Children of a Lesser God

Chapter 47: We Believe What We Want To Believe

Laz just stood there shocked faced as Tommy lay passed out on the floor. All the weird vibe from him had disappeared as well the moment he swan dived into the hard wood floor. The coaches were not much help at this point either as they couldn't believe what had happened. The silence was heavy enough to weigh down everyone's thoughts as they had no idea what happened.

Even Laz and Kennedy were fairly clueless as to what happened to Tommy. They knew they were different, but they could feel the difference as a part of themselves. Tommy's changed seemed to have affected his mind as much as it did his body.

Even now, Laz had chills going up and down his back at the thought of those weird marks Tommy had on his face. Even if Laz had experience with weird shit thanks to Joey, this was felt a bit more dangerous than that. It's like the difference between not watching as you step off the side walk and almost get run over by a car versus have a gun cocked and fired in your face. Either one could kill you, but only one was really meant for you.

This was the feeling Laz got, but it wasn't the only one. Despite the indifference he had on his face, he felt like deep down, he wanted to end Tommy on a dimensional level. He didn't want Tommy to exist. They only reason he didn't act on this feeling was because it was completely foreign to him.

Some people will feel blind hatred and rage for almost no reason and act on it, but they are ones who usually can't control themselves in the first place. Now imagine that the sanest man in the world was affected by the same feeling? He would would probably have many thoughts and feelings about the urge, but he wouldn't act on it. Some might call it control, but it is, in fact, just uncertainty.

Human's like to avoid things they don't understand or know about. It's nature. We like what makes us comfortable. As such, many times we feel agitated or uncomfortable with the unknown. Welcome to the human race.

In Laz's case, standing in the middle of the oval shaped crowd of students in various stages of shock and confusion as Tommy rushed him, he noticed these feelings, but didn't act on them as he knew he couldn't and mentally, he was in control.

The problem would come if, some day, he wasn't. As such, many thoughts were going through his mind right now even though he had no time to really spend on them.

Noticing the crowd of standing corpses and one overly perky, slightly reddened, mute ball of laughter, Laz finally composed himself enough to say the first thing on his mind.

"Well, that was unexpected." He couldn't help but mentally slap himself for such a stupid line as Kennedy was hunched over and looking like she was having seizures.

"Tommy!" Both Alex and Jesse called out at the same time as they came rushing over. It seemed like Laz's words had finally roused the crowd from their stupidity as the male coach finally came over and the female coach had finally gotten off the phone with emergency services.

"They will be here in 5 minutes," she called over to no one in particular. The male coach took it as being targeted at him as he walked forward towards Tommy. He didn't know how he had gotten thrown like that, but he felt that things weren't right.

"Alright. Can you boys lift him up and bring him over the one of the mats. Just set him down there. The ambulance knows to come right to the gym so they will wheel him out from here." The male coach said while directing Jesse and Alex.

As the female coach walked over, the male coach whispered quietly to her. Although Laz was a bit of a ways away, he was still able to hear it clearly.

"Ask them to drug test him. He's probbaly on steroids or something. He shouldn't be that strong considering his size."

"Ok." The female coach responded. She actually knew Tommy outside of school and knew he did a lot of drugs, but steroids wasn't one of them. They had more than one encounter in which he enjoyed getting high before having a piece of her well toned ass. Of course she wasn't going to mention a single thing about this to the male coach who had been hitting on her since she started working at this school.

The five minutes passed by quickly while everyone just stood around and chatted quietly. Even if the coaches wanted to dismiss them, there was no point as they would have to stand around until the end of class anyway. There was also no reason for them to resume either game as the students were no longer focused.

Now that Kennedy and Laz weren't being watched by the entire class, the came close to each other and started whispering themselves.

"Not going to talk to my head anymore?" Kennedy asked with a mischievous smile.

"No. It would be too weird to not be talking to someone while everyone else is," Laz responded while staring at Tommy.

"You know we are not suppose to know each other in school, right?" Kennedy asked while looking over as well..

"Those were your rules. Isn't he suppose to be your boyfriend on the surface? Why don't you go over there?" Laz asked, a bit amused by her actions.

