Two-Faced Bully

Just remember, there’s two sides to every story.

I’m quite big, so for most of my life I haven’t worried too much about bullies. Some older boys used to call me name but most of the kids my age are actually quite nice. I haven’t had to worry about dreading school. I’m not cool or anything, it’s just I guess I kinda blend into the background. I actually kinda like it because I don’t feel like I’m a douche jock but I’m not a total loser either. It’s nice to be in the middle. I think, for a long time, if you’d asked me I would have said most people didn’t even think about me, that much. And yeah it was a bummer but it also meant I was never too stressed out about how other people saw me.

But I was wrong to think I could get away with going unnoticed. It was the start of a new year recently and I dragged myself back to school only to find myself seated behind Alice. I’d never really spoken to her much but she’d been going to my school as long as I had. She came back from summer looking a bit paler than usual and tired, but I didn’t give it a second thought. I just pulled up behind her, sat down, and proceeded to get bored by my math teacher.

And then I heard a whisper.

“Fat ass.”

I looked up but no one else had noticed. It sounded like it had come from directly in front of me, but all I could see was the shimmering waist-length black hair that covered Alice’s back.

“Fucking fatty.”

I heard it again, loud and clear.

“You’re disgusting. You physically make me sick. How the fuck do you wake up every day and look at yourself? You’re not smart. You’re not handsome. Even worse, actually. You are fucking revolting just to look at.”

I was shaken just to hear these things. I was perplexed at the way no one else paid any attention to what was going on, and reached forward to poke Alice. She turned around, her face sullen and confused, and I asked her,

“Why are you saying these things?”

Because it’s fun to watch ugly people cry.

“I’m not saying anything,” she said.

I believed her, for some reason. After she turned back, I tried to dismiss the hurtful words from memory but they didn’t stop coming.

“How are you going to make a living in the future? When your mother and father die who’s going to look after you? Who would ever pay you to do anything? You’re thick and ugly. Everyone else is going to get careers or have families. You have no hope.”

I was starting to get angry, but no matter how hard I tried to figure out who was talking to me I couldn’t see a thing. Everyone either had their down in their work or they were just staring out the window.

“Psst,” the voice hissed. “I’m over here you ugly fuck.”

It was definitely coming from Alice. But it didn’t even sound like her.

“Over here,” it said, and a single slimy pale finger poked out from the back of Alice’s velvety black hair and beckoned for me to come forward. “Over here you ugly piece of shit. That’s right, ohhhh look at your fat terrified face.”

My heart sank into my chest as two stubby grimy fingers parted the hair just a fraction of an inch, and I saw a lightning blue eye staring back at me.

“Jesus Christ,” I cried and fell back out of my chair.

He fails to mention the fucking crater he left behind.

“What is going on here!?” the teacher cried while the entire class burst into hysterical laughter. I looked up to see dozens of red faces cheering and chucking things at me, while Alice had turned in her chair to look at me mournfully. “Get back in your seat!” the teacher shouted. “Come on come on! How far through your work are you? Hm?”

“Sorry miss,” I stuttered, before grabbing my fallen papers and putting them back on my desk. I put my head down and tried my best to just stare at my work.

But the entire time that voice just hissed at me. It just kept going and going. It was relentless and it… it knew things about me. It brought things up that not even my parents or my older brother know about. And the thing is, even though these horrible words made me angry (angry enough to want to hit whoever said them), I didn’t want to look up because I was so scared. That eye I’d seen was terrifying. It looked so malicious and angry and I didn’t have a clue what was happening.

I just wanted it to stop.

That’s how I feel about his silhouette.

And it did, when class ended. Only for the next day to come and for me to find myself sat behind Alice again. Sure enough, the voice returned. It’s been like that ever since. Damn near a whole month and every day for at least one hour I’ve found myself behind Alice. This thing just taunts me and… I really can’t explain just how hard it is to keep control. It knows exactly how to push my buttons. And just as I find myself getting angry I look up and find it staring at me from behind her hair and my heart skips and my stomach sinks into the floor and my skin gets clammy and everything goes fuzzy around the edges…

I don’t know. It’s impossible, the whole thing is impossible, I know! For ages I thought I must be going mad. I started reading about schizophrenia and other mental illnesses but none of them mentioned seeing things like this. It’s the face. It’s the yellowed teeth riddled with ugly black cavities, and the fat blue tongue it sticks out to mock me, looking like steak rolled into a tube. And the pale sweaty skin that stretches like rubber when it smiles makes my whole body shiver with fear. It looks like a corpse! Like someone cut the face off a corpse and stuck it on the back of someone else’s head and then covered it with hair. But it’s still under there… this angry vicious face that hisses horrible things.

Rubber skin? Oh he swings hard when he can sit by his computer and type freely but in the moment all he can do is stutter and cry.

