Insanity Stains Red

three

Over the three years that I had been at this school, I must have brought home at least fifty books for Rose to read, if not more. She had devoured each and every one of them with such joy that I couldn’t bear to point out to her the trouble we’d both be in if father ever found out about it. Instead, I just made sure that didn’t happen. Rose was the only person I could even begin to consider as my friend, and I’d do almost anything to protect her.

Huckleberry Finn was the book of choice today, with the sly knowledge that I had an English assignment coming due on this very book. That was another advantage to having Rose about; she liked to gush about the books she read, so I would end up knowing everything I needed to know for the assignment, without having to study it at all myself. ‘Smart thinking there, Red - That old crone won’t know any better, but you’ll only have to do half the work.’  I don’t really want to do any of the work. ‘Well it’s not like you can sleep with this one to boost your grades.’ You never know, I might- no, never mind. Even if she did swing that way, I don’t think I could stomach that with someone so old. Even her warts have growths!

Glenda was still waiting for me at the front desk, her kind smile unwavering, as if someone had cut it from cardboard and sewed it to her face. I wondered what she’d think if she knew what I’d just been up to with Mr Jenkins. Not that I cared, but it was always interesting to me how people looked at the world so differently, and the fact that you couldn’t always tell who thought in which way until you started an actual conversation with them – something I did rarely. But then, maybe I just didn’t understand differences as easily because I had been raised in a group of very like-minded people. There was only one right way to do things; my father’s way, the way of our god.

Knowing that if I dawdled any longer I would miss my bus, I tucked the book neatly into my backpack and headed towards the front of the school. I didn’t encounter any other students on my walk, though there were a couple waiting in the bus bay still. Most students understandably didn’t like hanging around at school any more than absolutely necessary, so there was generally a mad rush for the gates and the waiting busses when that final bell rang I personally didn’t mind waiting, I found the near-deserted last bus preferable to the over-crowded early ones. Not to mention, it gave me good reason to stay out for longer. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my home, but when you spent your whole life staring at the same pieces of furniture in the same house, pouring over the same boring-old rituals, you tended to value every moment you got to spend away from that environment; boring school work or not.

The bus let me off in the middle of the suburb, not the kind of place you’d suspect to find the sort of house I lived in. ‘The strangest of things happen in the most normal of places.’ The voices had a point, though I suppose it depended on what you called normal. My life was normal to me because that was the way I had been raised. It was the rest of the world that didn’t make sense. I wrapped my hands around myself and walked to the trail at the end of the street. It was the wrong way to go for home, but I needed to check my traps.

The forest was a place I went to as often as I could – my little hideout away from everything. ‘Oh look! That’s a pretty tree. Maybe you should burn it.’ I stopped dead and frowned. Seriously?! The voices tell me to burn things? How unoriginal. Can’t you come up with anything more original? ‘Well, you could always pee on it, but marking your territory seems a little extreme, under the circumstances.’ I shook my head and began walking again. Okay, so sometimes the voices didn’t make a lick of sense even to me. Besides, if I marked my territory, it might scare away the animals – and then what would I feed to Buster and Lulu?

Most of the traps were empty, as was to be expected. Just because it was a forest didn’t mean it was overflowing with little creatures. And even if it was, that didn’t necessarily mean that there’d be that many stupid enough to get caught in traps. I had to keep moving the damn things around, else the animals learned which places to avoid, and that got me nowhere. I checked each trap as I went past, making sure they were still fully functional, even if it looked like they hadn’t been disturbed since my last visit here two days earlier.