It's a hell of a feeling (Brendon Urie | Halloween)

Maria opens her eyes.

Everything is different. The heat that thrums from the party below her no longer makes her uncomfortable; it feels like nothing more than a cool breeze against her skin.

Her muscles ache. She flexes her fingers, and the crack resounds in the room as she does, each bone clicking into place. They're longer than they were before, sharper. Her nails arch into a point that she knows, somehow, she could cut through steel with if she wished.

The room around her is full of whispered secrets, words that she was too deaf to acknowledge before, but that creep into her mind now. One of the girls downstairs is cheating on her boyfriend; a boy lost his virginity tonight; someone is lying to their parents about where they are. Such trite secrets, but she knows them all. She doesn't have to ask, she merely knows, the way a person knows how to breathe or blink. It's an instinct.

Brendon's there- and he's so beautiful that it she wants to cry out. She can see, for the first time, that there are no tricks and cheap human effects. His muscles roll taut under the granite surface of his skin, and his veins flow with the same viscous venom that now flows through her.

He turns; his catlike eyes narrow in on her, and the smile on his face is nothing short of predatory but she loves it. She fucking loves it.

"Hello, Angel." He bares his teeth in a satisfied grin. The laugh that bursts from Maria's mouth is a peal of thunder, deep and forceful enough to crack a boulder in two.

"What have you done to me?" She asks him, but it's no longer accusatory- it's merely curious. Her voice is even different; no longer shaky, more assured and just a shade lower than before.

She's still curled on the ground. Maria stretches out her limbs and unfolds herself. Her head feels heavier; she raises a hand, runs it along the solid ridges of the horns that now arch from her brow. They feel hot to the touch, like a rock baked in the sun, and deliciously sharp and powerful.

"Why me?" She asks him then, and she can feel the fangs perched in her mouth as her lips slide over them, shaping a grin that matches Brendon's.

He chuckles, the sound deep and rumbling.

"I did to you what was done to me a year ago." The pointed tip of his dark tongue pokes from his mouth, runs along his charcoal lips. "I was at a party, just like you- there was a boy dressed in the best costume I'd ever seen." He laughs sarcastically. "I don't know why he did it, and I never will. I didn't even speak to him that night. But he spiked one of the drinks on the table; it could have been anyone who picked it up, but it was me."

Somehow, as he speaks, the image plays like a crisp memory in Maria's own mind. She sees a boy, handsome and dark haired, dressed in a simple white shirt and tie. He picks a plastic cup, tips it back into his mouth. The scene shimmers like a mirage- then he's outside, pawing at the damp earth, howling as his skin turns grey, his dark eyes burn a vivid green and horns split the skin on his forehead.

He becomes the Brendon she sees before her now; the scene flicks off, and Maria's left gazing at the real Brendon, the one in the flesh.

"Why me?" She repeats. It's not a melancholy question; she doesn't resent the transformation. She embraces it now. But the curiosity burns in her mind, and she's no longer too self conscious to keep her questions to herself.

"I watched you." He smirks. "Watched you carefully. I needed to... spread this to someone within my first two years, or I would lose all of this." He sweeps his hands over his body- and somehow she understands. She feels it too, the strength that surges like electricity beneath the surface of her skin, and she wouldn't give it up either. Her fingers itch with the urge to destroy something, to pinch the floorboards beneath her into nothing but splinters. She knows she could, if she wanted to.

"But why me?" Maria repeats, urging him to continue. Brendon grins, lips pulling back over his teeth, revealing the fangs that arch in his mouth.

"I watched you," he repeats. In the slitlike pupils of his eyes, Maria sees herself reflected- or rather, who she was in a previous life, the caterpillar that had yet to evolve into something beautiful. "Such a good girl, all the time... always letting others trample all over you, never standing up for yourself." He shakes his head, looking almost disgusted. "Just like me... the person that I used to be. I think, it's time the balance shifted, don't you? I think it's time that you have power over others."

Power. The word resonates with Maria, and she's struck by a sense of longing, a burning craving that lodges itself in the pit of her stomach. She needs it, she wants it... and she will have it.

"What do you say?" Brendon extends a hand towards her, inviting, beckoning. "Come with me."

He doesn't even have to ask. Maria curls her fingers around his, locking their hands together. She feels the granite of his skin slide against hers, her own skin no longer soft but durable, almost indestructible.

On the floor, the shredded remains of her Halloween costume are discarded like an old snakeskin, shed long ago and no longer needed. The wings are so pathetic, nothing but a cheap cardboard frame stuck with feathers, all now broken or broken off entirely. Maria can't help the laughter that rips from somewhere deep within her like a hurricane.

Brendon follows her gaze, then echoes her laugh with another thunderous chuckle of his own.

"You won't be needing those any more."

As he speaks, Maria tenses her shoulder blades, testing. The skin down her back splits, two sections tearing open like gaping grins either side of her spine. It's painful, excruciating, but now she enjoys the pain, taking sick pleasure from the way her shoulder blades sear and ache as the bones contort. Something is there, trapped underneath the skin and desperate to get out, and without asking Maria knows . She feels them almost claw their way to the surface, protruding, stretching...

They're nothing like the laughable pieces of cardboard on the ground, their white arches a mockery of the real thing. An intricate web of bones connect long, silky feathers, black but iridescent as an oil spill and slick with the venom that now flows where blood once did.

Maria knows what they look like without turning her head. She can sense every inch of them, each tiny barb on each feather.

She flexes, and the wings sweep through the air behind her. Brendon's skin has peeled back itself, and she sees him unfurl his own wings with impressive ease.

"You ready?"

Maria looks at him, more ready than she has even been in her life. 

"Are we from hell?"

Brendon smirks at that, his wings rustling behind him as he laughs.

"Heaven, or hell... it all comes down to a matter of opinion. Maybe for them, well..." he jacks a thumb in the direction of the party, where it still thrums and teeters on, the guests unaware of the creature they've unwillingly let in, the monsters that now laugh at them from just the other side of a wall.

"They would call it hell. But we're not them, are we? Not anymore."

Maria grins in agreement, the points of the new fangs lodged in her jaw grazing her bottom lip as she does. She's not one of them, is she? She's not one of those sad, deluded infants dancing in a polyester costume. She's here, with Brendon, ready to fly.

"Let's give 'em hell," she laughs, and his laughter joins hers once more, like thunder and lightning crashing together chaotically.

The partygoers don't stop at first, so consumed with their own affairs that they cannot even shift their attention to the feline eyes that shine from the staircase, until the first scream rings out, amusement quickly turning to disbelief and then fear, so cold and immobilising.

They're real, oh fuck, oh my god do you see this, this has to be a prank...

Humans will always fear what they can't take hold of and control, after all. And they take advantage of that; the fear that seeps into every crevasse of the room is more addictive than any narcotic.

With her conscience long evaporated and Brendon as the devil on her shoulder guiding her, Maria tears through the walls of this pathetic house, this pathetic town, this pathetic world. The universe is nothing but kindling for her fire, and the secrets that hiss and spit like a bonfire in her mind are whispering, urging her forward.