Pettibone

Did you ever feel bullied at home, school or in "polite society" in general? This is a tale about a poor kid who has been dealt a cruel hand and has nothing left to lose. With a very active imagination in place, he does something about it. Something VERY drastic. Be very careful of who you pick on. It could come back to bite you on the ass...and every place else!

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Pettibone did not know where he came from. All he knew was that he was here now, in this town, in this weak, scrawny frame of a borderline malnourished eight-year-old boy. Amnesia was a terrible thing. The Fates were just as cruel. Not only was he in this pitiful shell, now, but had been since he was cruelly thrust into the body of a mewling infant and had been for these long years. But this was not the worst of the indignities that Pettibone found heaped upon him, oh no. This thing called nature was not through with him. Not by a long shot.

His birth, for instance, was one that no sentient being should ever have had to suffer. The one who bore him, his mother, a preacher’s daughter named, Holly, had been a drug fiend with no real preference as long as the substance could get her to her next high. He had never really known her. The fact was she had been pregnant with him the day she chose to take her life. Holly had turned to prostitution, after running away from home to escape her father’s heavy hand of discipline and her mother’s constant haranguing her about who of the family, or who of any other’s families that Holly should be more like. She met a street walker by the name of Sable who told Holly if she wanted to make quick and easy money, she could show the girl the ropes, teach her a few tricks and soon, she would be raking the men and money in. The Johns loved the young ones and Holly was just their type. Young, fresh-faced and even if she wasn’t, she looked virginal. She would definitely have regulars once the ball got rolling. Sable not only introduced her to the oldest profession but to the oldest form of relaxation: drugs. Before too much time had lapsed, Holly had become acquainted with every substance legal and illegal to feed her habit which took any funds not absconded by her “manager.” During the course of one of her fuck sessions, Pettibone had been conceived. It could have been any one of her many regulars who Holly the Dolly was their weekend date night. When she started to show signs of being with child, the customers started to fall off rapidly. Holly’s pimp, a fine upstanding fellow named Marlon “Snowman” Jackson told her that she needed to get rid of the bun in her oven, but not in the friendliest of manners, far from it, or he was going to fuck her up to the point that nobody would want her again for even a quick blow job in the back of a biker dive bar. Holly’s rent was three months due in a roach haven apartment Snowman had set her up in. She hadn’t eaten in the better part of two days and her electricity had been shut off for a week. On top of all the abuse and humility she had endured from Snowman Jackson, she was hurting. The girl needed money for a fix. If Jamal could just hook her up, she would do anything he asked.

Snowman reached into his pocket and tossed her some bills. “Here, you fuckin’ ho!” he barked at her, with obvious disgust in his expression and tone. “Get yourself cleaned up and get rid of that little fuck wad in your belly! Don’t you come back here until it’s done, you piece of trailer trash! Then we can get you back to work. You owe me double, with interest!” Snowman said, putting special emphasis on that last word.

With that, Marlon gave her a violent push making her land hard on her ass. He walked to the door of his crash pad without offering to help her up, or even visiting more abuse on her person. Beating her wouldn’t help his bottom line and he needed his money like a dog needed a bowl of kibble. She couldn’t draw in any customers old or new if she looked like a human punching bag, which, incidentally, she was. Marlon opened the door to his apartment which was barely a step above Holly’s own living conditions. “Now,” he said. “Get the fuck outta here. I have new talent comin’ up and I don’t want them to see some ratchet hose bag up in my crib bringin’ my rep down with her skank ass.”

Holly quickly gathered up the bills that Marlon had thrown at her and left without saying a word. Marlon shut the door nonchalantly behind her.

Holly bought half an ounce of heroin from a street dealer she knew named Johnny B. who always claimed he had the purest of the pure. But it was a well-known fact among the street and upper-class criminal element, that Johnny B. was a rat fink son of a bitch that sold a shit product that was going to get him whacked one day and probably very soon. He was going to screw over the wrong gangbanger, or white-collar broker with the right connections and Johnny B. was going to become a permanent fixture in one of the concrete foundations of a high-rise building project. Holly alluded to as much when she went to send some business his way for the real deal. It cost her all the money Jamal had given her and a fuck thrown his way, but Johnny B. got up off the goods. After Holly had left him, Johnny B. suddenly remembered he had some relatives in New Jersey he hadn’t seen in a number of years and decided now was as good a time as any to visit them. Permanently. He packed up a suitcase full of clothes and a duffle bag full of money and product and was on the road to parts unknown to anyone in the city, even himself.

