Emmie Rolland's Life as Told by the Nutcase Herself #3

Later that day, during gym class, we discovered that our class was being combined with a boys’ class because there apparently wasn’t enough room for everyone to have separate classes and something had to give. I didn’t appreciate that gym class was the one we had to share with the boys because of many reasons:

1. Gym class makes people sweaty and red-faced, which is not exactly the opportune moment to connect with someone of the male gender.

2. As I said before, I have very minimal hand-eye coordination and thus embarrass myself whilst trying to playing various sports.

3. Gym class is the class that Libby excels at, thus giving her more time alone with the boys that she seems to have connected with. And, well, I’m a selfish person. I want some time with some cute boys.

4. Boys playing sports is frightening if you’re being forced to join them. It is one thing to have weak, fragile girls with zero upper body strength toss dodge balls at your legs and a whole other thing entirely to have strong, muscular, competitive boys hurl dodge balls at alarming speeds at your face.

5. No one looks attractive in our gym uniforms, especially while running, jumping, or weeping from the pain of having a dodge ball thrown at your face.

6. Ms. Kalenstein insists on wearing gym shorts even though she probably hasn’t shaved her legs since 1973 and she has so much leg hair one could plausibly cornrow it. Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing just to be associated with her.

Anyway, we were playing dodge ball in gym class, because there was a torrential downpour outside, which normally wouldn’t have stopped Ms. Kalenstein, but Mr. Davis, the gym teacher from St. Francis, seemed to think it would be inhumane. He wasn’t wrong. In any case, I said we were playing dodge ball, but most of us girls weren’t so much as playing as sitting on the sidelines on account of being walloped with balls so often. We actually got out more than we played. Libby, in the other hand, was keeping up with the best of the boys, as was Ruby, who also had promising athletic ability. In fact, together they had actually made some of the ganglier and geeky looking boys cry. I was rather impressed, actually.
“I hate sports,” Julia said, nursing yet another split lip, the second of that week, actually. She was watching Ruby pelt boys with dodge balls, glowering darkly.
“Yes, well, evidently, sports hate you too,” Poppy replied. Giselle, meanwhile, was filing her nails. Normally, Ms. Kalenstein would’ve shouted at her until she was blue in the face and every vein in her body was bulging, but she seemed to have become rather smitten with Mr. Davis, the other gym teacher. It was very amusing to watch as he did not return the same feelings, but I can’t say that I blame him. Her abundance of leg hair alone was reason to never speak to her again.
“I love this game,” Ruby said, coming to join us after finally getting hit in the left knee with a dodge ball. She beamed at us and sat down, looking breathless, yet surprisingly not that sweaty. Julia just glared at her in an ironic way, holding ice to her bleeding, swollen lip, but Ruby didn’t get it.
“Hey, Ruby! You’re back in!” One of the guys called from across the gym, though it technically should’ve been someone else’s turn to rejoin the game, not that any of us really minded. Honestly, the less dodge ball I played, the better.
“How can anyone enjoy this game so much?” Giselle asked as Ruby ran off to play dodge ball. Giselle was still filing her nails and looked wholly uninterested in everything around her.
“Well, I guess if you’re good at it…,” Piper shrugged. She and her twin sister Poppy both stood up and left to refill their water bottles that they had drunk merely out of sheer boredom opposed to necessity. They certainly weren’t doing enough physical activity to be dehydrated.
“Hello, ladies,” one of the gangly geeks that Ruby and Libby had managed to bean in the first few moments of the game sidled up beside my friends and myself, smiling sheepishly in a supposedly attractive manner. It wasn’t very attractive.
“Uh…hi,” Julia replied, looking at the guy in shock. He grinned again.
“My friend and I were wondering if you’d be interested in seeing a movie with us,” the dorky boy gestured to another equally as geeky boy behind him. Giselle looked up from her nails and I could already tell what she was thinking, although, fortunately, instead of saying it aloud, she merely returned to her nails.
“But there’s four of us and two of you,” I pointed out, frowning at them. Beside me, Natasha, who was reading her calculus text book (sadly, I’m not kidding), even looked up from her book to frown in disbelief.
“The more the merrier,” the boy winked at us. Giselle snorted. Natasha continued to frown some more. Julia, who was still nursing her split lip, laughed a little.
“No,” Giselle rejected bluntly. The boy took a moment to be generally startled before opening his mouth to protest, a smile playing on his lips again.
“But—”
“Still no,” Giselle cut him off. The boy looked more affronted this time. He was about to speak again, looking a little more angry and dejected, when another boy came up behind him.
“Arnold here isn’t bothering, is he?” The new boy asked. “Because I can take care of that.”
The one who had asked all four of us out at the same time, Arnold apparently, scuttled off quickly, looking quite like he a stick wedged up his bum. I looked up at our saviour and was unable to speak for a moment. He was very attractive. He had short sandy blonde hair and freckles and was built not unlike a farmer. He had also brought a friend with him, a tall black boy with dark, dark eyes and spectacular cheekbones.
“Sorry about that,” the sandy-haired boy apologized on behalf of Arnold. “We’re not all like that, I pomise.”
“Frankly, I’m a little offended he thought he had a shot,” Giselle said, still looking at her nails. I was amazed that she could manage to look away from these gorgeous boys. I realized that I must have looked pretty ridiculous staring at them with my mouth agape, kind of like a really stupid trout, but I was too stunned by their attractiveness.

Emmie Rolland's Life as Told by the Nutcase Herself #2

When I got to school, it was quickly evident that I wasn’t the only girl who had decided to break the no make-up rule in order to be a slight bit more attractive in the hopes of seducing one of the St. Francis boys who were going to be joining our school. In fact, there were already some boys loitering about the front hall and the outside of the building. I was so excited that I almost started jumping on the spot, but then I remembered that Aeden was only feet behind me, walking to school as well. He, of course, wouldn’t dare actually walk beside me and Niki, but as soon as he got to school, he started talking to Giselle and Julia, who were standing out front nearby. I shook my head and glared at him as I walked over to them. I wished I knew some of his friends so that I could talk to them and annoy him, but he never has them over, mainly for that reason, I’m sure.
“Hey, it’s Libby!” Someone called from behind me, as I walking over to Aeden, Julia, and Giselle, and I turned to find the guy with the brown faux-hawk, who Giselle had said she’d spoken to in the grocery store, standing with another blonde boy, who had called Libby’s name. Libby, meanwhile, was grinning from ear to ear, walking towards the two guys like I’ve never seen her before. She was wearing her uniform, but she had rolled the kilt over so much it was practically a belt. And she was wearing her knee socks, even though it was still winter. Plus, she had gone all out on her hair and her make-up was not at all subtle. I’m pretty sure she was wearing false eyelashes and was standing like ten feet away. That, as I have already said, was strictly forbidden. Actually, there’re a lot of things that are strictly forbidden at St. Bernice’s. They are as follows:

1. No boys allowed. Ever. Like seriously, ever. Unless, of course, a boys’ school burns down. But usually, never.

2. Make-up is, apparently, distracting to the eye and detracts from your intellectual worth. Or something like that. I don’t really listen when teachers ramble on about things like that.

3. Not wearing your uniform is punishable by death. Well, maybe not quite, but it’s really not a good idea to wear something that goes against school policy. That includes the wrong tights, wearing nylons instead of tights (it’s the mark of a floozy, apparently), not wearing plain black shoes, rolling over your skirt to make it shorter, etc.

4. Being late for class, as I’m sure you’re well aware now, is also not acceptable.

5. Skipping class is prohibited, especially if you happen to find yourself in the same store as one of the teachers, namely Miss Wingardin, who is shopping for lingerie. Very uncomfortable.

6. What else? Oh yes, drawing on class photos is also frowned upon. Ruby learned that the hard way, after drawing a Hitler mustache on Miss Erich.

7. No smoking on school grounds. That rule also goes hand in hand with drinking and drugs. Sex and rock ‘n’ roll, also not a good idea.

