Impish

CHAPTER 2: THE HORNS

I wake to the sight of Roux, bewildered, standing over my bed. Their eyes are wide, like they have just witnessed some cataclysmic event. The crinkle of their nose and forehead is unmistakable. Their hair, cut choppily, is stuck to one side from the way they slept on it.

Of course, it makes sense that they're not dressed yet. It's still dark out. A quick glance at the skull-shaped alarm clock next to my shitty yellow lava lamp reveals that it's not even five AM yet.

I laugh at their expression. I do it softly, so as not to wake my mother. She is still asleep on my legs. "What, Roux?" I ask. "Did I grow horns overnight or something? Why are you looking at me like that?"

They nod once, then again. The bewilderment in their eyes does not dim. It's almost like their eyes are reflective, like a dog's or wolf's.

Now I'm the confused one. "What? That was a joke. I was joking. Why are you--" Panic rises in my throat and I swallow it. "Why are you nodding? Is there something wrong with me?"

They point to my forehead wordlessly, gesturing without any sound escaping their lips. I take in all that they are, trying to understand what's happening. Roux isn't properly dressed for the day yet. That can be explained by the panic they seem to be in. They're still in the leopard-print pajama pants they bought from some old couple at a yard sale and an old My Chemical Romance shirt they bought at Hot Topic back in seventh grade. It's not too big for them anymore. It used to reach their mid-thigh, but now it just touches the top of their silky low-rise pajama pants.

I roll my eyes. I think I'm finally catching on to what they're doing. This is all one big joke and they're trying to pull one over on me. "Oh, ha-ha. Very funny prank, Roux. I'm going back to sleep now."

"It's not a prank," they say, still dead-serious. "There's-- There's something on your head."

"No way. There isn't. Come on. I'll prove it. I'm not that gullible." I reach into the top drawer of the nightstand on my side of the bed, pull out a small aluminum flashlight, and start to slide my way out from under my mother. I try to do so without waking her. With every intention of putting this nonsense to bed so I could get some shut-eye, I cross the room to my floor-length mirror and click on the flashlight.

The yell of what the hell that rips from my vocal cords should be enough to shake the earth, but I'm too weirded out to think about the consequences of my actions.

I'm stuck where I stand, staring at what indeed seems to be horns growing out of my forehead. They're small, haven't grown out completely, and could reasonably get covered up by my bangs, but that's not the problem. The problem is that there's something foreign growing out of my body. The problem is that it feels like there's something deeply wrong here. The problem is that there are horns growing out of my head when there absolutely shouldn't be. Overnight, I have become something unrecognizable to myself. I am the same and I am drastically different. I have fallen into the uncanny valley and there is no way to climb the mountains of personhood that surround me.

I hate it.

I try to rationalize it. Maybe they're not horns poking out of my head, but compacted hairs. Mom gets those on her stomach sometimes. They turn dark and hard and, mixed with the keratosis pilaris that still plagues her, she has to go at them with tweezers. Maybe that's what's happening to me. Maybe the little red bumps have migrated from my arms and thighs and ended up on the slope of my skull.

The fact that I yelled at five in the morning is enough to rouse my mother from her soft-snoring slumber. She jolts awake and scrambles to stand up. Her voice is groggy and hoarse from a few hours of gentle snoring. "What? What happened? Is someone dead? Did someone puke?"