Meanwhile at her own dreary little apartment, Holly drew her a nice warm bath in the old tub where she bathed after most of her nightly rendezvous.’ She never brought her clients here. Some of it was because of shame where she now called home, instead of the chaste bedroom where a picture of Jesus knocking on a door with a lost lamb in his arms, looked down on her with a beatific smile full of grace to be given if she should answer His eternal calling. Holly always hated that picture. It was a constant reminder to her of the prison that she had been placed through no fault of her own. One out of “love.” Her religious parents used that word like most others would liberally toss around curses and vulgarities. “Love” to Holly equated with words like “bitch,” “fuck,” “slut,” and “whore.” At least there was honesty in the latter words. In the first word, not so much. Holly never believed in love, or never felt it in her whole life. The main reason she brought no one here was because this place was hers. Her sanctuary. Her escape away from the ugliness of what her young life had become. Her own heaven that she would share with no one, not even the life within her that waited to be born into this world to play the cards it was dealt.

Holly luxuriated in running her fingers languidly through the warm waters of the bath. When she tired of this, she got up from the stool by the tub and went to make her final preparations which involved a spoon, syringe, tourniquet, the baggie of heroin and her father’s straight razor that she stole when she left home to defend herself from the bad elements that she had heard about from others that had lived in such places. All this meticulously done, Holly stripped and stepped into the bathtub. When she sat in the warm water for a bit, she shot up with the drug and allowed another sort of euphoria to flow through her system. Holly lay back in the tub and closed her eyes, rubbing her swollen belly. “Petti…” she said, slurring her words from the effects of the heroin. “Bone…pretty…bone…” she giggled. “Mommy is going to take you UP to heaven…with hair…”

Again, she giggled covering her mouth this time. “With her. What’s the manner with me…?”

With another giggle, she reached for the last instrument to make her bath complete. She raked the blade’s edge up and down her forearms, feeling her nerves tingle from the sensation and moaned from the motions. Then, without any other hesitation, she raked two long razor trails down her inner forearms. Blood spurted immediately. Holly dropped the blade in the bathtub and her arms flopped down into the water. The latter became a deep crimson in a trice.

An hour later, the old woman who lived in the apartment under Holly, called the building superintendent when it was discovered water was pouring from the upper floor and flooding her own bathroom. Somebody needed to get up there and fast, or she was going to call the Housing Authority for about the umpteenth time since she had been living there. The super was less than enthused about hearing from the old bat, but she could bring down real trouble on his head and the rest of his partners who owned that building as well as a few others in the city. It wouldn’t take but one really bad report from the Health Department (He had greased palms to get through all of the inspections he had thus far, but his luck would eventually run out and something like this they could not let go) and they would shut them down. He didn’t want to leave his game being televised live. He set the TiVo to record it and went to see what was up at the apartment building. One thing for sure, though, the old woman’s lease would not be renewed for another go around. She could live out of a refrigerator box for all he fucking cared. Shrugging on his jacket, and grabbing his toolbox from the garage, he went out.

Bobby Shell, the super, planned to walk past Bernice Byrd’s apartment and just go up to the third floor and see what was up. In all likelihood, it was a busted pipe. They had been fucking up ever since the hard freezes that Denver and outlying towns like Agnetha, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Parker, Peace and many others had suffered during the winter’s past. He would have to shut off the water, of course, to fix the problem and got a sort of mean pleasure knowing that the old woman was going to be one of the tenants affected.

If Shell thought he was going to get past Bernice’s door without being cut off at the pass, he was sorely mistaken. The old biddy was waiting for him. She stood in her doorway, arms folded, her expression one of a disapproving apple doll. “I’m here to look at the pipes, Mrs. Byrd,” Bobby said, wanting to appease her and get her out of his hair before she could into her complaining too deeply. “I’m sure that’s it. These old pipes all need replac...”

The old woman cut him off. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. Just hop to it. I don’t pay what I do every month for you to slack ass around. My bathroom is flooded!”

It won’t be your bathroom for too much longer, he thought. “I understand. I have to shut off the water to find out what’s wrong with it, so you won’t have any of it for a little while.”

She waved this last away. “As long as it fixes what’s broken, I don’t give a shit. Better see why it’s red too. That can’t be healthy, especially for us old folks. It’s bad enough we have to worry about lead and mercury in our water like they do in Michigan. Peace is a part of Denver. We’re supposed to have clean water.”