8. Being in the academic halls during lunch time is against the rules. I think that’s really because the teachers don’t want you to catch them smoking or swearing and such. They’re really male truckers on the inside, I’m fairly certain.

9. Not attending school functions and/or assembly means four detentions, unless you have a good excuse for missing either, though they almost never believe you, so really, you end up with four detentions. Our school is like a P.O.W. camp, save for the hard labour. Oh wait, that’s what gym class is for.

10. Pranks, laughter, happiness, or fun of any kind is outlawed.

11. And also, like I said before, parking anywhere in the school parking lot is prohibited in case one our incredibly elderly “teachers” needs the spot. In my opinion, once you’ve reached the ripe age of a hundred and seven, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive anyway.

Anyway, where was I before I so rudely interrupted myself? Ah yes, Libby looked like she was ready to go clubbing in Paris, and not exactly for a long, tiring day of school. I would normally be concerned for her safety, considering that the teachers would be on her in seconds, ready to yell at her and give detentions by the year. However, today was different because it appeared as though she was going to be our ticket into Boyville and I really wasn’t unselfish enough to give up my free ride.
“Hello, Liberty Prince,” the blonde greeted Libby once she had come up beside them. “Don’t you look lovely.”
“Thanks,” Libby replied shyly. She tugged at her skirt, which wasn’t really a skirt anymore. I strained to hear what she was saying, but I couldn’t really hear because Giselle was laughing loudly at something. I turned to tell her to keep it down, which is when I noticed that Aeden was looking at Giselle in a very odd way. It was kind of like a distant gaze. You know, the kind of look that men give women in romantic comedies. I was not impressed.
Later, after assembly, we went to our first period class, which happened to be French. When we got there, we took our usual seats near the back because, as we had been informed earlier that morning, the boys of St. Francis would be having their own classes in other rooms. In any case, since I’d had endless hours of free time the night before, thanks to Aeden’s incredible ability to whine for days at a time, I’d managed to complete all of the French homework I’d had since the beginning of the year and hadn’t even tried to do earlier. The result was that I actually knew what was going on and ended up answering about forty questions in a row, just because I knew the answers and class was extremely boring at such a slow pace. I thought Mme. Ecksweiler was going to have a heart attack. And yes, we’re all thinking the same thing, why is the French teacher’s last name Ecksweiler? Well, it’s because she’s not actually French. It’s hard to believe, I know.
Anyway, because I was doing spectacularly well in French class, I got notes from a lot of my friends. Natasha sent me the first one, which just goes to show how shocking it was that I knew answers in French class because Natasha never passes notes. She’s a prude like that. In any case, her note read:
Who are you cheating off of?
And, at the bottom of the note, she had drawn a little picture of what looked like a possum being suspicious. So I wrote back:
What’s with the possum? Why is he so sad? Does he have rickets?
She just glared at me, but I didn’t really care because I had already gotten another note from Giselle and Libby, who were sitting side by side even further back than me. I swear, they’re joined at the hip.
What’s wrong with you? Stop answering questions, it’s unnatural.
I didn’t even bother to respond to that one, but when I looked back, Libby was doing her famous blind dolphin impression, so it didn’t matter anyway.

Emmie Rolland's Life as Told by the Nutcase Herself

Later that night, when I was watching television at home, I got a phone call from Giselle, who sounded very excited indeed. Of course, I had only just picked up the phone when my older brother was on the line as well, eavesdropping, but not very well as both Giselle and I could hear him breathing heavily.
“Aeden! Get off the phone!” I yelled down the receiver, which startled my brother, but annoyed Giselle.
“What are you shouting for?” She yelled back at me, which was great because it threw Aeden off even more.
“Aeden is listening in on our conversation,” I answered vindictively.
“Why?” Giselle returned incredulously. “Surely he has something more interesting to do with his time. Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?”
“I’m not eavesdropping,” Aeden retorted to me. “And I do have something better to do. I was merely trying to call someone and you happened to be on the phone, as per usual.”
“‘As per usual’,” I repeated mockingly. “You are so pretentious.”
“Shut up and get off the phone,” Aeden ordered in response. “I have to call Megan by six o’clock.”
“Short leash?” Giselle cut in at which point I began laughing and Aeden hung up the phone in angry protest. It was really quite amusing and he was totally eavesdropping.
“Anyway,” Giselle said after my older brother had hung up the phone. “I talked to Libby–”
“Did she tell you about what happened with those guys?” I cut in eagerly.
“Settle, Emmie,” Giselle said. “What I was going to say was that she still refuses to say anything about it. But then I went to the grocery store with my mother and I saw one of the guys that she was talking to. You know, the one with the brown faux-hawk?”
“Yeah, what about him?” I pushed, really wanting to know where she was going with this. Giselle, when she has big news or something interesting to say, even in the slightest, will always take a long time to spit it out because she likes the attention she gets while she’s talking. It’s really irritating.
“Well, he was with someone, I think his brother, and he came over to me, which was really weird and, you know, unexpected,” Giselle rambled on. “Plus, I was with my mother, and you know how she is. It was really embarrassing.”
At this point, I was ready to shout at Giselle, but I knew that she would only get angry and then she’d never tell me and I would never know what happened with the guy in the supermarket, so I refrained from shouting.
“Well, anyway, he was like ‘Hey, you go to school at St. Bernice’s right?’, so I said yes. Then he asked if I knew Liberty Prince, which really made me laugh because know one calls her ‘Liberty’ except for her grandmother. But then he gave me a funny look, probably because I was laughing for no apparent reason, so I stopped.”
I could practically feel my brain dropping out of my head from sheer boredom when Giselle said this. I just wanted to know what the guy had wanted and instead, she was telling me some inane story about the habits of Libby’s grandma.
“So then my mom was like ‘Giselle, come here, I can’t find the right lettuce’ and I never found out what the guy had wanted because my mother started holding up lettuces for me to look at and I had to leave just to avoid being mortified to death,” Giselle finished her story, finally, and I was horribly disappointed.
The next morning, I managed to wake up on time. Actually, I woke up earlier than I was supposed to because my younger sister Elise was singing in the shower. And when I say ‘singing’, I mean belting out the words to “Womanizer” by Britney Spears, which I thought was horrendously inappropriate considering that she’s only seven. Of course, my parents were otherwise engaged as usual and no one could bother to care for my youngest sister. I was so disgusted I threw my pillow over my head in protest and went back to sleep.
“Emmie! Get up!” Aeden shouted, banging on my bedroom door about five minutes later. I sat up, like a startled groundhog, the pillow falling onto the floor.
“What?” I shouted back through the door. Usually, when I’m woken up, if my mother remembers, she’ll come in and pat me on the foot or something, but Aeden, of course, wouldn’t do that because he hasn’t set foot in my room in the past eleven years. Honest.
“Get up!” Aeden repeated himself, shouting some more. I grumbled, but got up anyway. And then Elise barged into my room, hair dripping with water, still singing Britney Spears. Unfortunately, Aeden was still out in the hallway, waiting by my door and almost fell into my room when Elise flung open the door. The stunned look on his face as he almost broke the streak he’d been on for the past eleven years was priceless. I started laughing and then Elise joined in, even though she didn’t know why I was laughing.
When I went down to breakfast later that morning, unnaturally early, Elise was still singing, though she had started dancing now, and Aeden was sulking into his cereal. He’s a very unpleasant person to be around in the morning because he’s grumpy and crabby. I try my best to avoid him when he’s like that at all times.
“Emmie, I need you and Niki to take Elise to school this morning,” was the first thing my mother said to me when she entered the kitchen. Of course, she was running late and only half dressed. She had her slip on, a pair of nylons, and a pencil skirt, but she hadn’t managed to get a shirt on yet. I thought Aeden was going to throw up into his Cheerios.
“Why do we have to take her?” I protested. “Why can’t Aeden take her?”
“I’m meeting Megan this morning,” Aeden snarled at me, not looking up for fear of seeing our scantily clad mother again.
“So you get a girlfriend and forget all about your familial duties?” I retorted, but neither Aeden nor my mother seemed to particularly care. Apparently, they had already decided that I was definitely going to be taking my Britney Spears-loving little sister to school, which, of course, meant that I was going to be late for school again because it was really out my way and no one had bothered to tell me earlier.
And so, only minutes later, me and my other sister Niki dragged Elise out the front door and began walking to school. Well, actually it was more like a half-walk, half-jog and Niki and I each had one of Elise’s hands, so she was practically flying behind us. And then I noticed that she wasn’t even dressed. That’s right, my younger sister had her uniform skirt on and her knee socks, which is ridiculous because it was like minus twenty and she should’ve been wearing tights, but, then again, my mother can’t even dress herself so I guess it shouldn’t really be expected that she is capable dress her children. In any case, under her blazer, Elise was still wearing her flannel pajama top. And it was pink and covered in unicorns. Not exactly subtle.
“Niki, Elise isn’t even dressed yet!” I called to my other younger sister as we raced down the sidewalk. Niki looked back and groaned.
“Bloody hell,” she commented, but didn’t stop moving. Eventually, she spoke again. “Well, it’s too late now. We can’t go back home or she’ll be late, too.”
She wasn’t wrong, so we continued to drag Elise until we got to her school. Then we handed over her backpack, which had the lunch Niki had hastily made for her in it (a muffin and two bananas), and thrust her into the school. There would be hell to pay later for the pink pajamas, but it was too late at that point and neither Niki nor I particularly cared. So we just began sprinting towards St. Bernice’s, limbs flailing, hearts beating, and devil take the hindmost.
“Crap,” Niki said when we reached the school. We were, as predicted, late. I had somehow managed to miss first period entirely two days in a row. Maybe if we hadn’t been made to take our younger sister to school, which, by the way, was all the way across town because she went to some weird arts school, we would’ve made it on time. I honestly don’t see why Aeden couldn’t have just taken her, not that his school is any closer, because he goes to St. Francis, but he can drive, so he would’ve at least made it during assembly.
“Follow me,” I told Niki and the two of us slipped around to the outside of the science rooms. Between the biology room and the chemistry lab was the girls’ washroom on the first floor. First, Niki lifted me up to the window and I climbed into the very small window, I’ll have you know. And then, with my feet dangling in the bathroom, I hoisted Niki up as well and we dropped into the bathroom with a great amount of difficulty, I might add.
“Okay, now we just sneak into–” I started to instruct Niki.
“So nice of you to join us, ladies,” came the voice of Miss Erich. We turned around and came face-to-face-to-face with Spike the Doberman, who had her arms crossed over her chest and a very unpleasant expression on her face. Actually, I think she was trying to sneer at us, but it looked more like she had eaten four bricks of cheese the night before and was, consequently, really bunged up. Niki had to pinch my arm to keep me from laughing.
Anyway, in classic bad luck, we had to go see the headmistress and our mother was called, though, if they actually managed to speak to her, I would be very impressed, because I certainly never get to. My interaction with my mother consists of her entering a room for a short period of time to tell me to do something, then leaving before I can protest. Sometimes she hangs around just long enough for me to reply, to give me false hope, but it never matters, because then she just walks away without saying anything back. She takes very little interest in all of us, which I think is ridiculous. If she didn’t want children, she should’ve just bought plants. If a daisy dies, you can just buy another one and won’t get arrested for child neglect.

