 |
| (This is a horror story, so pretend my bat is an axe) |
The Creature in the Trunk
When Robin walks she likes looking down at her feet. Most girls assume Robin walks that way because she is painfully shy. Not so. Her extreme shyness probably caused her to look down at her feet in the first place, of course, but her black patent leather school shoes were the real reason it became her standard walking posture. The shiny shoes looked so much prettier than all of her other shoes that they transfixed her. She loved to see how the shoes contrasted against the purple-gray concrete sidewalk and the speckled linoleum floor of the school halls. Sometimes she would even get lost following her own feet.
School uniforms were invented, in part, for students like Robin. Uniforms are meant to make all students look equal, even if they’re not. If the girls at Sacred Heart were to see the hand-me-downs Robin inherited from her older siblings she would be humiliated, but in her uniform she looked just like everyone else. She liked that.
On this day, Robin was walking across the lawn towards the gymnasium admiring how her black shoes clashed against the green grass when she smacked right in to junior class vice president Amber Charles.
“Just the person I was looking for,” Amber said. “I have a job for you.”
***
Amber led Robin along by her elbow, grasping on to her so tightly that Robin’s fingers were beginning to tingle for oxygen. Robin didn’t ask any questions, though; she just looked at her feet and let Amber drag her along. Amber Charles had never once spoken to her before, and Robin was already wishing it had stayed that way. She didn’t know what Amber and the twins had planed for her, but Robin figured the less of a fight she put up, the faster it would all be over with.
Amber led her behind the dining hall and down the stone steps to the cellar. She pulled Robin in to the dank room and locked the door behind them. Amber finally released her grip and walked to the back wall and pulled back a sheet revealing a secret door.
“If you ever tell anyone about what you’re about to see, you’re dead,” Amber said, as she bent over to unlock the door with a key hanging around her neck. Robin looked down at her shoes. Still shiny, even in the dark. She wasn’t really afraid- but she did wonder why bad stuff always seemed to happen to her.
As Robin had expected, Misty and Larissa were waiting for Amber on the other side of the door. The twins wore matching Sacred Heart cardigans and maroon slacks and were the junior class President and Secretary, respectively. They were sharing a joint in the windowless room, sitting on a large trunk.
“Did she come quietly?” Larissa asked. Misty cackled at the thought.
“Jesus, ladies. Next time, can you wait to smoke that at home?” Amber hissed, grabbing the joint from Misty’s mouth and smothering it on the dirt floor. “My mother drug tests me.”
“We wanted to get him high,” Misty said as she pounded on the trunk.
“Well now we’re all getting high, you, him and me!” Amber said with a scowl.
“Which brings us to the topic at hand,” Larissa said. “Robin, please come take my seat.” She stood and gave Robin her seat on the trunk. Misty scooted closer and gave Robin a big smile through the lingering smoke.
“You’ve always struck me as a girl who’d be really easy to manipulate,” Larissa said as she produced a little gray mouse from her cardigan pocket. “Also, you’re a loser so you’re probably willing to do whatever we say just so you can tell yourself you have friends. I’ve always been good at reading people-“
“Get to the point already,” Misty interjected as she jumped off the trunk and grabbed the mouse.
“Look, retard,” Larissa continued, “we bought an old grappling hook at the army surplus store and chucked it down the dried up well back behind the market. We heard it hit someone- he grunted and it echoed up. Turns out there was some kind of freak monster dude living at the bottom. As luck would have it, we happened to throw the hook down just at the right moment to hit him on the head. He got knocked out and so we hooked him and dragged him up. We carried him here and we’ve been torturing him since Friday.
“Now we need to go to a student council meeting, and we need someone to watch over that trunk to make sure he doesn’t get out. He’s injured so if a little blood seeps out of the bottom don’t worry.”
“And if you tell anyone about this?” Misty lifted the mouse up to Robin’s face, squeezed it so it squealed, then chucked it to the floor and smashed it with her shiny leather shoe. Robin scooted further back on the trunk, pulling her feet off the ground.
“We won’t be more than two hours,” Amber said. “We’ll hurry back, don’t worry. Just stay on that trunk. Don’t get off.”
“How come I should believe you?” Robin asked her in a low whisper. This was the first thing she’d ever said to any of them.
“Holy shit, she can speak!” Misty giggled.
“Hey you!” Larissa screamed at the trunk and pounded on it with her fists. “Can you prove you exist so we can go to our meeting?” She pounded and pounded until she was red in the face. Finally, he issued a long, deep moan that slowly morphed into the shriek of a tormented creature. That was more than enough proof to convince Robin.
“Was that so hard?” Larissa asked as she gave the trunk a kiss. “And Robin- I can already tell that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
And with that, the girls closed the door and locked it behind them, leaving Robin alone with the creature in the trunk.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment