Chapter Text
It was a new moon, and Monty was curled, claws digging into himself at the edge of his bed. His stomach felt sick, his skin felt alive and burning, as if something was pressing from underneath, screaming to get out.
He knew this feeling, how it settled in his core, how it flared primal panic at the back of his brain. Glancing out the window, he saw the sun was setting. The sky was bleeding light through the red fog of the Plaugeround. A forest was flickering, half real, half mirage, just outside the reaches of the school grounds. He had to get out.
Fear grew in his eyes. He had forgotten, somehow, about this regular change of his. His clothes were tight around his chest, bandages wrapping his chest threatening to bruise his ribs if his body decided to shift. Baggy hoodie hung over his limbs, that constant need to forget himself. To disappear.
Feeling the tips of his canines grow pointer under the swipe of his tongue, filling his mouth, he remembered how little time he actually had. In a swarm of movement, Monty was pushing through his bedroom door, bounding barefoot down the halls of St. Churnleys.
“Monty?” Kevin raised a question as Monty came stumbling out of his dorm into the common room where the other boys were playing limbo. Monty’s eyes were widened with panic, an animal feeling the cage close in. Monty ignored him. Monty just ran.
Heard some echoed exclamations of confusion, the commotion that must have been Ben, eight feet tall, falling to the floor. Praying they wouldn’t follow him, pinching his eyes together because he knew they would. Stupid they were, bound by the loyalty of shared panic and love.
But he had to get away. He had to keep them safe, no matter if the Plagueground was dangerous at night. Skipping down the stone stairs, cold against the pads of his feet, the pads of his feet growing leathery, changing shape. He didn’t have enough time. He never had enough time.
Shoving his shoulder into the nearest exit without much thought, he stumbled onto the pebbled ground. His breaths came in pants. He needed to get away. He needed to be far away from the school as possible- he needed to-
His body was growing as he threw his small body into the forest, hair growing denser on his knuckles and chest, a warm feeling of odd joy quickly replaced with panic as fur threatened to swallow him. He couldn’t breathe. It hurt, the way his bones stretched, his jaw aching as it gnashed against nothingness. Hunger was a gaping wound in his stomach.
Monty’s run turned into a jog through the trees, turned into a stumbling. Hand landing on the nearest bark to support himself, hand curling into fist, into paw, into the jagged outlines of claws. It was happening again, it was swallowing him, that evil, that uncontrollableness.
Hunching among the roots of the trees, he curled his body into himself, hugging himself with his arms. Rocking back and forth. Nails digging into his upper arms, pinpricks of pain that did nothing, compared not to that loud roar in his head.
Screaming. He heard them screaming. He thought of the blood, his brain supplying disgust, stomach revolting, curling away from the thought. “I killed my family.” Monty murmured to himself, shaking. Reminding himself. So they had to stay away. Repeating like he always did, that spike of guilt and grief, that pain behind his eyes. He wanted that pain to swallow him, bury him in the dirt like they were.
“I killed my parents.” He whispered, throat shaking, soft and meek. Reminding himself what he did, what he could do, blocking out Kevin’s concerned question, that image of Roland, smile faltering as he saw Monty running away down the corridor, body already shuddering with change.
Blood on the dining room table. Blood on his hands. But it would never be their blood- never again, not them-
Salavia was drooling out of the corner of his mouth. He was panting, he couldn’t breathe. He wanted his clothes off, he wasn’t wearing his uniform, they were going to tear- they were going to be ruined.
Tears beaded in his eyes. Forever unfixable. That's what he was. Every two weeks for the rest of his life, he would be like this, no matter if he wanted it or not. Monty gagged around nothing as his jaw stretched, his teeth grew into sharp prongs, yellowed from misuse, gums blackening like a dog's.
A sob choked out of him and it was replaced with growl, shuddering from his throat. Tears ran down his cheeks. He heard a distant call, three pairs of shoes skittering on gravel, a detail too small for him, unchanged, to hear.
Pushing himself up, he felt his hoodie tear at the seams, felt the gauze bandages he had wrapped around his ribs earlier that week strangling him. He had gone through the motions of wrapping his chest ever since he noticed it was changing, ever since his had first shifted into a wolf-thing, because of course one torture for him wasn’t enough. His chest had to grow too, so he strangled it the same way he wanted to strangle his neck.
