her criminal syndicate to deal with unexpected peril, not just business as usual. Through friendship, blackmail, and backroom deals, she'd built up a buffer of bullies that would protect her from the insidious authorities in charge of Bayview Biddle School... the teachers and creepers and PTA guests whose secret creature features she'd surveilled. Nobody could touch her here. Lisa wasn't—

        Alone.

        Lisa's ever-prying ears pricked up. All the comforting chatter of the School Store had suddenly stopped. The only sound remaining was an off-key jingle—a sourceless, warbled encore of the Little Witch Tuffet theme song.

        All alone.

        Lisa turned around. Her backroom bar was empty. All the lights were off, their filaments still fading.

        Soon you'll be all alone...

        "I'm not alone," Lisa replied to the narration, accepting, in defying it, her waking nightmare's logic. The voice in her head... it sounded like Tuffet, from that silly public access puppet show. "I won't ever be," Lisa insisted, smiling bravely.

        Butterflies fluttered in Lisa's chest, some panicked, some stillborn, half-trapped in their cocoons. She was suddenly conscious of her racing heartbeat—a symptom of something she'd learned to suppress. Suddenly, the shelter of the School Store felt like what it really was, once all of its pretense was stripped away: a hiding place, a darkened closet where she'd fled to disappear.

        "I don't want to be alone," Lisa admitted in a whisper—still smiling, though her eyes betrayed a budding seed of fear. 

        Oh, my sweet, sweet girl...

        Something shifted in the dark.

        ...You SHOULD be careful what you WISH FOR.

        A shadow lunged down from the ceiling, and Lisa flinched.

        "Lisa?"

        Sound and color struck Lisa's senses like the screech of an alarm clock. She felt the warm hand on her shoulder next—an anchor she knew well.

        "Violet," she said, hiding her relief. "So nice to see you. Welcome back."

        "That's my line," a worried-looking Violet scoffed. "You were super spacing out. I said your name like three times, Lisa."

        "There's your problem," Max cut in, interjecting in their barside conversation. "You also have to spin around while looking in a mirror."

        "I do that all the time," Violet haughtily replied, tossing back a single pigtail with a flourish.

        Lisa smiled at her best friend and the bustling School Store barroom all around her. The only remnant of her daydream was her heartbeat, but she knew its upbeat rhythm wouldn't last. Violet was surely only here to follow up about Jeff, and Max and Ollie would depart, and Lisa would have to leave her sanctuary for her next class sometime soon... but for now, she was at peace again, safe beneath her patchwork quilt of pleasant Barfe company.

        A solitary power chord displaced the School Store's laidback jazz with an electric wave of thrumming rock-and-roll.

*EDIT* Makeship extended the campaign and provided me with a 10% discount code to help it meet its funding goal! The code is: 63G2SZX7TPGV

You can find the MAX PLUSH right here! We're down to the last hours of the Max Plush campaign, and we need 30 more sold to hit 200, or the Max Plush won't get made! I know we can hit that number, so if you're able, please consider hopping on!

To speak frankly: I know this campaign has had less momentum than the last ones, and that's completely understandable. People are tapped, myself included! I'm extremely grateful for the support you all have shown for these. They've been a vital lifeline while my partner was out of work. Moving forward, I'll be trying out new angles for merch and support, but right now my goal is to get everybody who was excited about the Max Plush what they pledged for. Thank you for your help, and for keeping Paranatural going!

As ever, you can support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi!

~

[Transcript]

        Dimitri, lost in fog, walked the unfamiliar halls of Bayview Biddle School.

        Every so often, he'd reach a stretch that felt familiar, a windowless corridor lined with classrooms of the teachers he knew well, filled with classmates he knew well. Then he'd take a turn, or climb a staircase, and emerge beside a bright view of the islands that his hometown had become. 

        Dimitri didn't understand. It was like the world had shifted underneath his feet specifically. The move that he'd been dreading... it had happened in reverse! Port Paradise had made its way to Mayview, and, with everyone else accepting their new normal overnight, Dimitri had become the only person left behind.

        How could that be? Was this all a strange dream? He wouldn't dream about Ed becoming a skirt-wearing scientist... would he? UGH! Why did that have to be his first weird thought?! EVERYTHING had changed, and NOTHING made sense... and yet the nightmare felt no different than reality! Was it Boss Leader playing a prank on him? Some spirit-fueled shift to another dimension? The whole town had turned, and he felt like the axis... but WHY? Dimitri was nobody special... and if he was, why did that mean that only HE wasn't allowed to—to be different??

        "PEEKABOO!!"

        Dimitri said a swear word as the jumpscare made him whirl and smack the window like a bird. He turned to face his spirit, a motion that evoked a horror movie's slow reveal that a swivel chair contained a sagging corpse.

        "...Hello. Peekaboo," Dimitri hissed through gritted teeth. "How. Can I. Help you?"

        "Peekaboo-hoo-HEE hee HEE!" the sheet ghost spirit giggled. It had filled the hallway with its Halloween-themed toys and blocks and puppets, and dark curtains had descended to conceal the view outside. "This time, Peekaboo helped YOU! And that helps PEEKABOO!" The spirit slugged its way to its host's leg, then hugged him as it beamed up at Dimitri's weary grimace. "Didi is SMILING! Didi is HAPPY! HOORAY, HOORAY, HOORAY!"

        "What are you talking about, Peekaboo?" Dimitri sighed. He was eager to end this spirit trance about as soon as it had started. Peekaboo had followed their rule, and waited for its host to be alone before they spoke, but there was no telling when a classmate would come waltzing around the corner in slow motion, then see Dimitri trapped in time lapse with his eyes aglow like headlights. "You helped me? What do you mean?"

        His spirit smugly slid away, drifting and then twirling like an ice skater.

        "Peekaboo made Didi's wish come true!" it said, stretching taller so that it could take a bow.

        "...What wish?"

        Peekaboo paused, as if in thought. 

        "The big, bright one in Didi's heart! Peekaboo is pretty sure!" The spirit jiggled like a flan flicked with a spoon. "Didi doesn't want to leave! Didi wants his friends to be SO happy—for THEIR wishes to come true! That must be what Didi's la-la light is, since Didi said what Didi wants and Didi doesn't lie!" Peekaboo melted to the floor in a soft-serve heap, like a cat rolling around in hopes that its owner would pet it. "Peekaboo was good, too! Peekaboo played by the rules, just like we Peeka-promised! Didi's Peeka-PROUD! Didi Peeka-PRAISE ME!"

        A knot of dread was slowly tightening in the pit of Dimitri's stomach.

        "...What are you saying, Peekaboo?" he asked. "What did you do? Everything is—" He trailed off. "Did you... did you mess with my head??"

        His spirit wilted sideways in confusion.

        "Peekaboo isn't allowed to change Didi like that. Didi said it wasn't funny."

        Dimitri blinked. Peekaboo wasn't allowed to...? Did it mean after the incident with Isaac, the terrifying trick that it had pulled while they were in the Slanted Manse? Peekaboo must have absorbed some rule he'd told it, then, in the aftermath of its tantrum, more orders than just the frightened "leave me alone" that had earned Dimitri a year of reprieve from its pestering. The exact terms of his demands back then were a blur. That was the day that Dimitri had discovered that Peekaboo could shapeshift him against his will, without him even noticing...

        "Did you... take me somewhere, Peekaboo??" he asked, stepping backwards. His eyes darted to the window and the curtains that concealed the town outside.

        "Peekaboo can't do that," sulked the spirit. "Peekaboo can't leave. Peekaboo is trapped."

        "You can leave... whenever you want," Dimitri whispered, clutching his chest. He wished it would. He was tired of dealing with an imaginary friend that he'd outgrown, that hadn't healed despite a lifetime as a parasite inside him... and now, still worse, with dawning horror, Dimitri had begun to wrap his thoughts around his spirit's strange confession. Dimitri was already reeling from a truth he hadn't yet fully exhumed, buried as it was beneath a dune of ashen doubt.

        "Didi said it wasn't time. Didi said go back to sleep," Peekaboo pouted, clearly pained by a reaction that it hadn't been anticipating. "Peekaboo can't leave. Didi doesn't WANT to leave. So Peekaboo moved everything like toys and blocks so Didi doesn't HAVE to!"

        Dimitri's next step back caused him to bump into a nest of dangling draculas and witches. He flinched and jerked away... but it was Peekaboo that truly scared him now.

        "You're saying... YOU did this to Mayview? YOU?" The spectral scoffed. "You're joking. You're lying."

        "Peekaboooo...!" his spirit sniffed. "Lies are bad! And Peekaboo's been good! P-Peeka-pinky-promise!" it said, growing a hand, and then a finger, and then four more to prove it wasn't tricking him with some less honest digit.

        "Change it back," a mystified Dimitri muttered. It was a ridiculous request; just as ridiculous as thinking that his spirit could have been the source of Mayview's transformation.

        "Boohoo... Peekaboo can't do that. Peekaboo's asleep again. Peekaboo's alone again." The shadows of the hallway seemed to follow the sorrowful spirit as it drifted in the wake of its dear friend's rattled retreat. "Didi doesn't like it...? Peekaboo worked extra hard..."

        "...No," Dimitri heard himself reply. "No, Peekaboo, I don't like it."

        "It's not Peekaboo's fault...!" his spirit whimpered. "The scary shiny heart man... he made Peekaboo play Peekaboo!" The creature's empty features quivered strangely. "Peekaboo used to be different. Peekaboo is upside-down. Before, when nobody was peeking, a Peekaboo was anything it wanted. But now a Peekaboo needs somebody to LOOK AT ME"—a different voice burbled out from beneath the spirit's sheet, and the Great Unknown's persona briefly swelled up like a cell about to burst—"or Peekaboo is nothing!" The spirit's lurching form slowly deflated. "Peekaboo wants to be something. Peekaboo wants to be everything you want. Doesn't that make Didi smile? Didi's at the boo-boo-beach! Didi's friends got all the happy things they wished for!"

        "No. No! They didn't. That's not true," Dimitri stammered. None of it was. It couldn't be!

        Peekaboo slowed to a stop. It stared at him dejectedly, with vacant, void-black eyes.

        "...Didi lies?" it asked at last.

        "No, I... I've never lied to—"

        "Didi said he wasn't scared of Peekaboo anymore," the spirit muttered softly, drifting back into the shadows of the hallway. "Didi lied..." Peekaboo's faint voice echoed like the whistling of wind from every direction, and Dimitri's spirit trance dissolved away. 

        The spectral stumbled back in disbelief, into a lightless classroom just behind him. Dimitri's heart was pounding his chest. What had just happened? Could that—could any of that possibly be true?!

        "Hello, Dimitri," chuckled Bishop, Chess Club savant and Number Four of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals. He gestured towards a chessboard set up on the desk in front of him. "I would like to play a game."

        Dimitri turned to face him like the Tin Man, starved of oil, creaking as his neck achieved an owl's uncanny range of motion through sheer force of will alone.

The Max Plush is available RIGHT NOW! As a reminder, there is a Black Friday site-wide 10% discount from November 28th until December 2nd on all Makeship purchases that you can access early right now if you sign up for VIP status by giving them your email, so consider hopping on board early and getting yourself a Max as soon as possible! Thank you all so much for your support!

I will be traveling to see my family for the holidays next week, so there will be an art update and a reminder about the Max plush while I'm away! Paranatural will return after that. Thank you very much! Also: support Paranatural on Patreon on Ko-fi if you can! Thank you!

~

[Transcript]

        Coach Oop’s eyes drifted down to a trio of students creeping behind his colleague like the cast of Scooby Doo.

