Body: My Damned School Days

By Michael Ocheskey

I've spent my entire life as an outcast. I never had any friends in school, and everyone treated me with jealousy or reverence, keeping me at a distance. Then, one day out of the blue, my parents decided to send me to high school at my father's alma mater. I was being shipped abroad to spend the rest of my teenage years at a boarding school I'd never heard of before and couldn't find any information about online.I was terrified of what the future held, thinking my high school days would be like Hell on Earth. Little did I know, I was right. My damned school days had just begun. My name is Nick McMullen, and this is my story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Siren Song Publishing
• Release date: Feb 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950005079

Michael Ocheskey

Michael Ocheskey was born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming and has a love for creativity, especially animation, music, movies, books, and tv. He loves digging into human creativity and is currently working toward starting multiple businesses that allow him to utilize that creativity. He is an author of primarily fantasy, but some sci-fi elements as well, and owns Siren Song Publishing, a newly created micropublisher for up-and-coming fantasy, sci-fi, and horror authors. His education was vast and varied. While he did not receive a Bachelor's degree in college due to multiple major changes, he is proud of the education he received. He was able to learn many topics that enhanced his writing and artistry including psychology, philosophy, foreign history and literature, music, anthropology, education courses, and many more. Ultimately, he ran out of funds and was forced to drop out of college before obtaining his Bachelor's degree. He currently works as an independent contractor, delivering for apps such as DoorDash and Instacart  to pay the bills, but is simultaneously working toward his goals and dreams of supporting himself solely through his creative endeavors as an author and entrepreneur. He is working toward establishing multiple businesses including a company that designs card and board games, an animation production studio, and Siren Song Publishing, which is currently a vanity press, meaning he is the only author it publishes, but he is hoping to expand it into a small publishing house with around a dozen authors in time.

Book preview

Nicholas McMullen 1

Today was the start of another average summer day, or at least it should have been. I sat awkwardly on our family’s gaudy, fluffy, crimson sofa in the middle of our family room, watching the most boring shows imaginable. I’ve never liked television, but there wasn’t anything else for me to do as I didn’t have any friends and my parents were away.

I sat in my typical seat, the middle of the sofa, wallowing in self-regret. I’d sat in the middle for as long as I could remember, my father to my left and my mother to my right, with their arms wrapped around me as they reached for each other in a heartfelt family embrace. Now it was incredibly lonely. This couch was far too big for one.

The whitewashed walls of the living room used to make the space feel wide and welcoming. Now I felt as if they were closing in on me as I ruminated in my house awaiting the late-night arrival of my parents.

My parents, Samantha and Richard McMullen, were the co-founders of their own blood bank and research facility. They worked with a team of scientists to develop synthetic plasma and cloned blood.

I thought it was a rather creepy field of research, but they had told me time and again of the importance and hopes their work represented. The hope, as they put it, was that their research would save more lives in emergencies and non-emergencies alike. With synthetic plasma and clone blood at hand, hospitals could keep a larger stock for transfusions and wouldn’t have to worry about the contents being contaminated by a donor’s disease.

Companies that use plasma as an ingredient in their products such as certain cosmetics would be able to buy synthetic plasma in bulk without having to lessen the amount hospitals received.

The technology to clone blood would also be fundamental in saving the lives of people with certain diseases, especially AIDS and other diseases that affect the immune system. The theory was that the cloned blood was free of disease, contained a large quantity of white blood cells, and could boost the immune systems of the infected people. Although it wasn't a cure, it would at least help slow down or perhaps stop the deterioration of the immune system in its entirety.

Of course, there was more to the theory and practical applications of their research than just that, but I’d never been much for science and didn’t understand all the details.

Unfortunately for my parents, though the theory was sound, the execution of the plan was another matter. It was hard to find people willing to be test subjects and many doctors found the process to be unethical, though I couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t like my parents were trying to clone humans and kill them for their blood. They were cloning just the blood itself. Nobody was being hurt and the clone blood could save lives. I saw nothing unethical about it. Still, debates raged on and I had gotten used to being home alone this summer as my parents’ research was keeping them at the office from morning to night.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself, though I still found myself moping about the house wondering when I’d get to see them again. Usually, I woke up to an empty house, a bowl of cereal, and a note saying that lunch and dinner were in the fridge. The note always ended with the words we love you.

I hated those notes.

To me, words have always been meaningless. I knew my parents loved me, but I hated seeing it in writing. It felt superficial. What I wanted was audible truth, to hear my parents tell me they loved me, to look into their eyes and know it wasn’t a lie. Yet, though that was definitely better than a note, I still wouldn’t be as satisfied with that as I was with action. To me, words have always been inadequate, especially when it comes to expressing emotion. Better than words, actions were what I used to express myself and what I longed for in return. Dinner with my parents, playing catch with Dad, helping Mom in the kitchen; these were how I expressed my love and how I received love in return.

This summer was the hardest of my life. I’d never felt more alone than I did this summer, not even at school where I was detached and distanced from all the other students. And so, I sat and watched television shows I couldn’t stand just to pass the time and hopefully ease some of my discomfort.

It was a commercial now and I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. The ridiculous cat meowing a jingle on the screen just couldn’t hold my attention. I was still in the middle of my mental moping when I was interrupted and shocked by my parents’ early arrival from work.

Today, when I saw the excited looks on my parents’ faces, I thought I might get some of that show-not-tell verification I longed for. Unfortunately, what I hoped for and what fate had in store were leagues apart, literally.

Hi, Honey! Samantha smiled tenderly at me as I swiveled on the sofa to get a better look at them both. Your father and I have some really good news for you.