Something New

And I will now start posting parts of another novella/novel I'm currently working on. It's titled "Emmie Rolland's Life as Told by the Nutcase Herself", which should give you some idea of what madness it entails.

And...Procrastination!

Alrighty, friends (still just Cecilia, I'm sure), that's all I have of "Germs" for right now, but I'll get to work on typing the rest up soon so that you (Cecilia) can read the end, and I'm sure you're dying to do so.

Meanwhile, I will entertain you (Cecilia) with other things I'm currently working on. Maybe just bits and pieces so that you (Cecilia) still buy the books when they come out in the not-so-distant future! I'm just kidding. It'll probably be quite a while from now.

Germs: Clive to Angus

In any case, Clive finally picked something, having decided that it was the one with the least side affects and that he probably didn’t want nausea, abdominal pain, or a third head, and left to pay. The other man, meanwhile, stayed in the aisle, making his way through every single container on the wall. Finally, he, too, picked several container off the wall of medications and went to the cash register to pay. Unfortunately, and rather ironically, most of those bottles and boxes had already been handled by Clive, who had infected them. Thus, the wiry man, Phillip J. Hofflemire, got sick from his cold medication.
But not right away. First, he paid for his various pharmaceutical drugs and returned to his car, a large hatchback in which he carried emergency supplies, in case of car trouble, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and nuclear warfare. Then he drove home to his house, equipped with bomb shelter and a heavy-duty foundation in case of floods or any natural disaster able of destroying a building. He put his newly purchased cold and flu medication in his routinely organized medicine cabinet, which also held wart removal cream, Polysporin, penicillin, sensitive toothpaste, and allergy medication, even though Phillip had no real need for any of it. They were there mainly for precaution. If Phillip felt even the hint of a sneeze coming on, depending on the season and circumstance, which he would analyze thoroughly, he would take either cold or allergy medication to prevent whatever it happened to be from further developing. Sometimes, Phillip would even take both if it was winter and he happened to be surrounded by cats or especially vivant plant life. Phillip then climbed into bed, setting his alarm clock for seven the next morning, and fell asleep, keeping his eyes on the clock beside his bed until he did so. Like usual, it only took twelve minutes.
The next morning, Phillip woke up along with his beeping alarm clock and climbed out of bed. He went to the bathroom to shower for twenty-four minutes, get dressed into his Tuesday clothes; underwear included, and then went to the kitchen of his home for breakfast. He made his usual breakfast meal, two pieces of whole grain toast and pulp-less orange juice. Then he returned to the bathroom to brush his teeth, each tooth for thirty seconds. After looking himself over once in the mirror, Phillip left his home and climbed into the driver’s side of his car and drove cautiously to work. Phillip worked in a cubicle at a large company. Phillip didn’t have a specific task, but did exactly what was told of him. Sometimes he was ordered to staple newsletters or handouts. Others times he was told to make photocopies of files and papers that he didn’t even understand. It didn’t really matter to Phillip what he was doing because he liked to feel like he was doing something important without having a lot of attention focused on him. He knew that even though no one probably even knew his name, he was helping the company in a somewhat minimal way, but helping it nonetheless.
On that particular Tuesday, Phillip was stapling great packages of notes on photocopier usage. At lunch, Phillip reluctantly left said task to eat his lunch. It consisted of a chicken and lettuce sandwich with no seasoning or sauce, and a small cup of coffee from the staff room. After that, Phillip happily returned to his stapling. Some time later, Phillip felt a sneeze coming on. Panicking, he searched through his briefcase, but realized anxiously that he had left all of his medication at home in his medicine cabinet. Phillip hyperventilated for a moment, trying to think of a solution to what seemed like the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It wasn’t bad in the literal oh-no-I’m-going-to-sneeze sense of the circumstance, but in the sense that he had spent most of his entire life up to this point being prepared for an event such as this and, when something had happened, he had been unprepared, leaving Phillip feeling very helpless and panicky, shown rather obviously by his hyperventilation. Soon after Phillip realized that there was likely nothing he could do to prevent either an allergic reaction or an illness from happening, he began rocking back and forth in his computer chair, arms clamped to his scrawny chest, nostrils flaring and whimpering slightly.
After a bit of weeping, Phillip managed to pull himself together, just barely, and began sorting his perfectly sharpened pencils, shortest to tallest, in an attempt to distract himself from his imminent illness or allergic attack. To Phillip, it was only a matter of time. But questions kept slipping into his mind, deterring him from his organizational task and creating more panic, questions like when was my last encounter with a cat? Or who do I know that’s sick? And how long have I had that ficus? These questions led to more distressing questions, the likes of can a cold kill someone? How is Ebola spread? And what are the symptoms of Mad Cow? Phillip even wondered if you could still get the bubonic plague nowadays.
And soon, Phillip found himself back in his fetal position, rocking back and forth, his pencils deserted, with anxiety pressing on his chest. And then Phillip’s limbs began going numb and the pressure on his chest became much more than anxiety, feeling more like a Buick was resting on his lungs. Fortunately, his superior happened to stop by, having really come to tell Phillip off for taking so long with the stapling. He saw Phillip sprawled on the floor, wailing incoherently, and called for an ambulance, assuming that he had finally snapped like a dry and brittle twig that had been long overdue to snap, which, to anyone who knew Phillip, really wasn’t that unlikely. As it turns out, Phillip was actually having a heart attack.
“Gah!” Phillip blurted, shooting upright in a bed he was startled to find himself in. He looked around and realized that he was in a hospital and this would have greatly distressed him had it not been for the smell of disinfectant, which put Phillip at ease. Phillip sat back, breathing in deeply and closing his eyes so as to not see the many different tubes and wires attached to his frail body. But the questions came back, racing through his mind like some sort of twisted and distorted car race. Phillip began asking himself more reasonable, but still disturbing things, such as what’s going to happen to me now? Can this be cured with cough syrup? Am I allergic to peanuts? On and on this went until sometime near noon when he was brought “brunch”, a term Phillip used loosely as none of what he was served appeared to be edible. After picking at what Phillip considered to be the most ghastly scrambled eggs he’d ever ingested, mainly because they were runny and yet surprisingly rubbery, and nibbling on the single most dry piece of toast he’d ever encountered in his life, he began poking at his wobbly, bright, and unnatural lime jell-o with his used fork, trying to decide whether or not to risk it. In the end, he settled for no, horribly put off by its fluorescent colour, and mercifully managed to doze off for a bit.
The jell-o did not go uneaten though, as it was nabbed seconds after Phillip had fallen asleep by a rotten little boy by the name of Angus MacTavish, who was gluttonous and greedy, quite chubby in stature, with flaming red hair and a temper to match. Angus was at the hospital visiting his quite elderly grandmother, a woman so frail she could barely open her eyelids, but wasn’t paying any attention to dear old Granny. No, instead he was watching Phillip poke at his lime green dessert and, as soon as Phillip closed both his eyes, Angus snatched the jell-o away and began eating it with his hands. He could’ve just used Phillip’s dirty utensil, however, as either way Angus was going to catch Phillip’s illness. The jell-o, by this point, had been prodded so many times with Phillip’s infected fork that it wouldn’t have mattered if Angus had sprayed the dessert in Lysol. The green blob was already diseased and it was making Angus so as well.
“What’ve you got there, Angus?” Angus’s grandmother asked nicely, seeing that her grandson had his nose stuck in a small paper cup.
“It’s none of your business!” Angus shouted back for no reason at all. His mother, Mrs. MacTavish, blushed furiously and looked at her mother-in-law apologetically.
“Angus, don’t speak to your grandmother like that,” she chastised very weakly. “We don’t want to make a scene.”
These last words prompted Angus to drop to his stomach and begin punching the floor with his fists and kick the air with his feet, all the while wailing loudly, doing exactly what his mother had told him not to.
“Angus, there’s really no need for that. Come now, listen to Mummy,” Mrs. MacTavish tried again feebly. “Angus, Mummy told you to stop.”
It appeared, however, that Angus didn’t care what Mummy told him to do because he kept howling and flailing until everyone in the near vicinity was looking at him, including Phillip, who had woken from a light slumber and was quite glad to see that the jell-o was gone.
“I don’t know what his problem is,” Mrs. MacTavish said to her mother-in-law, trying to make some sort of explanation for her son’s behaviour. Mrs. MacTavish, however, would never know what was wrong with her son. It never occurred to the parents of spoiled, rotten children, such as Angus, that they behaved the way they did because their parents let them do so freely. And Angus was exactly the kind of boy to take advantage of his parents’ far too good nature and, as a result, was always throwing tantrums for no apparent reason and had very few friends at school. In fact, Angus was so greatly disliked because of his ill manners and wretched attitude that even the teachers wanted nothing to do with him. And then something rather unexpected happened.
“Oh for the love of God, boy! Shut your trap or I’ll wallop you so hard your head will spin!” Grandma MacTavish ordered, cutting Angus off in mid-wail. He looked up at his grandmother, who did not appear to be joking as she’d gotten out of bed and was currently holding a slipper raised over her head. Angus then decided that it would be best if he stood up and stopped yelling for a while. Mrs. MacTavish looked both relieved and aghast that somebody would talk to her son like that. Everyone else just seemed glad at the loss of such loud and irritating screaming. One patient even clapped.

Oops...

So, I've just realized that I've been posting the first draft of "Germs" and not the final copy, which means I'm going to have to type up the rest. That will take a little longer than expected. Thus, I will finish posting what I do have and then start posting other work. It's all very confusing, I know.

