Queen of Teeth

She should never have come.

White debris breathes through cracks in crumbling walls, and black smoke climbs toward the moon. The high school lies a broken eggshell, and beyond its lot, she finds the reason she has been called here. A new creation cries forlorn in the night, baptized in the blood of teachers, peers, and family. Once a teenage student weighed by purse and books and expectations, now turned a pale dragon, countless limbs thrashing as boneless ropes, eager to burn the world.

There is monstrous beauty in the blood-spotted skin, and beneath, an intense desire to live. A desire unfulfilled.

She should never have come because, deep down, she can never leave, even when the dragon lets her. Guilt will follow her beyond these soot-coated ruins, through fires and chemicals and once-human screams. Wherever she goes, this night will haunt her for the rest of her life.