Phrontistery Of Monster Kind - Six Feet Deep

Chapter 2

As always, I was running late. I'd have to strap a watch on myself to be on time and even then, I wouldn't check it. Somewhere in my unpacked luggage I must have left it. It was the only explanation as to why I wasn't wearing it yet. Perhaps another excuse for my disorganisation. I hoped one if my jewellery pieces hadn't feasted on it yet. Not the best way to make a first impression with my colleagues, and I already had so much against myself.

I'd done it before, and I could do it again. No sweat. Except there was a lot riding on this. I couldn't let the headmaster down, nor the deputy who had the final say. More importantly, I risked disappointing myself and my soon to be students- not that they would be without a teacher if I quitted last minute and prolonged my holiday abroad.

Thankfully, Royse Ridge hadn't changed much since my time here. The blueprints were engraved in my mind as I sped through the halls, the lack of clinking from my stiletto's against the once stone floors haunted me more than it should.

Though the layout was the same, they had modernised it. Turning the castle's regal interior into... well, a school with bright stairwells of orange and green that were putrid on the eyes. I'd half expected them to knock down the walls of the classrooms and add those retractable glass panels with whiteboards built in that human schools had adopted. That would be a step too far. Those do nothing for the students that suffered from attention deficit disorders, as the rowdiness of the class in front of them was always more interesting than the content the teacher had scrawled onto the board.

Harro wasn't allowed to do that. He would not deface a castle with so much history like that, not under his leadership. Few know that this school had a life of its own. Decorating was one thing but changing the structural foundations of the place was the equivalent of performing surgery on a healthy organ just to replace it with a defective one.

So, I could ignore the carpet justifying that it preserved the floor underneath and pray that the sting of the stairwells died down during my time here.

When I taught history in a human high school, no matter what year they were in, the students peered past me, through the glass and into the other class to see who out of their friends was there.

I didn't teach there long; they didn't understand my taste in accessories and when ordered to remove them lest they fire me for scaring the children. So, I quit.

I wasn't fond of the way the human's run their schools, strict on dress codes kicking students out of class because of their choice of clothing, deeming it as a distraction instead of teaching people to mind their vile thoughts in their head. If an adult couldn't keep it in their pants, they shouldn't be teaching children.

Monsters were freer with their expression, which I loved. You needed to be when you got cast aside and forced to hide away from humans. The groups that mix were the most accepting of the bunch, sharing cultures and customs. It was more common to see monsters in more revealing clothing (if they were comfortable, of course), not just because they were content with who they were, but some needed to. You couldn't make rules if not all students couldn't follow. A many-eyed giant similar to the likes of Argus Panoptes might need to show more 'skin' than a vampire who must cover up so they didn't get fried alive in the afternoon sun.

My choice of fashion leaned towards the modest style. I was a teacher, after all, and no matter what world I was in; I didn't need students gawking at me as I tried to teach them about the fall of the roman empire or the bubonic plague and how it led to the war of Rodentia and eventual ostracisation of the Rattus from other monsters.

But those days had passed, history as it were, and couldn't affect my teaching now.

However, my choice of fashion was causing me dread as I strode to the staffroom. Note to self: don't wear tight ankle-length skirts if you are planning on being late this year.