Germs: Marc to Clive

Delores’s appearance was unappealing. Delores’s personality was heinously ugly. Marc, though taught not to judge a book by its cover, took one look at her light, brown hair, styled into a half-bob, half-mushroom cut, and her already large hazel eyes that sat behind about two inches of prescription glass, making her large eyes seem massive, and decided he didn’t like her. And then he noticed the hand-knitted, pale pink bunny sweater and violet corduroys that had been hiding under her immense overcoat.
“Hello,” Marc had greeted her uneasily and rightly so, holding out his hand for her to shake.
“My name is Delores,” she replied in an odd, wheezy voice, pointing to the name tag on her rabbit sweater, on which she had drawn several small pictures of what appeared to reptiles and fish.
Moving quickly away from the table and, specifically, Delores, Marc hurried over to where the pretty coordinator was sitting and rang the bell himself. Then he found the first woman he had met, Rose, and asked for her phone number, claiming that he had forgotten before.
Meanwhile, Delores stomped up the basement steps, smiling to herself. She slung her thick coat back over her shoulders, before stepping out into the cold brisk winter’s air. She was rather pleased with how the day had turned out. After all, only one man had thrown up this time.
Delores marched back to her home on the slush covered sidewalks. It was a short walk and Delores enjoyed it anyway. She especially liked the sound her clunky boots made on the wet, pavement. It was sort of a sloshing sound, compared to the hard sound of her chunky heeled, boots thudding against the cement. All in all, by the time Delores had reached her apartment complex, she had worked out a steady beat, counting each time her heels hit the ground.
She walked past the doorman, who flinched slightly, like making an involuntary movement to run away. Delores climbed four flights of stairs, counting each one, sixty, then dividing the number by five, twelve. She walked past seventeen doors before stopping at her own and unlocking it. She entered her apartment and counted the windows across from her, three.
“Hello, my babies!” She called to her many scaled pets. Beneath the three windows, Delores’s two snakes and three chameleons stirred. On the kitchen table, her twenty-three fish didn’t respond at all.
“Yes, I did have a lovely time,” Delores replied to an unasked question in a half-silent conversation between her and one of her particularly large chameleons. She walked over to the row of cages and picked up that same chameleon, which was green at the time.
“Oh, Marvin, you always know what to say,” Delores giggled, placing the large reptile on her bunny-sweater clad shoulders, having removed her coat upon entering the apartment. She began bustling about her small apartment, feeding first her many fish, then moving on to her reptiles, to whom she tossed large quantities of live crickets and other such insects. After this task was completed, she made supper for herself, which consisted of four tins of baby food, mashed beets, and a whole avocado. It was at this point that Delores realized her shoulder was significantly lighter than it should be and that her hefty lizard was nowhere to be seen. As she began searching for her pet, she noticed that she had left the front door to her apartment open. A few minutes later, it occurred to her that Marvin may have escaped through the small gap between the door and its frame.
“Marvin! Marvin!” Delores cooed down the hall, crouched so low to the floor that she was practically crawling on all fours. Halfway down the hallway, Delores sneezed violently on the bare, burgundy carpeting of the hallway. About half an hour later, Thomas Cromwell tripped on that same threadbare carpet and did a face plant in about the same spot. Rubbing his sore cheek, Thomas looked up to come face to face with an exceedingly large reptile. Squealing a little bit, Thomas jumped to his feet and launched himself as quietly as possible into his nearby apartment. Satisfied that the animal hadn’t followed him, Thomas shut the door as silently as possible and crept into the kitchen. The floor underneath him, however, didn’t feel the same need to be quiet and creaked.
“Hello, dear,” Thomas’s wife Ellen said from the couch. She was lying down, still in the pantsuit she’d worn to work, a damp facecloth clinging to her forehead. Thomas said a quiet reply, not mentioning the lizard incident in the hallway, and went about his regular business, trying to seem both casual and discrete. A little while late, however, he was interrupted by Ellen.
“How was the interview, dear?” She inquired from her spot on the sofa. Thomas swallowed, a task that seemed considerably difficult at the time, like choking down a large wad of solidifying porridge. Thomas shook his head in response to his wife’s question, and then, realizing that she couldn’t see him, said a meek “no”. And then all hell broke loose.
“Oh for Pete’s sake, Thomas, do I have to do everything around here?” Ellen demanded, springing up from the couch, turning to face her husband, hands planted firmly on her hips, seething quite visibly with anger. Now that she could see him, Thomas shook his head.
“You are utterly and completely useless!” Ellen bellowed. Thomas was about to point out that “utterly” and “completely”, used in that instance, meant pretty much the same thing, but thought better of it.
“I almost got the job,” Thomas said instead, trying to defend himself. “It went better than the one last week.”
“I certainly hope so!”
“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” Thomas hollered back, surprised at his own bravery. For a moment, he was quite pleased with himself, but then the moment passed and he realized that he’d only made Ellen angrier. By this point, her face was the colour of a good red wine and Thomas found himself afraid that she might start foaming at the mouth.
“You threw up, Thomas! You vomited on your potential employer last week! I really don’t think it can get much worse than that!”
“I try my hardest, Ellen!” Thomas shouted back, even more astonished to find that his courage had returned. “You know I’m an artist! I don’t see why I should have to—”
“Oh don’t give me any of that artist crap!” Ellen cut him off. “You finger paint, Thomas! Finger paint! Children do that!”
“Not as well as I do,” Thomas muttered under his breath, but not quiet enough. Ellen heard a blew up.
“Shut up, Thomas! Just shut up!” Ellen turned her back on her husband, fed up with having the same argument over and over.
“I’ll look in the paper tomorrow,” Thomas offered lamely, sensing that he’d taken the argument too far this time.
“Good,” Ellen replied, still walking away from him. Just as she’d reached the door to the bedroom, she turned around to face him again. “Why don’t you just grow up, Thomas, and join everybody else in the real world.”
