AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm sorry for being such a blatant Kyle Gallner fangirl, but he's such a tasty little morsel! Anyways, here's a story I wrote. You probably figured that out.

PS: None of the reasons as to why Colin became what he was are mentioned in the movie, I just made them up.

CHAPTER ONE: Lasagna with Teeth

I was disgusting. "Lasagna with teeth", according to my dear old mom. Charming, huh?

The people doing my autopsy must have been terrified. I wouldn't blame them, really. It must've been like something out of a George A. Romero film: me clambering off the operating table, puking up something black and spiky, and then baring my teeth at them like a rabid pirahna.

I'm pretty sure pirahnas don't get rabies, but does that even matter? Didn't think so.

When I actually came to, I was curled up in the corner of the morgue, ass naked and rocking back and forth like a mental case. Something warm and salty coated the insides of my mouth, the coppery tang identifying it immediately as blood. And the bodies of the two coroners lay scattered in slimy pieces across the floor.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit, I thought, not feeling totally and completely capable of coherent thought. I knew what I'd done. It was easy enough to add two and two together. Hapless coroners+zombified teenage boy=coroner shepard's pie. Not a good equation. I got up and staggered out of the room. It was maybe two or three in the A.M, meaning no one really was around. That, thankfully, made it fairly easy for me to bolt.

One thing I like about Devil's Kettle: it's a dinky-ass town. And dinky means you can get to your house totally naked and covered in blood without being noticed by anyone. Well, except for that one hobo, but I think he was high.

Anyways, I pulled a total Excorcist and climbed up my house's wall (I was pretty shocked, but it makes sense now that I think on it. I'd just fed, after all). I had to smash the glass of my bedroom window to get inside it. The shattering noise was deafening. Why didn't my parents wake up?

Where were my parents?

Focus, Colin, focus. I scrambled in and went straight for my dresser: I wasn't sure how much longer I could take this situation seriously in the buff. I remembered the days when what you wore actually mattered: when I actually spent time doing my hair like a total fruit salad, because that's what all the people I hung out with did. Now I couldn't have really cared; I just needed to not be naked.

I heard stirring downstairs as I zipped up my pants. I thought I heard my mother murmur something in her sleep.

Wait, how would I be able to hear that? My parents' bedroom was way too far away for me to hear anything. They could've been banging and I wouldn't have lost a wink of sleep.

I stood still for a moment.

I could hear so many things. Crickets sang in the deathly still of the night. Flower petals rustled in the front yard. Down in the kitchen–the fucking kitchen–I could hear a fly buzzing.

I'm, like, a fucking superhero.

The thought didn't cheer me up much. I wanted to go downstairs. I wanted to see my parents. I wanted to be alive, a normal kid again.

The corners of my eyes began to sting.

You are not crying right now, Colin. Quit being such a little bitch. I pawed at my eyes quickly, hoping no actual tears had escaped.

I needed to leave. But where would I go?

Kindergarten instinct kicked in. A familiar place. A comforting place.

I'm not sure if I was really paying attention to my feet until I turned the corner and ended up on Needy's street. Her house looked deserted, but at the moment, it didn't matter to me.

I needed somehwere to hide, and her place seemed like it would be alright for now.

Again with the Excorcist crap, only her window was (mercifully) unlocked. I didn't want to have to break her window.

Her room was kind of girly, all frills and ribbons. Not what you'd expect from seeing Needy Lesnicki day-to-day. But it didn't matter. I sank down on her bed and let my muscles slacken for a moment. I needed to self-assess. I put two fingers against my wrist. No pulse.

I really was dead.

And yet...

I hiked up my T-shirt and stared down at my stomach. The incision the coroner had made had healed into nothing more than a faint white mark. As for Jennifer's teeth marks, they'd turned to puffy, pinkish scars. They could have been from years ago, and yet the horrors of that night replayed fresh in my head, never fading or blurring.

Why had I even come up with that stupid idea? Who had convinced me to ask Jennifer out in order to get closer to who I really wanted to be with?

Why had I been ballsy enough to go to Jennifer's house? My stupid boy-brain had assumed that she would unload all details to Needy the next day, including any juicy bits that might have taken place.