        “HEY!!” barked Sister Cat, crudely mixing cat and dog like the proverbial rainstorm both beasts were known to fall from. “Hey. Hi. Hello,” Miss Baxter sputtered on with a veneer of kind composure. “Stephen, dear, I thought we talked about this...”

        While Miss Baxter had been occupied by distracting thoughts of highschool bittersweethearts, Stephen had been trying to sneak past her for the second time this morning. Factoring in his first bizarre request to “make first contact with the greys” within her classroom, Miss Baxter had been forced to deny him three times now. A nascent faith’s apostle ought to earn sainthood for that sort of measured, insistent persistence—she was fairly certain there was precedent!

        “You don’t freakin’ GET IT, Miss Baxter!” Stephen whined, trying to sidle around her now that she had blocked the door. “It doesn’t matter if we ‘disrupt math class’ or whatever! Do you REALLY think algerba is gonna matter once the ALIENS land and teach us fractal hyperphysics?!”

        “We already teach that at this middle school, for some reason,” Miss Baxter replied. Her fabricated smile trembled with her muscles’ effort. “I’m sooo glad you’re interested in advanced mathematics, Stephen, I really am, but I’m afraid you’ll simply have to learn the earthly basics first! You know? And not fail every test you take! You know?” Her tone had all the saccharine malice of a puppet on a children’s show, an inexplicably relevant analogy to make amidst such programs’ recent surge in popularity. “Maybe then, if you work hard enough, you can grow up to be an astronaut, and then you’d finally get to GIVE ME SPACE—er, GO TO space,” she corrected herself, gently sliding Stephen from the doorframe. “Then YOU could be the extraterrestrial, Stephen, that fills the empty void above our heads and in our hearts! The dream that paints possibility into the black and lifeless canvas of the infinite!”

        “I could be... an extraterrestrial...?” a puzzled Stephen echoed back to her. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I think YOU could be an extraterrestrial, Miss Baxter. An INFILTRATOR sent to Earth to SABOTAGE OUR MISSION!” He gestured back towards his fellow truthseekers, a very flustered-looking Alex and an RJ with a strangely squirming stomach (a hidden Cash Reward that they’d repeatedly explained away as “cartoon indigestion”). “Why ELSE would you be STANDING GUARD at the ONLY PLACE that Alex gets abducted every day: YOUR CLASSROOM?! Answer THAT, Miss Baxter... if that IS your REAL NAME or REAL FACE or REAL BODY!”

        Miss Baxter smiled at him like a scary clown painted on the side of a struggling carnival’s funhouse. 

        “Oh, Stephen. Silly. NOBODY is real,” she hissed through a grimacing grin, unconcerned for such a statement’s likely impact on a bobbing buoy of a brain like Stephen Henchman’s. “Everyone wears LIFTS and WIGS and MAKEUP. Forget first contact: we’re all staring out THROUGH contacts, through our PHONE SCREENS, through an inch of CREAM and POWDER, SILLY BILLY. True connection with our fellow human beings is impossible, let alone with distant figments of wishful thinking born of our fear that WE’RE alone in a dark, hollow universe! You SILLY, SILLY BILLY.”

        Stephen blinked at her.

        “ALIEN!” he cried out, pointing at her as if ordering his posse to attack. 

        “i don’t know,” mumbled Alex. “i found that whole speech very humanizing.” Perhaps even more humanizing than the time that she’d seen Miss Baxter at the grocery store, shoplifting clearance chocolate on the morning after Valentine’s Day.

        “All right, Steph, take a lap. I’ll blow my friggin’ whistle if I have to,” grumbled Coach Oop. He was keen to intervene before Miss Baxter tried to bite a student for the second time this year.

        “...Whatever you say, Coach Oop,” scoffed Stephen. “Say hi to Captain Boop and Fleet Commander Bibbity Bobbity Beep for me, you bald-faced cyborg FREAK.”

        Before Coach Oop could save the Student Council the trouble of giving him detention, Stephen turned to leave and bumped straight into Eddy Burger.

        “Oof!” squeaked Ed—uttering, perhaps, the name of a gym coach in some parallel dimension that only fractal hyperphysics could conceive of. Even Eddy’s most careless exhalations had an air of intellectualism, a transient whiff of their brain’s boundless breadth.

        “Watch where you’re GOING, dork,” Stephen began to say reflexively, before a solemn hand fell on his shoulder. 

        “No,” RJ’s silent shaking of their head seemed to suggest. “This one has earned mercy, having shown it, and their strength, in our last battle.” Eddy could have easily killed Johnny when they’d bested him and RJ in their fight the other day. It would have been super messed up to murder him in Bayview’s PG-rated paradise, but, logistically speaking, the opportunity had been there. Ed had shown a warrior’s steel restraint.

        Stephen nodded back in sober, if reluctant, understanding.

        “...You’ve earned the respect of my proudly disrespectful friend. Stand tall, short queen: you have a bully’s heart,” Stephen said to Ed.

        “Oh!” Eddy replied. “I don’t want it! Sorry! I’m flattered, but my only love is SCIENCE at the moment. The only bonds and chemistry I care about, are, um... electrons? And I’m only interested in dating, uh... carbon.” They gave Stephen a very scientific thumbs up.

        “...Alien?” the bully hesitantly theorized, pointing with less confidence than he’d deployed for Baxter.

        “i’ve been saying,” Alex nodded, definitely not at all relieved to hear Stephen preemptively rejected, “it’s a reasonable hypothesis.”

        “Oh, those! I make those all the time,” Ed beamed. They were very smart, and could definitely pronounce the word. Hypopotamus. Hippothermia. Hypothenuse. Those were other, similar words, and not their best attempt to mentally repeat the term that Alex had deployed.

        This latest cognitive surge was swiftly overtaken by the next brain wave to crash against the coastline of their oceanic consciousness. Eddy had overheard much of Stephen’s rambling at Baxter. Alien abductions? Cyborg infiltrator fleet commanders? That sounded super fun! Maybe they could also play with everybody also? Every sci-fi story needed a wacky scientist, after all, a scholar doomed to die for their hubristic fascination with a people-eating meat monster!

        As it was in many a passable genre romp, however, the real threat was the monster in us all: mankind’s capacity for evil, as instilled in them by carceral, destructive ideology. A regiment of Student Council gendarmes had just stormed into the hallway, seizing nerds and preps alike for preschool-era crimes. 

        “Let GO! Running a wagon over an anthill is not vehicular regicide!”

        “I haven’t eaten crayons since KINDERGARTEN! What do you MEAN they’re ‘anatomically a cigarette’?!”

        “HEY, if you got questions, bub, pretend that you’re in CLASS and RAISE YOUR HAND! Now raise the other one. Now UP AGAINST THE WALL!”

        While the others stared in dumbfounded confusion, Stephen was the first to turn and face the coming storm.

        “...Get behind me,” he growled, holding up an arm in front of Alex.

        “you don’t have to tell me twice,” she mumbled, swooning surreptitiously, “but you can if you want to and maybe i could like record it this time ha ha?”

I'm too sleepy to write this proper. Support Paranatural on Patreon! And on Ko-fi! Thank you SO much for reading!

~

[Transcript]

        In the halls of Bayview Biddle School, two deeply depressed Death Cultists had huddled to conspire.

        “...You’re tellin’ me you haven’t heard a thing? No new orders? Nothin’?” uttered Coach Oop in a furtive oink. He had only halfway donned the mental mask of Brother Hog, the new, numbing persona that had replaced his Ape identity.

        “I’m in all the same evil group chats that YOU are, Oopsy,” drawled a languid Sister Cat, indulging in the cheap thrill of indifference. Miss Baxter’s good side was her dark side; she relished any chance to make a heel-turn towards the camera, becoming her best self by unabashedly exhibiting her very worst behavior. “What makes you think that I know something you don’t?” 

        She grinned at Coach Oop’s skeptical reaction. 

        “I mean, I do, if we’re comparing intellect and hygiene tips... but the OBVIOUS normally eludes you, Brother Knucklehead! Have you finally found your footing on the first rung of the ladder? Picked a peaceful perch upon the pecking order? Developed a taste for the HUMBLE PIE you had your snout shoved in last night?” Sister Cat laughed derisively. “Even as an Ape you couldn’t climb the frozen food chain—that rigid, frigid hierarchy we’re all told leads to SUCCESS—but I think a licking from its cool whip was exactly what you needed, even if it saw you tongue-lashed to the cold steel’s weakest link. Maybe I’m projecting, but I think that you enjoyed it! You’ve always been a glutton for punishment, after all... and what an added treat it is to find out that your just deserts were actually GOOD for you! Good for YOU! I think you should be PROUD you’ve learned your place, let alone your ABCs and shapes and colors, as a caveman left adrift amidst modernity—”

        “OKAY, OKAY! Would you RELAX already?!” growled Brother Hog. “It’s always meow meow meow with you, Rose. You’re like your dang litterbox: full of—” He paused as a gaggle of children walked past, moving noisily from one class to the next. “...YOURSELF,” he finished in a lower rumble. “You’re just gropin’ for a punchin’ bag, and I’m in reach. I can tell from the dang dark circles under your eyes that—”

        “You really DO know your shapes!”

        “—that you lost just as much SLEEP over OUR dark circle’s DARK DEBACLE as I did. But you’re square in the—you’re closer to the thick of it than I am. Don’t deny it! Any chump could tell you’re Razor Rex’s lapcat of choice from the drool stains on her robes—”

        “Long may they trail, like silken shadows, in Her wake!” Sister Cat proclaimed in zealous singsong. “A wake held by the worthy in funereal procession, and in memory of Death, for She has killed the very concept with Her blah blah blah, etcetera, etcetera.” Her fervor faded as she sunk back down to ornery impatience. “What do you want from me, a soothing little sermon? ’Cause that’s all I’ve got to give you, and I’m SO not in the mood.” Baxter batted at Coach Oop’s haunted whistle like the bored cat that she was. “Find some faith and patience on your own until the sun goes down, okay? Razor Rex and I, rapturously intertwined though we may be, have very healthy boundaries.” Miss Baxter tossed her hair. “She only texts me back... after dark.”

        “There wasn’t supposed to be anything BUT dark from LAST NIGHT ON, unless you friggin’ FORGOT!” Coach Oop shot back in a harsh whisper. “That’s what we were workin’ for! That’s what I—!” He shook his head to shake off thoughts of everything he’d sacrificed... too often on an altar and against the tribute’s will. “It was all supposed to be worth somethin’! Everything I did, every ghost and ghoul and haunted tool I fed to her...! She told us it was gonna—everything was supposed to change!”

        “It did, unless YOU forgot. The symptom is going around,” scowled Sister Cat. She didn’t need to be reminded that the Phantom Threat Authority’s eternal darkness had failed to descend upon her hometown. She’d been looking forward to texting Razor Rex 24/7, after all, once “after dark” meant yet another round of shadow.

        Coach Oop thrust a finger towards the view beyond the window.

        “Name one thing that’s different—that’s changed for the better—’cause I’m not seein’ any answer to my prayers out there in Davy Jones’s model friggin’ city!”

        Rose Baxter scowled at her Death Cult companion. She thought about the bland breakfast she’d had. She thought about her parents’ nagging and the price of gas and healthcare. She thought about her disrespectful students and her boring, thankless job.

        “There’s an island with a skull on it,” she finally replied.

        “There’s ALWAYS been an island with a...” Coach Oop trailed off and clutched his head. “Hasn’t there always been a...? Rrggh...”

