Phrontistery Of Monster Kind - Six Feet Deep

Chapter 17

The journey into town was dreadfully painful. The bus bumped up and down on the dirt path. Two buses transferred the students who couldn't fly over with one teacher amongst them as the other on duty hadn't needed to ride across. The school should consider hiring those articulated buses, as well as getting the road paved. But alas, I had to endure the bumpy drive and the racket of sixty screaming students.

I spun around and yelled at them all to silence or they'd all have detentions with Mr Mors.

The bus became deathly quiet.

If they had gotten detention, it would have been with me, but the threat of having to stay up all night contacting books or write essay after essay until their hands fell off didn't sound like a fun Saturday.

Oh, it wasn't going to be. I had to be stuck with the one teacher I didn't want to be with for hours. Thankfully, I could get away with walking around and monitoring students and just having lunch alone as to not have to be in the bird's presence. Why, oh, why did it have to be Mr Noctua?

The buses were cleared as soon as they stopped. Each child thanked the school drivers as they hopped off. I was informed that the pickup was at five pm, and the other at six. If a child missed the bus, they'd be given detention and have to either wait until they returned, or a staff member picked them up. My bet is they would send either Mayor or Mors. If Harro went, he would most likely buy them ice cream and tell them of the times he used to sneak off on the weekends to get up to mischief.

I had my own stops for this trip. In my hands, I held the crumpled remains of the paper flowers I salvaged from Simon's destruction. Stained from broken pen cartridges, they were still as beautiful as they were without the splotches.

There weren't many shops in town of interest. The town itself was shaped in a 'u' with the hotel being the middle section. A grocery, a couple of restaurants, and a toy store were located on a long strip while the post office and jewellery store, which also served as a blacksmith, were right across from them.

Through an alleyway, signs led to the island's cemetery. I stood at the gravestones of the original owners of the house turned hotel. A mausoleum was built in their honour, long after death. Back when the humans stole the corpses of the locals for research to study the mix of monsters and man. They called us behind closed doors an abomination. We all knew that was a lie, both in how they preserved us and the lies they baby-fed to the future. No museum would hold their remains, and no man should destroy the skeletons of this land.

If I recalled correctly, the monsters of the time fought them off, but the damage was done, and the bones were stashed and towed away on boats to gods knows where. They took the items they were buried with, along with the gifts above by the locals. All we had to remember them were the tombstones we made in their honour. Split into four sections, the main was for general deaths, then for members of the three families and their honourable associates.

The smallest section and the one I stood in only held the mausoleum in the centre with the vast land around it. The stone was vandalised with graffiti and a gargoyle sat on the steps entrance, watchful of me.

Approaching him cautiously, our gaze met. When close, I whispered, "Stan." His eyes shifted in recognition. "Let me guess, the locals defaced it." Granite shifted as the gargoyle gave me a single nod. "Is his stone still clean?" He gave another nod. "Was it graffitied?" Then once more. "-And the others, are they in here or with their mother's side?"

"Sharp section."

I took out one of the paper flowers and handed it to the guardian of the mausoleum. "Place this on his plaque." When he had it, I curtsied and said, "Thank you for your service."