Unfortunately, the juicy bits were a bit more drippy. Or bloody, whatever. My point being, my life wasn't worth trying to make Anita Lesnicki jealous.

Yeah, that's right, boys and girls.

God, I'm such an idiot. I lowered my shirt. The scars were a cruel reminder of how much I'd paid for my own selfish stupidity. Just to think–if I'd actually just told Needy I liked her, I'd probably still be fucking alive.

I collapsed fully, lying on my back. Needy had a very soft mattress. Its scent reached my heightened senses, some mixture of girly shampoo and laundry detergent, and that warm, feminine smell all girls give off. I didn't know how many times I'd wondered what it would be like to lie in Needy's bed, under different circumstances.

I heard the softest of scuffling sounds coming from one story below, where I'd made my entrance. I caught a smell–dried blood.

Jennifer.

I jumped to my feet and bolted, flinging myself into the closet and closing the door behind me. Through the slats in the wooden door, I saw Jennifer creep in and close the window behind her. She shed her bloody clothes (stained with my blood. Thanks, Jen) and opened Needy's dresser drawers, searching until she found a pair of pajamas. She tucked herself into Needy's bed and turned the lights off.

I stood stock still in that closet. I wasn't sure how long. I didn't know if Jennifer was asleep or just lying there. I didn't even know if she, if whatever she was, needed to sleep.

The front door opened and closed eventually, and Needy's scent hit me again.

Shit. Jennifer was lying in her bed. I needed to warn her, to get her out of there.

On the other hand, if Jennifer saw me, I didn't know what she'd do to either of us.

Jennifer won't hurt Needy. They're best friends. Right?

Shit. I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to do.

Needy's bedroom door opened, and she entered the room, throwing herself down onto the bed, mere inches away from Jennifer's still body. Jennifer shifted, and Needy shrieked, bolting upright.

I wasn't even breathing. I waited to see if Jennifer would spring, if she would bare those horrible teeth again.

Instead, she just laughed.

My ear pressed up against the closet door, I heard her tell Needy what had happened that night at Melody Lane. As badly as I felt towards her, I couldn't help but feel a little bad for her. A band of satanic alterna-rockers going "totally Benihana" on her ass didn't sound like any fun.

I saw her whip out what looked like a giant toothpick and carve a long line into her arm. I shuddered. The people I had hung out with did shit like that all the time, slicing and burning and rubbing themselves raw just because they desperately needed some kind of attention–but this was different. The line healed up like a movie clip put in reverse, blood sucking back into the wound and all. When she was done, there wasn't even a mark.

It was her eyes that unnerved me the most, though. She just didn't care. Not about the pain she was causing herself, or Needy, or anybody else. It just didn't matter to her.

Suddenly, she lunged forward and she and Needy locked lips. I stifled a surprised "whoa". Needy launched her back onto the bed and climbed atop her.

This was insane. How did this happen? Normally, I would not have been complaining–two girls making out is hot, okay?–but under these circumstances, I just felt like someone had dumped reality into a Sweeney Todd-style meat grinder.

Needy seemed to come to her senses. That's when Jennifer said something about Chip.

I saw Needy's whole body stiffen, as though her bones had fused together. She jabbed a finger at the door. "Get out."

Jennifer laughed and slithered out of the window, dropping to the ground outside and promptly melting into the shadows. Needy crumbled back down onto her bed and began to sob.

Cautiously, I pushed the closet door open. She didn't hear it over the sound of her own tears. As I approached her bed, I knew it probably wasn't the right thing to do, but I didn't care.

I sat down at the edge of the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. From the way her warm skin tingled against my fingertips, I knew my hand must have been ice cold.

She wailed and jumped away, legs getting tangled in the bedsheets. "C-Colin?"

"Yeah, it's me." I chewed on my lip, teeth scraping painfully against my lip ring. "Please...don't be scared, Needy. I mean, you can be scared, but I promise–I mean, shit, why wouldn't you be scared? I just fully came out of the closet–well, not like that–" I stopped. I was babbling, like I always did around her.

