12 – Chuck

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“Well I hope you’re feeling better after getting that off your chest,” the Caretaker said, “and good call running away from a stranger, especially when you’re on your own like that. Now, before I call your parents to come in and take you all home, perhaps Chuck might entertain us with one final tale, seeing as how his friends are refusing to?”

Chuck stuck out his tongue. “Haven’t got one.”

The Caretaker shrugged. “Pity. I was curious to know what kind of horrible fancies might spew from a mind like yours.”

“You can keep wondering then.”

The Caretaker pointed to a corner of the hall. “I left a pack of plastic cups and a drink for you guys. Good job everyone. Try to keep the school tidy from now on.”

He left the hall and the children gathered around the table. Hagman barged ahead and poured Chuck the first cup. He drank it, then turned the bottle upside-down and splashed the soda across the newly cleaned floor.

“What the hell?” Trystyn said.

“Chuck, you’re a monster,” Wyllow said.

Hagman and McQueen cracked their knuckles and stood either side of him.

“You’re right,” Chuck said, “I am a monster. In fact, now I think about it, I actually do have a story of my own. It’s about just what kind of monster I can be.”

“So you were just being spiteful,” Freya said. “You only said nothing happened to you because you don’t want the Caretaker to hear it.”

“You’re right, I don’t. But seeing as we’re all friends here, why don’t I return the favor for hearing about your lives?”

Helen scowled. “We’re not your friends.”

Chuck smiled and sat on the opposite side of the puddle. McQueen and Hagman sat too. The others looked at each other and without a word, sat down as well.

“Does everyone have a drink?” Chuck smirked, ignoring their grumbles. “No? Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin.”

Chuck’s Story

I was new to this school, new to the town. I had no friends or family but my dad, and he never spared me a second thought. My first day here, two meatheads called McQueen and Hagman, with arms as wide as their heads and heads so empty their brains could share the inside of a walnut and still have room to spare, they took a shine to me. See I’m a weed. Apparently weedy bodies make great punching bags.

I learned fast the only way to avoid a beating was to stay hidden, to not make myself a target. What I didn’t take into account was how few opportunities to find new victims these two had.

The other students never had it so easy, not since I came to the school. Did they help me with their newfound peace? Did they offer friendship or pity for what I was going through? Oh, no. They saw me coming and they cleared out. Better to be a spectator than in the arena, right?

So one day, while hiding in the toilets, I heard the usual thumps they call footsteps outside the doors. The windows in there were high and small, and there was nowhere to run. I clenched my fists and I braced for the worst.

“If you need a hiding place, I’ve got one right here,” a voice on my left said.

Only there was no ‘on my left’. There were only the sinks, mirrors and a wall. Still, that didn’t bother the owner of the voice.

“In here.”

I stepped back. That couldn’t be right. My reflection didn’t copy me. It grinned out from the opposite side and stepped out of the way.

“You can stand there waiting to get pummelled or you can slip in here and get some answers, Chuck. What’ll it be?”

McQueen and Hagman’s footsteps stopped outside the door. I tapped at the mirror but my hand found nothing but empty air. Then the door handle squeaked and I jumped, and realised without thinking I’d jumped into the mirror.

I slipped through without any transition, no feeling I’d gone into another world or any special effects. I’d simply slipped into a hole in the wall and entered a room that looked exactly like the one I came from, only reversed.

“This way,” my reflection said from around a corner.

He took my hand and pulled me through the wall. Again, there was no feeling of anything. It was as if the wall wasn’t there, just more air that happened to look like a wall, some intangible illusion.

From the other side, I could see Hagman’s and McQueen’s reflections, as if they were real people. They searched the stalls for me.

“That was close, my friend,” my reflection said.

I turned to face him and screamed. He wasn’t my reflection anymore. Now he was a skeleton. A living, grinning, not-breathing skeleton.

“Oh, god, don’t kill me!” I said, tripping back and falling to the floor.

“Relax, I won’t hurt you,” the skeleton said. Curiously, his jaw didn’t move when he spoke. He crouched down beside me. “In fact, little buddy, I’m here to make your day.”

He held out a hand. Thinking it was better not to anger the creepy undead man, I took it. His fingers felt like polished wood. A veneer of brown, rusty or scab textured putty filled the gaps between his bones and formed a skin over his whole skeletal frame, and for someone with no muscle he was surprisingly strong when he pulled me up.

“Look around you,” he said. “See what we have?”

We were on a plateau or a balcony. Stretching in every direction was a dark sky of castles or cathedrals or citadels suspended in mid-air, all connected by towers and arched aqueducts. Braziers burned along their walkways, illuminating the steam of red canals fed by gargoyles, who drained the same canals to feed the infinite web of them below.

“Am I in Hell?” I croaked.

“No, far from it.” The skeleton said. He grinned somehow as he said that. I don’t know how, but he managed it. “This is paradise.”

As far as paradise went, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

“What do you want with me?”

Two more skeletons approached. Like the first, they were bones vacuum sealed in brown crap, yet they’d clearly made efforts to individualise their looks. One was pierced with chains and a Mohawk of iron spikes while the other wore a leather jacket and sunglasses. The didn’t speak, although Sunglasses offered me a plate of cinnamon rolls he seemed to pull out of nowhere.

“We know you’re new to that school, “the first skeleton said. “We’ve been watching it a long time. There’s a power in there, something we can’t identify. So here’s the deal. You act as our spy and in return, we take care of your bully problem for you.”

I swallowed before answering. “What would I need to do?”

“You investigate everyone while they’re in the school itself. Stick these in the pockets of the staff and children, and our trackers will follow them outside it.”

The skeleton pulled open one side of his ribcage, like he was reaching into an inner jacket pocket, and pulled out a small leather pouch. He placed it in my hand and opened it. It was filled with tiny, shiny seeds.

“Are you going to hurt them?”

“Only if they’re a threat. We’ll wipe their memories of us once we’re done. Do we have a deal?”

The skeleton stuck out a hand.

“What are you?”

It struck a pose. “I’m a Dralbon, can’t you tell?”

“A what-mon? Is that your name?”

“I’m called the DraftsMan. And I’m drafting you, Chuck. Do we have a deal?”

“I just plant these seeds on people and in return, the bullies become history?”

The DraftsMan shook my hand. “I’ll go one better, boy. You help us capture that power, I’ll grant you immortality. You can live forever as one of us.”

He pointed to the reflection illusion. Hagman and McQueen were lying face down on its floor, bound and gagged by their own reflections. Hagman’s flickered and from underneath it, the iron spiked Dralbon gave me a thumbs up. The DraftsMan returned it.

“Good job, boys,” he said, then turned to me and pointed a thumb at them. “My guys here will aid you in any way and keep you safe. And here, take this. You look like you need a little more meat on your bones, at least while you still need some.”

He shoved the whole plate of cinnamon rolls into my hand and ushered me back through the wall, back to where the reflections of Hagman and McQueen helped me through the mirror and into my world. When I turned back around and put my hand to it, the mirror was solid once more. My protectors saluted me and I felt the weight of the sack of seeds in my hand. I put it in my pocket.

“Alright, boys, let’s get to work,” I said, taking a bite from the first roll. “I want to live forever.”