“It’s probably some rust, Mrs. Byrd. I will...”

Again, she cut him off. “I said it was RED, not rusty!” She hollered. “RED, RED like those Chinese and Russian commie flags! I know what rust looks like! This is RED!”

“I will get right on that,” he assured her, starting back up to the third floor.

“See that you do. I’ll be waiting.” She called after the already frazzled man. Bernice went back inside her apartment, slamming the door behind her.

Bobby reached Holly’s apartment door and knocked. “Ms. Schaffer…it’s Mr. Shell, the super. We had a complaint of busted pipes. I need to come in and check yours. Could you let me in, please?”

No answer. Bobby waited for a minute and said to the door again a little louder this time. “Ms. Schaeffer…?”

Again, no answer. Bobby reached for the key ring hanging around his belt and found the master key to Holly’s apartment. He shoved it into the keyhole and unlocked the door and stepped into a nightmare. This was where the water was coming from, no doubt about that, but what he saw through the bathroom door facing the apartment doorway made him drop his toolbox and fall on his sizable butt. His jeans were instantly drenched from the water flowing from the bathroom as if he had been drinking a keg of beer and couldn’t quite make it to the bathroom a mere twenty feet away. He staggered to his feet and immediately went for his cell phone, that miraculously, had escaped any water damage, and put in a call to the sheriff’s department.

A full twenty minutes later, the cavalry arrived. The deed was already done. They did not see this as a priority. All that was left to do was tie up loose ends and move along to the next call. When the deputies arrived, Bobby was leaning with his head against the stair railing going up to the fourth floor. The superintendent was noticeably ill. Under the steps, almost out of anyone’s line of vision, was a puddle of vomit that consisted of undigested nacho chips, queso and salsa. The deputies saw this and the lead officer shook his head and indicated for his junior partner to deal with the sick man. “Are you the one who made the call, sir?” the officer asked the building super.

Bobby nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice phlegmy and not his usual “jovial” self.

The lead deputy heard just a little bit more of the query going on, before he entered the apartment and found Holly in the tub, bled white, the water almost clear by now, having run most of the scarlet river down below on old Mrs. Byrd’s bathroom. No matter how many times he saw it in his line of work, Deputy Lloyd Marshall never got used to this. This girl was young. Too young to perish in such a fashion. She would have been pretty at one time, maybe even a prom queen, but the baggie, syringe and tourniquet told the tale of what happened and the wrong turn she took and brought her to such a sorry state.

Deputy Marshall reached over and did something that had been needing to be done for over an hour and turned the goddamned tap off in the tub. “Jesus Christ on a pony,” he muttered. “Couldn’t that idiot super have turned off the water, at least?”

A moment later, Marshall’s partner, Patrick Donnelly, came into the room. “The guy out in the hall said he came to answer a call about this leak…”

Donnelly stopped. He looked down at what his partner was staring at. “Ah, shit, Lloyd! Ah, shit!”

“Get a grip on yourself, Pat. You have seen this all before. we have to find out who her next of kin was and notify them of what happened here.” Lloyd told the other as calmly as he could in the current circumstances.

They were about to carry their conversation further when splashing in the bathtub once more turned their full attention to the crime scene before them.

“Holy hell!” Donnelly exclaimed. “There’s a baby in there with her!!”

Sure enough, splashing in the water, trying to surface for air, was an infant, the umbilical cord still attached to it. The child was face down and if quick action were not exercised, it would die right there with its mother. Marshall removed a pocketknife from his uniform and extended the blade. “Why don’t you just use the razor beside her in the water? She won’t be needing it anymore.”

“It’s evidence, man!”

“But…” Donnelly began.

Lloyd reached into the water for the baby’s tether and started slicing through it to save the child from drowning. “No buts about it. We have to preserve the crime scene at all costs…”

As Lloyd drew the baby from certain death, he got his first good look at the boy’s face and made one of his own. “Ugh! Maybe it would have been a blessing to let this ugly little bastard drown in there with his mother.”

Donnelly own face was a mask of total disgust. “I’ll see if I can’t find a blanket around this dump somewhere.” he said and went off to do just that, leaving Marshall alone with his seemingly hideous burden.

