I Must Be Crazy

“I see you found a new friend there? She as good as the last one?” the older boy who might have been called Adrian asked with a smirk.
“Hi! I’m new at this school today. Who are you? It’s nice to meet you,” said Tiar, automatically and almost woodenly. Markus stood up and grabbed her by the wrist.
“Come on, Tiar.”
“But - wait! Food, no, can’t leave food!” Despite her protests, Markus dragged Tiar away, out of the lunch hall, to the laughter of the older boys and, in fact, most of the lunch hall.

Markus lead Tia as far away from the lunch hall as he could. When they reached the end of the languages corridor, which was empty and silent, he whirled to face her. “Those, Tiar, were the bullies. They are not people you introduce yourself to and try and make friends with.”
Tiar nodded. “I knew they were the bullies,” she said. The boy hesitated.
“You did?”
“Of course. I was just trying an alternative approach, in case that would help at all. I don’t think it really did, though.”
“Now they’ve followed us here,” Markus said, as the door at the end of the corridor opened. Tiar glanced up.
“I know that, too.”
“You seem to know everything, all of a sudden.”
She grinned. “We’ll see.”
“What’s this, then?” Adrian called down the corridor as he and the others approached. “Now you’re taking your girlfriend down a deserted corridor? Ooh-er, aren’t you a bit young for all that?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Markus, just as Tiar said brightly, as if the idea had just occurred to her and was a good one, “You’re all a bunch of dipshits!”
There was a short pause. Markus could hardly believe what he’d just heard, and eyed the bullies with apprehension. To his surprise, they burst out laughing.
“Hey, I think she’s trying to insult us,” smirked the boy who might have been called Ryan.
“Well, that’s just not very nice now, is it?” said one of the other boys, a huge gorilla of a boy with an unkempt mop of gingery hair. He flicked Tiar’s nose with his finger.
“Just because it’s not very nice doesn’t mean it’s not true,” she said, rubbing her noise. “You’re just a bunch of bullying bastards without the guts to pick on someone your own size. Your mothers must be so proud, that their gangrenous offspring are big and strong and brave enough to torment someone less than half their height. You’re a credit to your pedigree, or lack thereof - who knew such giant examples of worthless waste of life would spring from such disgustingly diseased loins as you have. You’re perfect specimens of cannon-fodder, you should join the army - you’re big, stupid and no-one would even care if you died. In fact, people would be happy if you did. Your families would dance on your graves and throw huge parties - thank the lord, we’ve finally lost those wastes of space, now we can have some real children, who are actually worth the time and sperm it takes to create them!”
Tiar finally paused in her tirade, panting for breath. Staring at her with wide eyes, Markus wondered where she’d summoned up such an outpouring of bile.
“What the-” started one of the boys, but almost at once the girl started again, apparently not quite finished.
“Don’t even speak, you giant animated pustule. Your existence would be better justified if you were a tumour on a dog’s left testicle.”
“Where the hell did you get her?” Adrian asked MArkus. The blonde boy hesitated.
“I hired her from an agency to stop you. If you don’t leave me alone, then - then I can’t take responsibility for what happens to you.”
“What’s she going to do, insult us to death?” the older boy said in disgust, over Tiar’s ranting. She paused again, apparently hearing this.
“No, no I’m not. Do you want to hear what I’m going to do to you?”
“No, because you’ll never shut up once you get started,” muttered one of the older boys, but the girl took no notice.