And with that, Ellen pulled the bedroom door closed behind her. Thomas sighed and looked around the small apartment for something to do. Deciding that starting another “project” was probably not a good idea at the moment, Thomas left the apartment, checking for reptiles on his way out, to retrieve their mail from the main floor. Thomas rubbed his hands together, consequently spreading the germs from Delores’s massive sneeze around, and walked to the elevator at the end of the hallway. He pressed the down button, transferring the virus from his hand to the worn, greasy button, which would later infect someone else. That someone happened to be Clive Emerson, a writer and he got sick when he left his apartment the later that night on his way out to the grocery store. The next morning, he left again, this time to get a cup of coffee from the generic restaurant down the street that was no doubt part of some huge chain that even had self-service eateries in Madagascar.
“You know, you can buy machines that do that for you?” The superintendent at the apartment building informed Clive, pointing to his hot cup of coffee, as he returned to the building. Every morning, the superintendent had watched Clive leave the building and always return shortly after with a fresh cup of coffee.
“You don’t say,” Clive scoffed sarcastically back to the man, otherwise ignoring him and sprinting up the stairs to his apartment. Clive maneuvered his way around his cramped apartment, stepping over pointless pieces of “modern” furniture from Ikea, things he had only bought to curb his elderly mother’s qualms about his lack of a decent lifestyle.
“Bloody hell,” Clive sighed under his breath as he tripped on an end table, knocking over a lamp and spilling some of his hot coffee on his hand. Quickly, Clive shoved the coffee cup on his work desk and hurried over to the kitchen to run his hand under cold water, leaping over a uselessly low chair in the process.
After his hand had been significantly cooled down, Clive returned to his desk and continued with his work. In this case, that meant staring at the fluorescent computer screen he’d left to get coffee. He was working on finishing an article for his column in the paper, an article that happened to be due by the end of the day. Incidentally, it was also an article that had been haunting him since he’d started writing it. For some reason, Clive couldn’t seem to finish it. He’d done the research and the rest of the writing in what seemed like no time at all, but he couldn’t find the words to end it. For the past week, Clive had been sitting in front of his computer in his dimly lit apartment, staring at the computer and willing himself to think of something to write. That morning was no different, save for the fact that it had to be completed and sent in for editing.
“Come on,” Clive said to himself, urging words to form on the screen in front of him. The words he did have sat in front of him, lifeless without the rest to breath life into them. They drove Clive crazy, proof that he could write, but not able to make him. By this point, he had read and reread those words far too many times; so many that they had lost their meaning. Nevertheless, he continued to read them, tweaking sentences and editing the same parts over and over again until they were to his liking. And then, later, Clive would return to those same sentences and paragraphs and “fix” them yet again. And on and on it went, some sort ritual as pointless as all of Clive’s Ikea furniture, something he only did to keep his mind off his supremely horrendous writer’s block. In a way, the part that was already written seemed as bad as the part that wasn’t.
And yet, the blank whiteness at the bottom of the computer screen mocked Clive. It taunted him, threatening to turn him insane. The white block, waiting to be filled, sat even more lifeless than the words above, staring back at Clive in some sort of twisted staring contest, a game that Clive couldn’t seem to win, no matter what he did. At one point, Clive had actually sat in front of his glowing computer screen, unblinkingly, waiting for the computer to give in. When the screen went dark and the screensaver started up, Clive took it as a sign that he had won, but when he flicked his mouse and the white pages reappeared, he still didn’t have the words to finish the article.
The article had become an obsession, something that controlled his entire life, at least until Clive had to hand it in, completed or not. Clive had worried about it, became angry at it, and wept over it. It had become like a person to him, something that could keep him up at night and fill his life. The only times when Clive relaxed at all were when he was out getting coffee, but he’d have to return to the apartment and the waiting computer shortly and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness would return with it. Clive, at times, couldn’t even recall what he was writing about. All he knew was that he had to finish it, whatever it was.
The rest of the day passed in much the same fashion that the week had. Clive sat motionless in front of his glowing, fluorescent computer screen, staring at the irritating whiteness. The only difference was that he could feel something start to happen in his body. Clive felt something that had nothing to do with the article or the blankness of the screen in front of him. For a while, Clive focused on this feeling, but inevitably relapsed to the encompassing anxiety of the article.
Later, the feeling came back, stronger this time. It pushed at Clive until he could ignore it no longer and he was forced to face what was happening inside of him. Clive was getting sick. The moment this realization came to Clive, almost like a sign, he sneezed. Then he began coughing. And then he sat in front of his computer screen, nose running and throat burning. Eventually, being in as much discomfort as he was, he decided that he would have to leave his apartment and do something that would suppress his cold symptoms. But then Clive also knew that he couldn’t leave his apartment and unfinished piece of work. And so, Clive ignored his illness in favour of his article again.
Even later, however, precariously close to the due date of his article, the cold became too much for Clive to handle, especially since his nose was running so much it was threatening to drip mucus on his keyboard. That left Clive with only one more option: to finish the article and go get medication. Put as simply as that, the impending force of his writing seemed to wither right in front of Clive. He found himself able to write the words he had wanted to for the entire week. He finished the article in what seemed like a few short, anticlimactic minutes and sent it to his editor, without even bothering to read it over. Then Clive left his apartment, finally able to recall that he had been trying to write about genetically altered asparagus.
“Good Lord,” Clive sighed, standing in the cold and flu medication section of a drug store. He was staring at a wall loaded with different brands claiming to be better than the next and describing symptoms Clive wasn’t even sure if he had. He stood like that for a long time, even though the store was probably going to close soon. Nevertheless, Clive picked up bottle and box endlessly, read the ingredients and when to use it, then inevitably put it back down again, not positive if it was really the one he needed. For the longest time, he was the only one in the aisle, examining container after container, feeling more and more overwhelmed. Eventually, however, he was joined by a wiry and nervous looking man with graying hair and shifty eyes, who also started examining the cold medications, which seemed odd, because as far as Clive could tell, he didn’t appear to be sick.

