Chapter 22 Osteology 101
Nina I woke up the next morning feeling slightly more rested than the day before, although my eyes still burned from crying so much last night.
I dragged myself out of bed, and after a shower and some coffee, I felt much better. I still avoided looking at my phone just in case there was more outrage over my photos with Enzo, and got dressed in a nondescript outfit to go to class.
People still stared at me and whispered about me all day, but I tried my best to ignore it. I just kept repeating what Lori told me in my head: this would pass. All I had to do was keep my head down, focus on school, and wait for the bitchy girls at this school to move on to the next bit of drama to gossip about.
After my classes, I decided that I had to return to the anatomy lab to finish my project, as it was due in two days and I had hardly even started. I really didn’t want to go back after what I saw in there last time, but I just kept telling myself that it was all in my head and that it would be fine now… I still didn’t feel like it was all in my imagination, but I had to tell myself that in order to get my work done.
It was getting dark out by the time I made it to the anatomy lab, which only made the environment seem even more spooky. I steeled my nerves before opening the door and stepping in.
The room looked perfectly normal and quiet. Taking a deep breath, I crossed over to my locker and put on my lab coat and goggles, then put on a pair of plastic gloves before pulling my cadaver out of the mortuary cabinet and pulling back the sheet.
Just as I figured, the cadaver was perfectly normal. He was still completely healed, as though I had never cut into him to begin with… had I just imagined the whole thing? Had I passed out, or dissociated, when I thought I was performing an autopsy?
While I studied the cadaver, I was suddenly alerted to the sound of something rattling. I took in a sharp breath and whipped around, only to see absolutely nothing. I shook my head and returned to my work. Surely my nerves were just making me overly sensitive to sounds.
I got my tools ready and started to cut into the cadaver’s abdomen. I cut down to the belly button, then began to shakily peel back the layers of skin and muscle as I prepared myself for potentially seeing more strange mutations inside.
There was nothing out of the ordinary. Just a regular human body, with regular human organs. I let out a sigh of relief.
I heard the sound of rattling again. It sounded like… bones? I turned around toward the direction of the sound and shrieked when I saw the skeleton that was used for osteology… moving! It was off of its stand and staggering directly toward me with its bony hands outstretched toward my throat.
I stumbled backwards, tripping over a table leg and falling to the floor. The skeleton continued to lurch toward me, clacking its teeth while I screamed in terror. I scrambled to my feet and over to the door, but when I tried the handle, it was locked somehow and I couldn’t get out.
I fumbled for my phone in my pocket, but it wasn’t there; it was halfway across the room, on the floor where I fell. The skeleton was already past it now, and there was no way I could get around it to grab my phone. I was cornered. While the skeleton continued to advance on me, I shut my eyes and shook my head. “This isn’t real… This isn’t real…”
The sound of bones rattling toward me was replaced by the sound of those very bones being kicked to the floor. I opened my eyes to see a large figure in the dark, wearing a hoodie with the hood up, standing over the skeleton as it writhed and kicked on the floor. It swiped a bony hand at the figure and slashed it in the thigh, but the figure retaliated by picking the skeleton up by its throat — well, where its throat would have been, if it had flesh. “Who sent you?!”
I suddenly realized that the dark figure was Enzo as soon as I heard his voice. How did he get in here? I looked over to see that the window was open… but we were on the third floor!
“I’ll never tell…” the skeleton croaked, its voice sounding like nails on a chalkboard. I didn’t know how it was speaking without vocal chords, but somehow it was.
Enzo stormed over to the rack where the skeleton previously hung and hung it back up. I watched in wonder as he whispered some strange incantation that I couldn’t understand, and the skeleton went limp.
“Enzo…?” I said, my voice shaking. This had to be a dream. There was no way this was real.
Enzo ran over to me and pulled off his hood. He grabbed me by my shoulders, looking me up and down with a concerned expression on his face. “Are you alright?” he said. “Did it touch you?”
I nodded. “I’m fine,” I said. “Your leg …” I pointed down at his leg, which had a large, bloody gash through his jeans. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, pulling me into a hug. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”
“How did you get in here?” I asked when we pulled away from each other. ” And… what was that?”
Enzo sighed and passed his hand over his face, walking over to one of the lab tables and sitting down on a stool. I kept darting my gaze between him and the skeleton, half expecting the skeleton to jump off of its stand again and kill us both..
“There’s a lot I have to tell you,” Enzo said softly, his eyes fixed on the floor. ” There’s a whole world out there that you weren’t supposed to know about.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. Enzo looked up at me all of a sudden. His eyes had shifted to that strange, glowing red color that I had seen the night we hooked up and a couple of times after that. They were stronger now, though, more red and glowing even brighter so bright, in fact, that — I could see them perfectly in the dim light of the room as though they emanated a light of their own.
“Nina…” Enzo said, staring at me intensely with those red eyes. “What you saw in here the other day wasn’t in your head. There are creatures in this world… creatures that aren’t human nor animal, but both.”
I furrowed my brow, too stunned to speak. “I’m a werewolf, Nina.”