“Let’s see, what can I do to you? Unfortunately I don’t really have any tools. I have stationery, but - oh! I know, there’s a blade in my pencil sharpener. That’s not too bad.” Her smile had become fixed; her eyes had a strange glazed quality. “I’ll use the razor blade to cut off your eyelids and maybe pry out your eyeballs a little, just to get them started. Then I’ll pull them out properly, so the nerve comes out with them, and I’ll make you eat the eyeball part while I strangle you with the stringy part. Wait, no, I don’t think it would be long enough. No, I have a better idea. I’ll kill one of you and kind of saw off your head with the sharpener blade - it’ll be quite hard, but I’m sure I’ll manage - and then I can break the top vertebrae off and pull out your spinal cord. That should be long enough to strangle someone with, and I can stuff bits of vertebrae and neck meat into your mouth to choke you.” All of this was accompanied by violent gestures by way of demonstration. There was something terrible in her manner; she was completely serious about everything she was saying.
“Screw this, you’re a psycho,” Adrian said uneasily, and motioned to his friends to leave. Tiar’s fixed grin grew wider.
“Oh no, don’t go. We still have so much fun to have.” When the boys kept walking, she said angrily, “I told you to stop.”
To Markus’s shock, they did, although it didn’t look like they’d intended to. In fact, once of them went to take another step forward and overbalanced when his foot wouldn’t leave the ground.
“Good,” Tiar said. “Now come back over here. Let’s go into the stairwell, so we can all sit down.” There were no windows in the stairwell; no-one would be able to see in. Swearing, the boys turned back and walked jerkily towards them again, moving as if controlled by inexpert puppeteers.
“What the hell is going on? What are you doing to us, you little freak?” gasped Ryan. Tiar just smiled.
“I’m just trying to reason with you. Markus asked me to stop you for him, so that’s what I’m doing.” She turned to Markus, still smiling. “Believe me, once I’m finished with them they won’t ever bother you again.” She laughed, and grabbed his hand, leading him into the stairwell. “I know! We can do it together! And then we’ll be even better friends, and there won’t be anyone to distract you from having fun with me!”
“Tiar, I’m not sure how you’re doing this or what you’re planning to do next, but I’m not sure it’s right,” Markus said anxiously. The girl looked at him, surprised.
“What do you mean? I’m just doing what you asked.” She smiled again. “I’m doing what’s best for you. They hurt you, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but-”
“They made you cry. They don’t deserve to live if all they do is hurt people. Especially you, Markus.” She squeezed his hand. “You were the first person to hire me, so you’re very, very special to me. I’ll never let anyone hurt you, never, ever again, I promise. You’ll be happy until the day you die because I’ll be right here by your side forever, protecting you.”
He didn’t even know what to say to this statement of totally unwanted loyalty. Tiar didn’t seem to require an answer, however, turning to the older boys, who were standing lined up neatly against the wall, their expressions ranging from fear to anger.
“Now then. I’ve heard that you haven’t been very nice to Markus, and that makes me unhappy.” One of the boys swore at her with futile bravado, and she dropped Markus’s hand to walk over to the boy where he stood by the wall. He flinched as she raised a hand to stroke his cheek. “I was lying before, about all the things I said I was going to do to you,” she said quietly, trailing her finger across his throat. “I don’t have any of the tools I need with me, as I said. So I can only do… this.”
She pressed the palm of her hand to the boy’s face, and in her eyes Markus saw a mad, feverish brightness.

