Nigel slowly encroached upon Gertrude who was sat next to a mighty oak tree that was seemingly felled recently. She held her head in her arms with her knees burying her face as she sobbed. Why she was sobbing was a mystery beyond Nigel’s comprehension, his acute mathematical ability would not be able to solve this riddle. He wanted to sooth her, tell her everything was going to be alright, to comfort her in her time of need. But ultimately, he wanted to take advantage of a girl in a vulnerable state in order to satisfy his own selfish needs and maybe get a kiss on the cheek as a reward. He did not get any of those things.
When he approached Gertrude he extended his arm to somehow reassure her by placing his hand on her shoulder. He was nervous. He had never touched a girl in such manner before. He had never touched a girl at all before He took another step closer with his arm outstretched then he called to her.
“Gertrude” His disembodied voice was like a whisper in the wind. Gertrude looked up from her arms to trace the voice.
“Gertrude, I’m here for you” Nigel’s hand was almost within touching distance of her shoulder. His fingers grazed the fine cotton of her cardigan. Gertrude’s fingers were wrapped around Nigel’s spine.
In her confusion and alarm, Gertrude had thrust out her hand thus penetrating Nigel’s insides and grasping his spine only to wrench her grip towards herself yanking Nigel’s spine out of his stomach in the process. Gertrude felt the warm dousing of blood which leapt out of Nigel to soak Gertrude’s already blood-soaked cardigan. She looked down to find a chunk of bone in her grip.
Nobody ever found Nigel’s body. Over time, various animals were astonished at the realistic tasting meat at the imaginary tea parties they held at his corpse. His face was never plastered on milk cartons because nobody had noticed that he’d gone.
GERTRUDE
Is it wrong to be strong? Of course not, people are free to make their own life choices and such a question is rather irrelevant. Some people choose to spend their free time getting buff at one of the many shrines to fitness with their great halls of metal and legions of shakers containing every form of protein available – in most cases in the same shaker. There are also some people who choose not to go to the gym and spend their time doing other things, and that’s just fine and dandy too. That being said, what about the people who don’t get a say in the matter at all and are just super strong without any kind of training, formal or otherwise?
The latter scenario, despite its many physiological inaccuracies is what befell Gertrude. She would typically fall under the category of person who has zero interest in becoming strong, she liked reading books, studying hard, being alone and avoiding all other people like the plague. As such, she was very academic and achieved high marks across all classes – with the exception of physical education of course. The academic side of high school was a breeze for Gertrude, the social aspect was a little more challenging to say the least. She loathed her fellow students for having inferior intellects and they in turn loathed her for being an insufferable know-it-all. But that suited Gertrude just fine as she was of the disposition that if she couldn’t maintain a stimulatingly intellectual conversation with someone then they weren’t worth the time nor the effort. Even the fellow nerds didn’t like Gertrude, but not because she was a know-it-all, but rather because she knew more than them and they were jealous of that fact. Nerds can be just as vicious as the ‘popular’ kids, except they can lace their insults with quotes from long-dead philosophers and reference the author, publication date and page number to boot. The issue with their insults was that there were very few people that could understand them and therefore very few people were actually insulted by them.
Gertrude’s high school, for all its ineptness, did contain a library. A shabby affair with many a dog-eared book gracing the shelves in no discernible order. The books were neither organised by author’s last name nor organised by genre, resulting in copies of The Great Engineers of Ancient Egypt sitting next to copies of Bill and Ben the Crackpot Men. The librarian had been with the school for so long that she had become part of the furniture, it was even rumoured that she slept in the library nestled amongst all of the shoddy tomes. Once upon a time, the headmaster had sought her removal as a result of the terrible lack of organisation expected from a librarian, but she countered by throwing him under her desk and having her way with him. When the headmaster emerged from the depths of the desk, he was covered in lipstick marks, his hair was a mess and his clothes were barely on his person. Such activity would’ve been better performed outside of school hours but neither adult had the foresight to do this as students looked on and took notes in fear of there being a test on the matter. Ever since that romp in the library, the librarian had maintained her post and maintained minimal standards of organisation.
Gertrude was sat in the library reading a voluminous volume regarding philosophy, far too advanced for a girl of her age, when a nerd by the name of Conrad happened across her.
“To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die. As such, I hope you study it in a timely manner” Conrad had fired the first shot, but Gertrude was uninterested in formulating a cutting response. Instead, she simply glared at Conrad, which was enough to send him fleeing in terror. Conrad had tucked his shirt into his underwear again revealing his name stitched into his waistband, it was clearly legible even as he was running away in a manner that resembled a waddling penguin. Gertrude simply rolled her eyes and then resumed reading her book when the school bell rang, indicating it was time to get to class.
