The Bells

            In school, Margo’s friend, Pamela, was whipped for not wearing her bells. It had been the fourth time Pamela had done this and all the past times she claimed it was for old liturature. Or at least, that’s what she said the last three times. By now, Margo knew Pamela’s tricks.

            But nonetheless as Mr. Stieber raised his frail switch into the air, Margo would still winces as she had done every other time. By now, he had beaten her so many times that her cheeks were slashed and her nose ran with blood. Her bare back was cut with hundreds of little marks, which dripped slowly down her back.

            “Why did you take your bells off?” He shouted as he landed another blow.

            Pamela didn’t answer, she just sobbed harder.  The smell of blood entered Margo’s nose. She coughed.

            “Answer me!”

            Pamela didn’t, she remained quiet as if she were a saint about to become a martyr.

            Stieber smacked her across the face with his hand this time. Droplets of Pamela’s blood splattered across the desks and the faces of students that were lined the front row, including Margo’s but no one spoke. They didn’t even take a breath or attempt to wipe the blood away. Everyone saw Stieber’s hand was now red with blood. He grabbed Pamela by her ripped shirt, pressed the bloody hand against her back and pushed her towards first row of desks. She slammed against Margo’s metal desk with a clang but Margo didn’t gasp or at least she tried to hold it in.

            Margo leaned forward to see if Pamela fell to the ground. Indeed, she was there with her eyes closed and unmoving but she gave a slight smile to tell Margo that she would live. Margo switched her weight forward as if she was going to stand up but then she remembered Stieber. She averted her towards at the board.

            “Your bells make you human.”

            Stieber was the only person to talk. He wiped his bloody hand on a rag he got from his desk as he paced across the bloody wood floor of the one room schoolhouse. His tone, once psychopathic, was abnormally calm. He continued.

            “Bells make you better. They make you smarter, stronger, faster and without them, you are nothing. A speck. A speck in the grand-scheme of the universe, understand me? Without those bells, you become them.”

            Them, The Aliens. They take people away in the middle of the night and eat them. When the Aliens come, people commit suicide. They haven’t come to Earth yet, as far as Margo knows  but there is always some doubt that someone from the outside will come in. So they wear bells in order to tell who is human.        

 For just a moment, Margo wondered what it would be like if she didn’t wear her bells. Maybe then, she’d be like an alien and would be able to go thousands of light years away.

            The bells seem useless or at least when Margo wears them, she doesn’t feel any better than when she takes them off to go to bed. They don’t even make noise since the little metal balls, which would have made them ring, were taken out to make more bells. But, nonetheless, everyone wore their bells and didn’t complain for the most part.

            Mr. Stieber finished his lecture on the importance of bells an hour later. He concluded with the fact that the bells are the only things that identify you as human since anyone else would die even holding the bells. After class, Stieber began writing in his notebook as Margo helped Pamela up from the floor. She was awake now, but still beaten.