I hate it. I hate it so much. I hate that it knows things about me like I how I found a caterpillar making a cocoon when I was six and tried to pick it up and broke it. Even now I remember looking inside it and seeing this green goop. My heart sank as I realised what I’d done. What a stupid thing to remember, I was only six, but I felt so guilty afterwards. And somehow this thing knows everything about me!

“You fat fuck,” it hissed. “Did you think it was a KitKat? Why did you touch it? Why did you break it with your fat grubby sticky snot-covered fingers?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered under my breath.

“Ho ho ho ho, that’s so much better. You don’t even know why. You killed something beautiful and precious and you don’t even know why! That’s you summed up. That’s you: stumbling around this world filled with pretty things and just breaking everything you touch. Can’t be pretty yourself so you have to smash everything that makes you feel like crap. Is that it?”

Just being honest.

It never stops!

I feel like I’m going mad. And I’ve tried to confront Alice but she just looks at her feet sullenly. She acts like it isn’t there but there’s no way she doesn’t know. I’ve seen her touch it for crying out loud! I’ve seen her run her hands through her hair and her fingers pass straight over that leering white face. How could she not notice!?

I spoke to some girls and they said it’s just that Alice is going through puberty. Puberty! Are they insane!? That isn’t puberty! Her whole personality has changed and I know exactly why. She isn’t acting quiet because her tits came in. I’m not stupid!

He is definitely very stupid.

It’s that fucking thing on the back of her head. Something happened to her during summer. That’s why she’s changed. But who would believe a story like that? Teachers don’t even care if you get bullied by another student, let alone a hideous face that hides on the back of someone else’s head. I’ve tried getting someone else to change seats with me during maths but they won’t. I’ve tried speaking to teachers, but no one gets it. I say I’m being bullied and it’s all sympathetic cooing and sweet voices and when I try to explain it just…

“It’s the girl in front of me!” I say.

“Alice?” they ask.

“No! The girl in front of me!”

“But the girl in front of you is Alice…”

On and on and on it goes. My parents can’t help, the other kids don’t care, no one even knows except me.

So I had to take matters into my own hands. I had to try, at least! I’m not some psycho but I decided to sneak up on Alice, wondering if I could get her to talk on her own, or maybe even find out if it was all just a crazy prank. So I followed her after school one day, waiting for her to start walking home alone. But she didn’t go the normal route. She went a completely different way. Her house was nowhere near the direction she took. But slowly, one by one, all the other kids peeled off until it was just her and some other kid. It was this young girl, I reckon around nine, with a big afro of blonde hair. I stayed way, way back, and even hid a couple of times when Alice looked around.

It’s funny he thinks he hid well. It was like someone tried hiding a sofa behind a pencil.

It must have worked, because all of a sudden Alice just took a running leap at this girl. It took everyone by surprise and the young kid was quickly dragged off by Alice into some a nearby thicket. I ran as fast as I could and by the time I reached them both I could barely breathe. I arrived just in time, though, finding Alice sitting on top of this young girl who was face down in the dirt.

“Stop!” I screamed, but she just ignored me. Instead, her hair parted and that face stared at me with wide happy eyes.

“Fatty’s come to watch!” it jeered. “Oh look look look look. Look fatty. What are you gonna do?”

The young girl was trying to scream but Alice had her hand pressed firmly on the back of her head, choking her mouth with dirt. With her other hand she reached into her top and pulled out what looked like a mask, the edge lined with ten grimy fingers that wriggled in the air like spider’s legs.

“Oh please not that one,” the second face cried, the one held in Alice’s hand. That’s when I realised she was holding a nearly-identical copy of the face on the back of her head. “Please not the fatty,” it moaned with the exaggerated expression of a theatre mask.

“No no not him her!” the face on the back of Alice’s head screamed. “She’s your target! The girl! The girl! Not the boy you idiot!”

I try to be patient with the young ones but in the moment it can be easy to lose your temper.

Alice started to lower her hand towards the back of the girl’s head, the fingers of the second mask flaring wide in anticipation, but I jumped forward and pulled her off just in time. She fell backwards into the muck and let go of the insect-like mask. In an instant the young girl was up and running, her desperate sobs punctuated by the sounds of her footfalls. I looked down and let out a cry of disgust when I realised that the second mask was clumsily scuttling along the floor like a giant spider, bumping into sticks and rocks, trying to find the young girl.

“Go!” screamed the face on the back of Alice’s head. “Go! Get her now!”

Do I have to do everything for the new guys?

That’s when the crawling face stopped crawling changed its heading so it was aimed exactly at the young girl who was now a good thirty metres away. Suddenly, it raised itself from the floor split apart, the pale rubbery face bisected and thick blood oozed between the two halves. From beneath the opened face, unfurled two shimmering insect wings that glistened in the light like dew-covered silk. With terrifying speed, it launched itself into the air with a vibrating thrum. It shot through the air like a baseball and struck the fleeing girl in the back of the head with enough force to topple her straight over. From afar, I could only see the faint signs of a struggle as her she kicked her feet and rolled in the dirt.

