My class after lunch was Advanced Placement English, with Mr. Vaidya. Vaidya was a quiet, mousy kind of guy who spoke in a thin voice and had an East Indian accent. One of the things we found unintentionally hilarious was when he recited poetry, and today was no exception.

“Today, class, ve vill be studying Dylan Thomas, a Velsh Poet who came to US on four occasions. He is vone of the most important Velsh poets of the 20th Century.”

“Do not go gentle into dat good night,
Old age should burn and vage at close of day;
Vage, Vage against de dying of de light.”

I closed my eyes. I really didn’t want to laugh, but already snickers and snorts were sounding from around the room.

He really tried hard not to speak with a heavy accent, but I think that made things worse, and as the poem went on, the class couldn’t help but erupt into laughter.

Confused and frustrated, Mr. Vaidya told us to write a three-page essay analyzing the metaphorical language and themes and to put it into the historical and cultural context of the period.

Sighing, I pulled out my spiral-bound notebook and began writing. I loved writing essays, it allowed me to get all of my thoughts onto paper and it made so much more sense than answering multiple guess worksheets or True and False lists.

As I wrote, my mind quickly assessed, analyzed then synthesized the time period, the events happening when the poem came out, the culture of the period…

My pen flicked out of my hand and onto the table. I rolled my eyes and bent to pick it up. As I reached for it, I saw something was wrong with my hand—

My nails had extended beyond my fingertips. Not just the index and middle fingers, all of them on my right hand had extended, check that, were extending. A quick glance at my left hand showed the exact same thing happening.

I quickly shoved my hands up under my armpits. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed me looking at my fingers. Everyone’s head was buried in their work, including Mr. Vaidya who was typing something on his computer at the front of the classroom.

I darted a quick glance at my fingertips again, and they were longer. The nails were extending, and my fingers appeared to be slimming and taking on a much more feminine cast.

I closed my eyes. April. She must still be fucking with me. Jeff, Mitzy and I planned to get together after school to discuss what
happened. This was one of the few classes we didn’t share. Jeff and Mitzy were over in the Vocational wing, which was clear across campus. I decided to at least go to the restroom to see if any other changes were happening.

I got up and snatched the hall pass off the wall so no one could see my extended fingernails. Without a word, I waved the pass at Myron who gave me a nod and headed out the door.

Luckily the boy's restroom wasn’t far away, and I got into one of the stalls. Opening my hands, I saw they were nearly complete. A few more millimeters and my nails looked like they could be adorning any of the female students at our school.

“What the bloody fuck?!” I said in an urgent whisper. I didn’t have a fingernail clipper or anything, so I stuck the index finger on my right hand into my mouth and bit down, tearing the nail off, then proceeded to do the middle, ring, and pinky fingers…

Only to see they were growing back, almost as fast as I could bite them off, and even longer.

“No, no no, this can’t be happening!”

I pulled up my shirt to see if any other changes had affected my body, but everything seemed to be the same. I pulled down my pants to make sure things down there hadn’t changed, and luckily that was where it was supposed to be also.

I took out my phone and tapped an urgent message to April to meet me in front of the south quad lockers, STAT. She might not be looking at her phone, so it could take some time for her to see it. I watched the indicator and saw READ illuminate moments after it said; RECEIVED.
“Brt,” she texted back. I exhaled and grabbed the hall pass, then went to the quad area.

She arrived, looking annoyed. “What is it?” she said in a hiss. “I’m in the middle of a test!”

I held up my fingers in front of her. “What the actual fuck, April? I thought they told you to remove whatever spell!”

Her eyes grew wide, and she shook her head. “I did!”

“Then how do you explain this!”

She closed her eyes. A few moments later, she opened them again. “There’s some connection from me to you. Seth, I didn’t create that!”

“Well, can you disconnect it or whatever?”

She closed her eyes again. This time, I could see something in the air between us. It was strange, like seeing a mirage through a desert landscape. It swam, and I found myself closing my own eyes.

Images sprang into view as if I was opening an eye I didn’t even know I had. April stood in front of me, but in this mind’s eye view, she glowed with an ethereal pink light that surrounded her. A tendril connected her to me at our midsections, and as I looked down at myself, I could see I glowed a bright orange. The tendril connected her to me, pink and orange entwined, enmeshed. I could see another tendril extend outward from her and grasp the connecting tendril. It pulled, and I felt a sensation inside me, painful, that wrapped itself around my core and ended somewhere in my testicles.

She pulled harder, and I gasped. “Oh, shit!” I said. “That hurts!”

She withdrew her tendril. “Sorry. There’s a….”

“Yeah, I see it,” I said and somehow extended my own tendril, grasping it and pulling. She gasped in response also. “Oh!” That hurts too!
I narrowed my focus, zooming in on the tendril. Mixed in with the orange and pink, a third strand was black as midnight. We couldn’t see it from above, but it was there.

“There’s another tendril,” I said. “Zoom in, and you can see it.”

“Ohh, yes. But how did you—?”

I followed the black strand and zoomed in. Her voice was in the background. I wanted, no, needed to pay attention to this. The tendril flowed out from between us, black as pitch. It had several junctions that went in different directions, but the main junction—

“Seth, you need to stop.”

It went somewhere below us, somewhere deep in the building. I could follow it where it led, sliding lower and—

Someone slapped me across the face hard. I winced and opened my eyes. “Ow!”

“I told you to stop!”

I rubbed my jaw, where she slapped me. “I was following—“

“Seth, you aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”

“I know, but I thought if we could find out where—“

“Seth, only witches can do that. You opened your third eye!”

“Is that what that was?”

“Yes!”

I sighed. “Well, maybe whatever you did to me—“

“All I did was cause your body hair to fall out. And a simple illusion spell for the clothing. I did not tamper with your body construction; someone placed this connection between us…or something else.”

Sighing, I sat down on the carpeted bench against the wall. “Great, all I need.”

She sat down next to me and held my hand.