Per 
No one was surprised when the news got out that Shane Stross had disappeared. The young man was a loner. Unliked at school, where he barely spoke and only interacted with his classmates in the sense that they would grimace as he skulked by, and unliked at home, where the walls were soaked with the old stench of burning things and alcohol, where there was never any food or safety. It seemed that he was unliked everywhere in that small, nearly isolated town.
No one even noticed his absence at first.
No one cared.
There were whispers, of course, regarding what had become of him. Some said he’d taken his own life. Others claimed he’d been murdered, perhaps beaten to death by his perpetually intoxicated mother. Most people, however, agreed that he'd escaped into the nearby mountains, never to be seen again. He’d always been fast - always running away from everything and everyone.
No one expected him to return.
No one expected him to run back.
—
“Please explain what happened on the night of the 21st.”
The teenager picked at her fingers for a minute, shivering despite her coat and the heated interview room in which she sat. Finally managing to claw a clod of dirt out from under her thumbnail, she flicked it away as a strident cough brought her attention back to the figure sitting across from her.
She drew her arms around her torso, hands balling into fists in the fabric of her coat.
“Yeah, um, I’ll try, I guess.”
“That is why you came here, isn’t it, Miss-” the detective - the only one in the town, a leonine man with a beard that could have rivaled some Norse god’s - took a moment to look down at his notes- “Miss Heathersfield?”
—
About a week and a half after Shane had disappeared, the police had gotten involved, though more out of necessity than any genuine concern. Had a classmate of his not showed up at the station to confess what she’d seen, the town might have simply forgotten about him.
A report was filed, as was customary, and his school photo was posted on every street corner for reference in case anyone dared to go looking for him.
Nearly all of the photos were torn down the next day, the scraps laying soaked in the grimy snowmelt that lined the roads that time of year.
‘No one wants that ugly twig’s mug staring at them through their window.’
—
“Yeah…look, I didn’t do anything, I’m just here ‘cause I-I-I gotta tell someone what happened, you know? I haven’t been able to sleep since it all went down. I keep hearing-”
She paused, jaw clenching. When she spoke again, her voice had risen, carrying with it that damnable panic she had tried to quell on the walk over.
“He was a freak, okay? Nobody liked him - he was a crybaby with a weird face who barely talked to anyone at school. Everyone thought the same about him, maybe some wanted him to get lost for good. But-” she worried her lower lip, quieting- “not like that. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
—
Flyers with a paltry verbal description soon replaced the photos.
‘Male, approx. 6 feet 5 inches tall.’
He towered over most in the town, looking as if someone had taken a basic human form and stretched it. Even if he had been given clothes that fit him properly, his arms would have still hung from his coat sleeves like taffy pulled by gravity on a warm day.
—
“Please, continue, Miss Heathersfield.”
“Okay. Well.” One hand left her jacket to brush a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I guess it all started earlier that day, at lunch. We were all sitting together - me, Nines, Cab, Hank, and Jess - and then Hank had to take a pee so he left. Left his lunch alone on the table. Then, the freak comes along, and-”
“You’re referring to Shane Stross?”
She balked, blinking a few times before finally nodding.
“Yeah, yeah, him. Kinda forgot that was his real name. We always just called him ‘Stretch Armstrong,’ ‘Freak,’ or ‘Crybaby’ or…I think Nines called him ‘Shy Guy’ once?” Noticing the look of confusion on the detective’s face, she quickly explained; “You know, like the little red, masked guys from that new Mario game? His face kinda looked like that sometimes, so…yeah.”
“Okay,” the detective drawled, scribbling a quick note down before motioning for her to continue. “Go on.”
—
‘104 lbs.’
Malnourished and looking more skeletal than human in the right light, he fell on whatever food he managed to find or was given like a starved animal. More than once, he’d been collared for pocketing snacks from the corner store or the gas station.
—
“Right. So, the f- Shane comes along and just straight up snatches Hank’s lunch off the table and starts booking it down the hall. I think…I think Nines and Jess tried to chase him, but he was way too fast. They lost him real quick.”