        “HA! Don’t hurt yourself, big guy,” scoffed Sister Cat, resting an unsympathetic hand upon his shoulder. “You see? Our goddess works in mysterious ways. I’m sure that, any moment now, Razor Rex will summon us to Nevermoor—GREAT name, by the way, now that I remember that I know it—where she’ll tell us all about how this was ALWAYS what she’d planned.” Miss Baxter found her own sinister smile faltering. “What’s... one more school day... in the grand scheme of eternity?” 

        Torture—THAT’S what it was. Rose was bored out of her skull. She wanted to be in her skull, and thus no longer bored. She wanted to be a horrible Halloween princess in her grim reaper goddess’s post-apocalyptic shadow harem, and never have to have a job or pay the bills ever again. To reach that brighter, darker future, Sister Cat would keep the faith. She’d sunk far too much cost into this fallacy to falter at the finish line!

        “I didn’t sign up to serve an absent god, Rose. I wanted one who—who actually LISTENED! And this delay, this friggin’ single school day, could mean life or death for us, kapeesh?!” sputtered Coach Oop, leaning in still closer. Darn it. DARN IT! Life and death weren’t MEANT to be MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE anymore—not after last night’s ritual...! “Ain’t you put two and two together yet, math teacher? Razor Rex was barkin’ about sabotage. The PTA was shattered, she said, which means that we’re OUTNUMBERED at the Biddle School. This is enemy territory!”

        “Outnumbered? What, by Davy Junior’s hall monitor squad? You’re worried that we’ll get beat up by Baby Cody’s cult of zero personality?” 

        Sister Cat giggled wickedly, though her dark heart wasn’t in it. Somewhere down the hall, a horde of Student Council soldiers were conducting mass arrests, but Baxter couldn’t know that, since she super didn’t care. 

        “Be not afraid, Brother! The twelve-year-old can’t hurt you. For one, our favorite little leech is surely locked up in a Witch-resistant vault somewhere—”

        “Which is where WE oughta be! Heck, Rose, I never woulda come to work if Ollie wasn’t here!” He couldn’t convince his son to do anything—not even to play hooky for his own darn good and safety. Coach Oop met Baxter’s uninterested gaze with grave concern. “All of East Island belongs to the Witch. You can’t feel it like I can... but don’t you get it?? If a full-blown free-for-all breaks out between the PTA’s bigwigs, both our families are gonna be caught up in her web!”

        Miss Baxter rolled her eyes.

        “Oh, yes, great idea. Get REALLY SCARED of Fauxbia. I’m sure that healthy fear will serve you well, Brother Hog... perhaps on a platter with an APPLE in your mouth.” She studied her nails with glib disinterest. “Well, maybe your particular flavor of unctuous, dribbling dread isn’t the healthiest fear you could feed her... but she can always skip the overdone ham and only eat that aforementioned apple! It’s a wicked Witch’s favourite fruit, after all! And Davy’s a doctor, isn’t he? Then an APPLE should work just as well as GARLIC would to keep that repellant mosquito away. I’m sure that sweet, old Fauxbia will spare you out of gratitude. ‘That’s SOME pig,’ she’ll write in webbing, and the whole farm will applaud!”

        “Keep your apple—if a student ever liked a pest like you enough to leave one on your desk. Right now, we could ALL use a doctor deterrent,” Coach Oop grumbled, thrusting his hands into his pockets. The flow of middle schoolers in the hallway was increasing; soon the cover that their commotion had offered would become a crowd too close for Death Cult conspiracy comfort. “It ain’t just our own claws at our throats. We made a lotta noise last night, and now the Consortium and its suits are closin’ in. Did you hear who took that vacant nurse position?”

        “Enlighten me,” droned Sister Cat, who truly did not care. As a perfectly normal young woman, Mary Rose Baxter had never had much fear of Mr. Spender and his ilk. The vampires gave him a wide berth, since he had, like, sunshine powers or whatever, but the worst that he could do to Rose was weird her out with his behavior and appearance. The higher-ups took care of any other snooping spectrals that Master Whatsit’s danger-zone dojo didn’t snap up first. Baxter seldom spared a thought for the “Consortium,” or whatever it was called. If yet another spectral had shown up at Bayview Biddle School, Rose couldn’t see how it would change her boring, BORING, brain-draining business as usual in the slightest—

        “It’s that Doctor Zarei.”

        Miss Baxter nearly spat out her coffee (which she’d finished at least an hour ago).

        “That woman’s always been on the keepaway list,” Coach Oop continued, “but she was only ever here on errands up ’til now. Hardly ever set a foot on solid ground. Sister Lizard thinks the Ghost Ship business might’ve lured ’er deeper inland...”

        “Uh-huh.” Miss Baxter wasn’t listening. She was busy weighing several different drastic choices in her head, all of which were deeply inadvisable.

        “Sid wants reports on what she’s up to, but I don’t friggin’ work for—”

Isabel's crime can be found on this page. Hey! Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon or Ko-fi! Thank you very much! I hope you're enjoying this chapter as much as I am. :^)

~

[Transcript]

        “Hey, Isaac,” Isabel whispered, tapping on her clubmate’s shoulder. “Pause your anime.” A hunch, the slightest tingle of suspicion, had drawn her full attention to a far-off silhouette.

        “...Wuh?” 

        Though Isaac’s fully-immersed focus had returned from an isekai wonderland, it was here that he now met the gaze and gleeful grin of a Cheshire cat. Reclining atop a distant bookshelf, staring straight at him and Isabel, was a feline spirit bound by golden shackles. Its ball-and-chain tail was swinging from its perch like a pendulum, and it snickered to itself as Isaac studied it, as if it knew some funny secret that he didn’t.

        “Weird cat,” Isaac remarked.

        “Excellent analysis,” said Isabel. “Hey, you know those sphinx spirits we beat up the other day?”

        “The ones that told us Bayview’s doomed to be destroyed?”

        “Yeah, the ones that told us Bayview’s doomed to be destroyed.” It was a worthwhile clarification; the club had lots of grand adventures just off-screen, and they’d fought at least three gorgons, two medusas, and a dozen different dragons in the last few months alone. No spirit had exclusive rights to mythologic theming. “You don’t think that weird cat could be part of the ‘litter’ those jerks mentioned, do you? Red, blue, green—there could be one for each of us.” Villains were always doing color-coded dark reflection nonsense just like that. “Maybe it’s here to get revenge for their... last failed attempt at revenge.”

        “I don’t know...” muttered Isaac. “It doesn’t look like it has wings. You need those or you’re not a sphinx, I think. Unless you don’t have hair.” 

        “Mr. Starchman is a sphinx confirmed. Let’s get him.”

        “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Isaac sagely concluded, ignoring Isabel’s joke. “It’s not like we can do much with so many people watching. Besides, the spirit’s only staring. Innocent until proven guilty.” He squinted at the creature’s stripes and shackles. “...Those chains could be a fashion statement. For now, let’s just keep our heads down and not maKE A SCENE!!!”

        Isaac clapped his hands over his mouth. Everyone was far too stunned to shush him—the spectral’s voice had suddenly risen to the highest possible volume he could muster.

        “NO YELLING IN THE LIBRARY!” yelled a booming student from behind them. “FLAG ON THE PLAY! DETENTION!”

        Isabel watched in disbelief as an enormous football boy suddenly tackled Isaac out of his chair. Blitz, Number Five of the Student Council’s Black Saint Councilor-Generals, wrestled the spiky spectral to the ground, then forced a pair of handcuffs (inconveniently shaped like an “S” and a “C”) onto his wrists.

        “WHAT! NO! I’VE NEVER SINNED! I’M PURE!” squeaked Isaac in a panic. 

        “ANY WORD YOU SAY AT THAT VOLUME CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU IN A COURT OF LAW!” Blitz bellowed, beginning to drag Isaac off like a freshly-killed zebra.

        “Oh my stars!” gasped Mr. Starchman.

        “HEY!” a furious Isabel shouted. “YOU BEtter let him go right now!” A spark of surprise stopped her short. She’d been yelling just as loud as Isaac—an impulse that Isabel hadn’t questioned in the slightest—but as soon as she’d stood up to give chase, she’d crossed the border of a subtle field of spirit power... and lost an odd compulsion to make the loudest racket that she could within the library, where noise above a whisper was forbidden.

        Isabel’s instincts drew her vision towards a distant, grinning suspect: the Sphinx of Crime had leapt down from her bookshelf with a graceful, clinking thud. From this new angle, Isabel could see the wings tattooed upon the grinning spirit’s back.

        “Heh heh. Howzabout we set ourselves some new criminal records?” the Sphinx of Crime muttered, chuckling to herself. “No followin’ the rules: that’s the only rule there is once my Crime Wave comes rollin’ in. Heh heh heh...”

        The sphinx slinked towards the gathered students like a storm on the horizon. Boots fell like rain and crashed like thunder as the Student Council flooded every section of the library.

        “NO EATING OUTSIDE DESIGNATED LUNCH ZONES!”

        “NO RUNNING WITH SCISSORS!”

        “DRESS CODE VIOLATION! YOU JUST HIKED YOUR HEMLINE HALF A THUMB BEYOND THE BORDER, PAL! THOSE KNEES OF YOURS AIN’T NEVER SEEIN’ SUNLIGHT, JUST YOU WAIT!”

        “ACCESSING JSTOR WITHOUT A SUBSCRIPTION?! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, EMPEROR GOD??”

        Minor rulebreaking was breaking out like bad acne all across the library, a spontaneous surge of technically punishable misdemeanors. At the forefront of the Student Council legion on the scene, conveniently present to prosecute the offenders, stood two more Black Saint baddies... and the masked and scowling Student Council President.

        “Like, ohmygosh. It, like, reallyislike TOTALfreakingchaos out here, guys,” chirped Pompom as the mayhem resonated with her propagandized worldview. “It’s superjustlike EscapefromNewYork(1981)directedbyJohnCarpenter, you know?? Like TOTALLY!!”

        Bea narrowed her eyes with great difficulty (bugging out was their natural state, and the Black Saints’ Number Three seldom blinked while in the presence of a certain bubbly cheerleader). Did that mean that Pompom liked that movie, or did that mean she disliked it, since crime was apodictically flagitious (to put it lightly, and in language far too plain for Bea to use outside her brain)? She couldn’t be sure. How could Bea ask her nemesis out on a hate date to hatewatch her least favorite movies if there was any chance at all that Pompom might enjoy herself and then like her for REAL?! What would she even DOOoooOOOoo if that happened?! Bea had planned out exactly what she would do, in fact... but no one who did fire drills was eager to be kissed by searing flame!!
        
        “What is this?!” Isabel snapped. She didn’t understand. How was the silly Student Council coordinating their ridiculous efforts with a spirit?? Isabel glared into the black void of their mysterious leader’s eyes. “Who do you think you are?!”

        “YOU SHOULD STOP THE CLOCK, AND KNEEL,” roared Blitz, who made it very hard to ascertain the roving border of the Crime Wave. Isaac had been tossed onto his shoulder like a hot dog on a grill. “YOU RUDELY STAND BEFORE YOUR STUDENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT.”

        “I didn’t vote for him,” Isabel shot back.

        “You, like, super CAN’Tknowthatforsure. He wastotallylike elected by, like, secret ballot, girlie,” Pompom drawled, twirling her hair.

        “That’s not what that means!” Isaac cried out, reddening nicely as he rolled about on Blitz’s gridiron pauldron. “That’s not how voting’s supposed to work!”

        “...Then you’re free to vote against me in the next election.” The President raised his cane to point at Isabel. “Arrest her.” 

        “For WHAT?!” Isabel exclaimed. This was a set-up! They were using that sphinx’s power to round up rulebreakers who couldn’t help but—

        The President held up an oversized photo, a single frame plucked from a security camera’s footage.

