Chapter 2

It was just an hour later that the spasms ripped through him. Sleeping soundly, if not completely peacefully, the spasms ripped across his back and it felt as if he was being torn apart. Pain went through him as he became semi-paralyzed and he couldn't even scream while it happened. He lost control of his body and started to twitch and flop about like a fish, but the pain kept ripping through him. The flares of agony in his back didn't feel like they would ever stop. It was like something was ripping up at his skin from the inside. He felt bones grinding on bones and muscles being torn and pushed aside.

2 hours later, he was lying in the fetal position, holding onto his knees as tears streamed down his face from the unbearable pain, still lingering in his back. He saw the sun rise and heard his dad shuffling around in a post-drunk stupor, getting another drink and off to work or something. The minutes trickled by and he was late for school.

He almost got up and got dressed. Almost. But the intense pain turned itself back on, like a switch, and he fell to the ground with an arched back, burying his face in the threadbare carpet of the trailer, this time a scream ripping itself from his vocal chords as his back tried to rip itself apart. He could feel two places of intensity, in symmetrical places on his back. He felt something trying to rip itself from his back, poking at his muscles and his skin and trying to come out. Agony ripped itself through him and he shuddered and moaned and screamed for release and help. After an interminable amount of time, the pain stopped for the moment. Adam simply slumped down on the ground, his mouth open and jaw slack, his eyes closed and his body limp. He passed out fairly quickly.

He woke up sometime later with horrid cottonmouth and crawled, shoulders screaming, his way to the fridge and opened it to get a bottle of water. He drank his water completely in an entire 5 seconds it felt like and was still thirsty and drank more water. It took him a half hour of to quench his thirst and make it to the tv, where he collapsed on the ground, attempting to watch something stupid and contrite and take him away from the pain for a bit, possibly.

But the pain came straight back and this time he did feel it rip something open. He heard a squelch and felt a numbness in his back as well as something wet and slippery falling all over him. His eyes went black from the pain, but he could still scream that he felt it and was awake. He reached back, fighting through the pain, and touched whatever was poking out of his back now. What the fuck is going on! he thought to himself. Then he touched it, and it felt like a pointy end of a bone of some kind. Blood was pouring from around the spike he felt. The pain was incredible in its all consuming intensity.

"What the fuck?" he cursed to himself. He could barely move his back, and every move seemed to radiate more waves of more intense pain across his body. There was nothing in his world except two areas in his back that hurt more than anything he had ever known.

It was then that the bone-spike his hand was resting on suddenly shot out and cut his palm. The growth spurt was comical, if one were to look on and ignore the blood and the boy's face. Adam McKenna was experiencing growing pains to the nth degree, and as these bones grew longer and longer, his body convulsed, attempting to retreat from his back.

But he wasn't even close to done when he was red from his own blood and his new bones were each nine feet long. It was then that each of these bones grew smaller bones, coming from down upon them.

For Adam, even in his fervord unconciousness, the pain was still alive and well. It was in his dreams, instead, and he was being beaten by everyone he knew, people he didn't, and the person he never thought would. It was this last person that woke him up, sobbing.

He was famished, and looked down and saw that he had lost a lot of weight, at least thirty pounds, in just the last few hours. When he looked at the clock, he knew his father would be home soon. The best thing about his trailer right now was their linoleum flooring. Even though he was in so much pain, and so famished, if he could just clean up the blood that was on the floor, he could deal with his problems alone. He crawled to his bedroom and got his sheets, dragging them along by his teeth and his will, and he threw them over the blood. Then he crawled back to the fridge and ate everything in sight. He drank a gallon of milk, filled it up with water at the sink, and drank that. Then another was downed. He crawled back to his room, picking up the bloody sheets and throwing them in a corner when he crashed on the floor again.

He didn't wake up for the next two days. It was a good thing that it was the weekend. Someone might have thought about worrying about him, or something.