His claws caught on fabric as he tried, frantic, desperate, feeling like a choked thing, leashed, to tear the clothes off of himself. The bandages stretched and broke under the change of his body. He ran with vision blurred by tears, ran and stumbled, and found himself on all fours. Drowning in panic, in the thought that they couldn’t see him like this.
Clothes clung to him in strips, ragged. His chest, unbound, and he was crying into the dirt. Hunger was roiling his stomach, mouth yearning to close around something. His dad face down, dead in a bowl of soup. His mom, screaming.
Monty was screaming. Monty, brain revolting against the tides of his own body, choking on nothing, on memories, on the pain that lashed, a heavy weight on the back of his throat. Gagging. He wanted out. His body changed, without his consent, again and again. He hated it.
He was crying, pounding his head in the ground, his limbs stretching and rolling back as his body fought his brain. He couldn’t change, not like this, not now, not with his friends, his family, so close, on the edge of that wood he was escaping in. It hurt. He needed it to stop. His spine cracked.
Monty cried over his hoodie, destroyed, muddied, his shoulders shrinking with his grief, growing again with the insistent demands of the moon. He hated the feeling of his body, bare now but for rags. He shouldn’t look like this, those curves he hunched to hide away, covered up with baggy clothes, with the boxy cut of his suit jacket, wearing the extra layer even when the summer was hot. He hated it. Cursed boy who wasn’t even a boy, not fully, not yet, not ever.
He was screaming, into the dirt, claws digging into that earth, caught on leaves and dead bark. He was screaming, limbs trembling. Hating the feeling of his body, hating it. Hating how his shoulders always felt too thin, his body too short, his chest growing, even though he was barely eleven, and he hated it. Hated being tortured again and again. Rewarded for his difference with a curse that fought to swallow him, with the words that only boys got curses.
And here he was, a boy. And here he was, tired of taking kick after punches. Here he was, hand on the back of his neck, forehead pressed to the ground, sobbing, screaming, nails digging into the nape of his neck. His mom, telling him to wear a blouse, that christmas dinner, the pale pink stained dark by the end of the night. The pants that showed the shape of his budding body and made him want to vomit. His dad’s distrustful eye when Monty had expressed wanting a different body, a different haircut, too young to understand, too young to do anything but grieve. The way half of the table had laughed as the story was told, joking that he couldn’t really want to look like his older brother, did he?
His long hair had brushed his shoulders, revolting. Shivers down his back. An anger, a fire, a need for an escape that wouldn’t last. His aunt’s body, strewn across the floor. Dead. His uncle’s laughing face, not laughing anymore. The memory of blood made him feel like he was starving. He was starving. He couldn’t take it anymore.
Claws, digging into his chest. The peak of his scream coming back to his ears and it didn’t sound like him. Claws, tearing through tissue and fat. He was bleeding. He needed to be free of himself, he needed to be free- no one else had to go through this, had to doubt if they looked right, looked enough like a boy to be let in to St. Churnleys, was enough of a girl to be bullied, enough of a boy to get cursed. Lived days with his chest wrapped so tight with tape he stole from crafting class, gauze he stole from Nurse Lenny he thought his bones would break. That someone would have to fix him up, find out about this, ruin everything.
He hated it. This body, all these things out of his control. Curled, fetal on the forest floor, he screamed with pain as he raked his claws through his chest, again and again and again. He needed to be free. He sobbed. He tasted blood in his mouth, his own, and no one else's. Saw his grandmother, wide eyed with shock as her small body took in the carnage of Christmas dinner, Monty sat on the floor among the puddles of blood, head in his hands, the only other breathing thing in the room.
He clawed off his own flesh.
He had turned up to her, wide eyed and reddened from tears. Blood rimming the corner of his mouth, dripping down his jaw, his throat. His meek voice, unwarbling, saying, I killed them. As if he couldn’t make himself believe it.
She had screamed.
He was screaming.
The cops were called, so was the school. And with shaking hands, she had washed him off, cleaned his shaking body. Funeral’s held, accidents covered up to protect him.
Monty was clutching his chest, bleeding out, and howling in pain and grief and the need to be reborn, trying weakly now to scrape more of his own tissue off, reinvent himself into something he wished for and wasn’t caged it.
Claws dug into his wrists as Monty shook, sobbing, pain tearing through him. Spit leaking from his mouth, lips stained with his own blood that pooled around him. Claws threatening to scratch up his arms as he trembled, crying, wishing to be free of himself. Half hoping he was never found. Snot leaked from his nose. Let him bleed for this, for the family he had let down.