“Fatty wants a go?” I heard, the voice pulling my attention back to girl in front of me.

Alice had stood up and was still brushing the filth off her uniform. She still looked sullen, with hollow eyes but she looked at me for the first time ever and seemed to be actually notice me.

“What are you doing hear—”

Unfortunately, fragments will always remain. I can’t scoop it all out but I have my ways...

I cried out as her head suddenly wrenched around 180 degrees, her neck twisting like a screw with a sickening series of cracks and crunches. That grinning face appeared and fixed its pale blue eyes on me—her hair like two curtains held apart by a grave digger’s fingers—and cackled uproariously.

“Want a kiss?” it begged in a shrill voice as Alice’s whole body took on a ghostly demeanour. I don’t think it ever changed her physically, but it certainly moved it in an unusual way. Her arms bunched close to her stomach with her elbows poking out and her legs became bowed. She started to lurch towards me, slowly at first, but then faster and faster (like a vhs on fast-forward) until she was close enough to user her arms like clubs, throwing them around wildly. Her strikes hurt like hell, even if they were clumsy, but it was the sight of that drooling face that made me back away and gag.

Say it to my face fat ass. It’s easy to throw shit when you’re lying comfy in your bed but in the moment all you could do was shake like a bowl full of jelly.

Terrified and confused I fell backwards and she fell right on top of me. That porcelain white skin, coated with discoloured mud and threaded with sickly blue veins, stared at me with a stomach-churning hunger. I could feel Alice’s cold skin against mine and I instinctively raised my hands to cover my face. The entire time this thing hurled insults at me and clubbed me with Alice’s fists and I began to sob, which only made the loud ear-piercing insults even more vicious and unrestrained.

“Come on fattie fight back!” it laughed before reaching under Alice’s shirt. I could already see the wriggling beetle-shape quivering beneath the muddy sweater. As I realised what she had planned, I suddenly found a sliver of courage.

“No!” I cried and pushed her back. For a brief moment that horrible face looked surprised as it lost its balance and toppled over. As quickly as I could I jumped on top. Those fists kept hitting my arms and chest and I looked around, confused as to what I could do. Lying flat on her back, Alice’s hair had sprawled out on the leafy floor, surrounding her head like an inky aura. Seeing the face clearly for the first time, I noticed how some of the grubby fingers were clutching Alice’s pale scalp in a death grip.

I reached down, batting away the weak strikes that were aimed at my face, and dug my fingers under her slimy grip. With a terrible heave I pulled and nearly lost my stomach in the process. The face came off with a sickening wet tear and my body immediately revolted at the sight of blood and bone. Even separated from the back of Alice’s head by a few inches, it was still able to grin and leer.

“No saving her!” it cried, and I saw that it was right. Behind the mask was a hollowed-out skull where it had buried a fat throbbing body surrounded by a thousand needle-like growths that jabbed into the inner wall of her head. “It’s my home now!” the voice screamed. “Mine mine mine mine!”

Finders keepers, amirite?

Crying out I let go and scrambled away. Nothing was left in Alice’s skull but some pink goop, the rest replaced with the throbbing abdomen of that wretched monster. I watched with horror as it squirmed its way back into Alice’s skull, like a fat spider walking backwards into a burrow.

“Mine mine mine!” It cried before suddenly rising in a crab-walk, twisting its head back 180 degrees so it could keep its eyes fixed on me even as it shuffled forward. I became convinced I was going to die in that moment and in a last desperate attempt to get away I kicked out hard, stamping my big foot into that face. I heard a sickening crack and thump but I didn’t even stop to look. I just got up and ran away as fast as I could, bursting out of the trees and sprinting all the way home until I reached home. Once there, I collapsed on my door and vomited from the exhaustion.

Take the hint. Seriously. Who vomits after running three-quarters of a mile?

I don’t remember much afterwards. My parents told me they’d found me half-conscious in my bed. Somehow I’d managed to stumble into my house and shower and clean my clothes but the trauma must have wiped me out completely. Thankfully my parents just thought I was ill, even as they sat me down and told me with tears in their eyes that Alice was found just outside of school with a horrific head-injury. I tried hard to act like I didn’t know what was going on, but deep down I felt a tremendous sense of relief mixed with guilt.

I still don’t know what the hell that thing was, but now I know that there are more I can’t help but feel like something awful is happening in my school. It looked like Alice was getting ready to put one on me. Who knows how many other kids she got to before I stopped her?

I think I need to do a little more snooping around to figure out what’s going on, at the very least I need to follow that young girl with the blonde afro to see if she was infected. Thing is, I’m still exhausted after that fight. It’s been a few days but I’m so tired I feel like I don’t even have the energy to speak or eat.

Plus my neck is really sore and I have the worst headache...

I mean… come on? Not the smartest guy around. Do you know how many spelling mistakes I had to fix after he wrote this? He's a real downgrade from Alice, but when life gives you lemons...

Looking forward to answering some of your questions, by the way. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I’d love a chance to speak to some future fans.