I ghoul you ❤️

Villian Origin Story

Trigger Warning- Characters talk about past traumas

The girls in my dorm walk over to my bed and surround me in a warm hug.

"This is always the hardest part sweetie, but it's ok, we'll help you."

I sniffle a little and buried my face into her shirt, enjoying the warmth.

"How about we get you unpacked and ready for school tomorrow? We can get to know each other better while we do it."

I nod my head and stand up from the bed, grabbing the bags that had been thrown on the floor and placing them onto my bed. 

"So you must be the famous Alyssa Charles. Your dad is Councilman Xavier?"

I nod my head and continue unpacking my bag, "Yeah, you can imagine how he reacted when he found out his daughter was a ghoulie."

The girls both laughed, "Well welcome to the club, I'm Tiana and this is Sienna. We've been here for two years and it's not as bad as it looks."

"Really? It's not a school full of ghoulies?"

Sienna laughs, "Girlie, just because people are a ghoulie doesn't mean they are horrible. Trust me, you'll love our friends."

"Or maybe you'll love Sienna's hot twin."

"Ti! That's so gross."

Tiana shrugs and then laughs, "We'll I'm not wrong, you'll understand tomorrow."

The girls continue unpacking my bags. We had managed to get all my clothes into the closet opposite my bed and we're now moving on to putting up photos and art pieces on my side of the room. It wasn't until they pulled out my favorite piece to hang up.

"Woah! Did you draw this?"

It was a watercolor of my dad's childhood home before the outbreak. He lived on a farm with so many animals like cows and horses. The fields were never-ending and the big red barn sat right next to the house. The colours of the piece are so satisfying to the eyes that it calms me every time I look at it. It makes me proud that I was able to create something so beautiful just from an old photograph. I hope to visit one day...

"Yeah I did, it was my dad's childhood home before he moved to an oasis village when he was 12."

"Well Girlie, It's going on the board."

She walks over to the desk next to the door, a large board of photos, nicknacks, and quotes hung on it. Sienna removed some of the quotes in the center and then pinned my painting in their place. 

She turns around and smiles at me, "Now everyone can see it no matter where they are in the room."

I giggle and continue pinning up photos of my family and me, "So how did you guys become ghoulies?"

The girls went silent for a long time before Tiana spoke up, "That's not normally the first thing you ask some lovely. Wanna try with what my favourite colour is?"

I turn around to see the girls looking upset and worried.

"I'm not going to judge or anything, I'll even tell you my 'origin story'. It feels like I need to become a villain now because of how I became a ghoulie. But if you want to start with favourite colours I'm down."

"No, we know you're not going to judge, it's just hard to talk about that sort of stuff."

"Yeah, I get i-"

Sienna speaks first, "My parents no longer wanted my brother and I, so they basically poisoned our dinner one night with ghoulie flesh. It took two days for them to get us diagnosed and shipped off to a boarding school. It really hurts knowing that they couldn't care for us properly that they resorted to buying zombie fucking flesh of the black market. I mean, Mason and I are happier here than we were at home but still. When a parent openly stops loving their child it hurts like a bitch. We weren't supposed to be moved to West George until I was bullied and Mason beat the shit out of the boy." She chuckles at the end as if looking back on a happy memory.

I walk over to her and engulf her in a tight hug, "Don't worry, you've got amazing friends here now and they'll take care of you. And I hope that we can be friends too."

She pulls away and looks at me weirdly, "Of course we're friends! You're our roomie now. That automatically makes you our bestie."

I chuckle, "I'm glad because you two are pretty cool."

Tiana was next to speak up from the corner of the room she had tucked herself into. She wrings her hands out and looks up at me with tears in her eyes.

"I wanna tell you but bare with me. It's kind of a hard topic to talk about for me."

Sienna and I walk over to and sit either side, wrapping our arms around her shoulders, "No I totally get it, I'll tell you what happened to me in return."

She gives me a sad smile and nods her head, "Well, my parents were the leading sellers on the black market. I have no clue where they got all the flesh from but they were rich from it. Turns out a lot of people want it because of its 'health benefits. It's honestly a load of bullshit. I still don't know how they used it.

But basically, my parents got bored of just selling and started experimenting. I had siblings but they all passed away because of the experiments we were subjected to. I was the last to be born. But when my mother was not quite full term with me, she ate some zombie flesh. I was born a hybrid thing. I don't know what to even call me. My mother was happy though.

I'm basically just a zombie that ages. To make things worse, I outlived all my siblings when I came of age to be tested. It wasn't until my older brother passed that my parents were thrown over the wall and I was put into ghoul homes across the city. When I turn 15, they put me in here to complete my schooling."

By the end of her story, she had tears streaming down her face and she had buried herself into my shoulder. 

"Oh my, I'm so sorry you've had such a tough life. But just so you know, I will never let anything hurt you ever again."

She laughed at me and gave me a hug, "Well thank you, Alyssa."

"Girlie, it's now your turn to tell us your 'villain origin story'."

I take a deep breath and nodded, "Well I haven't told anyone what happened so you guys will be the first to hear. I was force-fed ghoulie flesh in front of a cafeteria full of people. It sounds so simple but at the time it didn't feel like that. I was held to my seat by a girl and a guy that had been bullying me for years and they shoved their hands down my throat to get me to swallow the meat. It tasted like rotten vegetables and charcoal. They managed to make me eat three-quarters of the slab while everyone filmed it on their charms."

I hadn't realized that I was crying until the girls squeezed me tight in reassurance, "We'll get revenge on those bitches one-day girlie, don't you worry."

This is the first time in years that I have felt safe and it's in another zombie's arms.