Lightheaded, the next thing Monty registered was the shiver that went through him, cool night air, blood warm and sticky beneath his skin. He gagged on his own throat, vision going dark at the corners. The sounds of distant yelling, footfalls that grew close. Eyes seared shut, pinching against everything, avoiding every moment of this darkened night. He just wanted to go home.
A hand on his back, heavy on the notches of his curled spine. The frantic whispers of worry that didn’t get through to his brain, groggy and on fire. The next thing Monty knew was that Roland was carrying him, bleeding out, body covered by Kevin’s jacket, Kevin’s palm shakily pushing the fabric into the wound.
The four brave boys carried him bleeding and reborn, out of the woods. Staring upward at the darkened sky, Monty whimpered as his vision was filled by their concerned faces. Silhouettes fading out as his vision blurred, and went dark.
---------
They had found him bleeding, and each boy flared with their own panic at the sight. Worrying more about Monty’s health than anything that could have stalked the Plagueground to hurt him like that.
Following the light that bled from Roland’s palm, lighting his fingers and hands and forearms from within, painting his skin translucent, and his body an orange red. Kevin cupping his mouth to echo a bird call into the woods, yelling at the top of his lungs a crow’s crackled caw. A sound the boys were supposed to respond to in turn, a way to find each other in the mists. The woods remained silent.
“Monty!” Kevin was shouting, loud, voice cracking.
“Monty’s, where are you?” Roland slurred, quieter, casting his light forward into the twisted woods. Edgar was anxiously skirting his feet, picking his nails, glancing over his shoulder again and again as the forest swallowed them, as if afraid it was never going to spit them back out again.
In his satchel, infinitely deep, there was a book on werewolf lore, Monty’s wolf mask, and a package of raw meat. He was used to carrying around small mammals and insects for Poe. There, just in case Monty hadn’t found anything to eat, needed to avoid getting eaten themselves.
Deeper into the woods they trekked, the more frantic they got, uneasy, the lights from the school fading away, swallowed. Drowned in the darkness. They were alone.
Alone until a chocked sound fell heavy and leaded between the trees.
Roland swung his hand toward the noise, eyes flaring in panic. “M-monty?” He lisped. Kevin pushed himself forward, checking the drawn string of his handheld crossbow as he walked through the trees.
“Lets me just casts-” Roland slurred, paused, then spoke louder and clear, head tilted as if demanding from the sky. “Light!” And his body responded by glowing. Apparently the object he had cast it on, was himself. The other boys stared at him for a beat, before casting their gaze out on the forest again, searching by a 20 feet radius instead of just a sunbeam.
And then- there! Pale skin against the moss covered ground, lodged between the roots of two tangled trees, clustered close together like ghosts.
“Monty.” Edgar breathed. Eyes almost all white. There was a pool of blood beneath him, his hoodie gone, strings of the fabric clinging onto him, pants ragged and torn but still hanging over his lower body. And there was so much blood.
Roland’s light flickered as his heart hammered, could feel the tickle in the back of his throat as another presence shuffled into his own brain. Whispered something like, finish him off, before he finishes you.
Kevin was immediately crouching at his side, shaking him, trying to see what was wrong, always trying to patch all of them together again. Panic was flushing his face pale.
“Monty!” He was yelling into the other boy’s ear. “Monty- C’mon- Get- get up. Monty!” The boy only let out a grunt. Kevin was staring like a deer in headlights at Roland and Edgar.
“We- we need- Need to get him to Nurse Lenny.” Edgar was stuttering, half looking around him for a bird that wasn’t there. Kevin was nodding, glancing around the woods to make sure they were alone. Roland was squatting down with a grunt, trying to pull Monty’s body from the floor.
“Nows this is gonna hurtssh.” He muttered, mostly for his own benefit. He pulled Monty into his arms, standing, his light mostly cast backward now as he held his friend, bridal style, revealing the long deep gashes along Monty’s chest.
Kevin and Edgar stared at the wounds, pale. Roland looked as if he couldn’t breathe.
“Quickly.” Kevin said, voice drained of all emotion, edged in nothing but primal panic, raw as he agreed with Edgar’s assessment. He swallowed heavily, brow heavy in concentration and worry.
They began to run. Monty groaned. Kevin’s suit jacket had been pulled from his waist and pressed heavily into the wounds. Wide eyed, he tried to think of what could have done this to Monty. Thinking of his friend, alone, on the forest floor. Dying.
