(Sequel to The Night).

———

Talla feels strange.

It’s the limbo state before you fully wake up but not necessarily asleep. Her thoughts are jumbled, fogged by sleep. Her body just coming to.

“Talla!” Jolting up, she whips her head so fast that she hears a crack. “What?”

Alina is standing over her, a horrified expression on her face. Her eyes are wide and she can barely keep her jaw locked. Which is a funny contrast to the fairy makeup that she still has on from the Halloween party last night.

Wait…what happened last night? Talla doesn’t remember the end of the night.

She takes in her surroundings for the first time and realizes they are still in JT’s house. Bringing her attention back to her friend, Alina looks different from last night. Brighter.

“What’s going on?” Talla asks.

“I don’t know. I woke up and these things were on my back!” Alina jabs her thumb over her shoulder at the radiant, shimmering wings behind her. Gone was the plastic set. Now in its place was the real deal. Talla thinks, at least. She of course has never seen real fairy wings because this is god damn reality.

“Did we fall asleep?” Talla questions intead of inquiring about the wings. “I have freaking wings and you want to talk about falling asleep?!” Alina yells, throwing her hands up in the air.

Talla glances around the room. There’s a couple people around them, asleep. Or at least she hopes they’re asleep. “I don’t remember falling asleep. I would have never slept here of all places.”

A football player’s house is actually her nightmare. She would have rather died than lay on his floor.

“I don’t know. I think I remember the lights going out. And then nothing,” Alina recalls, her wings flapping slowly as she’s thinking.

Someone zooms by them, seemingly at super human speed, interrupting both their thinking. As if by instinct, Talla uses the rope slung over her shoulder and lassos the person, catching them in the circle.

The person falls onto their butt with a groan. Talla thinks it’s a guy from her homeroom. He was dressed as The Flash.

“How’d you do that?” Alina questions, her eyebrows way up, almost to her hairline.

The rope is much heavier than before in Talla’s hands, more tightly braided.

“I have no idea.” She has absolutely no hand eye coordination. Something really weird is going on.

“Thanks for stopping me. I had no idea how to stop,” the guy in her lasso says.

“You’re welcome?”

A girl, just getting up, begins to stand up near the window, stretching her limbs. She screeches and ducks back to the ground, grabbing her arm as if it was hurt.

“You ok?”

The girl takes her hand off her arm and a big red spot is visible on her deathly pale skin. Like a burn.

“It hurts,” she has a slight lisp from her vampire teeth. That she still has in. Huh. That’s strange. She must realize that too because when she tries to tug them out, they don’t budge.

“What’s going on?”

Talla stares at Alina’s obviously real wings, sparkling in the sunlight. Her head swivels to the guy in her lasso that she somehow caught even when he was going way faster than a normal human. Then she eyes the girl still attempting to get the sharp teeth out of her mouth. She can only come to one conclusion.

“We became what we were dressed as.”