Goldilocks and the British Accent

08 | The Awakening.

Goldilocks🚺

"What do you think happened to her?" A soft female voice asks.

The air around me reeks of the nauseating smell of medicine and disinfectant and although I can't see anything, I can tell that I am in a sick bay.

"Well, she's been lying here for a few hours," replies the much deeper voice of another female. "She's obviously tired. I think she was under the influence of a drug. The question though, is what drug?"

"But that's...that's absurd," the other woman reasons. "We searched her desk and her bag and we didn't find any questionable substances. All we found was a few textbooks and an open packet of..."

"Of what?"

"Of skittles."

Silence stretches on for a few seconds and I can feel the deeper voiced woman thinking. "I've never heard of this skittles before, it's probably one of those new drugs these teenagers have come up with," she begins. "But whatever it is, I'm sure she was high on it. She was high on skittles."

"What?" the first woman questions, her voice laced with exasperation and disbelief. "Skittles aren't even a type of—"

"Shh, she's waking up."

Little spots of light begin to dot my black clouded vision as my eyelids flutter open. My arms instinctively reach out to block me from the stinging rays.

"Aah," I groan, blinking rapidly and shielding my eyes from the lightbulb dangling directly above my face. "The light."

"How do you feel, Sophia?" a gray haired woman in a white knee length asks as she flicks of a light switch.

Propping myself up with my arms, I swing my legs off the clinic bed till I'm sitting upright. I lift one hand to my throbbing head. "I don't know... How did..." I begin, taking a brief glance of my surroundings. "How did I get here?"

The second woman raises her head and I instantly recognize her as Mrs Carren, the philosophy teacher I almost killed. "You don't remember anything?"

I pause to rack my brain for any memories of earlier happenings. Earlier happenings that may have lead me to the sick bay. I shake my head slowly.

"Not the skittles? Not the suffocating? Not even Mr Terrence? Nothing?" Mrs Carren prods.

Embarrassment floods my cheeks as I lower my gaze to the polished tiles beneath me. I shut my eyes before letting out a long sigh. "All I remember is that I came to school this morning, tired and exhausted from yesterday—"

"What happened yesterday?" the nurse interrupts.

"I was at a party."

"A party on the night before a school day. Shame on you Soniya."

"It's Sophi—"

"Whatever, you should have known better," she chides.

I let out a silent curse. How does she expect me to explain if she won't let me finish?

"It was a formal party," I clarify. "And there was a fire."

"Oh," she raises a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with surprise. "The one on the news yesterday?"

I nod in affirmation. This morning, I woke up to the irritating sound of a female news reporter screaming into the microphone and exaggerating on the fire that had occurred. According to the same news channel, it was a stray bolt of lightning that set the tall building aflame.

It was a clear moonlit night, devoid of any clouds or rain. So where did this supposed lightning bolt come from? Maybe Donald Trump had a point about the fake news issue.