Darcie shot upright, whacking her head hard on the open cupboard door above her. She had been packing groceries into the cupboard when she had felt something - something strange yet familiar at the same time, as if someone she’d known a long time ago had walked into the room. Whatever it was, she could tell that it probably wasn’t a good thing.

Hadrian was teaching his class a lesson on Shakespeare and The Tempest when he suddenly paused, and a frown made his brow wrinkle. There was a long silence before one of his class asked, “What is it, Mr de Mellios?”
He blinked as if waking up, and his expression returned to its normal, slightly haughty, serenity. “Oh, it’s nothing. Amelie, what do you think about…?”

Zariya also reacted to the strange feeling, although she would have liked to think that she did so with more professionalism than Hadrian did. In fact, she was in the middle of a netball game with her class, and her sudden hesitation resulted in a netball bouncing swiftly off her head and nearly knocking her backwards. Ignoring the apologies of the child who had thrown the ball, the teacher glanced quickly around. Not finding the source of the problem in the immediate vicinity, she went back to the lesson.

Crispin’s reaction, of course, was to make things go ‘boom’. The lights in his classroom had been replaced with heavy-duty, virtually indestructible ones, but they weren’t indestructible enough. All the extra strength glass did was stop the students getting showered with bits of glass, at least from the lights. Lots of things exploded this time, not just the inside of the lights; a row of bottles on the windowsill, and as a result of these, the window itself exploded outwards; some of the students were showered with water as the plastic water bottles on their tables proved that glass wasn’t the only thing that Crispin had some strange influence on. The glass terrarium which held the class pets was also a victim, and it was because of a mixture of flying glass and escaping bugs and other icky things that Crispin’s class fled out of the door just like on his first day, shrieking.
Crispin himself just sat at his desk and picked bits of glass out of his hair. Sweeping some insects off his paperwork, he murmured to himself, “Something wicked this way comes.”

Markus could feel the wall pressed against his shoulder, although he couldn’t see it. He was curled in a huddle in the corner of the stairwell, his arms covering his head. He wondered for a moment why he was sitting like that, until he thought of what he had just heard. Some strange instinct had made him close his eyes as Tiar pressed her hand to the boy’s face; as a result, he had only heard what had happened directly after that. There had been… a soft, pulpy sounding explosion, and bits of something soft had spattered on him; he could feel warm wetness where something was soaking through his shirt. He had heard someone close by scream - one of the boys - before there was a series of other soft explosions, and the scream stopped. Then, there was just silence, apart from some dripping noises.
Someone touched his arm, and he flinched. “Hey, Markus? Are you alright? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” It was Tiar’s voice; she sounded worried. “Markus? Markus!”
“I’m fine,” he snapped, as she starting shaking his arm to try and get his attention. “What did-”
Whatever he was about to say was lost forever as he at last opened his eyes and looked around.
Tiar had been deadly serious when she said that the boys wouldn’t worry Markus. In fact, the boys wouldn’t ever worry anyone ever again; they would never interact with anyone again.
The scene that greeted Markus’s eyes was one that he would have been happy not to see, and one that would haunt him forever more. Where the older boys had been lined up against the wall, there was now simply a group of headless corpses, slumped at the bottom of the wall. The walls of the stairwell were splattered on all sides with blood, gore and unidentified grey stuff; Markus didn’t want to think what it was.
“Markus?” Tiar was saying again, but the blonde boy had staggered out of the stairwell and into the hall in front of the doors into the corridor. There, he threw up the contents of his stomach. The girl followed him, still anxiously repeated his name.
“Shut up… shut up… oh god, oh god… you did this…” He stumbled to the other side of the hallway, to the doors leading outside, into the cool, clear, fresh air; in here the stench of blood hung thick in the air, choking him.
“But Markus, I did what you asked - I stopped them! They won’t bully you any more after this,” the girl said, putting her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off.
“What… what are you? Oh god… they’re dead. You… what did you do to them?”
“I just did… I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I’ve always been able to do it. It’s easy. You just think them dead, and then they are.” She grinned at him. “See? So I was the best person to help you! I got rid of them easily-”
“No, no!” he groaned, still trying to unlock the doors. They gave a little, but still didn’t open. “I didn’t… I didn’t want-”
“But you said-”
“I didn’t want them dead!” It came out as a scream, and Tiar stopped in surprise. Markus stared at her, half in terror of her, half enraged. “Why can’t you see that this is wrong? It’s wrong, it’s wrong! You don’t - you don’t just kill people! This is - they were -” He trailed off, shaking his head. He could feel tears on his cheeks, and there was a strange blurriness at the edge of his vision.
“Are you mad at me?” Tiar asked in a small voice. When he didn’t answer she said, voice rising hysterically, “You are mad at me, aren’t you? You are, you are! Why are you so mad? I just did what you asked! You’re mean, Markus! You’re just so mean! I don’t… I don’t like you any more!”
He hardly even noticed as she ran out into the corridor; he thought she might have been crying. Markus leaned against the wall as the doors banged shut behind her, and slid down the wall, and just sat at the bottom of the wall. He closed his eyes. He didn’t ever want to open them again.