Darkness around me, darkness and nothing more. My feet plonked as I sloshed in an inch of water as I surveyed my surroundings, weary of anything in the ominous shadows. The dim and only light was from the proverbial hole in the sky until another hole was made in the black sky. The rays shined down like limelight, a spotlight for the spectacle before me.

The spectacle of my mothers cleaning the blood from a pair of overalls and a purple Batman hoodie. The spectral versions of my parental deity looked up at me from their work in all their godhood. The water at my feet turned into blood and then-

I woke up, surrounded by my peers. No one really noticed me doze off but I shivered from the goosebumps as if my body was telling me to remember that dream. The cafeteria all of us were in was converted into a quick lecture area by the staff. Turns out the state was wanting to address the recent international phenomenon that the news has been talking about for quite some time.

The speaker this evening was none other than our old principal Dr. Harris. No wonder why I fell asleep... the last time he did this was when Kennedy was assassinated. Actually... if I remember correctly he started his speech with stating that fact.

"It's now the staff's responsibility-" he was saying mid-speech, "to report any signs of psychological problems. Now I was an introvert when I was young but with recent events student privacy—with authority of the state—may be breached with a warrant." This earned some boos from the jocks and their suck-ups but Dr. Harris continued with a bit of conviction in his old VERY Stan Lee voice, "This isn't a joke, recent research has shown that powers are linked to a person's psyche and/or interests. Olympian," a picture of a blonde juvenile in jail was projected onto the white roll-out screen beside him, "the shapeshifting, electric shooting criminal was a teenager—like you—who developed an unprecedented dissociative identity disorder where he thought he was Zeus in an alternate person. This young man, raped over three dozen people and killed a few officers upon arrest. News stations are currently documenting this serial rapist's crimes. Another case," the projection changed to a girl being arrested outside a low-income neighborhood, "Lamb, liked creepy pastas, and developed advanced intelligence and a healing factor. These changes physically changed the shape of her brain and caused her affinity with horror stories to grow into an unhealthy imbalance in her psyche to the point that she developed sporadic fatal insomnia, a incurable TSE disease, and cannibalized," the projector showed happy pictures of each person, "her parents, her younger siblings and finally herself while trying to re-enact the Russian Sleep Experiment creepy pasta."

Those goosebumps from earlier? They multiplied by ten. Everyone in the room was silent as his words sunk in, another slide on the projector slid into view, showing us a mother and son in the snow outside a cabin.

"The final real example today, this case started when the boy had a ravenous desire for raw meat. Unbeknownst to him and his mother, whatever is starting this superhuman phenomenon caused the poor teenager to develop a supernatural Wendigo Psychosis. His mind changing his genetic makeup. And again, unknown to the mother, she developed the ability to see into the past and future reminiscent to Jack Torrence's Shining ability."

Not many people in the crowd were either old enough, or horror book savvy enough to catch the phrase so everyone pretended to understand as it went clear over our heads... like usual.

"With these visions came delusions, hallucinations and schizophrenia. Over a period of time, she began to feed her cannibalistic son and experiment with his blood. Many of you have heard recently about the Beaver City Crisis and the quarantine?" Another slide was projected onto the white screen.

"This is what the woman's son turned into. This is what caused national panic and military intervention. Scientists believe that the supernatural phenomenon now being called Adam's Latter Rain produce mutated TSE's whose prions can be transmitted from simply being in close proximity to the infected. These prions, even before Adam's Latter Rain, are immune to usual sterilization procedures. In fact, you'll learn in bio-chem, that prions are virtually indestructible. This Adam's Latter Rain event is mutating natural prions in the brain to act like contagious endospores, so if you suspect any mysterious behavior..." he reiterated towards the crowd, "please, do tell." The principal then gave the students and staff a fake smirk, trying to lighten the air with, "you know your Sex Ed lessons? This is just a little more serious." Nervous laughs passed over the group and he added jokingly, "Just a little."

A/N: Lot of dialogue but I enjoyed researching it and writing it! If you enjoyed reading it give it a like! 😎