“Why did Mr. Stross steal Mr. Pierce’s lunch?” the detective asked, fingers sluicing through his beard.
“It’s obvious,” she said, shrugging. “Dad’s doing time, mom’s a burn out and doesn’t care. He’s always hungry. Janitors have caught him digging in the trash for food. Pretty sure he ate roadkill once. So yeah, he saw Hank’s lunch and just took it.”
Another motion to continue.
—
‘Pale skin.’
What could be called his ‘skin’ was stretched like waxy cheesecloth over gangly joints, dotted with bruises, and shot through with stark, blue veins. It would have looked more at home on something that had crawled out of an open grave than anything - or anyone, for that matter - living.
—
“After that, Hank got all riled up by Nines and Jess. Cab got in on it too. They were really pissed,
saying things like they needed to, uh, ‘teach that fuck ugly thieving freak a lesson.’”
She paused again, taking deep breaths through clenched teeth.
“We jumped Shane behind the gas station that night. He was rooting through a dumpster - Hank got a bag over his head before he noticed us. I thought we were just gonna rough him up and dis him a bit, but…that’s…not what happened.”
“You were involved in this…plan?”
“I was…look, like I said, I didn’t do anything. I was there, but I didn’t touch Shane. Swear to God.”
—
‘Light gray eyes.’
His sunken eyes, irises blanched and pupils unnervingly pinned, bulged wide in a constant panic and darted back and forth from under whatever hair he hadn’t yet managed to yank out of his skull. For a few years, he had worn thick-lensed glasses on account of extreme nearsightedness, but too many thrown objects taken to the face had eventually mangled them beyond repair.
—
“He was wigging out the entire time that Hank had him. Maybe he was trying to say something, but none of us could understand him past his…past his crying. We-we took him to the river. That’s-that’s when I wanted to say something.”
“Explain.”
“It was freezing. All he had on was a sweater and jeans. If Hank threw him in the water, he’d die for sure.”
“Did you say anything?”
She was quiet for a long time, staring down at her knees. The detective leaned forward, rapping his knuckles stridently on the desk.
“Miss Heathersfield. Did you say anything to stop Mr. Pierce and the others?”
“No!” she blurted, startling back to attention. “No, I didn’t. Like I said, I didn’t…I didn’t do anything.”
—
Despite the replacement flyers, some of the photos still remained, pasted up in less trafficked areas where no one cared enough to tear them down. That panicked, wide-eyed, and slack-jawed face stared out from a nondescript background at the occasional passerby, expression unreadable, alien. Day after day, the snow washed away ink and warped paper until the face was stretched and bleached, the name barely visible.
Slowly, Shane Stross faded.
—
“What happened next?”
She covered her face with her hands for a moment, wiping her eyes.
“God, he wouldn’t stop crying. We…they…were yelling about what to do with him. Hank was buggin’ it and decided to…to…he started stomping on Shane’s face. On the bag. That’s when Shane started screaming.”
“Did any of the others do anything?”
“Y…yeah, they…they were all cheering Hank on. Even after…”
“After what?”
“After…after we all heard something break. Cab yanked off the bag, and…and…”
She fell silent again, eyes screwed shut, hands trembling.
—
It was late in the evening when Cassandra Heathersfield left the police station in grim spirits. She had spoken her piece. Now, Hank and the others were in her place, being grilled by the same detective with the huge beard.
Hugging her coat tighter around her, she trudged off through the half-melted snow that coated the sidewalk, heading for home.
The promise of her warm bed - and actual sleep, now that her conscience had been at least slightly cleared - was too much of a temptation for her to stick to her normal route. She took a shortcut around the backside of the corner store and down a quiet side road that few pedestrians walked.
As she rounded a corner a few blocks from her home, she passed by one of the photos that was left hanging, and her gut twisted at the sight.
The snowmelt from the power line above had leaked through this particular flyer, distending and dislodging the lower half of Shane’s face into a pulpy mess.
