Packed with action, teenage angst, and suspense, Brett Riley’s Freaks appeals to fans of Stranger Things and X-Men. Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Freaks, which releases on March 3rd 2022.
Four high-school friends suffer daily humiliation at the hands of three bullies. When the friends accidentally open a portal to another dimension, they unintentionally allow terrifying, other-worldly creatures to invade their small Arkansas town. Discovering that they are now endowed with strange superpowers, the four teens dub themselves “Freaks,” the very name their tormentors used to ridicule them. The Freaks must fight to save the lives of family and friends now in mortal peril and thwart a secret government task force that appears to be hunting them.
CHAPTER ONE
When three sets of hands grabbed him from behind while he stood at the urinal, Micah Sterne cried out, but not because he was surprised. Honestly, he didn’t know why it had taken so long; he’d been expecting something like this since school had started a month ago.
He struggled and fought for as long as he could, but as one against three, he barely lasted ten seconds. They dragged him into a stall. Two of them grabbed his ankles from behind and yanked. Micah stuck out his hands to break his fall, but he still landed on his face. Someone knotted a meaty fist in his shirt. His collar dug into his throat, the pressure making his temples and eyeballs feel like pus in a zit. He tugged the collar away just as they raised his legs and pushed his head into the bowl. Micah inhaled and squeezed his eyes shut. His face submerged, then his ears, then most of his head.
Please, God, let this water be clean.
He held his breath until he nearly blacked out. When they pulled him up, he hacked and choked and inhaled through his mouth. His nose felt clogged, as if someone had filled his sinuses with wet gauze. The toilet water was pinkish. A drop of blood the size of a nickel fell in, darkened the water, dissipated.
“Looks like you got a nosebleed, pussy,” a voice said.
“Bite me,” Micah croaked. Two more drops fell into the toilet. He felt little pain yet, but it would come.
“You heard him, boys,” said another voice. “He wants some more.”
Micah knew the voices. They had been saying shit like that to him for years. In fourth grade, one of the kids now holding Micah’s legs had told the whole class that Micah’s mom cooked babies and cats in her witch’s cauldron, just because she was Wiccan. In sixth grade the same kid told everyone, his voice dripping with certainty, that Micah and Jamie Entmann were faggots, queer for each other and maybe any other guy. Last year, at an eighth-grade football game, Micah was walking underneath the bleachers toward the concession stand when one of
them punched him in the back of the head. He had fallen on his face and blacked out for a minute, and as the kid who did it disappeared into the shadows, Micah heard that same slur again, drifting through the cheers and mutterings of the crowd overhead. The same old story, told week after week, sometimes more than once a day, and it always ended the same way—with Micah alone in his room, choking back tears of rage and humiliation.
And now this. They raised his legs again. A hand twisted Micah’s shoulder-length straw-colored hair. His nose throbbed with each heartbeat.
One of them leaned in close. Despite his plugged nose, Micah winced at the bully’s foul breath, like bologna and onions and stupidity. “Now, you might feel like you should grab the rim of that crapper and push. I wouldn’t advise it. I’d hate to accidentally stomp on your fingers. You get me?”
Micah nodded. Speaking would just make things worse.
The toilet rushed toward him again. Just before the water covered his ears, a third voice said, “Look at it this way, geek boy. Maybe that cold water will feel good on your nose.”
