Short Story #1

There were a lot of funny things that happened to me during my stay at Chatom Academy, most of them relating to studies and, quite frankly, the lack thereof. I hardly remember most of them, as it was such a long time ago, and I was so young. But I remember this one story completely; this one story that sticks out in my mind as being one of the most unusual of all the things that have happened to me.

I was only sixteen at the time; a most auspicious age when girls are full of wonderings about life and purpose and meaning and such. Since that’s the case, most of us Chatom girls were foolish and engaged in persiflage all day, occasionally holding a séance or two - just for fun, of course. We summoned demons and angels and dead people we knew - and pets - never really taking it seriously.

There was a young girl, Simone Walter, one of the youngest and most foolish, who had a room upstairs. We would always play at her, being the bugbear or bogyman or whatever and scaring her, she had such a fear of the dark!

She didn’t care much for our games, but we couldn’t help it. She was a mean and obdurate little thing, too; always yelling at us for something. She kept to herself a lot, but we were fine with that, to tell the truth.

One day she came storming down, yelling at us, and telling us off for banging on her door. Of course none of us had done this, but she didn’t believe it –who can blame her?

About two hours later she came storming down again, this time telling us off for shaking the floor so bad that her ink-well fell to the floor. We had been reciting poetry, mostly about the meanings of flowers, and we told her so. She was so furious, and told us that if we did one more thing –

We never did learn what would happen if that one more thing occurred, as threats are more effective when you have to wonder about what may happen. But we all nodded, and went on talking.

She came tearing downstairs about 15 minutes later, but this time said nothing to us. She just stared blankly.

“I don’t suppose a cat got your tongue?” asked one girl, smirking slightly.

Simone started to shake, and then tore away crying. She left the school not a day later.

We never knew what the matter with her was, but next day I overheard a parlor maid complaining of how messy Simone was. There was ink all around her room, and those paw-prints were going to be hard to clean off the dresser.