The Blaze: Worlds Apart

Chapter 4

13th March 2019

Roxanne's body felt weighted and helpless. She had been woken, like she was 6 days a week, by a blaring siren. The alarm was only muted once every girl that shared the dormitory had scanned their fingerprint on the large screen that occupied the entirety of the end wall. At this date, Roxanne was sharing the room, which was actually more like a corridor with a wall at each end, with 8 other girls. And, with unimpressed faces, every single one of them was glaring at her. She was the last out of bed. Again.

This gave Roxanne a certain power. The ear-splitting alarm would only turn off when she chose for it to and she knew that every person in the room was desperate for that to happen. So desperate, in fact, that they would do almost anything.

"For god's sake Roxie. Just get up!" a tall blonde girl, who was far to pretty to be here, screamed. Well, Roxanne assumed she screamed, the ringing in her ears had blocked most other sound at this point.

Roxanne chuckled and dragged herself off her rackety metal bed. She strolled over to the blinding screen and then turned around. Just as she had expected, 8 desperate faces, all with their jaws hanging open, stared anxiously at her.

"Strip. All of you. I wont turn this off until there is not a single garment of clothing on any of your pathetic bodies" Roxanne grinned.

Reluctantly, the girls took off the oversized shirts that they slept in and then peeled off their underwear. All of them, except Roxanne, were soon fully naked. All except Matilda. She was new here and incredibly young. She stood completely still and tried to look bold and fearless but everyone could see the terror flaring behind her eyes.

"Strip. Now" a voice ordered. It was not that of Roxanne but that of another older girl named Laura.

"No" squeaked Matilda, the fear etched in her mousey voice.

"If you don't take off your clothes this very instant, I will pound the living daylights out of you."

Matilda stood, frozen. At this point, she probably couldn't move her hands to take her clothes off if she wanted to, they were shaking so aggressively. Laura marched over to her and punched her once, right in her mouth. A small chip of tooth flew from her bleeding lips and Matilda fell the floor.

Roxanne pressed her finger against the screen and the sound instantly stopped. Everyone immediately gathered their clothes and threw them back on, humiliated that the people they would have to spend the rest of their childhood with had just seen their ungroomed bodies. Roxanne could physically feel the hatred towards her bubbling up inside each individual that was in the room. She smiled. This school had taken her freedom from her. It had taken her imagination. But one thing it could never take was the joy she found in having power.

Roxanne was smart. Really smart. She never broke the rules that the school had given her. The only rules she had broken were that of society, and for society she did not care at all.

***

Roxanne walked towards the canteen alone. She may have been at the school for the longest out of all the students here but that didn't mean she had the most friends. Or any at all. People knew who she was and that was what was important to Roxanne. She couldn't care less if people liked her or not. Hell, she didn't want them to like her. She wanted them to fear her; to obey her because they were scared of what would happen if they didn't. She wanted power. Power was a far more useful tool to her then trust or love. She had watched almost everyone else she knew get destroyed by other people; cut down to the core, forced to start again all because they thought they were in love.

"I am strong," thought Roxanne, "because I can create fear. Everybody else is brittle because they have the weakness of longing for love."

As she paced down the main corridor she could feel people's eyes burning her back, trying to figure her out. She had often heard people discussing what they thought was wrong with her, why her heart was so cold even if she had a heart at all.

She did have a heart. She also had antisocial personality disorder, which would explain her lack of empathy. None of her peers knew about the fact that she was a diagnosed sociopath. Roxanne did not feel the need to share. She thought it made her power seem less valid, as though she was gifted with intimidation when in fact it had taken her years of watching, listening, observing, to learn how to use people's weaknesses as her own strength.

She had almost reached the canteen when she felt a pointy tap on her shoulder. At first, she thought she had imagined it; no one ever approached her. She felt it again. She whipped her head around.

Laura.