by Frazer Lee
Victoria yawned, and a bad taste clung to the back of her throat. She needed that glass of water, still, but thought maybe she’d sit next to her mom for a while. Her limbs were so very heavy, and she felt so tired all of a sudden. She approached the kitchen island, reached out a leaden hand to her mother. And all the while the hissing grew louder and louder until—
Victoria jolted awake from her dream. She sat up and looked around the dormitory. No shades of pink pastel here, only gray. At least that horrid hissing noise had stopped. She swallowed, dispelling the acrid taste at the back of her mouth from her dream. The other girls were asleep.
All except for one.
Victoria saw that one of the girls was out of bed. She was standing a couple of meters away from Victoria’s bed, her face hidden by her dark hair. How strange that Victoria hadn’t noticed her before. Moonlight from the high, barred window accentuated the paleness of the exposed skin of the girl’s forearms. Victoria felt a sense of dread seeing her standing there. Not because she was afraid, but rather because she was tired of being tormented like this. She wanted it to stop, and to stop now.
“Go pick on someone else, okay?”
The strange girl instead took a couple of steps toward Victoria’s bed, making Victoria wish that she could have summoned more confidence into her wavering voice. The girl’s movements were unnatural, somehow. Each step was accompanied by a series of clicks, as though a puzzle of bones was attempting to solve itself. Her limping, lurching gait seemed disconcertingly like her body was twisted and broken. Seeing her reach the end of her bed, Victoria felt terror clinging at her psyche.
“Leave me alone!”
But the girl did not take heed. Instead she clambered onto Victoria’s mattress, her limbs scuttling across the bedcovers like the legs of a monstrous spider.
Victoria screamed as the girl crawled right up to where she lay.
Chapter Five
Fuck Her Up
I open my eyes to a cacophony of screams. I sit up, then swing my legs over the side of my bed. I see Victoria, thrashing around beneath her bedsheet. For a moment, it looks like someone dressed in gray is curled up at her feet. How weird. But then I realize it’s just her blanket, bunched up into a ball at the end of her bed. She’s still screaming, deep in the throes of a nightmare. I would have thought she’d be awake by now. The noise has woken up the other girls, and I hear a couple of them cursing Victoria drowsily. I see from the dusky light through the high windows that it’s not quite daybreak.
I climb off my bed and cross to Victoria’s. Her screaming could wake the dead. Honestly. I have no idea how she can still be under while she’s making such a racket. I reach down and grab her by the wrist before shaking it, hard. Victoria wakes with a start and stops screaming. She opens her eyes and then recoils at the sight of me. She looks terrified.
“You were having a bad dream.”
“Leave me alone,” Victoria says, her voice sounding raw from all the screaming. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”
Bit harsh, I think, given the circumstances.
“Ewww! Gross.”
I look over my shoulder to see Saffy gloating. “Looks like you’re not the only carpet-munching freak around here, Lena. Get a room, bitches.” Saffy settles down onto her bed again. “Another room, far the fuck away from me.” She rolls over, turning her back to us.
I look down at Victoria. She’s sitting on her bed, arms folded tight around her legs. The fear is etched into her eyes, like she’s somehow pulled her nightmare into the day with her. She looks almost catatonic. I wonder what she could have been dreaming about to be in such a state. But I decide against attempting to ask her about it, and beat a retreat back to my own bed.
* * *
After showering and getting dressed, we each line up in the refectory for breakfast under Principal Quick’s watchful gaze. A sharp nod from the principal is our prompt to proceed to the self-serving station. It’s a stainless-steel breakfast buffet of—
(You guessed it again, you are getting good at this, aren’t you?)
—lumpy porridge. I hear the refectory door slide open on its runners and look to see Victoria enter, looking sullen. She waits for the stragglers to go ahead of her in the queue. I let them pass, too. I’m second-to-last, with Victoria behind me. I reach the pile of plastic trays and take one, still damp to the touch from having been washed. I take another and offer it to Victoria. She just stands there, arms fixed at her sides.