“Stay with us, stay with us-” Kevin was mumbling, panting. He was trying to hum some healing psalm under his fractured breaths, trying to force the music of his curse out of him but coming up empty. Too tired from recess earlier that day to do much. Roland tried infusing the warmth of his god into the light that permeated from him, teeth grinding in concentration, and only succeeded in slowing the bleeding a tad more, bandage where they needed a stitch.
Edgar was mumbling anxiously to himself, talking to the ghost of someone that would’ve sat on his shoulder. Flapped alongside, over his head. Throwing his head and hands about as if he was having an animated conversation. Whispering under his breath- “But we need to take care of Monty- yea, no I know we need to find out what did this to him- yes of course so we can hunt it down, yea, yes- must be some monster. But-but what?- No, yes sorry-”
He mumbled, but there was no bird, except the one in his brain, to caw and flap a response.
Through the trees, the school reappeared more quickly than they had drifted away from it, as if the fog had gotten what it wanted from them and spat them, undesirable, back where they started.
The light permeating from Roland’s body cast warm on the stones of the fortress that was St. Churnley’s, setting in a glow that eerily projected the pulse of his veins. If the other boys looked at him closely enough, they could see his bones, dark splotches, through the glow of his skin, as if he was burning from the inside, somehow deeper.
(Edgar shivered as he noticed the way Roland’s teeth were shadows in his mouth.)
The brave boys bolted, frantic, without stopping, to the nearest entrance. Edgar’s hands scrambling with the handle, pulling open the heavy wood, Roland bounding with their precious cargo inside. Kevin was already yelling.
“Nurse Lenny! NURSE!” Monty was bleeding. Heavily. Some of the flow had stopped, staunched by Kevin’s jacket, stained red, and he was never going to be able to see it the same way again. Monty was pale, fully out of his wolf state now. He was unconscious, head lolling against Roland’s shoulder.
“Hey Monty-” Roland spoke through his teeth, stumbling down the hall, following Edgar’s great sense of direction in the dark. He shrugged, trying to tap Monty’s face to keep him awake- “Stay withs us Monty- pleassh.”
Edgar was opening the door to Nurse Lenny’s office, the young man sitting up bleary eyed from where he was clearly sleeping, cheek pressed to his desk, in the middle of his work. He bolted up as Edgar stumbled into the middle of the room with his momentum barely stopping. Kevin and Roland standing, panting and wild eyed on the threshold. Kevin had blood on his hands, pressing the jacket into the wound, better now that they were still. Roland still glowed like he had been swallowed by a halo. Monty’s breathing was shallow in his arms.
“Help.” Was all Kevin said. All sleepiness vanished from Nurse Lenny’s eyes. Snapping to attention.
“Here.” He was standing, moving toward the exam table in his office. Roland moved to settle Monty down on the table. The injured boy grumbled, gasped and winced.
“Fuck.” Kevin whispered under his breath, anxiously shifting from foot to foot, and it was nervewracking that Nurse Lenny didn’t see the need to tell him off for swearing. Lenny gestured, and all the boys took a step back.
With a deep breath, and a muttered, “Fuck, this is going to hurt-” Lenny placed a hand above Monty’s chest, and breathed in. It was almost audible, his teeth gnashing together. He choked and hummed, trying to hold in a scream of pain.
And slowly, the wounds on Monty’s chest began to stitch together, reseal, the blood pulling off of his skin, back into the wound, like the ocean swallowing water. Nurse Lenny was gagging, hand going to cover his mouth, jaw opening over another stone, coal flecked with sparks. Looking at it, all three boys gave an involuntary shiver.
He frowned at the taste, flicking his tongue across his mouth again. Cocked his head and glanced at Monty, healed, and slowly regained color. “Strange-” He muttered to himself and then shrugged.
“What?” Edgar was asking, panic still noticeable in his tone, even as Monty was there, healed, and waking. Adrenaline was slow to bleed out of his veins. The other boy’s eyes darted to Lenny too, all in a panic.
Lenny pursed his lips, shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing really, just that-” His brow pinched together. “There was something that I couldn’t heal.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Kevin spat, aggressive, and Lenny just gave him a look, taking the anger in stride. They had almost seen their friend die, again.
Nurse Lenny placed the coal, with a sigh, in the box of coal for burning. He was panting too now, clearly drained from the exertion. He dropped his body, heavy into his office chair, before responding. Tired again.