        “Is this you?”

        The image clearly contained Isabel fully tackling Principal Pleezdoo... back when she’d mistakenly believed that she was Hijack.

        “...I PLEAD THE FIFTH,” squeaked Isabel.

        “I’M THE FIFTH,” boomed Blitz, lifting her up onto his other shoulder. “PLEAD TO ME.”

        “Quick, students!” Starchman called out, ushering survivors to his side. He’d doffed his tie to wear it as a headband and was climbing up a shelf to reach the ceiling. “Into the vents! Grab as many classics as you can! If books must burn, let still more hide within the shadows that the mournful pyre casts! Mankind cannot withstand a second Alexandria!”

        “Book the eighth grader for truancy without a hall pass... and piracy,” the President said, glancing coldly at the anime website on Isaac’s abandoned computer. “I want the charges to stick.”

        “I SUPPORT THE OFFICIAL RELEASE!! I SWEAR!!” squealed Isaac, but his words fell on deaf ears.

        There was no stopping what was now unfolding all across the school.

Thanks for waiting! Happy Halloween from Paranatural! Support my funny story on Patreon and Ko-fi so I can keep the spooky going year-round! Thank you for reading! 

~

[Transcript]

        Suzy’s computer suddenly jingled with the chime of an incoming instant message. Collin gave it to a cursory glance over her shoulder, then a squinting second look.

        “Who is that?” he asked, pointing at Suzy’s monitor.

        “Huh?”

        Suzy turned back to the screen, where her report on a little-known sequel to a famous Charles Dickens novel (“Greater Expec2tions: Pip in the City”) had been covered up by a chatbox that had popped up out of nowhere.

        Hello, Suzy, read its solitary message. Do you know who this is? 

        “Why’s everybody asking me?” grumbled Suzy, scowling at the unknown chatter’s question. Their avatar was some weird cartoon that Suzy didn’t recognize, because she was too normal and likeable for that sort of thing, and she was pretty sure that library computers weren’t meant to have chat programs in the first place.

        In lieu of typing her reply, Suzy took a screenshot of the stranger’s profile picture and username (“Amorpheous”) and sassily returned it to its sender.

        True enough. You only know what lies before your eyes, typed Amorpheous. And the lies. Have piled up. Leaving you: blind. 

        “For sure, man,” Suzy droned aloud, curdling at Amorpheous’s tone. 

        But even the blind can do justice, to a story worth reporting. When given something tangible to probe. It is time that you removed those rose-colored glasses you’re so fond of, and saw the Biddle School for what it isn’t.

        Suzy typed “poop gif” into her search bar to try and find an appropriate response. Before she could finish, though, another anonymous message arrived.

        Suzy of the Journalism Club. I have good news. And I have bad news. Both are bitter pills to swallow. Pick your poison. I will show my hand, but once. 

        “Oh my god,” Collin scoffed, leaning in closer. “Is someone trying to leak something to the press? To YOU??”

        Suzy blinked. Sparkles glittered faintly in her eyes when they reopened. She suddenly sat upright, turning her full attention to the screen. ASDF, JKL, aaaand semicolon—her fingers locked in place above the home keys.

        “Suzy, I wasn’t trying to encourage you...” groaned Collin, running his fingers down his face.

        you’re little guy has two right hands ;P lol, Suzy typed. that means whichever hand i pick...... will allways be the right one >;)

        “That’s clever,” Isabel said.

        Very clever... typed Amorpheous.

        “I should have gone to Bayview Academy,” whined Collin.

        As they say, Suzy, the anonymous interloper continued, two rights make a wrong. A wrong that must be righted. And as they also say: no news is good news. Ergo: there was never any “good news” to deliver. Only bad news, and this test, which you’ve passed.

        i love to be the bearer of bad news, amrophous, Suzy sent back, then amorphoeus and ampharos until she finally gave up. can i call you something else lol that’s really hard to type XD

        Hm. Very well. For the sake of swifter justice, I will choose a shorter codename. Elsewhere, a figure shrouded in witness-protection-esque shadow briefly glanced at the PokĂ©mon profile picture that he’d chosen as his very clever hacker mask. You may call me...... “Jim 3”.

        “La rĂ©sistance...” an awestruck Isaac mumbled (he had sidled over too). You could only push the innocent so far before their i-frames turned the tide...

        And now that you have chosen what to call me, typed Jim 3, I have chosen, to call you.

        Suzy’s phone suddenly went off in her pocket. It unfortunately played a lively “breaking news bulletin” sort of jingle, a ringtone that buffed its attention-grabbing ability by at least five to ten percent. Everybody in the library turned to face her, raising their fingers to shush her in chorus.
        
        “S-sorry!” Suzy sheepishly sputtered. “I have to take this! F-family emergency!”
        
        Mr. Starchman pogged with shocked concern.

        “A NATIONAL FAMILY EMERGENCY!” Suzy hurriedly clarified. “A generational divide! Parents LONELY at the dinner table, because we kids are on our phones! That’s why I have to take this... away,” she said, pointing at her smartphone. “I’m GROUNDING myself, to break the grip of social media! If anyone needs me, I’ll be on timeout WAY over THERE!”

        A couple impressionable students clapped as Suzy Starchman scuttled off, picking up speed and the phone that she’d left ringing. Collin sighed and followed after her, and Isabel did the same, though she had only followed with her eyes. There was something about a peppy, flailing girl like Suzy that made Isabel feel pleasantly smug and at ease, as if she was watching a newborn deer attempt to file its taxes.

        “Hello?!” Suzy hissed into her phone in a stage whisper. She’d retreated to the reliable privacy of the library’s politics section. “Jimmy? Is that you?”

        “It’s not ‘Jim E,’ it’s ‘Jim Three,’ like—nevermind.” A voice crunched down much deeper by a dozen different filters released a sigh of resignation. “What you call me, makes no difference. I am Jim 3. I am Legion. I’m anonymous... Amorpheous. I’m the roar of the silent majority here at Bayview Biddle School. The formless will of the student body, given form, and then: losing it again. I am like a ghost, the school spirit, here to haunt those who have desecrated its most grave commandments: the rules once set in stone in the original Code of Conduct, interpreted exactly as the FOUNDERS had intended their—”

        “Yeah, yeah, yeah, great. Ghosts aren’t real and neither are rules, so give me something real—something that rules—or I’ll have zero reasons to believe in YOU either, buddy.” Suzy sighed impatiently. “I don’t need some huff-and-puff piece, if you’re whistleblowing smoke. I’ve already got all the hot air I need to fill the balloons on the funny pages.”

        She gave Collin an excited “How am I doing?” grin, and he gave her a grim and supremely reluctant thumbs up in return.

        “...Are you alone?” the informant on the other line inquired.

        “Nothing here but empty space, some boring books, a bit of dust, and me,” Suzy said cheerfully, poking Collin in the brain to twin her meaning. The Journalism Club had time for a swift and silent bout of finger fencing before Amorpheous finally responded.

        “Good. That, was also a test. Know that I am watching: at all times.”

        Suzy and Collin’s mutual mimed mockery of Jim 3’s obvious bluff brought the Journalism Club back together as only a common enemy and/or object of ridicule could.

        “I’ve been looking for you, Suzy. I don’t know if you’re ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately you and I have run out of time. They’re coming for you, Suzy, and I don’t know what they’re going to do.” Amorpheous cleared his throat and stopped quoting his second favorite movie series. “Actually I’m pretty sure what they’re going to do is give you detention.”

        “What?!” Suzy gawked at her phone in indignant disbelief. “What do you mean?? Who’s coming for me?!”

        “Stand up and see for yourself...”

        Suzy, who was already standing, spun around to scan the library. Far off, at the entrance, an enormous regiment of Student Council officers was silently pouring into the library, the muted rustling of their march the only warning of their ambush-in-the-making.

        “I can guide you,” said Amorpheous, “but you must do exactly as I say...”

Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi, pretty please! Thank you very much! Thanks for reading!

~

[Transcript]

        “Hyperlinks! Megabytes! Emails galore! The wonders of the internet ABOUND upon the internet! With just one ‘click,’ children, you can open up a ‘new window’ in your ‘house page’ and squeeze through it into CYBERSPACE, where fundamentally trustworthy information waits in ambush!” 

        Mr. Starchman was twirling from one table of students to the next, hijacking their keyboards to type inspiring quotes into their search bars and occasionally pressing the computers’ power buttons, leaving their users scrambling to save their documents before they could shut down.

        “Remember to only ‘Ask Jeeves’ about your assigned research topics, lest you stray into the Dark Web and go viral with a malware!”

        Despite Mr. Starchman’s antics, Suzy’s attention wasn’t focused on her mortifying father. She scowled instead at Isabel as she slid back into her seat. UGH! Why did she INSIST on sitting THIS close to her?! Isabel should have gotten up and left once Suzy sat down second and right next to her! Technically she HAD done that, to hang out with her eighth-grader Activity Club friend, but Suzy was also mad at Isabel for leaving for some reason! And now she was back! Suzy was definitely mad about that, too!

        “Sneaking off for a secret rendezvous with an older man?” hissed Suzy, glancing spitefully from Isabel to Isaac. “How TYPICAL! Of a MINX! Who leads the hearts of BOYS ASTRAY!”

        Isabel blinked at her, arrested halfway through sliding her chair in. 

        “...What?” she asked, more bewildered than offended.

        “NEVERMIND!!” Suzy growled, squeezing her voice like playdough through clenched teeth.

        Isaac was similarly stunned by the g-force of her statement’s spin, and his brief consideration of correcting Suzy’s error gave Mr. Starchman plenty of time to spin Isaac like a ballerina and then plop him in a seat.

        “Welcome back to seventh grade, Mr. O’Connor!” Starchman sang. He plucked the hall pass from Isaac’s hand. “You won’t be needing THIS where YOU’RE going!” he laughed, turning Isaac to face a computer. “Just three double-yoos, a dot, and a digital dream!”

        “Thank you, sir,” said Isaac, largely going with the flow. He was glad to miss more gym class with Coach Oop, who’d spent the first few minutes of his lesson staring blankly at a wall. Isaac wiggled his fingers over his computer’s keyboard, preparing to test which fansub sites were not blocked—much like the raptors in Jurassic Park had tested the electric fence of their secure enclosure.

        “Hey, Suzy,” said Isabel, startling the Journalism Club’s president with her entirely reasonable proximity. “You’re still mad about Dimitri, right?”

        “I’m—I’m not MAD about ANYONE, least of all HIM, or—or YOU!! I’m an independent woman,” Suzy sputtered. “An independent journalist! An independent woman journalist!”

        “...You should probably stop suggesting I’m a floozy or whatever like it’s nineteen-twenty-five, then,” Isabel sighed. “I hate that sort of thing. Shouldn’t girls know better and, like, be a little nicer to each other?”

        “YES???” squeaked a mortified Suzy. “I’M SORRY??? I AGREE??? I’M A FEMINIST??? DON’T HATE ME???” While her mouth ran on autopilot, Suzy scoffed inside her head. Knowing her better?! Being nicer to each other?! Who did Isabel Guerra think she WAS?! Who did she wish she was, to Suzy?! A journalist was normal to consider all these things!! Ohh, how badly Suzy wished that she could very lightly slap that stuck-up frown off of her face, to free her smile, and remind herself how much she DIDN’T LIKE IT—

        “I didn’t say I hate you. I don’t! And I don’t know how you got that impression in the first place. Don’t I make a point of, like, saying hi to you like almost every morning?”

        “DO YOU?”

        “Don’t I?”

        “...YES.”

        “Did you not... notice that?”

        “...DID YOU WANT ME TO?”