Needy looked as though she might laugh. Or cry. Or puke. "How did you get in here? I thought you were–weren't you with–"

"–Jennifer? Yeah. Uh, listen. I heard what she said to you, and I know you probably can't take it right now, but I have some news of my own."

She was still for a moment, as though catatonic. Finally, realization crept onto her face. "Wait," she breathed. "She...did something to you, didn't she? To make you the way she is?"

"I-I think so." I hoisted up my shirt again and showed her my scars.

She sucked in her breath and slowly took off her glasses. "What is that?"

"It's from when they were doing my autopsy. I just sort of, I dunno, woke up when they were in the middle of it."

"Have you killed anyone?" her voice was less trembly than before. It was a direct question.

I looked down at my hands, at the blood beneath my fingernails. "Yeah. I did."

"Who?"

"The coroners." I squeezed my eyes shut and bit my lip again. "I'm so sorry, Needy."

"Colin..." she reached out her hand as though to touch my face, and then pulled it away. "What did Jennifer do to you?"

"She went totally Benihana on me," I replied, smiling despite myself.

It took her a moment to get it. "Don't joke, Colin. What does this mean? What about your parents?"

"Everyone thinks I'm dead. I think my funeral's in a couple of days. Are you going?"

Needy blinked slowly, like a cat. "You–you want me to?"

"I would appreciate it, sure."

"I'll go, then, but...what are you going to do? I mean, you're not gonna, like, eat me, are you?"

I glanced at the moon. It seemed to be waning. "I fed tonight, remember? Coroner value meal." Looking back at her, I saw tears rolling down her cheeks.

I hesitated for a moment, and then touched the side of her face. She went still for a moment and then relaxed, full-on sobbing. I almost said "Don't cry, Needy", but then again, she had every reason to cry.

She grabbed the front of my shirt, fists grabbing bunches of the fabric. "Promise me something," she hiccuped.

"What?"

"Promise me..." she let out a shuddering breath, face twisting up in anguish. "Swear to me that you're one of the good guys."

Slowly, the way one might act around a deer in the forest, I scooted forward and folded my arms around her. "I swear."

I held Needy that night until she fell asleep, too drained by her emotions. Having just fed, I felt full of energy, kinetic and unreal. I paced around her room as she lay curled up into a ball on her bed, buried inside a dreamless sleep. Want to know how I could tell? With my ultra-fucking-night vision, I could actually watch her eyes move beneath her eyelids, smell her nervous sweat when a dream was coming on, monitor the pace of her breathing.

I picked at the blood under my nails, chewed my lips until they felt like sandpaper, glanced at the clock about five times a second.

And, naturally, I kept looking at Needy. I had never seen her with her guard completely let down except for in Narrative Non-Fiction, when it was just her and the pen. I had seen every tensed muscle in her body slacken like someone had pulled a loose threat on her and begun unraveling. Sometimes it was hard picking up my own pen in that class, I was so busy staring at her. I could have written so much about her; the way she reminded me of a little china doll, the way her fingers were small and stubby, the way she laughed, her gangly legs. She was so different than the Dead Girls I tended to hang out with: girls who masked a total lack of IQ points with black lipstick and crappy, dark poetry. She didn't really try to conform to anything in particular except for Jennifer's fist of iron.

Jennifer fucking Check. I didn't even know her middle name. It didn't matter. She would be Jennifer Fucking Check to me now.

"JFC sounds like KFC," I informed the sleeping blonde.

I glanced down at Needy again. The weave from her pillow was making a mark on her cheek. I laughed a little. She looked like a puppy, all curled into herself.

"Oh, Needy." I ran a hand through my hair. A few strands, caked in dried blood, snagged on my fingers. "What the hell are we going to do about Jennifer?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ok, first chapter. I hope you all enjoyed your reading!

My friends and I had seen this movie for the second time, and we were discussing why we thought Colin liked Needy and not Jen. I mean, he's the one Chip is all jealous of, and he seems to like Needy a lot. Maybe he asked Jen out to make Needy jealous...well, that was one of our hypotheses anyway. And so I took that idea and made it into a story. School just let out, so I think I'll be able to update this pretty frequently. R&R!