—
“Miss Heathersfield?”
“We all saw it, Shane’s face.” She fought back the urge to retch. “His jaw was broken. Right…right down the middle, and hanging off, too, like Hank’d got his boot in there. There was…blood, like the skin here-” she prodded her cheeks- “was all torn up and there was blood coming out of his mouth but he was still screaming, and-and-and…”
—
She stared at the photo, unable to look away. Perhaps it was just her sleep-deprived imagination, but she thought she could still hear him screaming.
Blood-choked screams from that broken and dislocated jaw.
It took her a moment to realize that the screams weren’t just in her mind.
Shane Stross’ screams were undeniably, blood-chillingly real, echoing through the trees around her, and joined by many more.
—
“And then?”
“I think the rest of us knew we were in deep - like, if we went any further, he’d be dead, so Hank tied Shane’s hands together,” she sighed, finally forcing her eyes open. “Guy was a Scout, he…he knew his knots. Then…they hung him by his wrists…on a low branch over the river. Hank said ‘he’ll scream loud enough for someone to find him, if anyone goes looking.’”
—
She jumped, looking around frantically, a cold sweat beading on her forehead and copper sparking on her tongue.
The screams were coming from the police station.
She took off down the street in the opposite direction without a second thought.
—
“And-and he just…kept screaming as we ran off.”
—
Her feet pounded against the road, the wind whipping the edges of her coat back and sending a chill through her body. The screams - Shane’s screams, she knew - hadn’t abated. If anything, they had gotten louder, drowning out any other screams that had joined them.
Panic fueled her flight, confusion and guilt and anger peppering the back of her mind as she ran.
Oh God oh God oh God Shane’s back he’s back and he’s killing people!
Fuck you, Hank! Why couldn’t you just let this shit go, you dickweed?
Is this some fucking sick karma?
God, I’m dead I’m so fucking dead.
I didn’t do anything!
I…
…I didn’t do anything.
I could've stopped this.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t-
The screaming was closer now, undercut with frantic, too-fast footfalls.
ShitshitshitshitshitSHIT!
She pushed herself further and further until she slipped on a patch of muddy slush and the ground came up to meet her, fast.
Skin was scraped raw against the road, the palms of her hands searing with pain as she tumbled, coming to a rest on her side.
Shaking, she managed to push herself back upright as the cries rounded the corner, heralding a tall, lanky figure with pale skin and even paler eyes.
Its lopsided mouth hung lazily open, bordered by saggy, scarred jowls, and its horribly long and bony arms jutted from what looked like the sleeves of a torn and muddied sweater.
It paused when it saw her, and its hands shot up to cover its face with a strangled wail as its body began to jerk and seize.
But, she had already seen it.
Him.
His face.
Mangled by Hank’s boot.
Staring out from the decomposed and bleached photo she had just seen.
Now, covered only partly by blood-soaked hands.
“S-S-Shane?”
—
“Thank you for this information, Miss Heathersfield. If you see Shane Stross, let us know immediately. I’ll be talking to your accomplices very soon, you can be sure of that.”
—
“God, Shane, I’m-I’m-I’m sorry, I really am!” she blubbered, trying to gather her trembling legs beneath her to stand.
She saw a long, wet, scraggly clump of hair caught between his lower teeth. Beard hair. She retched, the remains of her dinner threatening to come back up.
“Please, Shane, please don’t-” she choked. Finally standing, she began to back away, looking for her chance to bolt, a place to hide, someone to call to for help, anything.
She heard him wail again, louder this time, the sound undercut with what sounded like anguished sobs.
“Just…just don’t kill me, please.”
Suddenly, he ripped his hands from his face, the bloody fingers leaving trails of red across his pitted brow and sunken cheeks. His mouth stretched open further and further into an abyss lined with viscera, both old and fresh.
With a scream, she ran.
With a howl, he charged.
It only took two seconds for him to catch her.
And only five more for him to tear her apart.