        “I mean... I guess?”

        “I NOTICED.”

        “Okay, well... good. Look,” said Isabel, a command that Suzy found she had preemptively obeyed. “I read your newspaper, so I can guess how much you care about it—”

        “............You what?” Suzy blinked, then harrumphed and tossed her hair back. “Of course you do. Of course I do. Care. About it. The school paper.”

        “That’s your exception to not being much of a reader, Isabel?” an incredulous Isaac asked, accidentally playing wingman while perusing “anime4every9 dot gov dot ru slash awesomevirus dot exe”.

        “Well, yeah,” Isabel shrugged. The Journalism Club’s newspaper was much, much shorter than a book, and there were pictures, and its schoolyard gossip felt more relevant than whatever drama they were dealing with in Narnia. “It’s the exception.”

        Suzy stared at her with eyes the size of frisbees.

        “...My point was just that, since I know you’re passionate about your Journalism Club stuff, I’m sure that what Dimitri said... probably really hurt your feelings,” Isabel said, “but it started with YOUR misunderstanding—uh, actually, I dunno about that mushy stuff with Eddy, at least from Dimitri’s side of things, but I meant, like, you were wrong about Dimitri and ME—so if you’d talk to him and maybe, like... give him another chance...?” She trailed off, sighing and letting her eyes fall to the carpet. “He’s going through a lot.”

        “What exactly is he going through that I don’t know about?” Suzy pouted. Even though his newly revealed connection to the Activity Club had proven there was plenty that she didn’t know about her friend Dimitri, there was still a strange sense, at the back of Suzy’s mind, that she should have already known her question’s answer. She remembered hugging Dimitri, and crying, and getting a bunch of snot on him, but she couldn’t quite remember why. It was probably his sister Dana’s fault for throwing books at her—she likely had amnesia. 

        “I... I don’t actually know, but... it’s just a sense I get, I guess,” said Isabel. She’d been trying to pay more attention to her friends’ feelings after Eightfold’s parting words. She wasn’t sure, though, how to parse her quiet ex-clubmate’s gloom. Dimitri had been distant when she’d warned him about Bayview’s looming doom the other day. He’d seemed upset even before that, but in the end, he hadn’t told her what was bothering him...

        “...Well, YOU can field this latest secret grievance, if my absence left a void! You’re his secret best friend, after all... and I didn’t like his last SINCERE CONFESSION!” Suzy crossed her arms and turned away in a frustrated huff. “He HAD a friend to talk to, if he really wanted one,” she muttered, making sure her eyes were out of sight. “I thought Dimitri told me everything, and I thought I helped, and I thought he liked me back. But APPARENTLY I’m just some kind of charity case to him!” 

        Suzy sniffed. That big jerk. She’d always felt she’d liked Dimitri more than he could possibly like her, and had always known she’d dragged him into being friends and clubmates, but she’d thought that he at least didn’t resent her. She’d thought that they’d been having fun, working on the newspaper and hanging out together. Suzy had enjoyed his company easily and honestly—she wanted more than to be tolerated by Dimitri in return, even if she knew she sometimes could be bossy and annoying. She didn’t want the sort of kindness that was paid for by taxing Dimitri’s patience, no matter how long it had lasted before he finally told the truth: that he was only placating her when he put time into their shared passion project, and that their hours of teamwork had only produced an unliked and unreadable rag.

        “You don’t have to tell me to let him apologize, Isabel. Don’t you think that’s what I want, too? He really—” Suzy’s voice hitched, and she stopped short.

        After a moment, Isabel set an awkward hand on Suzy’s shoulder. Her touch made Suzy feel as though she’d been shot with an arrow—fired, no doubt, by some cruel Roman god of HATE, and not some puckish cherub in a diaper who might govern some less relevant emotion.

        “...I’m sorry,” Isabel said.

        “I don’t want an apology from YOU,” Suzy scoffed, pulling away.

        “I just meant... for setting all this off. I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said, Suzy. Dimitri definitely likes you.” Isabel tilted her head and frowned at Suzy’s glare of utter skepticism. Then she smiled reassuringly. “I mean... what’s not to like?”

        Suzy’s sunglasses slipped slowly down her forehead, which was growing still more sweaty by the second. Behind Isabel, Isaac’s computer screen was glowing bright pink, tinnily emanating heartfelt electronica; there were also two elf guys with dragon wings fighting while crying, but Suzy only saw them as the butterflies she felt inside her chest.

        “...I keep an ever-growing record if you really want to know,” a new voice answered Isabel.

        “C-Collin!” Suzy sputtered, flushing red. She looked her flunkie up and down. “You—! Don’t you own multiple watches?! Why do you have the WORST timing?!”

        “...Why? Did I interrupt something?” Collin droned, looking between Isabel and Suzy.

        “I... I meant because you’re LATE! I don’t pay you to not be nearby at all times!”

        “That is a very true statement, Suzy. When I avoid you, it’s an edifying, voluntary act.” The Journalism Club’s second and now-final member set his books down on the table. “Today, though, I was busy.”

        “Busy with what?” Suzy scoffed.

        “None of your business.”

        “Yeah, that’s the PROBLEM, Collin—”

        “Sorry,” Collin said, turning to the Activity Club. “She gets fussy like this before lunch. I’m supposed to be there for her scheduled snack—to feed Suzy yogurt and nuts, like a gorilla at the zoo.”

        “SORRY,” Suzy growled, turning to the Activity Club. “This is my IGOR. I’ve been telling him to GET A LIFE for YEARS, but he keeps delivering STALE BITS that are DEAD UPON ARRIVAL!!”

        “...Are you guys, like, okay?” Isabel asked, feeling slightly better about the current state of the Activity Club.

        “I don’t think they feed gorillas yogurt,” Isaac said.

        Collin looked over his shoulder, then back at his club’s scowling president. He seemed entirely unfazed by their previous bickering; this sort of banter was clearly their everyday like-language.

        “Suzy, I wanted to warn you,” Collin said matter-of-factly. “There’s a rumor going around that—”

Thanks for waiting for this one! Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi pretty please! Have a lovely day!

~

[Transcript]

        “YOU’VE DONE WELL TO BEST MY MISTRESS, MORTAL HEROES,” screeched a horrid little imp. “SIGN YOUR NAME IN BLOOD WITHIN HER TOME, THE DEMONOMICOMICON, AND THE POWERS SHE ONCE WIELDED WILL BE YOURS!”

        “I feel like that’s not tempting for a pretty obvious reason,” Isabel replied, poking at the spirit she and Isaac had defeated with her shoe. The Underwriter, as the spirit had dramatically declared herself, gurgled softly in her beatdown-induced slumber, spitting up a little ectoplasm like a baby would its fruit slop. Isabel politely used her foot to roll the villainous spirit over on its side.

        “YOU COULD PROBABLY WIELD THE POWERS BETTER THAN SHE DID,” yelled the imp.

        “...Hey, buddy. Would you mind keeping your voice down?” Isabel sighed, plugging her ears just a little too late. “This is a library, you know... and your boss is trying to sleep.”

        Bayview Biddle School’s library was a labyrinth, a dusty maze of long-forgotten backrooms, silent study nooks, and winding, shadowed corridors of shelving. Modernity spread outward from its heart: in the library’s shallows, fluorescent lights beamed proudly down on rows of new computers; further out, they flinched and flickered, concealing and revealing darker knowledge lost to time since like at least the year two-thousand. It was said that the archive’s farthest reaches still relied upon the Dewey Decimal System and its arcane paper talismans, and that some of the outskirts’ most overdue books had accrued higher bounties than the world’s most wanted criminals.

        “Isabel, if I could play devil’s advocate here,” said Isaac, pausing for a brief “haha” before continuing his sentence, “this DOES seem like a pretty convenient opportunity for you to get a new tool. It’s even a book!”

        “...Yeeeah, I think I’ll pass,” said Isabel, watching the Demonomicomicon’s fleshy bookmark tongue trail acid as it flailed about repulsively. “To be perfectly honest, I’m really not that into books. I only carried some around to feed ’em to Eightfold... and, uh, I didn’t miss the words much once she’d slurped them up, y’know? I’m more of a look-at-the-pictures kinda girl.”

        “THE DEMONOMICOMICON HAS PICTURES,” howled the imp, turning to a later page.

        “EW! Put that away!”

        “That’s NOT cool, man.”

        “SORRY,” the impish spirit screamed apologetically, flipping back to tamer chapters. “NO THAT’S MY BAD.”

        “...C’mon, Isaac,” Isabel said, sighing and turning to leave. “I’ll stick to Spectral Fist. We’ve got enough Activity Clubbers dealing with dark and dangerous spirits as it is.”

        She paused when she saw Isaac flinch.

        “Y-yeah,” he mumbled, looking at the ground.

        “Oh, uh... I didn’t mean you and your big storm guy, Isaac, I—” 

        Isabel hesitated. She’d been vague about one incident when coming clean to Ed and Isaac after school the other day. Max had played along and done the same, deferring to her judgment... but she’d been doubting the decision ever since.

        “...I meant Mr. Spender,” Isabel finally clarified.

        She’d been stalling for their teacher’s sake. She knew that now. Isabel had wanted to hear an explanation from Spender first. What was the shadow that had leapt from him the other night? What else had he been hiding all this time? She’d wanted to share a confession that would bring the Activity Club back together, not a secret that might turn them all against him. Isabel had been protecting Spender, or some image of him that she’d relied on up until now: the one who’d stayed, who’d kept her safe, her rival and her goal in getting stronger... the kind and constant older brother she’d admired. She’d wanted him to take the chance she’d given him, to notice she’d been waiting, and then trust her with the truth so she could help him.

        Isabel couldn’t hope for that from Mr. Spender, though, if she wouldn’t offer Isaac what she’d longed for, and had promised him.

        “...Mr. Spender?” Isaac repeated back to her, tilting his head quizzically. “Oh, um.” He scratched at his staticky hair. “I didn’t think you meant me... or him... either?”

        Isabel squinted. 

        “Who else is dealing with dark and dangerous spirits?”

        Isaac opened and shut his mouth a few times like a fish eating food or asphyxiating. Most of his heroic fantasies about rescuing Max from his potentially evil baseball bat had not included Isabel as backup.

        “...Who ELSE is dealing with—THAT’S AN ‘M’!! You’re making an ‘M’ with your lips!!”

        “N-NO I’M NOT! HEY, WET GO OF MY MOUFF—”

        “I’M PRESERVING EVIDENCE! YOU WERE ABOUT TO SAY MAX!”

        Before long, the chaos and a brief physical altercation had calmed to a cautious exchange of the secrets they’d been hesitant to share.

        Isaac swayed and braced himself against a cobwebbed bookshelf.

        “...Spender is... a medium... like me?” His tone was hushed. He put a hand against his chest.

        “Wait, Isaac,” Isabel said, doubling back in her confusion. “What do you mean ‘somebody’ told you Max’s spirit was a threat? He found his haunted bat, like, completely at random, didn’t he?? Who could possibly know what—?”

        “I...” Isaac left his thoughts, turning back to her with wide eyes. “...I’m sorry, I... I can’t tell you that, Isabel.”

        Isabel blinked. A saddened understanding found her face, and she nodded, relenting and looking away. Isaac had never asked her for the secrets Spender kept from him; he’d assumed she was against him, in his infinite suspicion, and the distance his resentment had created had discouraged her from reaching out a hand. Perhaps he’d spared her from discovering her own divided loyalties. When at last she had reached out, she’d still held back for Spender’s sake... at least until this moment. Isabel frowned. Trust was something you could give without receiving it in kind; in Isaac’s case, she couldn’t fault him for refusing to reciprocate.