That day’s itinerary included a physics class, which was the class that the bell signalled the beginning of. Gertrude enjoyed physics as it heavily involved mathematics. Anything involving numbers was a doddle to Gertrude, she enjoyed the black and whiteness of it, there was no room for creativity, simply right or wrong answers of which Gertrude was always right. The physics curriculum had just reached the part on quantum mechanics, admittedly a rather advanced topic to cover in a high school and so it was inevitably diluted heavily in order for it to seep into the young minds in attendance. Conrad was there of course, as was the quiet boy Nigel, who was also a nerd but a particularly quiet one that nobody really paid much attention to. Gertrude, being ever-observant, had noticed Nigel and respected his solitary life, she was a little envious of it in fact, as he could get stellar grades in most any class and not be subjected to the jealousy of the other nerds. It must be nice, she thought, to be able to blend into the background and just get on with things.
The class itself was somewhat of a joy for Gertrude, she answered every question and even the questions she wasn’t asked. The teacher found her a bore as she would always have her hand up and give additional details about quantum mechanics that not even the teacher was aware of. After all, the teacher had only read about the topic the night before and hastily prepared a presentation as is the norm with high school teachers. It got to the stage where the class was semi-taught by Gertrude herself, much to the annoyance of her fellow classmates who moaned and groaned at the sound of her nasally voice. They would get their own back when Physical Education was due.
Phys-Ed was indeed due, it was the class immediately following Physics, most likely because they shared the same first few letters, and required all of the boys and girls to separate into their respective changing rooms in order to wreak havoc when the teacher wasn’t looking. The changing rooms were war zones, places where the watchful eye of the phys-ed teacher was not present. Providing the students didn’t make too much noise, they could get away with murder if they wanted, not that they ever did, the worst thing to happen was a broken limb or two and that didn’t incur much heightened surveillance. It was imperative that the students got changed as quickly as possible or face their clothes being stolen. The showers were in disrepair and never frequented because students can be quite bashful when it comes to undressing in front of their peers. Regardless, there was never a foul smell in the changing rooms, in its place was the scent of de
odorant, Wildcat body spray (known as Hatchet in everywhere but the UK) for the boys and an array of scents for the girls, mostly flowery in composition. Naturally, Gertrude was in the girls’ changing rooms, and she was on guard.
With all high schools, and every year group therein, there are groups of girls who are considered the most popular ‘it-girls’, usually a group of four or five girls that all of the boys pined for and one extra who wasn’t on the same scale of attractiveness but made up for in personality. Tammy, Tina, Tara, Tamsin and Phyllis were the ‘it-girls’ of Gertrude’s class, the latter of which being the aforementioned ‘extra’. They liked to flaunt their popularity in the changing rooms by tormenting the other girls.
“Gertrude, I think you’re in the wrong changing room, don’t you?” Tammy was the leader of this particular pack.
“Yeah, shouldn’t you be in the boys’?” Tina drove home the point, as she often did. She was the second in command and would always be there to clarify any insult Tammy would throw. Secretly she was dating the same boy as Tammy and had designs on leadership.
“You’re ugly” Tara wasn’t the most imaginative of the bunch but could be relied on to add another jibe when the moment called for it. Tamsin, however, was of the ilk that preferred to leer at people and kiss her lips at any opportunity, which she was doing as the insults were thrown. Phyllis didn’t join in on the insults as she was more interested in the upcoming game of netball, she was the captain of the school team after all and took her Phys-Ed class seriously.
“I would slap you, Gertrude, but I’ve just had my nails done. You just wait until they grow out and then I will get you good!” Tammy’s nails were indeed shellacked, though she wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
“Good one, Tammy”
“Shut up, Tara you little bitch”
Typically, the Phys-Ed teacher would allow ample time for the students to get changed, half of the lesson in fact, in order to get away with not having to teach for a full hour. Not that Phys-Ed involves much actual teaching. When thirty minutes had passed, the burly Ms. Scanlan entered the changing rooms.
“Right, get to the court ladies, let’s play with some balls” Gertrude had hoped by court the teacher meant a mock trial of sorts, but such hopes were whimsical fantasy, that she knew, and so she dragged herself onto the court for a rigorous ten minutes of netball before ultimately ending up back in the changing room to face the torment of the ‘it-girls’.
Ms. Scanlan divided the class into two teams, previously she would assign two captains and let them pick their team mates but this would always result in someone feeling terrible for being picked last and so Scanlan opted to do the job herself. Every student hoped to be on Phyllis’ team as they knew that she could win a game single-handed. Gertrude was, surprisingly, placed on that very team.
“Alright Ladies, let’s play Netball!” Scanlan tossed the ball high in the air with so much strength that it touched the ceiling and bounced back ferociously heading towards Gertrude. It was as though the ball was travelling in slow-motion as Gertrude saw it getting closer and closer. She stepped aside and held out her hands, catching the ball. The first touch was Gertrude’s. She had no interest in actually playing the game and just wanted to blend into the background which is why she remained firmly behind all of her team-mates, but the ball was in her hands so she had no choice but to interact with it. She looked up and saw Phyllis so decided that she would know what best to do with it. It was only meant to be a simple pass of the ball to a much more experienced and talented player but when Gertrude released it, there was such force behind the ball that it went straight passed Phyllis and into the opposing team’s net, scoring a point.
