Charlotte Gaspel: Demons and Ghosts

XVIII: Cold Blood

A good day starts with a good habit. In Charlotte's case, the first thing she did when she got up was to write down in her notebook all the types of torture she could imagine to make that miserable walking rat everyone calls Mincy suffer. Among all the options, the most reasonable ones were: Make her swallow a stew with the flesh of her siblings; lock her in a flooded bathroom with the pipes clogged for three days; hang her by her toes; use her as a piñata; and, pull her teeth out with pliers and a hammer. She'll figure something out someday.

The first few hours of school began and, apparently, the science teacher woke up creative that morning, because it occurred to her that students would work best doing projects in pairs. I bet you can't guess who else had the same class that day. Don't break your head, it's Mincy. The students aren't sorted by classroom, so they just take students who look the same age and randomly put them together in different classes at the same level. Lucky Charlotte to have her work partner be the same girl with the name that flooded the pages of her notebook with hateful words.

Time to work. Charlotte approached her desk and hoped that seeing her arrive would make her appear a little weaker without her two bodyguards, but nothing could be further from the truth. As soon as Charlotte leaned over to sit down, she pushed the chair away, causing her to fall and scrape her back and neck. If it's happened to you, you'll know that any physical pain inflicted on you by another person has a special addition that drives you to want to give back. Charlotte felt the same way, but twice as much. You can imagine what she had to endure to keep from ripping that b*tch's fingernails out.

Hey, don't judge me, sometimes you have to put yourself in her shoes.

The two didn't exchange a single word, they just cast their eyes forward and occasionally looked at each other in disgust, but neither was going to give the other the satisfaction of showing annoyance.

The job was to dissect a frog. Educational institutions that condone such practices should feel bad for even considering them, but at the time it was no big deal. Every couple received a frog. Luckily, they were all already dead and all the students had to do was cut open their bellies with a scalpel to see their organs. Charlotte didn't quite know what the purpose of this activity was, but once she saw the slimy amphibian lying on the table, she realized that she could put into practice everything she had read about surgery in Arthur's extensive notebook. The teacher explained to them that the frog's insides are mostly human-like and that they could even play with its vital organs to pretend to be a surgeon. Charlotte couldn't wait, but her impatience was outweighed by her caution, so she made sure Mincy didn't stab her with the scalpel as soon as it was handed to her, but she had nothing to worry about, because she was already a few feet away from the table due to her fear of amphibians.

Everything was going wonderfully. The teacher left the room for a smoke. Everyone was busy doing their own thing and nothing could stop Charlotte from examining the anatomy of that little jumping creature. She got her scalpel and began to open the carcass. At this point, Charlotte was so focused that she let her guard down. All those smelly innards and perfectly assembled miniature organs distracted her from what is her main danger: The girl behind her. She saw Charlotte's bowed head and couldn't stop the urge to slam it against the table and onto the dead frog.

So it was. Charlotte could do nothing but breathe on the amphibian's already squashed slimy insides. She rested her arms on the table trying to get up, but Mincy was pushing her with both hands and was determined to keep her in that position until she started crying and could no longer defend herself, but from the looks of it, that wasn't going to happen. Charlotte panicked. Her scalpel was just millimeters away from piercing her forehead, but luckily, it remained horizontal the entire time. No one in the room did anything to stop Mincy, it was more fun to watch the new girl cry over a frog's guts.