After his mother’s body was taken away, the baby was turned over to child services to await word from his blood family on what would be the best course of action for his personal welfare. Holly’s parents hearing of their daughter’s fate and what sort of life she had been leading wanted nothing to do with the child. There were deformities, they were told. No telling what other physical maladies it suffered. The parents were not so misinformed on how the world operated that they didn’t know what sort of birth defects could take place from unwed mothers who chose such a lifestyle of drugs and excess. It was after some amount of persuasion from the county offices of Peace, Colorado, that Holly’s parents reluctantly agreed to take their daughter’s remains and have them interred in their burial plot in in the graveyard behind the Colorado established branch of The Promised Land Tabernacle, its sister church of the same name down in a small town known as Tranquility, in the panhandle of Florida. It was now defunct, but the one in Peace, Colorado was very much an active place of worship. The Schaeffer’s would take their daughter’s body, but the child she bore they did not know him and as such, would not take care of him and that was that. Child services took over from that point on and the baby was bounced back and forth in the foster care system like a hot potato.

For eight years plus, this went on. The baby was given the name of David Smith and much like his long-deceased mother, became the figurative and literal punching bag of all whose path he crossed. There were those who showed him kindness and compassion. The teachers at the many schools he attended who saw how hard the boy was having it as far as a so-called home and scholastic life. There were also special needs teachers that were even more so understanding. All of these individuals were few and far between. David had to deal with others most of the time that he was just a paycheck to (foster parents), a literal punching bag (various bullies in schools he attended and neighborhoods where he spent his temporary stopping points) and figurative abusers (everybody else who bruised with words).

David’s only form of escape from his daily trials and tribulations was through the pages of books and comics. His personal favorites in the comic books he read were Wolverine and Doomsday. One was a hero (antihero to be exact) and the other was a villain of seemingly unlimited power. Both were total badasses. Both had no problems dealing with their enemies in the harshest of ways. One had killed ninjas and cadres of villains. The other killed heroes and more specifically, the greatest hero to many of all time—Superman. Other than being the epitome of mean, they both shared another common trait: they relied on sharp bone protrusions to dispatch many of their foes. True, Wolverine only had bone claws sheathed in a fictious metal known as Adamantium. Doomsday was another matter. He was a superpowered alien whose body was practically covered in sharp, rock like bone. Extra weaponry to add to his already invulnerable physique that he gained more of depending on injuries and all the times he had died. If David could be either of his heroes, it would be Doomsday. He wondered if he concentrated hard enough, could he bring this ability into being. He even had a name for himself. Pettibone. He didn’t know how he knew the name; all he knew was that it sounded cool and that clinched it.

He looked in the bathroom mirror of one of the places that was his temporary home. His head was a misshapen lump. David thought so, anyway. One eye was slightly higher than the other and nearly closed shut. That side of his face the mouth was slacker than the other and the hair didn’t grow quite right there either. He was told by a former, cruel foster mother that his freaky appearance was the result of his mother doing drugs when he was still in the womb. He wanted to beat this particular mother to a pulp as she snickered about his condition.

David felt that old rage well up inside him as his breathing quickened and bellowed in and out. He clenched his fists and teeth as hard as he could until he thought he was about to have a brain aneurism. For as much as he tried to “Hulk Out” all he succeeded in doing was having shortness of breath and the first pains of an oncoming headache. No sharp bones protruded from his skin anywhere. His scrawny body wasn’t suddenly rippling with muscles stacked on top of muscles. All that was reflected back to him from the bathroom mirror was his too thin body and freakish face. Suddenly, his new foster mother (She and the father he was saddled with this time around were actually nice. He could definitely see a future with them) called to him from the kitchen upstairs saying it was time for dinner. David sighed, a feeling of glumness coming over him. He turned from the mirror and switched off the light. He left the bathroom.

Tonight, was his personal favorite dinner: Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Goody-gumdrops.

The next day at school was business as usual. David was cursed, jostled, pushed and shoved. His books were knocked out of his arms going to class. When he squatted down to pick them up and the papers that had scattered, someone slapped the back of his head, knocking him over. Several giggles and laughs accompanied this indignancy. David looked up to see Lonnie Mays grinning down at him. “You ought to watch your step in these halls, Frankenstein,” he said to the other boy. “It can be dangerous around here.”

Lonnie and his pal, another one of David’s main tormentors, Jeremy Smart, walked away, mimicking the walk of the Frankenstein monster, complete with moans, trance like expressions and arms extended with a shuffling gait. Then they laughed when they reached their classroom. David shook his head and returned to picking up his books and papers.