“You okay?” I have to ask, if only because I genuinely don’t know what to do with the spare tray now. Awkward.
“Don’t…. Don’t start,” she replies, agitated. “Just let me get my breakfast in peace.”
She sidesteps me and passes in front, grabbing a tray for herself. I watch as she fills a cup with orange juice before placing it on her tray and slouching off on the long, lonely walk to a vacant table at the back of the room. Saffy and the others make fun of her as she passes.
I ladle horrid, gloopy porridge into a bowl. I rock on my heels a little until I can watch the others out of the corner of my eye. I notice that Jess is again taking even-sized spoons of porridge and transporting them around her bowl, without eating.
Saffy has noticed, too. “Careful, Jessica dear,” she preens, “you might get sick, eating so much.”
Jess blushes and scowls at Saffy. “Fuck off, Saffron,” she says.
(Atta girl.)
The others laugh and jeer and Saffy waves her hand at them dismissively, as though they are flies buzzing around her.
I place the bowl of porridge on my tray and walk toward Saffy’s table.
“Make some room, bitches,” Saffy says.
I see the other girls shuffle up a bit at Saffy’s behest, making room for me to sit with them.
But I just keep walking and, to Saffy’s visible disgust, decide to sit down opposite Victoria at her table. She looks at me, shocked and embarrassed.
“You can’t sit here,” Victoria says.
“I already am.”
Victoria looks me fully in the eyes for the first time since this morning.
“Well, I said you can’t,” she counters.
“There’s more room over here.” I shrug and then take a sip of my juice.
A slow burning rage creeps across Victoria’s face.
“Get the hell away from me,” she cries.
Her lips narrow and her gaze becomes one of pure spite. Then she stands up and hurls her entire glass of orange juice all over me. The juice trickles over my face, cold and sticky. It stings my eyes before I can wipe it away.
I hear Saffy and her cronies react with gleeful astonishment. My ears start ringing. I stand up, and, allowing my legs to lead the way, I cross the room to Saffy’s table. Jess’s juice is still untouched, just like her porridge. I take it from her tray. Saffy and the others look at me, incredulous.
“Hey….” I place the fresh drink in front of Victoria. “You spilled your juice. Here’s another.”
“What the actual fuck?” Victoria looks incensed, and her rage peaks again. She knocks the drink flying off the table, then slaps me, hard, across my face.
Now my ears really are ringing. I hear the other girls gasp. Or, maybe, it’s my own sharp intake of breath that I can hear. My face stings from the blow. I touch the tender area on my cheek. It reminds me of something. A tactile response I’ve experienced before. But I can’t be sure. My mind is drifting as the ringing undulates, like the looping pealing of a bell. I face Victoria, who takes an instant dislike to my facial expression. But you have to understand, I don’t even know what my facial expression is. It’s like I have no control over it. In much the same way that I allowed my legs to take me to Saffy’s table to grab Jess’s drink, my facial muscles have a life of their own, too. When the out-of-body thing happens, I have to just let go. Unfortunately this seems to make V
ictoria angrier than ever. She launches herself at me, across the table. Kicking and shrieking, she grabs my hair and pulls me to the floor. I feel the dull sensation of her fingernails scratching across my cheek. I feel her yanking at my hair as we tumble together across the hard floor, and my scalp begins to throb. And all the while, the ringing in my ears echoes on.
Then I feel a new sensation – something approaching actual pain – and I realize I am facedown now, with Victoria’s knee in my lower back. She’s pulling at my right arm as though she wants to twist it out of its socket. Seems a bit extreme. The ringing diminishes, and then other sounds begin to penetrate my hearing. A cacophony of voices, Saffy and the others, shouting at us to “Fight!” and to “Fuck her up!” I gasp for air and can taste only spilled orange juice, which would be funny if it were not for the fact that I can’t actually breathe.
The pressure lifts from my back. I feel my arm twist again, before it’s released. I allow it to drop to the hard floor, the sensation helping me to orientate myself back into the physical world. I place the flat of my hand against the floor and push and roll over onto my back. The ceiling seems so far away, a distant and gray sky punctured by sickly yellow lights.