“Nothing really.” He stretched a kink out of his neck from sleeping hunched on his chest. “Usually just that the person has scars -” He shrugged noncommittally, waved his hand. “And, Monty’s fine, so.”
And the boys were too busy staring at Monty now to care to push that point.
Monty was slowly blinking awake on the hospital bed, and Kevin was falling, unstuck from where he stood, to his bedside. Monty’s eyes widened. His hands scrambling, holding the jacket over his chest, staring like a deer in headlights at the trio of boys that surrounded him.
“What- where-” He gasped, eyes darting around the room, slowly piecing together where he was, realizing that he wasn’t where they left him. Calming when the gears turned in his head. Kevin placed a hand on Monty’s, and the boy flinched, violently pulling back.
Kevin twitched, brow furrowing with concern. “Monty?” He asked, trying to remain steady but his voice warbled.
Monty was swallowing heavily, paling for a different reason. “What- how much did you see?” His eyes full of terror.
“You mean… of the thing that attacked you?” Kevin breached slowly.
“Yea Monty, what- what hurt you? You- you apparently ate, although it- it says here that werewolves-” Edgar trailed off, pausing as he caught the other boys staring at him. He swallowed, shook his head, closed the book of lore, hunching into himself and mumbling, “Sorry.”
Roland spoke up, eager and grinning, tiredness clinging in his eyes the only sign he was still affected by the sight of Monty, almost dead. “We’s only saw you. You was bleeding quite heavily.” Roland nodded, “But Nurse Lenny fixed you up!” He beamed.
Monty curled into himself, but his muscles untensed a tad. He breathed out. Glanced down at his chest, shell shocked, finding no blood coming out of him, Kevin’s jacket still stained with it, and the other boy was staring, the image searing into his mind. Slow to stop shaking.
With a pinch of fear, Monty observed himself, feeling out of body to the point of his observation feeling clinical. His chest appeared smaller, not entirely flat, but smaller. Almost the size it would normally be when he bound it. It was as if all the tissue he hadn't scrapped from atop his ribs had reshaped, without regenerating more cells. There were no scars marring his chest, unlike his upper arms that had been clawed at over and over again.
It had been worse before his grandmother had sat him in a kitchen chair, and shaved all his hair off. He had been trying to pull it out of his scalp for weeks, crying at the sensation of it on his neck, debilitated. His dislike of it had gotten worse after his shift. Every touch of hair on his skin was a reminder of when it grew from him, every two weeks, and demanded blood. She had simply taken scissors, and hummed to herself a soothing lullaby, as Monty sank deeper into the chair.
Sitting in Nurse Lenny’s office, Monty rubbed his palm over his scalp, back and forth, the soothing feeling of velvet of his buzz cut. A reminder that he was human again. His breathing calmed.
“Are- are you okay, Monty?” Edgar asked, eyes darting to the boy, the wall, his feet, then back to Monty again. It was shaky, but it was a nod.
“I- I need clothes.” Monty murmured. Edgar was nodding, looking frantically around. Down at himself, still dressed in his uniform, minus the jacket, replaced by a muted blue sweater vest instead.
“I uhm-” Edgar hesitated, unsure how to help, digging through his bag, saved by Roland’s chirping voice.
“You can have my jacket, Monty.” He smiled. Offering the garment to replace Kevin’s blood stained one. All the boys tried not to look at it. Kevin took it back and balled it up so the blood was hidden on the inside. Edgar was trying not to think about the bloodstained black feather he had hidden under his mattress. Monty was trying not to think about Edgar, discarded by the floor of a tower, nearly dead.
Monty nodded his thanks as he twisted his body, staring pointedly, eyes glazed at the trio, until Edgar apologized, flustered, and glanced elsewhere. Monty pulled on the jacket and buttoned it up, shaking hands fumbling, half wishing he could ask for help, gut clenching at the need to remain hidden. To not have them see, and question what it was that he was. He felt like a monster enough, he didn’t need his friends to turn on him too.
“Okay.” He said, quiet and cheerful. The boys turned back to him. Roland grinning, Kevin and Edgar matching Monty’s hesitant smile.
“Bed time?” Roland offered. The other boys nodded. Kevin offered his hand to Monty, and the boy took it slowly before being helped off the exam bed. Edgar glanced to Nurse Lenny to add his thanks, but the man was already asleep, head against his desk again, with no regard for his neck.
The four brave boys wandered back to their rooms.