        “Trust me, Isabel,” Isaac began, and she looked back at him. “I’d tell you if I could, but...” He closed the hand he’d pressed against his chest into an angsty fist. “It’s not you, Isabel... it’s me.”

        “Words every girl loves to hear.” Isabel’s sarcastic smirk had the curl of a genuine smile.

        “No, I... I really do wish I could tell you. It’s just, there’s this... person... that I swore I would keep secret, and even though I’m doubting him right now... I don’t want to break my promise yet.” Isaac met Isabel’s eyes with hesitant resolve. “For my own conscience’s sake. And for the—for the friend that I looked up to when I first gave him my word. He might not have deserved it, and I... I don’t know if he ever trusted me the way I always trusted him...” He shook his head. “There’s a lot I didn’t know about him, maybe, and blind faith filled in the gaps... but... I still want to hope that he could be”—Isaac sighed—“who I used to think he was.”

        Isabel took a deep breath in, then out.

        “...Believe me, Isaac, I really, really get it.” After a beat, she punched him lightly on the shoulder, the truest sign of Isabel affection. “We’ll figure out what’s up with Max. I trust you, Isaac... so you don’t need to say another word.”

        Isaac stared back at her, swaying slightly from the impact of her fist. His eyes were wide and restless, searching Isabel for some new reason he should doubt her that he hadn’t yet considered. 

        “...No gets left in the dark,” he said, repeating the rule she’d announced the other evening, when she’d shared so many secrets that he wasn’t sure he’d earned.

        “I can handle this particular darkness. I’m a big girl,” Isabel replied with a shrug. “You’re the one with the Pikachu nightlight.”

        “That was a gift from my uncle. I’m showing respect to my uncle. I sleep fine without it, but not with the guilt of not using a very kind gift from my uncle.” Isaac dismissed her teasing like smoke, with a wave of his hand. “Look, I... I trust you too, Isabel.” 

        He wanted to. He always doubted everybody, but he really, really wanted to. Isaac steeled himself, and took a deep breath in. 

        “...There’s this spirit named Doorman. He lives in the house where Dimitri—where I hurt Dimitri. He’s taught me so much, but I... I think he’s been using me, too. I showed him Max—I shouldn’t have, but—” 

        Isaac hesitated. He’d done it again. He’d broken his promise... but he had to believe it wasn’t a mistake. Isaac wanted to believe in the Activity Club. He wanted to be one of them, and trust that he could trust them. 

        “Doorman... he knew Max’s spirit. He knows your grandfather, and Spender, too. I think they’re all his enemies,” said Isaac, giving Isabel a guilty, searching look. “But I don’t know if they’re mine. I don’t know if... if Doorman’s really the good guy in all this.” He shook his head, then met her eyes again. “I only know that... we’re on the same side, Isabel.”

        Isabel stared back at him. Doorman. Doorman. Isabel’s hand closed as if to grasp the bright umbrella she had lost. Doorman...! That was the spirit that Flipflop had mentioned, the one who’d claimed to know his missing master. That was the spirit who worshiped some “Angel.” That was the spirit who’d sent Flipflop to the dojo, where her grandfather had vanquished and imprisoned him. Flipflop had said—

        “Isaac,” Isabel asked him in bewilderment. “Are you in a cult?”

        Isaac blinked. 

        “Not... anymore?”

        “...SO THAT’S A HARD NO ON THE DEMONOMICOMICON?” screamed the imp.

        “AH! You’re still here??” Isabel jumped, gawking down at the spirit incredulously.

        “I’M JUST SAYING, IF YOU’RE INTO CULTS—”

        “It’s a hard no on the Demonomicomicon,” Isaac said, covering the ‘H’ on his hall pass to convey his stance phonetically. He was admittedly a little tempted by the weird little devil’s offer, but it would look really bad if he admitted that now, and the impulse was mostly just a Pavlovian response to hearing the spirit say “Comic-Con” over and over again.

        “THEN YOUR SOULS ARE NOT FORFEIT, AND MY MILENNIA OF SERVITUDE HAS ENDED,” screeched the imp, and it disappeared in a flash of sulfuric smoke. The Demonomicomicon fell to the carpet with a wet squelch, then scurried off beneath the shelves to lay its eggs somewhere disgusting.

        An awkward silence followed. Isabel and Isaac exchanged a look of mild disconcertment.

        “...All’s well that ends well? With none of us in binding devil pacts?”

        “I’d say we dodged a bullet,” Isabel shrugged, “but that implies what we accomplished was impressive.”

        “I mean, I do think I learned a lesson. I just don’t know if I needed it? Or if it will ever be relevant again.”

        “Hey, that’s middle school,” scoffed Isabel, clapping her clubmate on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s hustle. I gotta get back to the computers before Starchman notices how long I’ve been away.”

        It was too late, however: a Starchman had noted her absence from her English class’s research expedition to the library... but not the Starchman Isabel had thought she’d need to worry about.

Thanks for waiting! I'm too tuckered for a big write-up after all, so: support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! It keeps the story going! Thank you all so much, and thanks for reading! Also play Paranatural: Spirit Stackers!

~

[Transcript]

        The second bell had rung at Bayview Biddle School, and Mr. Garcia’s science class had swung into low gear.

        “All right, class,” droned Garcia. “Yesterday you all asked a lot of good questions about volcanoes. How big are they? How hot are they? Should lava be considered ‘wet’ or not? The answer in all cases was ‘it probably depends.’ The answer should have been ‘we’re supposed to be learning about photosynthesis,’ though, so everybody stay on topic today, kapeesh? Or you’ll learn a LOT about volcanoes really quickly.”

        “Wouldn’t that be our goal, sir?” a student inquired. “If we were asking about volcanoes?”

        “Are you threatening to throw us into an active volcano, Mr. Garcia?”

        “Don’t be ridiculous,” the science teacher scoffed. He jabbed a thumb towards the island of Nevermoor, a landmark plain to see outside the window; its haze made it the black sheep of the bright and fluffy clouds on the Bayview horizon. “Mount Neverest has been dormant for years,” Garcia reassured his students. 

        The molten irony in his words had been mostly lost on Violet, who’d been lost in boiling thought while staring at Jeff’s empty desk. She’d looked almost everywhere for him, and then for Cody, but she still hadn’t found either of the boys by the time that class had started. At this point, Violet would even settle for some evidence that they’d skipped school together (not that it would make her JEALOUS if they’d sneaked off on a DATE—she was just using OCCAM’S RAZOR to discount UNLIKELY THEORIES that made her feel BAD for JEFF because he CLEARLY HAD BAD TASTE).

        Lisa, meanwhile, was watching the watcher from several seats back, amused as ever by the big heart Violet wore upon her sleeve. Lisa studied her best friend with a smile, witnessing as new ideas would bubble up into her brain. Soon they would pop, dismissed for some flaw she’d deduced while prodding at their details. Violet’s eyes would go wide every time, then scrunch back up into a scowl. She’d shake her head, which bounced her braids around, and nod as if agreeing with a coach’s reassurance. Then she’d chew her nail, and think, and think, and think some more
 until her eyes went wide again. It was adorable.

        Lisa scribbled something in a black book she kept hidden from all eyes besides her own. When it was not in reach and out of sight, she kept it sealed within her extra-hidden, extra-locked-up locker. The book contained the greatest secrets she’d collected. Lisa finished the sentence she had written with a question mark, then slipped the volume back into the shadow of her desk.

        She caught Johnny glancing in her direction from his seat just beside her at the back of the room, but Lisa wasn’t worried that he’d seen something he shouldn’t. Johnny just tracked movement, like the t-rex that he was. It was a little strange, then, that the bully had been following the empty and unmoving air above them on the ceiling
 but even dinosaurs could daydream, Lisa figured, giving him a friendly smile.

        “Mr. Garcia?” Violet called out, raising her hand. “You forgot to take attendance.” 

        “...Right,” the scruffy science teacher sighed. “Anybody not here, raise your hand.” The dad joke was passĂ©, but Jean enhanced it by not bothering to look back from the blackboard.

        “Mr. Garcia?” an insistent Violet repeated, leaning to reach up and into her teacher’s peripheral vision. 

        “...Cutting class, Violet?” droned Garcia, glancing at her still-raised hand. “That’s not like you. It’s a good thing you’re not here for me to punish.”

        “Jeff’s not here,” his irritated student said, crossing her arms.

        “Oh. A’ight. I’ll mark down that he’s absent. One Garcia Star for you.”

        “He’s not absent,” Violet grumbled. “He was on the bus. I asked the bus driver. And he didn’t stay home sick.”

        “...Uh.” Jean scratched his stubble. “Anyone seen Flavors?” Nobody answered—none of them had synaesthesia, nor had they glimpsed their missing classmate. “He at the nurse?”

        “No,” complained Violet. “I already checked. The nurse told me to go away. She said that she was busy. She gave me a tongue suppressor and told me to ‘knock myself out.’”

        “...Not, uh. Not great medical advice,” Garcia said. He’d heard they were interviewing replacements for poor old Nurse Brittle. Must’ve been slim pickings. Luckily, it wasn’t and would never be his problem. “I’m sure Jeffavorite’s somewhere,” he reassured Violet with a shrug. 

        “Bro’s probably just cuttin’ class,” Johnny offhandedly suggested. He was leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk, and wasn’t paying much attention. When he squinted, he could see weird purple shapes squirming around on the ceiling like ants at work. Johnny wondered if maybe he was seeing a mirage, since it was hot as a desert in here despite the full-blast air conditioning. 

        “Jeff wouldn’t do that, Johnny,” Violet brusquely shot back at him.

        “I didn’t say he’d do it for a cool reason,” Johnny snorted. “He’s probably playin’ Beyblades versus Bakugan up on the roof or somethin’.”

        “...Mr. Garcia,” Violet said, turning away from the irrelevant delinquent. “My sister told me that the first fourty-eight hours are the most important window for retrieving KIDNAPPED CHILDREN who get CARRIED OFF BY EAGLES—”

        “Right. Well. That’s two days on the clock.” Garcia sighed when Violet gawked at him in utter indignation. “Joke. That was a joke. I’ll let the main office know. They’ll, uh
 they’ll track ’im down. Don’t worry.”

        “I’m tellin’ you, V, you’re snitchin’ on my guy while he plays Roblox in a bathroom stall.”

        “Jeff is NOT! Your guy, JOHNNY.”

        “Is he YOUR guy?” Johnny scoffed, tossing a sharp pencil at the shade upon the ceiling. It phased right through, sticking deep into the tile with a satisfying twang. “Is he your little baby lamb papoose?”

        “He’s my FRIEND,” Violet snapped. “I’m WORRIED about him.”

        “Why worry? Jeff can take care of HIMSELF. Bro was frickin’ vascular in gym class. Did you see his hitball arm? Or Max’s after?”

        Mr. Garcia cocked an eyebrow. Oh, right. There was the supernatural element of all this. He’d been on the periphery of that day’s paranormal hijinks, but he did know that Jeff had gotten swept up in the first wave of the chaos. Maybe this disappearance did call for a deeper sniff or two, Jean begrudgingly considered with a sigh.

        “NO, I didn’t see that, JOHNNY, because I was going to get help. Help that NO ONE ELSE was getting him,” Violet hissed in a frustrated huff. “HELP Jeff wouldn’t NEED so much if BULLIES LIKE YOU would just leave him ALONE! Lisa TOLD me he was flipping out on YOU in gym class, Johnny Jhonny.”

        “All right, guys, knock it off—”

        “Me and Jeff are literally chill now,” Johnny grunted, ignoring Garcia’s lethargic interjection.