Germs: Ashley to Marc

Ashley made her way to her next class, math. The door was closed and the classroom empty, so Ashley tried the doorknob, only to find that it was locked. As she was waiting for her teacher to arrive, she felt a sneeze coming on, probably from her mold allergy that was exceedingly likely to flare up in the old building. In fact, Ashley highly suspected that there was mold in the school older than she was, which she also suspected was because the custodian spent more of his time staring at the librarian than actually cleaning apparently. She began sneezing as the other students gathered around the door in the hallway, getting in everybody else’s way.
“Ew, the brain’s going to get us all sick,” said Bree, another girl in Ashley’s class. Her and her dim friends laughed at this act of hilarity. Ashley pulled herself together, managing to stop coughing and glared at Bree and her fake-looking high-lights.
“At least I wasn’t named after a cheese,” she retorted. Bree and her friends looked at Ashley, puzzled expressions on their faces, obviously confused. Eventually, they turned away, not having said anything in response, clearly not understanding. Ashley merely shook her head and rolled her eyes, then began coughing again.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Mrs. Macintyre, finally coming to her classroom, now more than ten minutes late. “I was…uh…photocopying something.”
Ashley rolled her eyes at the back of her teacher’s head as she unlocked the door and pushed it open, leading the way into the classroom. As Mrs. Macintyre prepared for the lesson, handing out marked tests and arranging overheads, Ashley gaped at her own test. She had, unexpectedly, received a mark of thirty-nine and a half out of forty. This greatly upset Ashley because she was only one point twenty-five per cent away from one hundred per cent. Perfect. Ashley frantically calculated her mark over and over again, praying each time that Mrs. Macintyre had made a mistake. She hadn’t.
Ashley couldn’t let the mark go and obsessed over it for the entire seventy minute period. Between reading and rereading her answers several times, seeing where she could get another half mark, and scowling at her teacher at the front of the room, Ashley panicked about this ninety-eight point seventy-five per cent mark could affect her overall average. So far, she had only gotten one hundred per cent on every math test, quiz, and assignment that year. Ashley spent every night studying and making notes for every single one her classes, aiming for perfect in everything possible. She even wrote extra tests and completed extra credit assignments just for the satisfaction of getting one hundred per cent on all of them. Ashley could not, for the life of her, figure out where she had gone wrong. And yet, the mark sat at the top of the page in bright, bold red lettering, taunting her for the entire class. It silently mocked her, tormenting her so greatly that she forgot to colour-code her notes for the day.
When the bell finally rang at the end of the class, ending what seemed like an eternity to Ashley, she raced up to Mrs. Macintyre’s desk to complain about the mark. She vaguely overheard Bree making some snide remark to her dopey friends about it, but Ashley was so determined she barely heard. Unfortunately, Mrs. Macintyre had seen her coming, and had jumped up from her desk, shoving all of her papers in her bag and making for the door.
“Mrs. Macintyre, I think you made a mistake–”
“No, Ashley, you did,” Polly Macintyre called back, rushing out the door, grabbing what seemed like a harmless doorknob for the second time that day. The doorknob was not harmless; it was teeming with germs from Ashley’s newly contracted cold. Polly made the mistake of rubbing her eye right after, speeding up the infection process. However, that wasn’t the worst of Polly’s problems at that present moment. Right then, Polly was trying, unsuccessfully, to deal with the most horrid cramps she’d ever had in her life. She actually thought that intense shots of pain in her lower back and uterus were even worse than labour. When she finally arrived home after an agonizing car ride, Polly lied down on the couch to rest, having choked back a couple Tylenol. Polly sent her son, Graeme, to his room to play with his Lego, trying unsuccessfully to nap.
“Oh thank God,” Polly sighed when her husband Nigel entered the front door. She handed their four year old off to him, whom she was beginning to suspect was A.D.D., and hurried up to bed before Nigel could protest.
The next few days were not much better for Polly, only because of a different reason. The cramps passed, but was replaced with a horrible cold that Polly knew she must have gotten from one of the kids at school, which happened to be the dangers of working at a high school. Well, that and being hit on by the head of the math department, who greatly resembled a toad. In any case, Polly was restricted to bed rest by her husband, and therefore not allowed to go to school, which was just as well as Polly didn’t want to have another long discussion with Ashley Moran about her mark again. Polly, true to her word, stayed in bed the entire day, occasionally watching a little television or reading, but mainly sleeping. She was excessively grateful when the nanny was around, thankful for the peace that came with Graeme’s absence. Polly’s cold began to wither sometime around Friday, and by the time Sunday morning rolled around, she felt well enough to visit her father like she always did.
And so, mid-morning, Polly took Graeme to visit Grandpa while Nigel was out golfing with his friends. Graeme spent the entirety of the half hour car ride singing the Bob the Builder theme song repetitively, and by the time they reached the nursing home, Polly had the most horrid migraine she’d ever had in her life. Rubbing her temples, she led her young son into the building, Bob the Builder playing in a loop in her head. She rang for the nurse at the front desk and signed in. Then she and Graeme walked up two flights of stairs and down an empty hall to her father’s room. She knocked on the door and was greeted by a loud crash.
“Dad?” Polly called, pushing open the door quickly, entering the room in a worried frenzy.
“Oh hello, dear,” Polly’s father replied brightly. For some reason, he had a large frying pan balanced on his head.
“What was that noise?” Polly demanded, ignoring the metal cooking utensil.
“No worry, just the hens,” he answered, waving his hand as if to brush off the question. For a moment, Polly was quite concerned that her father might actually have hens in his room. She opened her mouth to ask, but he cut her off.
“You know, I’m feeling rather peculiar, sweetheart,” Polly’s father announced. “I think I’ll just take a little nap.”
“Okay,” Polly responded absentmindedly, searching the room for poultry.
“If I start speaking a Scottish accent, don’t worry,” he said, and then, inexplicably, fell over, the frying pan crashing to the floor. Startled, Polly tore herself away from her search for hens and looked towards the sound, rather surprised to find her elderly father sprawled on the ground.
