Hush

Hush: The mystery box

The last thing I wanted was to be placed in the girls' dorm. Giggling and squealing is one of the things my ears can't stand. The room was so full of a faded colour of pink it was like staring into the bowels of candy floss. Did candy floss have bowels? I shook my head.

There was an older girl, doing up her hair and putting on way to much make up and perfume. Her attempt to dress provocatively flopped before it began when she climbed into a pair of shorts that were too tight against her now bulgy thighs. The blouse she buttoned half way up was in need of a good ironing, yet as she gazed upon herself she saw beauty, and that was all that mattered.

'Where ya going Gem?' Asked another girl about her age.

'Nowhere,' Gem offered back vaguely. 'Just about.'

'You look pretty.' Charlotte said coming back from the shower room, attached to the girls' dorm for privacy from the boys.

'I look sexy.' Gemma corrected, curling her upper lip as she looked briefly at Charlotte in the mirror's reflection, then proceeded to flutter her eyes at a mascara brush that clumped her eyelashes together.

Charlotte shrugged, wrapped her hair in a towel and came over to sit on her bed next to me. 'Whatever you call it, you look it.' She picked me up and gazed at me curiously, my claws capturing her attention the most. 'I hope my brother is okay.' She said absent mindedly tapping on my claws with a thumb.

'Your brother is a douche.' Gem snorted.

A muttered agreement quickly flew through the room.

'No he isn't.' Charlotte said defensively. 'He is just... lost.'

'Yeah, well, hopefully he stays that way in hospital.' Another girl with too much anger in her voice replied from her own bed, not at all apologetic for what she said.

Charlotte threw me at the girl, my nose whacking her on the head. 'Say that again and I'll beat the shit out of you.'

I looked around the room, careful not to move. There were eight girls, three of them were easily in their teens the rest were children, lying in their beds reading, sleeping, anything to keep from being involved with these girls.

'Allow it, Charlotte,' Gemma scoffed, her East London accent loud, moving herself away from the mirror. 'Even you know that Elliot was an arsehole. Ain't you the first girl he touched?' Gemma ran her judgmental eyes up and down Charlotte, who closed in on herself without answering.

'I bet if I asked any of these girls in 'ere if Elliot has touched them, all of them will answer yes, some of the boys too from what I 'eard.' Gem gritted her teeth.

Charlotte didn't rise to defend her brother, or challenge the accusation. Instead she looked away and suddenly the conversation was over. Gem checked the girls in the room, making a quick head count. Everyone was accounted for. She shook her head at Charlotte and left the room, slamming the door on her way out.

'I like Elliot, he smells like porridge.' The girl who I had just been passed to said, she stroked my ears and turned me to face her, noticing the key around my neck.

Charlotte sighed, 'I know what he does and in a way Jack has helped us. But he is still my brother.'

'What is this key for?' asked the girl, not particularly interested in what Charlotte had to say.

Charlotte looked to the key and across the room to a small box. 'That looks like it will fit the document box.' She pointed over to the wooden box with 'Documents' written across it in bold black marker.

'What documents?'

Charlotte shrugged, and leaving me on the bed the girl hurried over and lifted the box, shaking it.

'Shall we open it?'

I looked across at them curiously waiting for them to do what I had wanted to do, had I found the box.

'You do it.' Charlotte said excitedly.

Sensing the two girls excitement the rest of the girls began to sit up in their beds like meerkats on the look out for hunters, eyeing one another cautiously, as I suspected, none of them had really been asleep.

A little blonde girl who had missing teeth shouted, 'don't open it, bad things are inside!'

But the key was already inside the lock and with a faint click the box was unlocked. All the girls gathered around it curiously. I was wondering if there had been speculation about the box when a girl with glasses voiced my thoughts.

'They say there are eyelids kept inside.' She bit her lip, her eyes not leaving the box.

'Don't be silly it's full of our future parents, Betty keeps them in here, she is psychic.' Another girl piped up.

'I heard that it is full of air.' The girl who had been holding me said.

'Isn't that nothing?' Asked the girl in glasses.

'Exactly.' She rolled her eyes.

'Shall we find out?' Charlotte finally shouted over the uprising speculations.

A little cheer encouraged her to lift the box lid, I found myself holding my breath as I waited to glimpse what might be inside.

Slowly, as she lifted the lid a dark tar thick liquid began to overspill from within and she dropped the box to the floor in surprised pain, as she shook her hand of the burning liquid. It spread across the floor seemingly endless.

'It's hot.' Charlotte informed. 'Don't let it touch you.'

'What is it?'

Nobody answered for a while, then the youngster that warned them not to open it spoke in a quiet mousy voice.

'I told you not to open it, the bad things have been let out.' At first everyone shushed her and mocked her but as the tar like substance began to evaporate deafening sound of screams filled the room, it wasn't only my ears that heard it. The girls quickly clasped their ears against the noise. My thoughts were scrambled momentarily, then the one sound I could make out above the piercing scream of the boxes contents was Jack. He too was screaming, I felt as though I had just been given a boost of adrenaline, Jack was in trouble. The screams from the box turned into sinister laughter.