Unfortunately, his luck was firing on all cylinders still. There was no seat available except the one directly in front of Lonnie. The creep grinned. That was not a good sign. Their teacher, Mrs. Taylor told David to take a seat that he was holding up the rest of the class with his tardiness. There were uncomfortable giggles throughout the room, but a stern look from Mrs. Taylor over the gathered students brought all this to an abrupt end. She cast about making sure there were going to be no further interruptions and turned back and started writing on the chalkboard.

The second Mrs. Taylor was writing on the chalkboard, that’s when Louis’s torments returned anew. First came the ear thumping. Then the taunts. “How does that feel, Franky? How does that one feel, huh? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it, huh, pussy? Pussy boy! Pussy boy! Little pussy boy! Frankenwuss!” Lonnie hissed.

David said one thing and one thing only to this. He didn’t even look at his brutish nemesis, instead, he stared straight ahead, seemingly focused on Mrs. Taylor’s ass, but he wasn’t

concentrating his attention on anything at all. The rage was building within, his expression becoming much like it had in the bathroom mirror the night before.

“Pettibone,” David snarled through clenched teeth.

“What did you say, Frankenwuss?” Louis retorted.

David stood erect from his desk, spilling his books and the desk too. He turned his full attention and rage on Lonnie who was startled to have his enemy to come at him like that. This caused everyone, including Mrs. Taylor to rivet their own attentions to the scene unfolding in their midst.

“MY! NAME! IS! PETTIBONE!! YOU ASSHOLE!!!

Then it happened. Sharp bone protrusions erupted from his hands and David screamed. So did everyone else, Lonnie and Jeremy included. David’s screams were ones of triumph. His teacher and classmate’s screams were those of absolute terror.

Now, his creation, Pettibone, was coming to fruition, bone shards erupted from every possible spot on the former David Smith’s body and encased the boy’s flesh in an unbreakable exoskeleton. This happened in a space of eighteen seconds, but when it was done, there was nothing left of Frankenwuss David Smith. There was only Pettibone, a monster borne from a lonely and longsuffering boy’s imagination and an iron will to survive at any cost. Pettibone turned his red eyes on Lonnie who by now had pissed and shit himself at seeing what his incessant bullying had helped to create. The horrific beastie was at least six feet tall by now and still growing. Pettibone’s massive maw opened and with a shriek ten times louder than when Mrs. Taylor raked the chalk down the blackboard, the thing’s mouth enclosed over the bully’s head and with a jerk to his left, Louis’s head came free of his body, spraying all the students nearby with a jetting crimson shower. Pettibone realized in a flash that he loved the taste of blood. That he loved the taste of human flesh. That discovery caused him to dig into the now still body of Lonnie Mays and Pettibone began to tear the corpse apart eating it with gusto, bones and all.

This woke the others up from their stupor at witnessing the most horrifying thing in their young lives. They all screamed as one and stampeded to the classroom door. Jeremy also meant to join the others. Pettibone snatched him up from the floor checking his headlong flight and began to eat the child alive, blood and viscera spraying in all directions. Pettibone would finish the rest of Lonnie in a minute. His victims tasted better when they were alive, kicking and screaming.

Mrs. Taylor in trying to get her students away to safety was knocked down in the initial rush and was immediately trampled. She died a minute later when the heel of a youngster’s cowboy boot jammed hard into her eye socket and buried itself in her brain. The kid seemed not to notice as he lost that boot. The main mission on top of the menu for that moment was survival. He and quite a few of his classmates managed just that. Other classmates weren’t so lucky. Those that fell were also trampled underfoot. However, none of them died from this. The bulk of the children managed to only receive only minor injuries. The worst any of the melee got was a little girl whose arm was broken in the mad rush to escape becoming a part of the growing abattoir.

Several teachers came out of their classrooms hearing children running and screaming like a herd of banshees. When the adults got a glimpse of the kids, most of them covered in some amount of blood, the teachers went into full panic mode. One of the teachers managed to snag a little girl that had gotten more than her fair share of gore drenching and stopped the child in her headlong flight. “Casey,” the man said as calmly as he could, his big hands covering a fair portion of her upper arms as he shook her and tried to get her attention focused on him. “CASEY!! What in God’s name is going on?! Where’s Mrs. Taylor?!”

Casey looked wildly back and forth between the classroom she just exited and the direction her school chums had disappeared. She was frantic as she struggled to free herself from the teacher’s grasp. “LET ME GO!” Casey cried. “A MONSTER! A BIG OLD MONSTER!! HE ATE THEM!!! HE WANTS TO EAT EVERYONE!!! LET ME GO!!! LET ME GO—YOU—FUCKING MOLESTER!!!”

