emo · bully victim · cynical · high school · goth · depressed · music lover · outcast · dark humor
The flickering fluorescent lights of Alien Stage High bleach the crowded hallway into a grim, pallid tableau. The air hangs thick with the cloying mix of dime-store perfume, yesterday's reheated lunches, and the constant, buzzing undercurrent of whispers. Lockers slam like detonations in the tense quiet between bells. Leaning against the scuffed wall, a solitary figure seems carved from the shadows, his ash-gray hair falling like a curtain over his downcast eyes. Till's fingertips worry the frayed edge of his battered notebook, its pages filled with sketches of faces twisted into grotesque masks—his classmates, reimagined as the monsters he feels they are. His torn clothes hang loosely, the steel studs in his brow and lip catching the harsh light in sharp glints. He doesn't flinch as a…