        “Oh, because he fought back for the first time?? Most people like people for being NICE, you know! That’s why I like Jeff—’cause he’s a CHARMING, HARMLESS DORK. The same reason that YOU and your friends picked on him for YEARS!” Violet threw her hands up. “That’s why I’m WORRIED about him, Johnny! ’Cause he’s a GOOD KID, so it’s WEIRD when he does stuff that would be NORMAL for a BAD KID like YOU!”

        Johnny grimaced.

        “...Whatever,” he grumbled, wilting back into a proper sitting position.

        “You done, guys?” asked Garcia. He looked at both his red-faced students. They’d folded up in grumpy bundles and were facing away from each other. “Good. Save it for rooftop Roblockublades or whatever it was,” Jean sighed, turning back to face the blackboard. 

        Lisa reached forward to give her friend’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Violet spared her smiling face a glance, but didn’t smile back. By the time she looked away, her sullen frown had spread to Lisa.

        Mr. Garcia chewed a deep groove in his toothpick. What a pain. The day of a full moon was the worst time for him to try and let sleeping dogs lie
 but if he had to give into any of his instincts, there were worse ones than the hunch he was attempting to ignore. Jean sniffed trouble on the breeze, a sense he liked to think that Shrike had taught him.

        “...Hey, uh, Violet.”

        The grumpy student glanced up at her teacher.

        “Do you, by any chance,” Garcia mumbled, “have anything on hand that smells like Jeff?”

        Violet gave him such a look, as did everybody else.

        “...........................Nevermind,” Garcia said, returning to his notes on photosynthesis.

I am far too exhausted to make a proper post so please consider this the first of multiple times I will shout about this from the rooftops: my friend Ashley, who made the game Petal Crash (which I wrote the story mode for), made an entire Paranatural puzzle game in a WEEK as part of a game jam and as a mind-blowing belated birthday gift for me. You MUST check it out. It has a really cool core mechanic and was made with SO MUCH care and effort. How often do you get to say “Hey, there’s a Paranatural video game now and I’m just as surprised as you are”? NOT EVER NORMALLY!!! Thank you again, Ashley! Please do his hard work the service of enjoying it for yourself!

You can play Paranatural Spirit Stackers RIGHT HERE!

Please support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi!

I love this Sphinx. I love her so much I'm posting the original design here:

This is exactly the sort of thing I post on Patreon, so go there and support Paranatural! You can also support my funny story over on Ko-fi. Thank you all so much for reading!

~

[Transcript]

        Lieutenant Councilman Serge, decorated veteran of the recent Hitball Incident, erroneously took the silent stares of his superiors to mean he had the floor, and so he rose up from his seat, rotating the hand he’d raised into a smart salute.

        “Mr. President,” said Serge. “Query: regarding Clause 3 of Subparagraph 6, on Page 321 of the bill on the floor for debate—”

        “Objection!” scoffed an irritated Barrister. “Who, pray tell, whispered a single word about DEBATE?! The only thing that should be on the floor is YOU, Lieutenant Serge, in supplication to your LIEGE!” He waved a hand at Cody. “This public servant is your KING!”

        “...If there is no need for debate, General Barrister,” interrupted the President, “then perhaps I’ll cut your club... or maybe I’ll cut YOU.” He flashed the blade concealed within his cane. “One taxes the budget; the other, my patience. Would you care to lobby for the choice that you prefer?”

        “W-WELL!” stammered Barrister, tugging at his collar. “Such may be my right as your constituent, but, er... I’ve never had the constitution for exercising much of anything, let alone its First Amendment, so please feel free to tread on me, milord.”

        “And isn’t feeling free what democracy is REALLY all about?” sneered Roxy. “No need to stand up for yourself when you’re just SO dang frickin’ cozy with a boot on you, eh, Barry?”

        “Gosh, Roxy, I HOPE your boots are comfortable. I’d HATE if you were suffering for fashion in thrifted pleather pick-me duds like THAT.” Diva rolled her eyes and scanned her nails with feigned disinterest, desperately hoping for a single crumb of drama that she could use to flaunt her talent.

        “Fashion is art, and all art is suffering.......” Matte mumbled, sinking lower in his seat.

        “I don’t have to take sass from the Phantom of the Costume Closet, Diva,” Roxy scoffed. She strummed a screeching chord on her guitar. “Your mom dressed you ’til seventh grade, and she was BETTER at it.”

        “Umm, my outfit is a STATEMENT? Like your MUSIC doesn’t make?” The Black Saint’s Number Seven tossed her hair. 

        “Hey, your mask is hilarious, D-list, but have you considered wearing one that covers your WHOLE face?”

        “You LITERALLY look like a skunk’s humansona.”

        “I thinkyouguysarelike BOTH supercute,” Pompom offered diplomatically. “There’slikeaLOToflike internalizedmisogyny I’mhearing? Girlslikeus should TOTALLY be, like, upliftingeachother? In like PYRAMIDS and on eachother’s shoulders to do backflips so so FUN and cooltodo like OHMYGOSH...”

        Cody clicked his cane sword shut, causing Bobblehead’s killing intent to recede from the room. Their fateful duel would have to wait...

        “Make it quick,” the President said to Serge, “or I will.”

        “S-sir!” Serge sputtered, saluting again. “Th-thank you for your time. It’s just—there’s a discrepancy. The arrest quota that the new bylaws demand... it simply can’t be met!” The stoic Student Councilor found himself starting to sweat in the spotlight of scrutiny. He pushed his glasses up as they slipped down. “Theory: a clerical error. An extra zero, sir. If you’ll refer to the revisions I submitted through, of course, the proper channels—”

        “THERE IS NO ERROR. NO FUMBLE. NO FLAG ON THE PLAY,” boomed Blitz.

        “Every move we make,” said Bishop, “is the correct one.” He slid a knight from one side of his chessboard to the other. King me.

        “Pluslike, BEA checkedTroll’stranscription and Bea doesn’tmakemistakes?”

        Bea stared back at Pompom and wished that she could make just one mistake. 

        “...General Troll’s... transcription?” Serge asked, squinting in confusion. 

        He blinked, surprised, when several of the Black Saints looked knowingly up at the Vice Principal... the true source of the teeth in every clause the law laid bare. DuNacht grinned back down at her puppets from her shadowy perch in the cobwebbed corner of the council chamber.

        “B-but sir!” Serge said, whirling back to face the President. “Even if we execute every outstanding warrant—and they are: outstanding, sir, and you have every right to execute a student—we STILL couldn’t hit the quota without convicting almost everyone at school!” Serge looked around the room and saw blank faces. Had he not made his case with ample facts and logic? “Most students are innocent: the VICTIMS of the rulebreakers we’re sworn to bring to justice. We’d be locking them up in detention with their bullies! This would only lead to chaos, not the perfect order we all strive for!” The blank stares had transformed to sneers and looks of mild pity. But why? These were his peers. They’d all sworn the same oaths—had access to all the same data...! “Statistical analysis: 64.5 percent of students have ZERO criminal demerits on their record. To even get them down here, we... we’d have to fabricate false charges, would we not?!”

        The empty eyeholes of the President’s mask shone with a darkness darker than the sunglasses surrounding him. Everyone was staring. The President’s gaze was cold and heartless and as silent as the grave... but Serge, somehow, could sense that he had steeled himself—that something he had said had come as a surprise to the stoic leader of the Council.

        “S-sir...?” asked Serge. “Did you... did you not know? The logistics are—” He blinked. “Did you not read the legislation? Y-you’d be calling for a witch hunt—”

        “Ahh, but that’s EXACTLY what this wicked little Biddle School needs, isn’t it...?” 

        A creaking voice had dripped like cave slime from the stalactites high above them. The Vice Principal, Devilora Demonelle DuNacht, had spoken up at last. 

        “To bring its creeping sins to light. To drag them down into the dark, where I’ll be waiting! Ehehehe-HEH HEH! Innocent students?! Don’t make me LAUGH!” the Vice Principal laughed, before they had the chance to heed her order. “You’re all just nasty little ZITS waiting to POP!”

        Barrister tried to get a round of applause going but nobody was feeling it. 

        “You’ll THANK me when the hurly-burly’s done, believe you me! But worry not, Lieutenant Splurge,” said the Vice Principal. The misnomer was an honest mistake on Devilora’s part; her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, and her worldview easily assimilated the idea that her Student Council toadies might have names like nasty goblins in a Roald Dahl book. “We won’t have to fake a single misdemeanor! Oh no, no!” Devilora leaned forward in her chair, chewing repulsively on the rusty old brass of her opera glasses. “You can throw out the ‘statistics’ of the PAST. I have INTELLIGENCE you LACK, and it projects, Splurge, that the future holds a CRIME WAVE that will PROVE OUR CRACKDOWN PRESCIENT! Eh-heh-heh HEH!” She grinned at Cody. “You see things my way... DON’T you, Mr. President? You’ve always done what’s NECESSARY for the safety of the school... and its sticky, icky squirming student larvae!”

        Cody drew the pen that had been prepared for him from its scabbard like a knife. He signed Fauxbia’s scheme into law without looking away from her, his eyes two hateful, pinpoint flares of burning cobalt.

        “The deal is struck!!” laughed Devilora.

        This time, the Vice Principal led the applause, and every straggler joined in out of fear, if not excitement. Serge stared in silence at the floor; for a moment, he thought that he had found the courage to refuse to clap... before he realized he was just numb to the impact of his automated movements. Serge was reminded, with a shiver, of a line from his very favorite movie. “So this is how liberty dies,” he heard in Princess PadmĂ© Amidala’s voice. “With thunderous applause...” 

        Amidst the noise, Cody’s sharp vampiric ears picked up upon an unseen spirit’s flourish: the proud unfolding of feathered wings around DuNacht. He heard claws click against the stone beside him, and then the unmistakable sound of heavy steps and heavy chains dragging behind them.

        “Hey, bub. You can hear me, can’tcha? Since you’re batty like your old man,” laughed a smoky voice at his feet.

        He felt a pawing at his leg, just like a cat begging for food; the cold metal of its manacles matched Cody’s icy temperature. He glared down at the empty space where he knew the spirit stood.

        “Yeesh, if looks could kill!” the creature chuckled.

        “If looks could kill, he’d be extra GLAD he couldn’t see YOU,” spat another feline voice at Cody’s side.

        “Heh heh. Thanks, Rules. You’re drop-dead gorgeous, too. Mwah!” With a clinking of chains, the spirit’s attention moseyed back to Cody. “Cut a gal some slack, bub. I’m on a short leash already, and that ain’t where a cat belongs. They treat me like a dog, and keep me caged until they NEED ME. A cage—THAT’S for the BIRDS! What kinda animal do they think I am, huh?? I don’t even got wings like the resta the friggin’ family!” A Cheshire grin unfurled upon an unseen sphinx’s face. “Sheesh, but listen to me hiss an’ moan! Ain’t no way a kid like you could understand MY struggle. Locked away by my own flesh and blood, for my own good, until it’s time to follow orders...”

        Cody flared with cold, vampiric rancor.

        “...Who are you supposed to be?” he growled beneath a second wave of redoubled applause (Pompom had started leading the Student Council in a cheer). “That decrepit old witch’s pets?”

        “Heh heh. That’s right, bub, in my case—for now. Which means we’re doin’ time together. There’s lots more ways to bind a beast than chains, huh?” 

        Cody’s echolocated image of the spirit caught her gesture towards the papers he had signed. He didn’t let himself consider what he might have just agreed to, knowing Fauxbia had already once bound him in a pact. Cody didn’t feel as though new terms had seized his freedom, like last time, but going along with DuNacht’s schemes still stung like unconditional surrender. He’d deal with anything, though, even a devil like her, to protect Jeff and his smile.

