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Scribe
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: I live in Scotland!
Gender: Female
Posts: 78
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Untitled Story about Young Witches
This was just my random writings, I'm not planning anything to come of it I'm just enjoying writing it but feedbag would rock!
There were these two schools, across the street from each other. Old families lent their largest estates to the education and intellect of the twenty-first century adolescent.
On one side of the street was St Bernard High School. A tall red bricked building with the exterior of a high security prison. Steel gates and fences stood tall with sharp points that stabbed the sky making the colours blend and melt around the barrier too bright to seem real. It was once owned by the Bernard family, a powerful family that once held place in parliament amongst several knighthoods and honours. The oldest member, Sir Patrick Bernard, was a tall man whose white beard whipped his chest back and forth with each step, and whose crinkled legs required the aid of an oak walking stick engraved with the family emblem. Which incidentally became the school motto, “Hold true to thou own faith, and god shall find thee.” The school was founded before its neighbour in nineteen-fifty-three (by the then young Sir Patrick) becoming the first Catholic school in the area under Father Stewart: a crippled old man with a bald head, white goatee and thick black robes making him seem far too small for the attire he adorned.
Since it opened the school had a reputation as one of the finest schools in the country, with the best teachers to the best subjects studied in Britain, from drama to biology and families returning with their children and grandchildren given scholarships to the highly recommended boarding school.
Until nineteen-seventy-eight when three girls were taken from the school in body bags. After this the school became a place for the rejects of other schools, shifted around by uncaring, too busy parents wishing to dispose of their children to the care of impartial teachers with too much to worry about in their own lives to play mother and father to the boys and girls under their watch.
Outside of the gates a car pulled up. The long black vehicle purred as the teenage girl stepped out onto the melting tar pavement to stare at the red bricked prison. Her hair was dyed a blood red colour, which had faded to ginger-blonde around her temples and tips. Her eyes were hazel and her skin pale from the thick amounts of powder she had caked on her face, little flecks of it punctuated her waxed brown brows; she had plastered a blue kohl pencil under her eyes giving the impression she hardly slept, with thick black eyeliner twisting into an oriental flick at the edge. She turned and pulled a heavy rucksack from the back seat of the car as her mother stepped out.
“So here we are Lizzie. St Bernard High, I went here you know? A fine school, real fine school.” Her mother mumbled at her gothic daughter, who was busy shading herself in the thin shadows of the fence. Lizzie smiled (if one could call the awkward snarl a smile) her mother was not one for emotional goodbyes, but here in the aura of her old stomping grounds her feelings were bubbling over onto a pathetic attempt to console Lizzie’s so-called abandonment issues.
“Yeah mother, you told me- twice,” her voice was harsh and high pitched.
“Remember Elizabeth: try and socialise, study and have some fun. Don’t just sit in your room praying to that god of yours and for goodness sake have respect for their beliefs.” She handed Lizzie a leather shoulder bag and a suitcase then got back in the car. “Oh, and cut down the Goth phase darling, it won’t help your popularity.” The engine roared and she drove off leaving a wave of dust splashing on Lizzie’s jeans.
Sighing deeply she turned and pushed open the gate which screamed as she closed it behind her. The building towered before her, shadowing her as she walked into the main entrance. It was a long room with a high ceiling, Lizzie gasped at the pure height of the room, assuming it was the size of all four floors, covering the walls were paintings of the Bernard family. The main portrait looked strangely detached, the faces upon the family were emotionless, straight and dead. The youngest member shared Lizzie’s name, and sat, emotionless and pale on her father’s knee. Young Elizabeth Bernard was beautiful and went on to be a famous actress and singer until at the age of twenty-nine she killed herself from a huge drug and alcohol overdose. Typical of my mother to send me to a place where my name represents death Lizzie thought, giggling inward, I bet she hopes I go the same way.
“Can I help you?” A voice from behind made her jump.
She turned to see an old woman with wrinkled skin and a hunched back. Lizzie grimaced slightly at the woman’s soft tones and her wispy unwashed scent. “Um… yeah sure you can. I’m a new student and I’m not really sure where to go.” Her tone was polite but extremely forced, as though the common niceties were a foreign language to her.
“And you’re mother left you at the gate you poor dear. Let me get you a drink while I look up your name.”
“Really that’s not-”
“Yes it is dear, hot chocolate with whole milk. What is your name?”
Lizzie stared at the woman, her sudden show of kindness unknown to all of what Lizzie remembered. The woman smiled softly: “your name dear?”
“Oh- Elizabeth (Lizzie) Short,” stuttering.
“Ok, my name is Mrs Windsor and I’m dorm advisor for the girls of our fine school.” Lizzie smiled at the word ‘fine’ same as her mother used to describe the place. ‘Place’ was a better description, no attachment, no in-depth love for it, just another ‘place’; another nameless garden at the back of a nameless house with nameless residents with emotionless faces. Just like the other three schools she had attended.
Mrs Windsor reappeared caring a steaming mug of hot chocolate (a bit silly for high August) but Lizzie took it in her small pale hands anyway and sipped gingerly at the sweet elixir. With a strange graceful hand Mrs Windsor began to type Elizabeth’s name into the purring computer, it buzzed with age then the printer shot out a copy of Lizzie’s timetable and room number. “Ahh,” Mrs Windsor said softly, “Room thirty two. You will have two roommates: Alicia Partial and Sandy Brooke. Lovely girls well brought up, well mannered girls. Hopefully you will get on well with them.” She smiled and handed over the timetable, leading Lizzie into a corridor marked “Girls Dormitory- Year Five.”