“Gertrude! That was incredible, keep it up lass!” It was indeed incredible, Gertrude had scored a point from the other side of the court. In Gertrude’s school the system for dishing out rewards and punishments involved coloured slips of paper. The pink slip was a reward for when a student did something noteworthy, whereas the yellow slip was a punishment for when a student did something that was also noteworthy but for a different reason. Scanlan awarded Gertrude a pink slip there and then for the once-in-a-lifetime shot, Gertrude’s first pink slip for Phys-Ed in her entire time at school. Phyllis approached Gertrude, sending a shock of fear through her.
“Good shot” Phyllis patted Gertrude on the shoulder. When it came to sport, Phyllis didn’t let playground politics get in the way of victory.
The whistle was blown indicating the end of the game. Gertrude’s team had won, unsurprisingly considering they had the school netball captain on their team. All of the students filed into the changing rooms for round two of the ongoing war. To Gertrude’s surprise there was no war though. The ‘it-girls’ were glaring at her of course but that was soon ended by Phyllis glaring right back at them, offering a moment of respite and reward for the terrific performance.
In a bizarre twist of fate, the next day’s agenda had Phys-Ed first and then Physics afterwards, the head teacher clearly couldn’t bring themselves to separate the two phys’ and so whenever one class was first, the other would inevitably follow and vice-versa. Gertrude was having an especially bad day after having got out of the wrong side of the bed, this was a particularly trying scenario as the wrong side was pressed against a wall. She fathomed that it could be due to Aunt Irma’s imminent arrival, although her aunt was not scheduled to visit anytime soon and was loathe to do so. Aunt Irma was her father’s sister and she never much liked Gertrude, often spitting on her as she spoke. Vile woman that Aunt Irma. Alas, to make matters worse, Gertrude had to face the terrors of Phys-Ed first thing in the morning.
Ultimate-Frisbee was the sport of the day, a mash-up between the ancient art of discus throwing and the hooligan infested game of football. Ms. Scanlan was keen for the students to play and so reduced the changing time to a curt ten minutes. It wasn’t clear at first why the teacher was so eager at playing Ultimate-Frisbee until she gave impassioned instructions on the many ways to throw the disc. There was the traditional flick of the wrist, the backhand, the over-arm lob, the reach-around and her personal favourite – the mighty tug. Scanlan threw each technique with immense accuracy whereas the students failed to throw more than two feet. Tammy was reluctant to throw anything with her shellacked nails but Phyllis was switched on by any sport and approached it with as much ardent fury as her teacher. Due to budget cuts, the Phys-Ed department was woefully underfunded and could only afford a meagre amount of Frisbees, far from enough for one each, and so the class of thirty was split into groups of 14 and 16 with two Frisbees to spare. Scanlan was never good at mathematics, hence why she taught Phys-Ed.
When the disc finally reached Gertrude, she caught it with ease and paused. It took her a moment to determine the optimal technique to use to despatch the disc to her classmate less than two feet away. Opting for the traditional flick of the wrist, Gertrude let loose the spinning saucer to the amazement of her teacher and classmates. The disc shot out of Gertrude’s hand and was sent flying far into the distance. Scanlan reached into her pocket to award a pink slip of paper, the highest honour in the school for minor achievements such as this. She took out a pen from her top pocket and wrote Gertrude’s name on the mighty pink slip, two Phys-Ed pink slips in two days, it truly was a bizarre twist of fate kind of day.
“Very good, but can you do the mighty tug?” Scanlan commanded.
Gertrude was wary of attempting such an advanced technique, however, the allure of a pink slip was too intense to pass up the opportunity. She stretched her puny arm muscles and positioned her elbow as demonstrated by the teacher. But the technique was too advanced for such a novice as Gertrude and the disc shot out of her hand and was sent flying into Tammy’s leg. Tammy collapsed in apparent agony, clutching the place where the Frisbee struck. She cursed Gertrude, calling her every name under the sun, but everyone thought she was over reacting. In her peripheral vision, Gertrude could see Ms. Scanlan tearing the pink slip in two. After some
time bawling on the floor, the teacher realised that Tammy wasn’t faking her injury and called on two of her classmates to take her to the sick bay. She pulled Gertrude to one side.
“That was a mighty throw, Gertrude. Which is why I’m not going to give you a yellow slip. You understand that I cannot give you a pink slip either as that would set a bad example to your fellow students. Now get to the changing room. Class dismissed”
The herd of semi-sweaty young girls headed towards the war zone that was the changing room. A few of the girls lingered outside to chat to the boys who had just returned from a session of rugby caked in mud and sweat. Gertrude immediately entered the changing room and hastily got herself changed for her Physics class. As fortunate would have it, the ‘it-girls’ were not in the changing room as they had escorted their comrade to the sick bay moments prior. As a result, Gertrude was free to change in relative peace for once without incident.
The physics class was in full swing, with the teacher garbling about one of nature’s mighty forces when the head teacher entered the classroom and summoned Gertrude to her office. It didn’t take a genius to determine the reason for Gertrude’s sudden summoning. Tammy wasn’t in the physics class and so it was logical that the Frisbee incident in the previous class was what had sparked this summoning.
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