“What’s wrong with Grandpa?” Graeme inquired in a small voice from the doorway.
“Dad?” Polly asked, ignoring her son. Her father pulled himself to his feet and looked at his daughter with a shocked and questioning expression on his face, like she should know why he had fallen over.
“Oh my,” was all he said.
“Dad, are you alright?” Polly asked, frowning and trying very hard not to laugh at the same time. It wasn’t that the situation was funny to Polly, she just couldn’t help herself. It was a most curious state of affairs she had found herself in.
“Oh yes, quite alright dear. Just slipped I guess.” This statement from her father was less than reassuring to Polly and she ended up buzzing for the nurse. Polly sent Graeme outside to play with his Lego blocks he had brought so that he wouldn’t get in the way of the adults.
“I think he’ll be alright, ma’am,” said the nurse who had let them in earlier. She was a rather hefty woman named Rose. She had arrived shortly after Polly had rung for her and had helped Polly’s father get into bed, making sure that he was fine after the fall. She shook Polly’s disease-ridden hand and left the room, returning to the main office to change out of her work clothes. It was past lunchtime and her shift had ended. She took the bus to the recreation centre and made her way downstairs to the basement. On her way down, she had a coughing fit, and realized that she must have contracted something from the home, despite being extra careful. She ignored it, however, in order to proceed with her plans.
Rose had signed up for the speed dating session at the recreation centre as soon as she had found out about it. She wasn’t sure why, but, for some reason, men just didn’t respond well to her. She didn’t know if they found her appearance unappealing or her personality threatening. She supposed they might like her better if she was thinner or had longer hair, but Rose wasn’t willing to change. Men might also like her better if she wasn’t so strong-willed or stubborn, but, again, Rose wasn’t willing to change. She figured that if someone wanted to date her, they should want to date who she really was.
That having been said, Rose was also tired of eating all her meals alone and only getting phone calls from her mother and telemarketers. So, it was for this reason that she had signed up for speed dating.
When Rose entered the basement room, she was mildly surprised by the number of people congregated in the room. Most, however, were either rather unfortunate looking, pathetic, or resembled convicted criminals. Needless to say, Rose was not impressed and was seriously rethinking her decision when she edged around the room to the main desk at the far end of the room to pick up a number and a nametag. The woman orchestrating the event, however, was pretty, blonde, and young and Rose found herself inwardly hating her. She didn’t think that someone so attractive and clearly not a loser should be allowed into the private lives of people so pitiable and desperate, herself included.
“Thank you,” Rose said politely to the girl, grabbing a nametag, though she really wanted to punch her in the nose. Rose took her designated seat and waited for the session to begin. Eventually, everybody else seated themselves and the pretty girl read the rules. Then she rang the bell, signifying the beginning of the first round. Rose found herself sitting across from an average looking guy with brown hair and blue eyes, a wide, white smile and a blue and green plaid shirt. His nametag read “Marc”. Rose was impressed.
“Hello, I’m Marc,” the man stated unnecessarily. He held out his hand to shake and Rose was about to do the same when she felt a cough coming on. She politely covered her mouth, but unwisely shook the man’s hand with the same hand she had coughed into.
“Rose,” she replied, clearing her throat. He nodded and they began chatting, mainly about their jobs and she thought it went rather well, but, when the young girl rang the bell again, signaling the end of round one and the beginning of round two, Marc didn’t ask for her phone number.
“Well, bye,” Rose said, a little disappointed. Marc nodded and watched her leave, wiping his hand on his pant leg as she walked away. Then he greeted the next woman. She turned out to be no better than the first.
“I’m actually a telemarketer,” the woman drawled in a nasally voice, giving a high-pitched whinny at the end. “Can you believe that?”
Marc could believe that, but he shook his head instead, not wanting to seem rude. He winced involuntarily as the woman began to speak again.
“With a voice like mine, I should be on the radio,” the woman continued. “Or a book-on-tape person!”
“Right,” was all Marc responded. He greatly disagreed with this, but didn’t want to say so.
“Some people think my voice is very soothing. They say it wants to make them sleep.” Marc thought it made him want to break his own neck, but he grinned and bore it. Finally, at the end of the round, Marc actually checked to make sure his ears weren’t bleeding. And it didn’t get much better after that. Marc wasn’t even sure why he had signed up for speed dating. He was fairly certain he was a good-looking guy, mildly unattractive at the very least, and certainly not hideously deformed like some of the other men in the room. He also knew he wasn’t a total loser. He had a real job, a house, and a car. He didn’t live with his mother, and really didn’t even see her that much. Short of the fact that he wasn’t a Greek god, Marc couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. He could, however, definitely see what was wrong with everybody else around him, especially his dates.
The first woman would have been okay had she not coughed on him. Sure she was a little on the butch side, but that was nothing compared to some of the other women he’d seen. She was also the most interesting, in a good way, by far, and, besides him and the pretty woman running the event, the only other dateable person in the room. But, he could already feel himself starting to get sick, and had turned her down. That had turned out to be a mistake as she was followed by Rita, the most nasal woman alive. Then there was Moira, who, despite owning about eight cats too many, was pleasant enough. Marc, however, couldn’t get over the fact that her name sounded like “Moyle”, which really just made him uncomfortable. Next had been Bethel, the trucker with a voice deeper than Marc’s. Needless to say, she threatened his masculinity. After Bethel had been Stacey, the personal trainer with forearms that could rival Popeye and biceps larger than Marc’s thighs. Monique had seemed nice at first and she was even pretty. Marc had seriously considered dating her until her nervous twitch reared its ugly head. At first, Marc had thought she was trying to point something out to him, but when he couldn’t figure out why she kept nodding at the man to their left, despite the fact that he was morbidly obese, he realized that she wasn’t doing it on purpose. But the worst by far was the last, a rather odd woman named Delores.