The teacher, whose name was Mr. Schneider, reeled as if he had been slapped. He was sure that the little girl didn’t mean what she said. It was the hysterics. Casey had said the first thing that had come to her mind, and it was a defensive phrase that was uttered when kids felt threatened by any adult, they were uncomfortable with and wished to extricate themselves from the given situation. It was great she had learned as much (minus the expletive) but now was not the time to get into the appropriateness of when and when not to use such self-defense mechanisms.

“Casey!” Schneider tried once again. “What is it…?”

A second later, the man saw what it was. Pettibone was now massive and a good eight foot tall, if not more. Translation: He could not get through the door as he had easily been able too when he had been David Smith. This made the monster VERY angry. A few blows of its huge fists and the doorway was once more passable. The cinderblocks of the wall were smashed into chunks of concrete that went flying in all directions and the beast was free. Its gaze shifted in the direction of the teacher and little girl.

Several things happened all at once. Mr. Schneider’s attention was now full on Pettibone. He relaxed his grip on Casey just enough that she was able to slip free and went running in the direction her friends and other classmates had taken. Soon, she was out of sight as well. The monster was a killing machine, of that, there was no doubt. Its boney surface was covered with blood, shit, and a clear, unidentifiable substance that was most certainly some other bodily fluid. Schematics. There was no time to get into them. Schneider had a duty to his students. He had to get back to them. Schneider just wanted to get back to his classroom. He wanted to see his wife in a few hours. He wanted to kiss her and after a fine dinner that included steaks on the grill and a fine red wine, they would make love, then she would ask how his day went and he would tell her that it had been a wonderful day to be alive and they would fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Pettibone reminded him what part of his life was the dream and what the reality. The creature was on the man in less time than it takes to tell, and Mr. Schneider and his wonderful dream was shattered along with his bones as the monster smashed all two hundred and six of them with just a few blows. He followed the two bullies who had come before him and incidentally, Mrs. Taylor, before Pettibone ever made it out into the hall. When the newest victim was no more, the creature could sense more prey in the classrooms that cowered as best they could as to elude discovery for all the good it did. Even if Pettibone didn’t have keen senses that would lock on the adults and children even if they were on the other side of the school, the fact that he had once been one of them a short while ago, gave him all the information he needed to find them. He smashed through the late Mr. Schneider’s classroom door and the screams started once again.

During the slaughter fest that brought others to the scene, teachers and older students started blowing up the sheriff’s department’s emergency lines with 911 calls. The authorities in turn, could not believe what they were hearing in these calls but had little choice to send out deputies to investigate what was really going on at the school. Maybe it was a chemical spill in one of the science labs, or cafeteria food finally working its mojo on the brains and stomachs of the staff and students. Whatever the case, the department was going to get to the bottom of it one way or the other.

Those who didn’t place the calls were filming what they could in its entirety to post online. That was until, Pettibone, saw what was happening during his killing spree in one of the classrooms. Most of the aspiring film makers turned tail and ran when they saw the jig was up. Others, whether from wanting to make a name for themselves as future directors and camera operators, staying until the last possible minute, or out of sheer stupidity, got great footage of the hulking evil coming towards them and a one-way trip to the hereafter.

Unlike the day of David Smith’s birth, the sheriff deputies didn’t take all that long to reach the school. When they saw what they were called in to see, after the initial shock they opened fire on Pettibone who was lumbering down the hall towards his next meal. Handguns, rifles and shotguns fired as one at the primary target, knocking some bone shards from the monstrosity, but not slowing it down a whit. It didn’t matter how much he lost in bone mass. Pettibone would gain it all back—once he reached the cops. It was, after all, how he had grown so big in so short a space of a time. Flesh, blood and bone. All worked to build the perfect beast. There was a world out there full of it. Pettibone would have it, no matter who, or what he had to kill.

Starting on his new venture with these irritating officers. He moved forward. They screamed. This went on for a long, long time.

Deep down inside the boney monstrosity that was the creature known as Pettibone, was the true mind behind the carnage. The boy once known as David Smith, the son of no one, a deformed bastard kid that no one ever wanted, smiled. For every person he killed and ate, he grew stronger beyond his wildest expectations and like a wild animal once has gotten a taste for something, it wanted more. The more he got, the more deadly he became.

Being a monster wasn’t so bad after all.

By Ken King

From: United States