Every ten feet there was a door with big decorative signs with two or three girls’ names written in flamboyant glittery pink writing surrounded by sequins and assorted scribbles. “We like to encourage creativity into our students. Decorating their own signs is the first step to a happy creative environment.” Lizzie coughed what an idiot, like creativity is really what is on the students mind. Being honest with herself Lizzie had been looking forward to being at this school most. A mix boys and girls boarding school. What could be better to get some action? And by the looks of things so far the teachers had a very naïve her outlook.
They stopped outside a baby pink door covered in posters of stars, skulls, and men with Mohawks. How very punk, Lizzie thought, amused. On a sheet of A4 paper hanging ceremoniously from one piece of blue-tack was the names Alicia Partial and Sandy Brooke. Alicia’s name was written in a curly italic hand, the A curling down elegantly to start the P of her second name; Sandy’s writing was harsh and sharp, her S made out of three perfectly straight gagged lines. If anything had made Lizzie nervous so far her future roommates writing did. Writing says a lot about a person’s personality. The soft loops of Alicia’s writing suggested she was the most gentle of the two and perhaps the more intelligent, while Sandy looked to be the aggressive type.
“Go on then girl, dinner is at six.”
With that Mrs Windsor walked away leaving her standing staring at the door. Just as she was about to knock on the door it flew open. Standing in the doorway was a tall, slender man with broad shoulders and the look of a Native American. His eyes shone like beacons in his tanned face as he looked Lizzie up and down taking in everything from her kohl decorated eyes to her skinny jeaned legs. With sound like a growl from the back of his throat he shoved past her and walked out the way she had came.
“Hello!” The voice came from a small girl with chubby cheeks, curly mousy brown hair and big blue eyes. Her voice was soft and warm. With an uneasy grin Lizzie returned her enthusiastic greeting. She bounced up and down like bouncy ball singing an atonal tune to the words: “We have a new roommate, we have a new roommate, we have a new roommate hehehe.”
“Oi! Shut up a second will ya? I’m trying to study!”
“Oh be quiet honey we have company!” From a door on the opposite side of the room a tall, muscled girl with full lips and bright blonde poker straight hair swaggered in and sat on the pink covered bed. She could have been a wrestler from the muscles on her, but she still managed to look amazingly beautiful and feminine despite her intimidating build. “Who’s the wannabe Goth?” she said, slight amusement on her face as she digested Lizzie’s tight jeans, baggy band t-shirt, bright red hair and heavy black and white make-up.
Finding her voice she stammered, “Elizabeth Short, I just moved here.”
“Lizzie!” the smaller of her roommates squealed with delight, pushing a smile onto Lizzie’s cold unsure lips. “Please say people call you Lizzie! I love the name Lizzie! It’s just so pretty!” With contagious enthusiasm she grabbed Lizzie into a bear hug, with a lot more strength then would be thought for a girl of that height. “Sure…” she gasped, “Lizzie is fine Alicia…” The girl let go with a laugh.
“I’m not Alicia! That’s Alicia”-(she pointed to the blonde haired girl)- “My name is Sandy!” So writing obviously doesn’t tell you that much about a person, she thought.
“So what’s your story then?” Alicia asked, casually examining her painted fingernails.
“What do you mean?”
“What are you here for? Y’know, you don’t get here by being a good girl. Unless you’re Sandy of coarse,” she shot Sandy a knowing grin.
Lizzie blushed, “Oh right um well it’s kind of a long story-”
“Well hurry up Gothica or we’ll be here all night.”
“Ok. Well my mum used to go here and when I had been to a few schools that just didn’t work for me she sent me here,” she concluded abruptly.
Alicia snapped, “That’s your long story?” then wandered back into the other room, slamming the door behind her.
Crestfallen Lizzie put her bags on the floor and shut the still open door. Sandy sat on the unmade bed by the window. Without the attention of the two girls she had the chance to look around. It was a plain room, with white walls and drab grey curtains hanging from the windows, there were two singled beds, one against the inside wall and the other against the window. There were three doors in the room. One she assumed went to Alicia’s bedroom, the other back into the main hall, the third into the en suit bathroom with was tiled in the most unforgiving green that it made whoever stood inside look unhealthy. Sandy’s bed had bright pink covers with assorted Disney princess on it.
“That’s your bed there under the window Lizzie,” Sandy smiled pointing at the white unmade blankets she was sitting on. “Don’t mind Alicia. She has major pmt problems and needs a kick up the arse. She’s nice enough when you get used to her.”
“Cool.” With the help of Lizzie she made her bed with the dark purple oriental designed covers she had bought last year and unpacked her things into a chest of drawers by the wall. “So how long you been here for,” she asked the bouncy Sandy. After consideration she had decided she liked the smiley girl with the mad brown curls. She had a certain likeable quality above her ever smiling dimples, maybe it was the way she looked at you, but Lizzie just couldn’t find something she didn’t like.
“Since first year. My mum is a descendant of the Bernard family, so I kind of had to come here. Unlike most of the kids here I was given the scholarship as a member of the family. They act almost like I’m royalty,” she grimaced, “one of the few here who wasn’t dumped off. It is a good school though, I can’t much fault it. The teachers are still good. We get the best subject choices in the area and the food isn’t half bad either.” She smiled across the bed at Lizzie, who instinctively smiled back.
“So what’s the story with Alicia?”
With a pout Sandy went quiet, “It’s not really my place to tell you about Alicia. It’s her story to tell not mine. And the good book does say something about plagiarism doesn’t it?” Lizzie scowled, I forgot this place was a Catholic school. “I take it you’re not Catholic then?” Sandy asked smiling graciously.
“What gave me away?”
“The same look as I have when they are talking on Sunday service!” She grinned playfully.
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