Both of them were standing at the entrance to the living room, removing their white lab coats and putting them on the ancient-looking coat rack just inside the archway. Underneath their lab coats it was impossible to tell they were scientists. They didn’t give off the stereotypical scientist vibe. My mother looked like a super model in her tight red pants (was that leather or latex?) and black, skin-tight blouse that exposed her belly button and much more cleavage than was necessary. My father wore a black t-shirt with a picture of a wolf howling at the moon and off-white trousers with the fabric faded and frayed at the knees.

You’ve finished your research? I guessed, jumping to my feet in elation. Now I wouldn’t have to spend so much time alone.

Of course not, Richard laughed heartily.

My eyes darted back and forth between my father and mother in distressed confusion. His lighthearted nature and his words were so at odds with what I was expecting it caught me completely speechless. The hair on the back of my neck stood up slightly at the sound of his laugh. Technically, his laugh no longer scared me, but this unexpected situation and my uneasiness brought back some of the old feelings of fear I had had as a child; completely irrational fear at that.

Richard’s laugh always sounded more animal than human. There was always a hint of a growl buried deep within his chest. When I was a child it had scared me to the core—made me feel like I was face to face with a lion or a bear—but now I knew it was ridiculous to be frightened. My father would never do anything to harm me. He wouldn’t even punish me. Samantha had been the voice of authority in the family while Richard had simply been the deflector with phrases like, Listen to your mother.

I supposed it was my father’s physical features that had always scared me as a child, but the very features that scared me were almost as prominent in me as they were in him. Richard had always had silver hair, even as a child. He had pictures from directly after birth—he had been born with hair—and sure enough it was no different in color from his now gleaming silver. I always joked that Dad must have been born an old man and had remained frozen in time since then.

I kind of had Richard’s hair to a degree, but it wasn’t nearly as pronounced. It was a mixture of Samantha’s blonde curls and Richard’s silver straight plait, leaving me with an almost ghostly sheen of wavy hair, hair that was neither blonde nor silver but somewhere in between. My wavy hair, which traveled down past my shoulder blades, was blonde at the roots, but grew lighter and lighter as it cascaded past my neck and ended in glinting silver at the tips.

I also had my father’s eyes, though not as prominent. Eyes which my father had told me were caused by a genetic defect passed down through his family called heterochromia. Richard’s eyes were silver pools with three thick streaks of gold flowing out from the pupil, whirling like water in a drain. My eyes were silver too, but without the gold streaks. Instead, there was a gold ring around the edge of each glittering iris and another wrapped tightly around the pupil as if to lock it in place. Both Richard and I were tall and slender, but the major difference was that Richard possessed incredible strength, like a body builder, while I could barely lift fifty pounds.

Mother was a beauty in every way, tall, slender, graceful, vibrant skin, lush green eyes, full red lips, and a smile that could stop men’s hearts, but not even her beauty could compare to Richard. I felt envious of my father’s beauty and a little sorry for my mother, especially when we went out together.

Before Samantha had met Richard, she had been the envy of all around her. Now, when we went out as a family, no one paid any mind to her, which, though she would never admit it, was probably the reason she wore such scandalous clothing, to try to take some of the focus away from Richard and back to her.

Richard was now the focal point of attention, being almost divine in appearance, and I held the rest of the people’s gazes. Though not as divine as my father, I had well balanced middle ground between my mother’s unequaled earthly beauty and my father’s divine beauty. Yet, while I envied my father’s beauty, I regretted my own and because of that, another part of me wished I were more like Mom. My beauty had been a deterrent at school. Most guys stayed away from me because they hated the fact that all the girls at school ogled me and the rest stayed away because my unnatural beauty frightened them. It made them feel something they would rather not think about and would vehemently deny if questioned about.

It was a similar situation with the girls. They ogled me, but they didn’t come near me since they were envious that my beauty surpassed theirs. I received many date requests, but none of them were ever sincere and I turned them all down. The girls, and even a few guys, who asked me out didn’t know anything about me and had no desire to know me. They just wanted to be able to say they had the courage to ask me out. It was either that or they wanted to be beside someone that would make them stick out in a crowd. My beauty made me the envy of many, but it also isolated me from others, making my family the only people I was close to.

Richard’s skin, though not pale, had a luminescence to it which was almost inhuman. Looking upon him was like looking at the sun; it could blind you if you looked too long, especially when Richard was outside. It didn’t matter if the sun or moon was shining upon him. His skin seemed to glow like a bright beacon, contrasting with the natural light and yet an integral part of the light itself. I possessed this strange luminescence as well, but much more mildly. It simply looked like someone had painted a glossy, clear liquid over my skin.

We’ve decided where you’re going to school next year! Richard announced joyously, filling in the drawn-out silence and interrupting my thoughts.

My face fell in despair, eyes drooping, jaw dropping, and forehead furrowing. He had hoped the news would brighten my mood, or at least that’s what I suspected from the odd look of inquiry now on his face.

I glared incredulously at my parents, eyes shifting between them like a pendulum, What? I roared, I’m going to the local high school. That was decided long ago. All my friends are there! Of course, that was a lie. How could I tell my parents that from kindergarten up through junior high school I had never had a single friend? It would have torn their hearts. I’d lied about that for so long now that I realized a part of me actually believed it...or wanted to.

You can make new friends, Samantha suggested shyly. Then she pleaded, Please, Nick? Won’t you do this for us? It’s the school your father went to when he was your age. It would mean the world to him if you followed in his footsteps. She cringed away from me reflexively, prepared for my rebuttal.

The one thing I couldn’t stand to hear