“Both of you. My office, now.”
I push myself up into a seated position and see Victoria being dragged away by Principal Quick. Victoria is putting up quite the fight, but the principal is much stronger. Much fiercer. I notice that the principal is clutching on to Victoria by her hair. That’s got to hurt. And that’s also what I’d call poetic justice.
Around me, Saffy and the other girls cheer and applaud the unexpected breakfast floor show. Ignoring their taunts, I get back to my feet and dust myself down.
Without looking at any of their jubilant faces, I follow Quick out of the refectory.
* * *
It is absolutely peeing it down with rain as we both kneel in the exercise yard with our hands on our heads. My knees have gone past the burning-with-pain stage and are now into an unpleasant cramping sensation. I kneel there, willing my ears to start ringing, but of course they don’t. It’s Murphy’s Law that an out-of-body excursion won’t happen when I most need it to.
“Don’t think I can really take much more of this,” Victoria mutters through chattering teeth. “My hands are freezing.”
I give her the side-eye through the rain, and see her frowning at me.
“Are you actually a real, live human person?” she asks. “I mean, you’re not even shivering.”
Oh, but my knees are burning. “Think warm thoughts,” I say.
Victoria’s lips curl into a bitter smile as rain water pours down her face.
“Warm thoughts,” she replies. “That’s a good one.”
“You lack focus.” Now I am just fucking with her. You’ll forgive me. There’s not much else to do out here.
“And you sound like Principal Quick,” she says, and then sighs. “But I suppose I do lack focus. I lack a lot of things. Guess that’s why I’m here.”
Ah, here it comes. I wait.
“I have a bit of a temper…” she says, then trails off.
“I noticed,” I say.
She chuckles wetly before asking, “So why are you in here?”
Still, the ringing in my ears won’t come, however much I wish it would. “I don’t play that game.”
“Oh?” Victoria says, but she can’t disguise the inquisitiveness in her voice. “Have it your way.” She leans forward and searches my face for something. Her eyes darken, and I wonder why. Over her shoulder, I see Quick through the courtyard window, ever watchful, and I realize that I’m beginning to see the light.
“What is it?” Victoria asks.
* * *
We trudge down the hallway after Quick. Both soaked through, we leave wet footprints on the floor behind us as we walk. My legs are still a little wobbly from kneeling so long in the exercise yard. I guess Victoria’s are too, as we’re both having difficulty keeping up. We follow Principal Quick around a corner, and into a wider corridor where scrubbing brushes and buckets filled with soapy water await us.
“Now that you have cooled off,” the principal announces, “you are both on cleaning detail. I will be back in one hour for inspection. Make it spotlessly clean, or you will only have to do it again.”
She pauses for a moment, then glares at us sternly before she walks away.
Victoria sighs heavily. She kneels down on the floor beside the bucket and grabs a brush. I watch, still standing, as she soaks it in suds from the bucket, then begins to scrub the floor. There’s an awful lot of floor, folks. It’ll take hours to clean it all. My head begins to ache at the thought.
“Some help?” Victoria asks, and I neglect to answer.
I’m looking beyond Victoria and watching Quick’s shadow as it moves across the far wall, accompanied by the click-clack of her shoes across the hard floor of the corridor. The shadow disappears along with the noise of her footfalls.
It’s time to make my move.
“Hey! Where you going?” Victoria asks as I walk past her.
Ignoring her apparent frustration, I continue on, past the dark staircase set into the side of the hallway. I duck inside the stairwell to watch and wait for a moment. From my darkened vantage point I can see along the length of the adjacent corridor without being seen. It’s all clear. I feel a chill on the back of my neck, like a cold breath. I turn and see nothing except the stone steps leading up into the gloom. I return my attention to the corridor. Satisfied that no one is there, I take a deep breath and break cover. I move stealthily. My movements are controlled. I’m focused, watchful, and alert. I spy a crack of light in the main doorway. It’s ajar. I pad over to the door.