And Now I'm Confused...

So, now that you're commenting (and by that, I mean the usual three people), I don't know who is commenting, because it all comes up as "anonymous" (except for Cecilia). So, if you want people to know that you wrote the comment, feel free to sign it. And I would really like to know who is making the comments, because, while I am gifted in many ways, determining which comment sounds like who is not something I'm particularly good at.

Germs: Mabel to Ashley

The next morning, Mabel awoke early in the morning, showered, and dressed, then moved to the kitchen to make breakfast for herself and her husband. Since it was a Sunday, Mabel scrambled two eggs for Bobby and fried some bacon. As she put on a pot of real coffee, Mabel made herself some whole grain toast and spread marmalade over it.
“Good morning, dear,” Bobby said to her, tying up his robe. From under it, Mabel could see his classic blue and white striped pajamas and sensible slippers. Mabel, however, was wearing something fashionable and “hip”.
“Isn’t it?” Mabel replied, glancing out the kitchen window. She handed her husband his eggs and bacon and took her own plate to the table.
A little while into the meal, while Mabel and Bobby were making their way through the paper, there was a ring at the door. Mabel frowned in puzzlement, having no expected someone, and got up to answer the door. She found herself looking at the surly, sour-faced mailman.
“Oh, hello,” Mabel greeted the dumpy man half-heartedly. He ignored her.
“Your mailbox is not regulation height,” he informed her in a bureaucratic, self-righteous voice. Mabel could actually see a beige tape measure poking out from his trouser pocket. She sighed.
“I’m sorry? What?”
“It is, in fact, two point three centimetres too short,” the mailman continued. Mabel sighed again, ripping her mail from his hands.
“I’ll have to look into that,” she lied, just to appease him. He, however, saw through this and tried to remove the mail from her hands.
“By law, you must follow all postal rules,” the man protested. Mabel frowned at him, but let go of her mail as she felt a sneeze coming. Thinking that the ill behaved young woman at the supermarket must have transmitted some of her ungodly disease when she sneezed on Mabel, Mabel covered her mouth and, did in fact, sneeze. While she didn’t actually sneeze on the mailman, when she grabbed hold of the mail again, the germs from her hand spread over the paper, which then were moved to the man.
Eventually, after Mabel had agreed to fix the mailbox, the mailman handed over her mail and returned to his truck. He walked cautiously down her driveway, careful to avoid ice, and marched purposefully around the front of his truck, climbing into the driver’s seat of the great postal vehicle. He rifled through his mailbag, discovering he only had a package for a woman named Gertrude Glindenschnit left. Laughing at the name, the mailman pulled away from the curb. As he merged with the flow of traffic, the man, Jerry Stock, rubbed his eyes, which were suddenly very itchy. It was then that the virus entered his body.
Jerry Stock drove to Ms. Glindenshnit’s house singing to himself a medley of Tom Jones songs, starting with “She’s a Lady” and ending with “Mustang Sally”, belting out the words at the top of his lungs. He only stopped singing to curse and yell at the drivers around him, making rude hand gestures out the window. Jerry was indeed not a very nice man. He was actually quite vile, especially for someone in a public service profession.
Finally, however, he stopped singing when he arrived at Gertrude Glindenschnit’s home, which was situated on a particularly busy street. He parked his postal van at the side of the road and walked up Gertrude’s front walk to her home. He rang the doorbell, package under his arm. When Gertrude answered, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
“Gertrude Glindenschnit?” Jerry asked, managing to get his cruel laughter under control. He could tell, by the look on Gertrude’s face, that she knew exactly why he’d been laughing. It was clearly something that happened to her often. The fact was that Gertrude was not a pretty woman. Perhaps it was the way her lips pinched or her slightly asymmetrical eyes. Either way, she slightly resembled a glass-eyed trout.
“Yes,” Gertrude replied. Jerry handed over the package, according to postal regulation, making her sign for it, and then began walking back down the walk to his truck, laughing, loudly, again.
Jerry, however, should have been paying better attention to what was happening around him, rather than ridiculing Gertrude’s appearance, because, as he stepped off the curb to enter his truck, Jerry was promptly run over by a bus.
This, of course, is unfortunate, but there is always a moral that can be taken away from each situation. The moral in this particular circumstance happens to be “never make fun of anyone who resembles a fish”. Anyway, even though Jerry had been killed in a terrible bus accident, the story doesn’t end here, because, as the package that had been infected by Jerry reached Gertrude’s hands, she, too, was infected.
And thus the story continues with Gertrude Glindenschnit, a high school librarian. Gertrude took the package into her house, in which she lived alone, and opened it carefully, curious to see what it was. It turned out to be a novel horribly overdue and sent to her by a former student at the high school she worked at. The note attached explained that the former student had been packing up his belongings, preparing to move, and had found the novel. It was now thirteen years overdue.
Shaking her head, Gertrude tossed the novel into her handbag to take to school with her the following day, and picked up her own book, a sappy romance novel entitled “The Love he had Always Loved”. Though she worked in an environment full of classic literature and excellent reads, Gertrude held a soft spot in her heart for mushy romances. Even though she knew the things that happened in romance novels never took place in real life, Gertrude longed for something romantic and exciting to happen to her. As it was, she was a middle-aged librarian, who lived by herself and looked like a fish. She knew she was unattractive, especially because of the reactions she got from others, such as the mailman, but she believed that everyone deserved to be loved.
Gertrude spent the rest of her Sunday the way she spent every other Sunday. She read a large quantity of her romance novel and only stopped when hunger pains starting to interrupt the plotline. She paused at the sounds of wailing sirens nearby, but ignored them. Then she made herself meatloaf, canned corn, and mashed potatoes, her favourite meal, for supper. After that, she watched a little of her favourite show, “The Bold and the Beautiful”, which she had taped, before showering and going to bed.
The next morning, Gertrude awoke to the peaceful silence of the morning, stretching and feeling good. And then she checked her clock and realized she had overslept by about an hour. Panicking, she frantically threw on the first piece of clothing she grabbed from her closet, and raced out the front door. She jumped into her car, hastily putting on make-up as she sped towards the high school.
When she finally reached the school, the bell had already rung and the halls were empty. Gertrude ducked past the administrative office, sincerely hoping no one had seen her, and dove into the library. Some students were already there, studying during their first period spare, and most of them looked up and stared at Gertrude as she entered. She smiled politely and ducked into her office to prepare for the day. When she left again, the same students looked at her, most with puzzled expressions on their faces. Gertrude realized that she must have done something to her hair or make-up in her haste to get ready. Deeply embarrassed though she didn’t even know what the problem was, Gertrude snuck out of the library and hurried down the hall to the staff washroom.
Once inside the small bathroom, Gertrude checked her appearance in the mirror. To her great surprise, she actually looked quite good. She had, in her hurry, managed to put on the only dress she owned. It was maybe a little fancy for school, but it really did look rather nice on Gertrude’s slender, curve-less frame. It was a cocktail dress that Gertrude had bought for her sister’s wedding. It was a deep plum colour and cinched at the waist, which made it appear as though Gertrude actually had a waist. It was sleeveless and scoop-necked and reached just above Gertrude’s knees. When Gertrude had worn it to the wedding, she had worn a shawl over her bare shoulders, and, as she looked at herself in the mirror, she felt slightly uncomfortable, even though she looked remarkably good for someone with the face of a fish.
On top of the dress, Gertrude’s make-up was much different than it usually was. It wasn’t the type or the style; it was just that that there was more. She had, for instance, put on about four coats of mascara more than she usually would have. The effect was that she looked less like a sea creature and more like a woman. She wasn’t beautiful by any means, but she was pretty, attractive even.
“Oh my,” Gertrude said to herself, fixing her hair, though there was nothing really to fix. She left the bathroom feeling slightly confused and returned to the library. She sat behind the main desk, checking out books for students and making photocopies, all the while biting her nails, a habit she had when she was nervous or uncomfortable. By the time lunch rolled around, she barely had any nails left and was feeling a bit queasy, like she had the beginning of a cold, though she had no idea where she could have gotten it from.
Gertrude ate her lunch in the library as usual, munching intermittently on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and her short fingernails. Half way through the lunch period, Gertrude was interrupted from her meal by the school’s head custodian. His name was Joe Danby, and Gertrude was really quite smitten with him. He was tall and slim, with surprisingly broad shoulders and wavy brown hair. He was also, equally surprising, rather handsome.
As he entered, Gertrude immediately flushed, though nothing had been said. Joe turned to her, presumably to explain his reason for being in the library, but never finished what he was going to say. Instead, his mouth hung open for a moment, Gertrude stared back at him.
“My, Ms. Glindenschnit, you look lovely,” Joe said, and Gertrude’s face reddened even more, now a light shade of burgundy, not put off by the note of surprise in his voice.
“Call me Gertrude,” Gertrude replied meekly. From then on, it was like one of Gertrude’s romance novels. He looked deep into her eyes, and she looked deep into his. It was as if they had really fallen in love at first sight. And then they were interrupted.
“Umm…Ms. Glindenschnit, can you photocopy this for me?” A student said, holding out a white piece of paper. Gertrude took it and, absentmindedly, photocopied it five times too many. She handed each copy back individually, all the while entranced in some sort of lovey-dovey staring contest with Joe. The student, a senior named Ashley Moran, looked back and forth at the two adults, visibly confused as to what she had interrupted. She accepted each paper the librarian handed her, inwardly willing the machine to work faster. Eventually, she was handed all of her papers, paid, and scurried out of the library, taking one final glance at the odd couple now standing about a foot away from each other, still staring at each other.
“Weird,” Ashley breathed to herself and hurried back to her locker. She quickly grabbed her books and raced to her first afternoon class, afraid that she was going to be late. She made it just in time and handed out the photocopies Gertrude had made, giving one to each person in the class. Then she began with her seminar. As she was speaking, she kept running the original copy through her fingers nervously. When she was finished and sat back down, she began chewing on a hangnail, worried about how her seminar had gone. It was then that she contracted the virus that had made its way onto the paper from Gertrude.
Ashley received her mark from the teacher after the class and was pleased to find that she had gotten a ninety-eight per cent. Ashley left with a smug smile on her face, giving half-hearted and unhelpful sympathy to the other person who had presented that day. They hadn’t done nearly as well as Ashley, a fact she openly shared.

When in Doubt, Comment!

Alright, so I've noticed that some people are reading my writing (grand total of three, I believe), which is great, but it would be even better if you commented. Good, bad, whatever. I mean, don't try to make me cry or anything, but some constructive criticism would be lovely.