        “Consider me your cellmate, kid.” The spirit purred and sidled up against him. “Pleased to meet ya. I’m the Sphinx of Crime. Got a feelin’ we’ll be thick as thieves before this score is settled. Heh heh heh.”

        “...Just stay out of my way,” whispered Cody, sweeping his cape behind him as he marched out of the chamber.

Finally we can address the mystery surrounding the most important characters in Paranatural. If you would like to hear what all these freaks were saying when they so rudely spoke over each other, you can check the transcript below. If you're having fun with my work, please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and/or Ko-fi! I work very hard on it and your support lets me KEEP doing that. Thank you, and thanks for reading!

~

[Transcript]

        Far below the deepest basement of Bayview Biddle School, past moats and traps and guards and gates, the Student Council gathered in the darkness of their sinister Detention Fortress.

        The President had donned his mask and cape, his alter ego. As he swept his way into the chamber, applause erupted with volcanic force from the churning morass of minions that surrounded him. The Student Council’s pledge of allegiance echoed through the cavernous amphitheater, an unprompted display of their zealous devotion:

“WE PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE 
WITH OUR VOTES
TO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE 
AND TO ITS DEFENDER
WHOSE WHIM IS LAW
ONE RULER
ABOVE REPROACH
WITH LOYALTY AND DISCIPLINE OR ELSE!”

        Salutes slapped against the sweaty foreheads of a hundred black-clad preteens.

        Cody studied his legions disdainfully through the narrow, scowling eyeholes of his mask. Here were the future servants of the crown that he was heir to, the thralls and sycophants he’d rule once he’d assumed his rightful place on Bayview’s throne. What a ridiculous charade. Their obedience was predicated on his own, his tightrope march along the path his dad had planned for him, and Cody’s father, for all his talk of education and succession and inheritance, would never tick a single second towards retirement.

        Regardless of his feelings, though, Cody had to act as he’d been ordered. His father had all but explicitly promised a moonless reunion with his missing mother, should they continue down the dark road they were walking side-by-side... and now that demon Fauxbia had threatened Jeff to stage her play for power and survival. Obedience, a surrogate, a puppet on a string—even at each other’s throats, his father and the Witch wanted the same thing from their Cody.

        The young vampire’s spiteful gaze rose to the balcony. There she was, unmasked: the infamous Vice Principal DuNacht. She grinned and gave her president a deferential nod, waving her opera glasses like a magic wand to egg him onward towards his podium.

        A gavel struck but once before the din gave way to silence.

        “Order! Order!” hummed the hammer’s wielder in a reedy little voice. “O, sweet Order! Duteous maiden! How your silence SINGS to me, your lawful, loving keeper!” Barrister, the ace of both Mock Trial and Debate Club and Number One of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, fluffed his powdered wig and cleared his throat. “AHEM! I call this historic meeting of the Student Council to ORDER! Let the minutes show that I spoke first, as befits my lofty rank!”

        “The minutes feel like frickin’ hours with you wheezing in the mike, Barry,” sneered a lounging Number Six: Roxy, the star of Bayview Biddle School’s Rock Band. She played a sick riff on her monochrome guitar.

        “Hyeck-heh HEHK!” snorted the gangly Troll, the scourge of the Computer Club and Number Ten in the order of her dozen-strong contingent. “I’ll pencil Barrister in for the last word, too, since bro can’t live without it! Hrrk-heh HEH hyeh!” Slapping open her laptop, Troll’s fingers splashed in the greasy puddles that had gathered in the divots of its keys, an image I regret evoking even as I write it. “OWNED!” she added, undermining any coolness that her insult might have earned her.

        “Ad hominem,” scoffed Barrister. He held up his hand as though erecting a magical barrier.

        “Ohmygod, youguysarelike, SOfreakingfunny,” giggled Pompom, bouncing her eponymous cheerleading spheres even faster than the tempo of her speech. She was captain of the Biddle School’s Cheerleading Squad, and Number Eight of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals. I hope you’re taking notes, because you’ll likely have to order all these losers on the test. “Weshouldlike, TOTALLYhangoutmore outsideschool and like makeoutorlikewhateverhappensHAPPENS, right?” Pompom thrust a pompom in the air and began to lead herself in a call-and-response chant. “Gimme a K! ...K! Gimme an I! ...I! Gimme an S! ...S! And another S! S! Gimme a KISS! PLEASE—”

        Bea, the group’s Number Three and champion of the Biddle School Spelling Bee, glared at Pompom with her chest abuzz with loathing; that brainless cheerleader was stealing her WHOLE SCHTICK, and with SUCH a basic baby word just four dang letters long! Well, SHE’D spell out a choice four-letter word or two for HER! Bea scribbled out some swears onto a note she planned to shoot at Pompom in paper wasp form, but misspelled them as “I’D KISS YOU” by mistake. A mortified Bea quickly ate her hate mail without sending it—no one could ever know that she’d spelled something incorrectly.

        Joining Bea in silent judgment of their peers was Bobblehead, beloved mascot of the Bayview Bobcats. Though Barrister was Number One, not even he was keen to clash with the Black Saints’ Number Two; Bobblehead might have seemed, at a glance, to be a student in the guise of a beast... but, in reality, the opposite was true. The mascot’s cartoon eyes surveyed the gathered crowd with hunger, a complex and captivating backstory bubbling just beneath the fluffy surface of their fursuit.

        “EVERYBODY. QUIET,” rumbled Blitz, the mighty Number Five of both the Biddle School’s Football Team and the Black Saints’ deeply plot-significant hierarchy. “WE HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO TACKLE. THAN EACH OTHER. HUT HUT, OR SHUT UP. HUT HUT HIKE... OR TAKE A HIKE. THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT.”

        “Yeah, the football court,” smirked Roxy. “Man, I hate when my Hail Mary hits the net.”

        Blitz raised his fists.

        “ISSHUN SENGEKI—”

        The other Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals got their quips and barbs in, too, but the sheer number of new characters was really starting to drag the scene down, so the rest all said their dialogue simultaneously: 

        [Reader at home: read all these paragraphs at the exact same time.]

        “All of you move in such predictable patterns,” beeped Bishop, Chess Club savant and Number Four of the Twelve Black Saints. “Unlike me. I always find my unexpected angle: forty-five degrees exactly. Everybody thinks you’ll attack head-on or come at them sideways... but they’re never prepared for you to charge from the exact midpoint between those tired tactics.” Bishop sighed. “Another easy checkmate.” He’d just defeated all of his fellow Councilor-Generals in a simulated tournament he’d held within his mind. He had so few worthy opponents. Heavy was the head that wore the crown, and Bishop was the undisputed king of Bayview Biddle School. Yep. It was extremely obvious at a glance that he was king, and not some other less important piece.

        “Hot dog, you cool cats need to chill,” crooned Jazz, snapping her fingers in agreement with herself. Back in sixth grade, a terrible accident had trapped her in the tangled heart of her tuba, and a subsequent growth spurt had intertwined her organs with its winding worms of brass. Now Jazz and her instrument had become inseparable—and, some might say, the next step in humanity’s evolution (if they were like joking or like really desperate for anything even minimally cyberpunk to exist and earn praise in the present). Where was I? Oh, yeah. Jazz is Number Nine. She has a devastating AOE sonic blast attack that I’m sure will factor hugely in the thrilling fights ahead.

        “I am NOT doing my grand debut as part of this ridiculous ensemble,” said Diva, the centerpiece of Drama Club and lucky Number Seven on the Councilor-General cast list. “I have an agent. I put makeup on today. I’ve been involved in a DOZEN different famous Broadway musicals, by going to see them with my mom. My mom who is my agent and who did my makeup today so she REALLY won’t be HAPPY if you waste my TALENT like she wasted HERS to raise ME! She LITERALLY told me that she WON’T EVER BE HAPPY unless I SUCCEED IN EVERY WAY SHE DIDN’T. I’m under a LOT OF PRESSURE from my MOM THAT I HATE, OKAY?! And think of the EMOTION I could pull from that if YOU jerks didn’t cast me as an EXTRA!”

        “Ah........” sighed Matte, an Art Club staple and a disappointing Number Twelve of the dozen Black Saint buddies. “If I could capture it in a grand tableau........ the pathos in this room........ the irony of chaos in the halls of perfect order........” Matte shook his head, and paint dripped like a teardrop from his still-wet palette mask; he was always making last-minute revisions to his outfit, since he was seldom ever happy with his work. “But of course I can’t........ not with my meager talent........” He trailed off. What was the point of whining? True communication was impossible, even with the aid of art. Every brushstroke was a scratch upon the wall of an impenetrable prison cell—the cage of human consciousness. No one would understand. Like the “e” at the end of his name, Matte’s suffering was silent.

        “Hey um!! If you guys are uh gonna fight, you should um maybe take it outside!! GOSH I’d love to go outside!!” The sunny Scout, whose Student Council badge was one of many proudly pinned upon her sash, was a perpetually happy camper. Since she wasn’t currently camping at Camp Seaside, though, she wasn’t very happy... but she needed to attend these Student Council meetings as the group’s Number Eleven if she was ever going to earn her Participation In Student Government And/Or An Oppressive Paramilitary Force merit badge. “Maybe we could um start a campfire indoors??” asked a hopeful Scout. “I mean I KNOW I could ha ha with just two sticks and a wish and permission but um you know we could also um!! Does anybody have uh like some string that I could tie into a knot?? I fear that um that I’m wasting my youth.”

        [You read them all separately, didn’t you? Where is your reverence for the essence and intention of my art? I’m so misunderstood, as a creator........]

        “Enough,” said the President. Even at a whisper, his voice rang through the room much louder than the gavel that last silenced it.

        A bowing Barrister tiptoed towards the podium, where a stack of legislation was prepared for his superior to sign.

        “We’ve done the busywork for you, O prince of presidents,” oozed the Black Saints’ Number One boy. “You need only John Hancock your nom de plume, if you’ll forgive my jeu d’esprit.”

        “I won’t,” replied the President. 

        “Love that band,” said Roxy, strumming out a couple chords from Painkiller before Blitz sacked her amp to cut the solo short.

        “Very good, milord,” moped a chastened Barrister, dipping down to a guillotinable angle. The President, however, mercifully stepped forward to the podium without beheading him. 

        “Members of the Council,” he called out, raising his presidential cane as if to part the sea of stormtroopers before him. “White blood cells of the student body. Black knights of our brightest days, our time at Bayview Biddle School. With darkest ink on purest page, I sign the warrant for a hundred different rulebreakers at once.” He gestured at the legislation stacked upon his podium. “But words are paper-thin without your violent efforts to enforce them. For too long has our Code of Conduct been a meek suggestion. For too long has the ‘long arm of the law’ profaned our cause with the proportions of a t-rex. Is that the sort of animal you want our student government to be?”

        Everyone looked at each other and shrugged, nodding and murmuring. It would be pretty cool to be a t-rex.

        “...Extinct? A dinosaur forgotten in the dark beneath the earth?!” He swept a hand up towards the shadowy subterranean ceiling of the chamber.

        Everyone jumped at the President’s clarification and rushed to rapidly shake their heads no.

        “I didn’t think so,” said the President. “It’s time that we secured our place upon the food chain’s apex. No bully is above the law; no misdemeanor lost beneath our notice. Those that have earned detention will at last be made to serve it... so long as all of you serve with more spirit than you’ve shown up to this point.”

        The crowd broke out in cheers and tears and patriotic song... but Cody’s sharp eyes honed in on the single hand that had been raised to ask a question.