Just as I hoped, Principal Quick is standing outside puffing on a cigarette. I wait for a second, calculating my next move. But the principal is stubbing out her cigarette. She turns and heads back to the door. There isn’t much time. I must act now – or never.
As Principal Quick reaches the door, I kick it open. The door hits her, square in the face, and knocks her off balance. I see her put her hand to her nose, which is gushing blood. She makes a strange kind of garbled, gasping noise as I dash past her.
It’s a satisfying sound. Like music to my ears.
I sprint away into the rain. I’m not bragging, you understand, but I’m fast – really fast. A quick glance over my shoulder and I glimpse Principal Quick, clutching her bloodied nose, watching me go in shocked surprise. The damp air chills my throat. It feels pretty good, like the afterburn of an ice-pop. I run between the gateposts and out into the wilderness.
Chapter Six
The Path to True Rehabilitation
I keep running until I’m deeper into the stark wilderness.
Wild grasses and tall, slender trees surround me in the otherwise rocky landscape. I begin to feel a tightening in my chest, and then the pain of a stitch starts burning in my left side. I slow down to a jog and then to a walking pace. I turn, still walking, and look back at where I came from. No sign of Quick, of course; there’s no way she could keep up with me if she tried.
(Okay, maybe I am bragging now. Sorry, not sorry.)
And there’s no way on earth she’d trust one of the other girls to come find me, either. Not even golden girl Saffy. Or especially not her, if you know what I mean. I stop walking and turn to face the landscape ahead. Gray clouds are churning overhead and they dampen the daylight from the sky. The wind whistles through the tops of the trees, a siren song beckoning me to higher ground. I walk on, toward a steep, grassy bank. My calves are throbbing from the climb when I reach the top. I look down, and see a stony path winding its way along a ravine. The path is too narrow to have been formed by human traffic, and it is strangely comforting to speculate about which kinds of animals have trodden this path before me. I’m one of them now, let loose in the wild and free to
follow the undulating land. My stomach growls and I do my best to ignore the accompanying hollow sensation in the pit of my stomach.
I follow the path, enjoying the scent of the damp grasses growing in random clumps on the slopes either side of me. But, all of a sudden, the pleasant smell gives way to something foul. I hear the buzzing of insects and, pretty soon, my eyes find the source of the stench. The ruptured, broken carcass of a hare lies at the side of the path up ahead. Its gray-brown fur is loose, like a woolen sweater that’s been stretched, and is absolutely swarming with flies. I pull my clothing over my nose and mouth and hurry on by. I can’t help but see the hare’s body laid out as though it’s been dropped from a great height. I remember my dream about the clock tower and the girl. The hands, stuck at seven. And I remember how it felt to plummet toward the recreation yard, and a shudder passes through me, chilling me to my marrow.
(I tell myself that it’s just the wind making me feel cold.)
And so I hurry on, eager to be away from the dead hare. High above me, the sky boils with thunder clouds. I can almost feel the pressure of a gathering storm crushing down on me. Instinctively, I fold my arms around my body and, my head tucked down against the elements, I push on along the path. A few minutes later, and to my utter relief, the path leads me under tree cover.
With the canopy of trees above me, I feel hidden from the world. The trees are densely packed together, growing wild from wherever they’ve taken root. All the scents of the forest are alive in my nostrils and I breathe them in eagerly. Fresh pine blends with damp earth and the freshness of the wind, which becomes a gentle breeze the farther I walk into the forest. Twigs snap beneath my feet and leaf litter rustles. Pretty soon I’m walking on a soft, springy carpet of pine needles and I realize that the path has disappeared completely.
I’m lost in this forest, strolling all alone. Stark nature is all around me. It’s actually really glorious.
Then, I hear the pitter-patter of a few raindrops as they begin to fall on the leaves. Oh, crap. Nature might be glorious, but it is also unpredictable, and unforgiving. The sound of the rainfall builds as the heavens open.
