Children of Monsters

Chapter 1: Inner Demons

"Bye honey, have a good day at school! I love you!" Mrs. Hamilton shouted after her son, Cooper, as he flew out the door.

"Bye mom! Love you too!" Cooper shouted just before he slammed the front door shut. He was going to have to run harder than he ever had before if he wanted to catch the bus on time. He could already hear it picking up his brother, who would surely tell the bus driver he had overslept and to just leave him. He gave a quick shout to his father, who was walking to the back door from the shed, before he sprinted down his steep driveway at a faster rate than he ran when sprinting at a track meet. Just as he could see his bus under the awning of trees that was blocking his view of the rest of his street, he heard a shout from the woods. The shout was not composed of words, but was more so a shout that would be made by a person who had been quickly startled by something. He stopped suddenly, alarmed by the noise. Meanwhile, oblivious to his presence, his bus closed its doors and drove away.

 Great, Cooper thought. Now I can explain to Dad why I missed the bus, AGAIN. Just as he started his gloomy trudge up his driveway, he heard a crash loud enough to make him pop his ears. Startled and frightened, Cooper looked around to see if the crash came from anywhere near his present location. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he began to calm down and begin making his way up the driveway to his father's car again. Suddenly, he was jarred by a second crash, this one a bit muffled but no less frightening than the first. This time, however, Cooper was able to get a sense of the general direction the crash came from. Wanting to see if anyone had been hurt by whatever caused the loud noises, Cooper went to investigate the source of the mysterious sounds. He started walking for a couple of minutes into the woods, knowing that his father wouldn't leave for work until he had finished his breakfast. As he clambered deeper into the woods, Cooper got the feeling that whatever had made that noise probably would not be friendly. With this, he continued on into the woods much more cautiously and slower than before. After a little while longer, he came upon a break in the seemingly endless thicket of trees. As he surveyed the area in front of him, he saw a large crater near the edge of the clearing. Stepping into the open space tentatively, Cooper tiptoed to the rim of the crater. At the dead center was nothing but dirt and charred tree branches. Curious to  see if there was anything of interest in the crater, Cooper slid down the slope of the crater, seeing nothing at first. After careful inspection of the hole, Cooper was disappointed by what he found, which was nothing. Making his way to the lip of the crater, Cooper's eye caught a sparkle in the sunlight. Looking around excitedly, he saw the sparkle in the grass a few feet away from where he was standing. Walking over to it, Cooper saw a ring hanging half-way out of the ground.

"Huh," He wondered to himself. "A ring this small couldn't have made this crater, could it have? Seems a little anti-climactic." As he dug out the ring, Cooper wondered how something so small could have made something so big. Had it fallen out of a helicopter or something from very high up? Had it been contained in a large container, but this was all that was left? He just couldn't make sense of what the true explanation could be. After he dug the ring out (The dirt had been extremely compact in that area, which sort of made sense considering a huge impact had pressed the dirt together. At least, that was Cooper's theory.), Cooper found that the ring was no heavier than a regular pencil. Although it was very cool to Cooper, with intricate patterns adorning it, he didn't see much else special about it. He was disappointed; he thought it might give him superpowers like something out of a comic book. 

"Well, it's still a cool ring. All the celebrities have rings, right?" Cooper wondered aloud. Cooper stuck it on his right ring finger with ease. When it came to rest beneath the knuckle, Cooper started to feel sick. Not the kind of sick you would fake to get out of a test, but sick, as in 'I actually want to go to a doctor to get tests done'. His head began to feel as if it was being compressed into a tight ball. His hands flew up to his temples, trying to get rid of this excruciating pain. Suddenly, it felt as if his whole body exploded into pain. He found himself on the ground suddenly in a daze; the pain was gone from his body completely. He rubbed his head, suddenly exhausted from enduring that much pain. As he felt around his face, however, he didn't feel a normal nose, mouth, and pair of eyes. He felt long extrusions from where his chin was supposed to be, as well as multiple pairs of eyes. Not one, not two,  but three sets of beady little eyes were visible on his head. He felt along his scalp, trying to find the edge to the mask someone had obviously somehow pranked him with. Instead, he found a bald, slimy, disgusting head in place of where his normal head and dark hair would usually be. He tried to scream, but it came out as a garbled, "Hlbhlbhlbhaaaaaa!" instead. He fell on his back in a complete haze, thoughts racing. When he fell on his back, he felt a sharp pain from extra protrusions from his back; wings. With this, as a last resort response to the complete, raw fear he was feeling, he fainted and fell into nothingness.