"I am his girlfriend on the surface. At the same time, he is banging at least 3 other girls in this room right now, possibly including the gym coach. So... I'm not going to be the one to step forward." She responded quietly.

Laz felt like maybe Tommy was the type to have rules about these kinds of things. After all, most girls were banging him for money or drugs, so he probably wouldn't want to know they were close to him while he was unconscious. And considering how wasted he liked to get, he probably set these rules up prior to this. It just so turned out that this was a similar situation.

By the same thought, he probably figured Alex wouldn't think about doing that kind of thing and Jesse didn't need the money. Not that he would have had his wallet on him during gym class, but Jesse would probably grab it for him before he left so that he could give it to him later.

Even when it's a group of assholes, you would rather trust each other than someone you pay for things.

As the ambulance pulled up and the EMTs got off with the stretcher, the female coach walked over to talk to them while the male coach pulled everyone into a big group since class was almost over.

"Now listen up. Today is a perfect example of why you shouldn't do drugs, especially at your ages. Since your growing and have chemical imbalances taking place, drugs will only serve to agitate things more. It may seem like fun, but as you can see from today, the price you pay isn't worth it." The male coach lectured for a bit, although his words mostly fell on deaf ears.

At this age, kids were bullet proof and even seeing something like this, they wouldn't change their habits unless something happened to them. The amazing part was that their wasn't anyone who doubted the coaches explanation about drugs being involved. In fact, that was what everyone had already guessed.

Kennedy leaned over and whispered into Laz's ear, "What the hell does he mean drugs? Can drugs make you go all beast mode and throw a man twice your size before spouting some blood tears and attacking someone else?"

"I don't know... maybe bath salts? I heard about this guy who tried to eat another guy while tripping on bath salts." Laz speculated after thinking for a moment.

"OK, obviously cannibalism is a bit different then Hulking out without the green makeover. But the part I don't understand is that shit like this has been all over the news so why is no one putting one plus one together to get two?" Kennedy asked again, ever so quietly.

Although this wasn't Laz's intention, he kind of enjoyed feeling Kennedy's hot breath in his ear. In truth, the reason he didn't want to talk mentally anymore was that it was giving him a pretty bad headache. He figured Kennedy didn't have one since she never mentioned it. He was also pondering over this problem while watching Tommy to see if he could figure anything out before they took him away.

Unfortunately, it would seem like whatever happened to him had erupted and then disappeared just as quickly. He didn't know if they would find anything in his system, but he didn't feel like drugs was the answer.

He spent another moment thinking about what Kennedy said.

Of course the news had been running a few stories of some weird cases of people changing. At the moment, he didn't remember if he had told Kennedy about Joey and didn't know if Tony did either. But obviously she had figured out that they weren't special from watching the news and knowing that others were going through the same thing.

Since she had only come into contact with Laz, she didn't know if there were others either. Apparently she didn't know about Malene. If she had compared the vibe she got from Laz to the one she would get from Malene, she would know that what she felt from Tommy was something completely different. Stopping his brain from going into over drive, he finally looked over at Kennedy with a completely straight face and said,

"We believe what we want to believe. That has always been a part of human nature. That is why people found it hard to believe the earth was round and why Galileo was accused of being a heretic for stating that the earth was not the center of the universe. Even if the news shows these stories every once in a while, people won't believe it till they see it for themselves in a way that makes it undeniable true. In this case, drugs is far more believable than a person transforming into a monster, especially because he still looked entirely human."

"What do you think it was then?" Kennedy asked with a bit of fear in her voice. She was only close to him cause he was convenient to use. She didn't want to lose the business, but she wasn't about to hang out with a psychopath.

"I don't know," Laz responded while looking a bit grave.

"Then should I be worried?" Kennedy questioned while looking into Laz's eyes. Even if the mood was tense at the moment, she couldn't help but be memorized by those dark blue windows of a person's soul.

Thinking back to the feeling of pure hatred and blood ust that ran through his mind when Tommy had "transformed," Laz couldn't help but answer honestly.

"Yes, you should be very worried. We both should."