Insanity Stains Red

eight

“Why haven’t you asked me about my bruises?” I could tell I had caught him off guard, the shock on his face confirmed as much. He looked to be at a loss for words, his gaze flicking around the room – looking at everything and anything as long as he didn’t have to meet my eyes. Finally, he regained his composure and a calm demeanour settled over him.

“I assumed that it was something you would tell me if you wanted me to know – what goes on in your personal life has nothing to do with me unless you wish it to; that’s your choice.” His eyes were serious as he gazed at the black marks pocketing my hands and face, now that the rest of my body was covered from view. “Is it something you want to talk about? I am still a teacher and here to listen, despite our current arrangement.”

“No” I muttered, looking away from his knowing gaze. “And I don’t have a problem with our arrangement; it works, that’s what matters.” I sighed and collected my bag from the ground, my mind a tumult of confusing emotions; at the front of it all was anger. “I’ve got to get to class, see ya.” I slung the backpack over my shoulder and walked out without looking back or waiting for a reply, though I wasn’t sure the later would have come anyway.

I stopped outside the gym and squinted up into the bright sunlight, shielding my eyes with one hand. I hated sunny days – they illuminated everything in a way that made you think there was actually some hope left in this world; it was deceiving. Night time was so much better – you could pretend all you want in the dark, but no one was fooled. As the saying goes; all cats look grey at night.

First period would almost be over by now, so there was no point showing up there – doing so would only succeed in gaining me detention. No, it was much better to miss it entirely and make up excuses later. I decided I might as well head to Politics class and just sit in the corridor for the last ten minutes or so; I took my time walking.

Mr Jenkins never arrived. The class milled outside the room for at least ten minutes, bored at restless. I frowned, wondering what was going on – Mr Jenkins had not missed a single class this year, ‘Something must be up. This isn’t like him – is it because of us?’ I was certainly starting to become concerned. After another five minutes, a substitute hurried up, looking harried and out-of-breath. She unlocked the door and ushered us all in, directing us to take our seats and open our books; we’d be working on revision this lesson.

Typical substitute-run class, all in all. They were always too scared of messing up the teacher’s curriculum to teach us anything new, or they just didn’t give a crap. I was pretty sure this teacher fell into the former category, her anxious behaviour giving away her obviously up-tight nature. I was betting she was a perfectionist; a perfect fit for Mr Jenkins and his piles of papers. I was going to have to figure out what was up with him and his disappearing act – I couldn’t afford for things to go wrong now.

‘Maybe he’s just having a day off because he’s sick? It’s not unreasonable, even teachers get sick sometimes.’ Maybe, but he hadn’t seemed the least bit sick yesterday when we were doing the dirty. I decided to wait until tomorrow. I didn’t have class with him, but I could talk to him in his office – and if he didn’t show, then I’d find out his address and hunt him down at home to figure out what the hell was going on.

I couldn’t focus on anything, the voices whispering crazy ideas in my head, reasons why I was screwed ten ways ‘till Sunday. Ideas that involved the FBI and jail and… Well, when even I could recognise they were crazy, you knew I had a problem; I knew? You knew. Oh, what the hell. I couldn’t stay at school, too many things had gone wrong, I was frustrated and bloodthirsty, and I needed to escape for the day. It’s not like I would miss anything important.

I waited out the class like a good girl, but then a soon as that bell rang to dismiss us, I gathered my things and kept walking – straight out the school gates. There were no teachers to stop me, no security to chase me down. My school was quite lax, and I found that useful when I was in one of my moods. The only question now was how I was going to spend the rest of the day; there were no buses that came past this way to take me into town; I was on my own. At least until I hatched a plan. The darkness stirred within me once more. It was finally time for blood; we’d been patient long enough. But first, we had tools to be gathered.